Emily

by Jack Weyland

  Molly returned. “I called the bishop. He’s on the way.”

  “They’re going to put me on a helicopter,” Emily slurred.

  “Yes, I know.”

  “I don’t want to go. I’m afraid I’ll fall out.” Talking took more strength than she had.

  “You won’t fall out.”

  “I’m not sure I can hold on the whole time.”

  “You won’t have to hold on.”

  “If I don’t hold on, I’ll fall.”

  “No, really, it’s going to be okay.”

  “I don’t want to go. It was a mistake to come here.”

  “You have to go to the burn center, Emily.”

  She closed her eyes. What’s the difference? One way or the other, I’m going to die.

  “I want to talk to my mom and dad,” she said.

  “All right, let’s do that now,” Molly said, asking a nurse for a phone Emily could use to talk to her parents.

  A short time later, with Emily giving her the number, Molly made the call.

  “Hello. Is this Emily’s mom? Hi. This is Molly, her roommate. She’s been burned. I’m here with her in the hospital. She wants to talk to you. Hold on, I’ll put her on.”

  Molly placed the phone by Emily’s good ear.

  “Mom? . . . I got burned . . .” She felt her strength ebbing away. “Mom, if I don’t make it, I just wanted to say . . . I love you. Tell Daddy I love him too, okay? Okay . . .”

  The effort to talk was too much.

  Molly took the phone. “Hello? This is Molly again. Well, the doctor hasn’t said, so I don’t know what to say, but it’s pretty bad. I know they’re going to fly her by helicopter to the burn center in Salt Lake City.”

  Molly stayed by her side, and for that Emily was grateful, except for a thought, which, like the fire, started small but was threatening to grow out of control. The thought was, If Molly had sprayed me with water when she first came into the kitchen, I might not even be here now.

  “They probably won’t let me ride with you, but I’ll find someone to drive me down to the burn center,” Molly said.

  “Don’t bother,” Emily said.

  “Don’t bother? Are you serious? I love you, Emily. You know that. There’s not anything I wouldn’t do for you.”

  Gasping to get enough air, and wanting someone to blame for the agony she was going through, Emily took two deep breaths and whispered, “Then why did you wait so long to put out the fire?”

  She might as well have struck Molly across the face for the hurt it caused. “I tried,” Molly blurted out. “I didn’t know what to do. I’m sorry. I did the best I could.”

  What does it matter now? I’m going to die anyway. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said that,” Emily said.

  Shortly after that two men were ushered by a nurse in to where Emily and Molly were. “I’m here to give a priesthood blessing,” the older of the two said. “I brought my son.”

  “You’re not Bishop Cherington,” Molly said.

  “Well, I was, up to a few weeks ago. You know what? I bet you wanted my nephew. He was recently called to be a bishop on campus.”

  “Why did you come when you don’t even know Emily?” Molly asked.

  “I never turn down a request to administer to someone.”

  “Please give me a blessing,” Emily said weakly.

  He bent over close to her. “Is there some place on your head we can put our hands?” he asked.

  “I don’t know.”

  “She was burned on her right side,” Molly said. “I think here on the side, by her ear, might be okay.”

  “We’ll be very careful,” Brother Cherington said.

  His son performed the anointing, and then Brother Cherington and his son gave Emily a blessing, barely touching the left side of her head with their fingers. She could hardly feel them. Brother Cherington blessed her body that it would heal and prayed that those who would treat her would make the right decisions and be able to use their skills to help her recover.

  When they finished, Emily could breathe better. Is this from God or is it from what the doctors did?

  After the blessing was over, a nurse entered the cloth-draped enclosure. “The AirMed helicopter is just minutes away.”

  Molly leaned near to Emily. “You okay?”

  “I’m afraid,” she said softly.

  “Afraid of the helicopter ride?”

  “Yes,” she whispered.

  “I’ll tell them to take special care of you.”

  Emily’s mind felt cloudy, almost as if it were detached from the rest of her body. The pain was still there, but it didn’t have an edge like before. It must be the morphine, she thought.

  A few minutes later two strangers appeared at her side. “Emily, I’m Garth, and this is Jordan. We’re from AirMed. We’re here to transport you to the burn center at the University of Utah.”

  “She’s afraid of riding in a helicopter,” Molly said.

  Garth smiled. “Emily, don’t worry about a thing. I’ll hold your hand the whole way so you won’t be scared.”

  It was time for Molly to say good-bye. She was crying as she leaned down. “I love you, Emily. I’ll come visit you.”

  Garth and Jordan switched gurneys and rolled her out a door and then out to where the helicopter was waiting.

  Emily was placed inside the helicopter, and a second later, the doors were closed. She was relieved to discover there was no way she could fall out.

  Garth was true to his promise and held her hand the whole time. He talked about his son who had graduated a year earlier from Utah State University. It was hard for her to concentrate on what he was saying.

  During the flight, Emily drifted in and out of consciousness. The morphine only dulled the pain; it didn’t make it go away, but it seemed to her the flight took no time at all. The next thing she knew, they were passing over a mountain and she could see the lights of the city far below.

