The Burn Journals (8 page)

Mom's coming down the hall. I can hear her footsteps and her talking to the nurses at the nurses' station. They're telling her we're in the playroom, and here she comes. “Surprise!” She actually looks surprised, maybe even shocked. Then she looks so happy.

She's going to hug me. I hope she doesn't start to cry.

“Did you make this sign?”

“Yup. Me. And Dad helped.”

“Thank you so much, honey, this is such a wonderful surprise.” Dad brings out the cake and the presents and everything and everybody is having such a good time. Mom loves all her presents. Dad didn't tell me what they were going to be.

All the nurses come in and get some cake and ice cream, and Carol gets out the Polaroid and takes a bunch of pictures of Mom and Dad and me. Mom rests her hand on top of mine while Carol's taking the picture and I want to pull my hand away because I'm afraid that it's going to get hurt, but I don't.

Mom tells me over and over again how much she loves the poster and all the presents and everything and how much she loves me.

They're going to cover the holes on my back and butt with skin from my hips and stomach. The good thing about surgery is that it means I don't have to have a burn care for that day. The bad thing is that they're going to have to keep me on my stomach for ten days afterward so that I don't screw up the new skin by lying on it. They say this will be the last big surgery. I might have to have a few more, but they won't be that big of a deal.

Becky's here for my daily stretching. She's got such a great sense of humor and such a nice face. And best of all when she comes to stretch me, she doesn't wear gloves. So it feels like I'm a real person and she's a real person and we're just hanging out.

They haven't let me have anything to eat since midnight and I'm starving. I tried to get Lisa to get me some ice chips, but she refused. Why can't I get a break in this place? The guys in the blue scrubs are here to wheel me down to the OR. I ask them if they know the way, just to be funny, and they say, “Yes, we know the way.” And I ask them if they're sure, and they say, yes, they're sure. I think they know I'm joking.

I'm in the OR waiting room. They put a hairnet on me and tell me it'll just be a minute. I think they've already started giving me something because I'm feeling light-headed and tired, but not really good like from the drugs they sometimes give me.

The one thing I have to remember is not to wake up during the surgery. That's all I have to do. If I wake up, I'll be screwed. I'll see all the skin all cut up and stretched and stapled all over me. So, I've got to remember not to wake up this time, not that I've ever woken up before in the middle of a surgery, but really, wouldn't that just be the worst?

They're taking me into the OR, with all the lights and the cold air. So much cold air. Maybe they'll put one of those warm blankets over me. A nurse is putting a warm blanket on me. She's wearing a hairnet, a mask, and glasses and I can barely see her eyes. They're putting the mask over my face and telling me to breathe. I've got to remember to stay awake, no, stay asleep, I have to stay asleep, not awake. They're telling me to breathe deeply. I can do that. I can breathe deeply. It's hard to see with these eyes how they are, they get so heavy and blurry and hard to see with when they make the breathing of the oxygen with the mask, and the breathing and the mask, and the breathing.

I'm waking up, this is bad. I'm supposed to be asleep, maybe if I close my eyes, I can stay asleep while they finish the surgery. Okay, just go back to sleep.

I'm lying on my stomach and I've got the tubes in my mouth, does that mean they're done with the surgery or am I waking up too early again? I'm probably waking up too early. I should go back to sleep.

Mom and Dad are looking at me, smiling, and I'm trying to look at them, but I'm on my stomach, like they said I would be, and I can barely open my eye. The tubes are gone and I'm breathing like I should be, but I just feel so sick all over. I try to tell Mom and Dad that I feel bad, but my throat is so sore and my voice is so hoarse from the tubes they put down there that I can only get out the words, “I feel bad.” They say it's the anesthesia wearing off and I'll feel better in a couple of hours. They tell me to go back to sleep.

