The Almost Murder and Other Stories

by Theresa Saldaña

  Delgado found her sister, Marta, the Burn Unit’s charge nurse, as she was finishing a poster she’d taped to the wall announcing an activity. She introduced us, telling Marta I was the girl she’d told her about. Her sister was as slim as Delgado was plump, but just as energetic. She smiled and told me she was glad to meet me at last.

  Delgado told us she had to fly and headed out the door. Marta asked if I’d like to meet some people my age, and I nodded; there wasn’t much else to do.

  She led me to a table of patients: two girls and a boy.

  All three looked me right in the face, without judgment or shock, and smiled. I looked at them, too, really looked. For the first time since the crash, I saw people like me: scarred, torn, kindred spirits. I felt indescribable comfort and a buzz of excitement.

  Jordy and Barbara had facial scars. Ellen, in a wheelchair, had both legs and one arm bandaged and splinted. Their eyes said everything.

  I put my tray down, and we ate lunch together. No one was nervous or timid around me. No one looked away from my face.

  After a while, Jordy said, “All of us were burned—obviously. Do you mind telling us what happened to you?” For no reason I could figure out, I laughed. And then, I told them.

  We went around the table, briefly saying what we’d been through. They were accustomed to doing this, but taking part in this tiny, powerful support group was a first for me. We were interrupted by a candy striper, who announced that my three new friends were late for occupational therapy.

  I told them that I’d be getting discharged the next day. Jordy seemed disappointed and invited me to come up to the unit that evening. There was to be a lecture and rap group. I agreed, eager to see them again.

  Delgado was about to clock out but told the charge nurse, Tiffany, where I wanted to go. She also okay’d me to attend the group. I rode up in the elevator, my stomach fluttering.

  In a big meeting room were patients of all shapes, sizes, colors, ages, along with many family members. All of them had gathered to hear a speaker.

  The subject was “humor in the face of adversity.” Our speaker, who’d written of her experience and been published, had lost her two children and husband in a freak accident. She told her story and handed out free copies of her book.

  During a break, my three friends introduced me to everyone there. I met an Asian man who had much of his face, including his nose, burned off. I was touched by him. He had beautiful eyes, a soft voice, a shy wife and a toddler who crawled all over him, unfazed by his scars or missing nose.

  I wasn’t the only one who’d been through pain, who still felt it.

  After the break, we were invited to share stories related to our experiences. I told them that I’d hidden in a stifling, damp garden shed in my own backyard for two hours just the week earlier because I didn’t want the cute landscaper’s son to see my face. I laughed and cried. Others understood and commiserated.

  At the end of the evening, we chatted as we stood in line for the author’s autograph on our books.

  I felt sad to leave the warmth of the Burn Unit, but it was my curfew: 9:00 p.m. I had to get back to my own room; twelve hours later, I’d be discharged. It felt natural to hug my friends goodbye.

  Jordy said, “Well, you’re getting sprung—come visit us.”

  I said that I would—and meant it.

  In my room, I thought of the difficulties I’d been through over race and ethnicity before my accident. Then I remembered all the faces I’d seen that evening on the Burn Unit. Black, Asian, Anglo, Latino. None of this mattered. We all hurt. We’d all been altered. We were all alive. Our pain and survival linked us.

  In the morning, my doctor told me that my growth was benign and bloodwork was excellent. While he filled out discharge papers, I went up to share my news and say goodbye to my friends again. They could tell I didn’t want to leave. I found myself crying as they hugged me. It was a good sort of crying—tears of love, recognition and connection.

  The first thing I did at home was to call St. Joe’s Volunteer Center. Luckily, the coordinator, Chantel Green, was in. I asked to become a Burn Unit volunteer, giving Delgado as my reference. A new training session would be starting that Monday.

  My parents had overheard everything and were beaming. I didn’t know it, but Mom had come to visit me the night before. Tiffany had told her where I’d gone and that I might become a volunteer. Nothing could have pleased them more than for me to be involved in service and with people much like myself.

  That afternoon, instead of surfing the Web and watching TV, I cleaned out my closet and tried on outfits suitable for the classroom and hospital.

  Saturday morning, I went to St. Joe’s. Stopping by the third floor, I asked Delgado if I could go up to the unit. She beamed and said it was fine, that I should go find Marta there.

  I went up and found Marta at the nurse’s station. She looked pleased to see me and suggested that I join an art therapy class. Since I still saw doctors at St. Joe’s for follow-up visits, she could list me as an outpatient, qualifying me for activities.

  Lousy as I am at painting, the thought of splashing a brush around sounded good to me. I followed Marta’s directions to a big, bright studio with artwork and easels everywhere.

  The teacher gestured for me to take a place. Of my trio of friends, only Jordy was there. I felt right at home, though, and painted a pastel, modern-art watercolor. It wasn’t a masterpiece, but I liked it. Jordy waved before going off to physical therapy.