  “There’s Salt Lake City,” Garth said. “We’ll be there in just a few minutes. They’ll take good care of you there. They’re the best in the business.”

  “Do they have Neosporin?” she asked weakly.

  * * * * *

  The burn center staff at the hospital was ready for Emily the instant she was wheeled in. A male nurse who looked more like a football player than a health care provider seemed to be in charge. He was wearing hospital greens, and his long red hair was tied back in a ponytail. “What’s her name?” he asked Garth.

  “Emily Latrell.”

  “Emily, everyone here calls me Red. Probably because of the color of my hair, right? So it’s easy to remember. You need anything, you call me, okay? Emily, you’re in ER at the University of Utah Medical Center in Salt Lake City. The first thing we want to do is to check you over to see how you’re doing. Okay? We’ll start with your vital signs, and then we’ll draw some blood for tests. You just relax and we’ll try not to hurt you.”

  She was transferred onto another gurney, after which Garth and Jordan said their good-byes.

  She found herself surrounded by a crowd of people, all of them peering and poking at her. To her, they were a mob of cruel tormentors, determined to inflict pain and embarrassment on her. Every movement, every breath, every puff of air sent her way was painful. She wished they would just give her another shot of morphine and put her in a dark room, close the door, and leave her alone.

  Instead, they gave her oxygen to help her breathe, started another IV solution, and checked her blood pressure again. Next, two people lifted the sheet to examine the extent of her burns. After a few moments, one of them said, “I’d say twenty percent . . . third degree.”

  “I agree.”

  A short time later they gave her more morphine. It was such a relief to have the acute pain turn into a dull ache.

  “Are you cold?” someone asked.

  “Yes.”

  They brought heated blankets and put them on the parts of her body they weren’t treating
at the time.

  Two nurses began the painful process of carefully cleaning the burn wounds. After doing so, they applied antiseptic ointment and bandaged the areas of her chest, stomach, and arms that had been burned. The two of them were as gentle as possible, but everything they did caused more pain.

  When the process was completed, Red took charge. Before pushing her gurney out into the hall, he said, “Emily, we’re taking you upstairs to the burn unit. Your traveling days are over for a while, okay? No more exciting ambulance rides. No more sight-seeing tours in a helicopter. You can just hang out with us for a while, okay? We’ll take real good care of you.”

  They took an elevator ride to the fourth floor, then Red wheeled Emily through some automatic double doors into the burn unit. They ended up in a large open area with a nurses’ station in the middle and patients’ rooms surrounding it on all sides.

  “We’re giving you our best room to start out with,” Red said. “Of course, some complain because it doesn’t have a door, but that’s so we can keep a close watch on you.”

  The last thing they did before they let her rest was to record her weight, using the built-in scale in her hospital bed.

  An hour or so later, her parents were brought in to see her. Because Emily hadn’t seen herself in the mirror, she studied their expressions when they first saw her. Her mother’s reaction was hard to read, but her dad turned away, so Emily knew it was bad.

  Her mother tried to keep up a brave front, but Emily could see tears in her eyes. “How you doing, Baby?”

  “Okay, I guess,” she said.

  Her dad was having a hard time even looking at her. “You had an accident cooking? How’d it happen?” he asked.

  “We don’t need to know that right now, do we?” her mother said crossly.

  “No, of course not, you can tell us some other time,” her dad said.

  They talked some more and then a male nurse approached. “I need to cut your hair.”

  “Emily, they need to cut your hair,” her mom said.

  “I heard him,” Emily answered, irritated that her mother felt the need to repeat everything.

  The nurse turned on the electric razor.

  “How short are you going to cut it?” Emily asked.

  “Actually, I’m cutting it all off. Doctor’s orders.”

  “Just leave it,” Emily said. “My mom can trim it where it’s burnt.”

  “The reason we do this is because we need to be able to see everything that needs treatment. We don’t want your hair hiding areas that were burned.”

  Working slowly and taking great care not to hurt her any more than necessary, the man cut all the hair off the right side of her head, so that where she’d been burned, she was completely bald. He cut the hair on the left side of her head too, but not quite so short. It left her looking like a three-year-old who had chopped at her own hair. Then he gathered up all the clumps and put them in the trash. “Okay, that’s it. Thanks,” he said on his way out.

  “We should sue them for malpractice,” Emily said.

  “What for?” her dad asked.

  “For cutting all my hair off.”

  “I’m sure they know what they’re doing,” her mother said.

  “Sure, they do,” her dad said. “Are they giving you something for pain?”

  “Yeah, morphine.”

  “They’re giving you morphine!” her dad said.

  The next time Red came to check on her, Emily’s dad said, “Is it really a good idea to be giving her morphine?”

  “It must be all right or they wouldn’t do it,” her mother shot back.

  “But what if she becomes addicted to it?” her dad argued.

  “It’s never happened yet,” Red assured him.

  Even after Red left, her dad was still fretting. “Why not something else besides morphine? I mean, there must be something else that’d be just as good, something that’s not habit forming.”

  “They must know what they’re doing. I’m sure they don’t need you to set them straight,” her mom answered.