I close my eye and listen to the sounds around me. The steady beeping is my heart rate, the constant humming is the IV pushing the meds into my bloodstream. There are feet in the hallway outside, tennis shoes by the way they squeak on the linoleum, a sound like a grocery cart, that must be a gurney with a patient going by, so I'm not back in the Burn Unit yet, I'm still downstairs in Recovery. Oh yeah, and I saw a cloth curtain when I opened my eye, so I am in Recovery. I wonder if I should ask Mom to read to me but I don't think I'd be able to pay attention.

I can see a red light and a black light, or no light at all. The red is on my right side and the blackness is on my left and the red light means that my eye is closed and I should try to open it to see what I can see, but it just seems like so much work to open my eye.

I can hear some whispering. That's Dad's voice, what's he whispering? He's got his concerned voice on. Mom says something, but I can't hear any of the words. She's being positive, she's got her positive voice on. I keep my eye closed.

When I was really little, I used to have this brown wallpaper in my room and my bed was pushed right up against the wall and when I was going to sleep I'd stare at the brown wallpaper instead of closing my eyes. Sometimes I'd fall asleep and start dreaming and I'd still see the dark brown wallpaper in my mind, like I was still awake with my eyes open. And sometimes I'd see these olive green silhouettes against the brown background. There was a big one and a medium-sized one and a small one. The big one had a voice like my dad's, deep and gruff, and the medium-sized one had a voice like my mom's, smoother but very serious, and they always started out calm and in hushed voices, but as the dream went on, they got louder and louder and angrier and angrier. There were never any words, just the sounds of their voices. Sometimes the little one would try to interrupt and say something, but then the two bigger ones would just start talking at the same time and the combination of the low gruff voice and the higher serious one would just be too scary and I'd wake up and I'd be staring at the same brown wall I'd been dreaming about, and the voices would still be there.

They must know that I'm awake because they're talking to me, asking if I need anything, if I want to listen to a tape, or watch a movie, or listen to a book. I don't want to do any of that, I just want to go back to sleep.

I'm hungry. I open my eye and see Mom sitting in the chair, reading. She looks up as soon as I do and asks me if I want anything. I say, “Ice.”

She scoops a little bit onto a plastic spoon and angles it into my mouth. My mouth was so dry. I love the taste of ice.

Maybe when I get older, I can work in an ice factory, pulling ice out of the lake in the winter and storing it in little log cabins filled with sawdust.

I'm listening to a comedy tape that my mom got me by Billy Crystal and it's got that funny “I hate when that happens” bit. The one where these two guys trade stories about when they hit their tongues with ball-peen hammers over and over again, and then one says, “That really smarts.” And the other one says, “I hate when that happens.” And the first one says, “I know what you mean.”

Stephen and I should do that bit together. We could be funny at that.

Mom's not coming today because she's going to North Carolina with Craig to look at colleges. I'm glad I'm not going with them. I used to hate that. We'd drive for about five hours and then get out and play Nerf football in the quad of some school for forty-five minutes and then get back in the car and go home. I don't even know why they made me go.

There are two kinds of people in this world. People that have to lie on their stomachs for ten days straight and people that don't. And the lucky bastards that don't have to lie on their stomachs for ten motherfucking
days are the ones that get to skate through life like
they have their own personal Zamboni smoothing the way for them.

People here like to talk to me about Pain Management. They ask me to rate my pain on a scale of one to ten. One being the least painful and ten being the most. I don't think they have a number for some of the pain I'm going through. I don't think they even have a number.

Then they like to tell me if I relax and breathe deeply, then I won't be in as much pain. That's complete bullshit. I'd like to see them breathe deeply and take this pain without drugs. I'm sick of pain.

Anxious, there's a word I hear a lot. They say I get anxious before burn care and anxious before I have my appointments with Dr. Rubinstein. But I don't think they understand the meaning of the word anxious. People get anxious in awkward group situations or before they go to birthday parties. Before burn therapy, I don't get anxious, I get freaked out. Before my meetings with Dr. Rubinstein, I don't get anxious, I get angry because she's going to ask me stupid questions and I don't want to answer any stupid questions.