  Afterward, I met Dad outside and chattered about my day, just as I used to do before the crash. He smiled and told me my face was glowing. I accepted the compliment and didn’t call myself Monster Girl as I used to.

  On Sunday, the slowest day on any hospital ward, I went back to the Burn Unit. A game of Monopoly was starting up in the recreation room. There was a spot for me. We played and talked about nothing and everything.

  On Monday, I started training. There were six of us: three seniors, a young married girl, a college intern and me. We had lessons in the classroom and tasks on the floor, where we learned on our feet.

  Patients, fellow volunteers and staff members were interested in me, my scars, my story. I told it again and again and didn’t feel embarrassed. After classes, I would visit my friends in their rooms, or watch TV in the lounge with them.

  By day, I helped patients as a student volunteer. At night, we were peers. We had dinner together in the Burn Café often. Afterward, I’d go home for dessert with my parents.

  When I called my cousins, I raved about all the new friends I’d made. They were glad for me, and when they visited, all three noticed that I seemed less shy about my appearance. Training and working at St. Joe’s had adjusted me to being around people, even unscarred ones, like my classmates, the staff and family members of patients.

  Four weeks later, training complete, I became an official Burn Unit volunteer. I’d found a place in the world where I could feel good about myself and be of service to others. I had found people to connect to, for whom my scars were a link: something to help me help them and let them help me.

  I assisted the nurses and heard cries, held hands, touched souls. Anything I did to help was given back to me manyfold. I made the closest connections of my life—we were more like sisters and brothers than friends. I talked, watched and learned from patients whose deformities disappeared when I came to know their hearts.

  Jeremy, a boy my age, had come back to St. Joe’s for a third skin graft on burns he’d gotten a year earlier when his legs and feet were scalded by boiling water at his dad’s restaurant.

  He and I compared scars: mine jagged, sharp and dry; his swirly, leaky, multicolored and raw from multiple skin grafts. Jeremy is African American; the dark pigmentation of the areas which had been burned was gone. That skin was pink and white, not deep brown-black like the rest of him.

  I told Jeremy that my scars reminded me of snakes. Jeremy confided that he thought his looked like a blotchy mess of
lava and lumps of molten clay. To him, some parts of his body looked polka-dotted. He called himself the Human Domino.

  Neither of us said, “Oh, your scars are just fine.” Instead, we listened, scrutinized, commiserated. Our heads and souls were linked. We finished each other’s sentences.

  After his skin graft, Jeremy was in awful pain. He asked me to stick around one day when he was about to have his dressing change. He couldn’t take it when his mother came to these procedures, since she cried so hard, making him feel worse. I told him I’d been through the same thing.

  The charge nurse, Marta, set it up so that Jeremy’s dressing changes took place during my shifts. I was his buddy, holding his hand, never wincing. Instead I distracted him or just kept quiet—whatever he seemed to need.

  One day, his mom, a tall, beautiful, religious lady, burst into Jeremy’s room and smothered me with hugs and kisses. She said the Lord had sent me to her son and him to me. She declared that the South Central Baptist congregation had me and Jeremy in their prayers at every service. Jeremy grinned at me, wondering if I felt overwhelmed. I didn’t; I just felt good.

  Alexia, twelve, was my pet and protégée. The entire left side of her pretty face had been burned in an explosion, when a prankster switched the chemicals in her school’s lab. After many skin grafts and surgeries, with more ahead, Alexia was glad to have an older girlfriend whose face, like hers, was marred.

  When my shift was over, I’d go to Alexia’s room to braid and brush out her long hair, watch TV or listen to music. Alexia trusted and looked up to me. She seemed quiet at first, but became a chatterbox once she came to know me.

  I noticed that Alexia kept the burned side of her face averted habitually, and I never remarked on it. After a week, she suddenly started to look at me full on. Then, she held her face up for others on the unit, too. I was proud of her.

  I kept Alexia busy, met her parents and brother and devoted myself to her. I never had a little sister and loved to spoil Alexia, listen to her and bring her books from home I knew she’d love. We felt we’d known each other forever. This was common in the Burn Unit.

  When Alexia asked about life “out there,” I was honest. I told her of the beach walks at night my parents and I took together, rain or shine. Feeling embarrassed, but knowing I couldn’t lie, I admitted to Alexia that, except for my parents, cousins and Burn Unit friends, I had become isolated.

  My “little sister” counseled me, insisting that I needed to go outside and see the world again, just as she planned on doing after her own discharge.

  Alexia said, “I’m not letting these scars ruin my life, but I wish you’d go first. Then you can tell me how it feels out there and warn me about what to expect.”

  I couldn’t say no to my dear sister-friend and agreed to do just as she asked. I hadn’t been strong enough before but I decided that I could and should be braver for her.