  Emily grew tired of having her parents there. They continually bickered, and they kept asking her questions that she couldn’t answer. She felt as though she needed to entertain them, but it was hard for her to think clearly. She was also still having difficulty breathing. Every word she spoke came with a price tag on it. She wished they would leave, but they were determined to stay the night at her bedside. She felt miserable and depressed and wanted to just be left alone so she could feel that way without someone trying to talk her out of it.

  Halfway through the night, her parents went to the lounge where they could sleep on recliners. Emily was relieved to see them go.

  In order to accurately monitor the amount of urine her body was producing, she had been catheterized. At first, she was afraid of leakage, but everything worked the way it was supposed to. She was surprised at the interest the staff took in what came out of her body. They carefully measured it and recorded the results. I’m like their science fair project, she thought.

  It seemed strange to her that she was producing any urine because she hadn’t had anything to drink for hours. Then she realized it was because of the IV that they kept constantly running. They’re pumping fluids into me like crazy, she thought. It’s a good thing I don’t have to get up every time. I’d no sooner get back to bed than I’d need to get up again.

  The night seemed to last forever. She normally liked to sleep on her side or her stomach, but they kept her lying flat on her back, and she only slept in snatches. The morphine, which was administered through a port in her IV setup, dulled the pain but kept her feeling kind of numb and floating. Even so, every movement she made was painful.

  Throughout the night, nurses came and left and returned again. She overheard their conversations. One male nurse explained in great detail the best way to buy a used car. It was like watching a bad movie on television and not being able to turn it off.

  Chapter 5

  Everything seemed a little distorted, the walls not quite square, the pictures crooked, the conversations unreal.

  She thought about what had happened to her, trying to find the place where the accident could have been avoided, beginning each scenario with If only I had . . .

  At first it was easy. If only she hadn’t worn the loose, polyester blouse to church . . . if only she hadn’t decided to cook noodles for supper . . . if only she’d had tuna sandwiches . . . then this never would have happened. Or if, even though it was a Sunday, if only she’d eaten at some fast-food place.

  Her mind raced. She couldn’t stop the process. She kept thinking of alternatives, even imagining at one point that she wouldn’t have been burned if she had made a different choice when she’d eaten supper with David Alexander. In her delirious state, she heard him ask again, “Is there some place we can go now?”

  She knew the right answer, the answer she’d been taught to give. But this time, because she was in pain beyond anything she’d ever thought possible, this time in her mind she said, “Yes, David, let’s go back to your apartment.”

  In her fantasy, he was surprised at her answer and gave her a big grin and told the waiter, “We’ve decided to postpone dessert until we get home.”

  That’s where two paths presented themselves. Go home with David, and I don’t get burned. Or tell him no, and end up here. The decision seemed so clear to me then, but now it doesn’t. Nothing seems very clear to me now.

  If I’d gone to his apartment, then everything would have changed. He would have asked me to marry him, and I’d have flown out with him on Saturday instead of making a videotape to send out. And I’d have met his mother and moved into their house. And tonight, instead of me lying here in a hospital bed, he’d be arranging for me to work as a newscaster.

  Is it ever right to make a wrong decision? Right now it seems like it could be. One thing’s for certain—I’d give anything not to have ended up in this place.

  What would have bee
n so wrong with living with David if it would have spared me this?

  We’d have ended up getting married anyway, so what would be the harm?

  * * * * *

  The next morning, Emily opened her eyes to see Red talking to a tall woman, who looked to be in her late twenties. Watching the easy manner they had with each other, Emily assumed the two were old friends.

  After a few minutes, Emily heard Red say, “C’mon, I’ll introduce you to her.”

  The attractive woman wore her brownish, copper- colored hair cut stylishly short, and she smiled pleasantly as she approached Emily’s bed.

  “Emily,” Red said, “this is Brooke. She’s what we call a child-life specialist. I used to think she and I would get married someday, but then she went and married some no-account bum who can’t even hold down a decent job.”

  Brooke shook her head and smiled warmly at Emily. “Don’t believe him. My husband, James, is an attorney.”

  “I rest my case,” Red said, rolling his eyes.

  “I’ll tell him hello for you,” Brooke said, chuckling.

  “You do that. Well, I’ll leave you two alone.”

  Brooke pulled up a stool and sat down next to Emily’s bed. “How you doing?”

  “I’ve been better.”

  “Do you need anything?”

  “Not really. You say you work with children? I’m not a child.”

  “I know you aren’t, but my role is to give you someone to talk to, and maybe answer your questions.”

  “Okay,” Emily said.

  “Oh, also, we have some CD players and some CDs that people have donated, in case you’d like that. And a few posters that people have dropped by for us to use. But, come to think of it, most of our posters are probably too young for you. What year in school are you?”

  “I just finished my freshman year at Utah State University.”

  “Well, that’s great. What are you majoring in?”

  “Communications. I want to be a TV newscaster some-day.”

  “Good for you.”

  “Do you know who David Alexander is?”

  “Doesn’t he do TV news?” Brooke asked.