Dr. Bitchenstein is here to ask me about everything that's ever happened and everything that ever will happen and to try to make me feel worse even though it's not really fucking possible to make me feel worse at this point, unless you were to do something terrible like put me facedown on a bed for ten days and ask me a bunch of questions about things that happened months ago that I don't even remember.

“Brent?” she says in her annoying accented Dr. Ruth voice. “Are you awake?”

“Yes,” I say without unclenching my teeth.

“How are you feeling?” How am I feeling. How am I feeling? I'm feeling pretty bad, you bitch.

“Bad,” I say.

“I understand,” she says, but it's painfully fucking obvious that she understands about as much as I understand Austrian, which is none at all.

“Do you want to talk about it?”

“Uh-uh.” This time I don't even open my mouth.

“Are you in a lot of pain?”

“Uh-huh.”

“You're not feeling very verbal today. That's all right, I'll leave you alone, but you're going to have to talk to me at some point, Brent.”

That's where you're wrong. I don't have to say another word to you if I don't want to. I don't even have to open my mouth.

Dad's here giving me ice chips and not saying much. Every once in a while he tells me about someone I know, or someone he knows, that's doing something great.

He says, “Craiger seems like he's leaning toward George Mason. That'd be good, huh, bud? Real close to home.”

“Is he going to live at home?”

“No, he's going to live in the dorms.”

“Is he still going out with Valerie?”

“Yup. They're going to the prom in a week.”

“Is she nice?”

“She's pretty nice.”

“Are they going to get married?”

He laughs, but I wasn't really joking. I guess that's a no. He says, “I brought your mail. Do you want to see it?”

“Sure.”

“Here's something from Sue, Roger, and Kellie. They say, ‘Get well soon,' and they all signed it. And there's a picture of Kellie here. Do you want to see?”

“Sure.” He holds it up. It's a school picture. She's in eighth grade like me, like I was, and she looks happy with a big smile showing both rows of teeth, short blond hair, a blue shirt, and hoop earrings. Her parents were friends with my parents before we were even born, so we kind of grew up together, but we never really got along. She was too stiff and I was too wild. But she doesn't look so bad in that picture. I wonder if I should figure out a way to make her fall in love with me. I mean, she has known me her whole life, so it shouldn't be that hard for her to love me now and maybe she won't care what I look like. Something to think about.

Dad tapes Kellie's picture on the wall. Then he picks up a big manila envelope that's stuffed full. It's from Patty Perry and her fourth-grade class. He reads the note, “‘An ancient story from Japan says that a wish is granted for every one hundred origami cranes folded. So here are a hundred origami cranes folded by Mrs. Perry's fourth-grade class. We wish that you'll get better soon.' And then they all signed the note at the bottom.” Dad pulls out a string with a crane tied to it and another and another. He keeps pulling them out of the envelope until the string stretches all around the room. He hangs the string over some thumbtacks in the wall, over the quilt my friends at school made with the messages written in bubble paint, over the Aerosmith poster and the pictures of Nanny and Grandpa and my cousins, over the letters from my French class and the Chicago Bulls pennant, over the wall of get well soon letters from God knows who and the Christmas picture of the Humberts, over the Cindy Crawford poster and the signed Magic Johnson T-shirt. The string stops right above the IV that's pumping something into my veins. Dad looks around and says, “You're going to need a bigger room.”

When I was in fourth grade, I used to show off and bang my head into different things, like walls and banisters and stuff, just to prove I could take it. It didn't matter to me, the pain always went away eventually. But sometimes, during burn care, the pain feels like it goes on forever—like it's the ocean and I'm crossing it in a rowboat.

So the good part is I don't have to have another major surgery. That's good. The bad part is that I have to lie on my stomach for another four days. Even Becky and Dawn have stopped coming to visit with me, I guess because they can't do any range of motion exercises while I'm on my stomach.

Sometimes Tina still comes in and talks to me about stuff and makes me laugh a little, but she seems busier now. Barbara comes in too, feeds me ice chips and talks to me for a little while, and then goes to see to another patient.