  I knew that I couldn’t help Alexia adjust to life after she left the hospital if I didn’t get myself out there first. I needed to jump back in and reenter society outside my home and the Burn Unit. I had to let strangers see and react to me, brave the inevitable stares and learn to share with people who had no connection to scars.

  I couldn’t help Alexia or anyone else without taking a leap of faith. And so I did.

  My cousin’s house was my first destination. The Three Ts had come over to visit me so often, often by bus. It was well past my turn to go to see them. I chose a Saturday afternoon for this first post-injury return to Van Nuys, my home away from home. And I went. My cousins opened their house, hearts and lives to me. It felt great to be back.

  Two weekends in a row I went to see my cousins, but we stayed inside. I prayed for courage to do much more.

  That Monday, I told Alexia what I was about to do, and asked my cousins to go with me on my first “outside trip.” We discussed various options, then decided on lunch at CPK and a movie at the Galleria Mall.

  Dad dropped us off, and we went to the main level. It was busy, crowded. Noisy. Right from the start, I sensed some shoppers’ shock or discomfort when they saw my face. Others turned away. I’d expected this and stayed strong.

  We went to a Barnes & Noble bookstore. There, a small boy, about five years old, asked me, “What’s that on your face?” I told him I had scars from a car accident. He said, “Oh,” and went back to his picture book.

  More people handled the sight of me better than poorly. I sensed that, although many didn’t know exactly how to react, most had good intentions.

  We had a great meal without incident, saw a cool movie, and all in all I felt pretty good about being out. I told my dad so in the car. He and my cousins declared they were proud of me. Dad took us to have ice cream sundaes to celebrate my “coming out.”

  The next day, I told Alexia all about my trip to the mall, and she congratulated me as if I’d run a marathon. In a sense, I had.

  The mall visit whetted my appetite for more. I grew excited about life and socializing. I started going out every day. With each journey, long or short, I grew accustomed to people’s reactions, and my own to theirs. I shopped with Mom and even walked to Starbucks on my own. Yes, people stared, and I heard some rude remarks, but being outside, back in the pulse and swing of life, was worth it all.

  I began writing a journal about my adventures and read many of my entries to Alexia. At first, I emphasized my positive experiences and skipped the negatives. She was too smart for this and asked me to tell her everything. I did.

  Marta invited me to speak in a Burn Unit lecture about my experiences and how it felt to go from the hospital to the outside world. I spent three weeks writing an outline for a speech I called “Transitions.” That Friday evening, I was more excited than nervous before giving my speech.

  Marta introduced me to patients and family members gathered in the meeting room. I was proud to share my story and feelings with this crowd of special people, just as the author I’d admired months ago had done.

  Alexia and Jeremy were in the front row, with their parents and my own behind them. I opened up and told them how I felt, and all I’d learned.

  The patients and families raved about my “Transitions” talk, so Marta asked me to give a shortened version and lead a support group every first Friday of the month. I was thrilled to accept.

  From then on, my parents treated the group, “Transitions,” to pizza after each discussion. We moved the gathering from the big meeting room to the more intimate Burn Café. Of course, I led it as a youth peer and volunteer, not as a professional.

  We focused on transitions and making steps toward specific goals. Kids and adults told me how much I was helping them to prepare for life outside. They helped me as much, or more, than I helped them. I was glad to feel useful and trusted.

  Little Alexia told me so much about her therapist and how much the sessions helped her, that I decided it was time for me to get some professional help. My parents were thrilled, and Delgado found a woman who specialized in counseling young women. Some had eating disorders; others had phobias or issues similar to mine.

  I was nervous before my first meeting with Eva Barzel, but we connected right away and I relaxed, kicking myself for not starting therapy sooner. She helped me put my pieces together and gave me encouragement beyond anything I’d expected. I went twice a week.

  Three weeks into our sessions, Alexia was discharged and went home to San Diego. I missed her like crazy, but we talked by phone and e-mailed. We still do.

  Within a month, I asked Eva what she thought of my new idea: to apply for admission at UCLA as a psych major. I wanted to help others, just like her. Eva knew this move was perfect for me, and I heeded her guidance. She wrote my recommendation letter, and I was accepted.

  Now, I’m in my second year of the program. I love UCLA, but the place where I’m getting my real education is St. Joseph’s Burn Unit, my home away from home, a place to help and heal.

  No day on the unit is the same. Patients com
e; patients go. Patients struggle; patients fight. Most of the time, they win. They battle through their inside and outside pain. And then they move on, scarred but strong.

  I connect with the souls of even the most disfigured of my friends at St. Joe’s. I see the light shining, the weeping hearts, the triumph of recovery.

  Scars, skin grafts, patches of purple, flesh raw and peeling, are just part of the shells of the people I know, including myself. While once I hid in anger and self-pity, I now hold my head up high. Today, I see the scars as badges of survival.

  The patients at St. Joe’s come in every shape, size and color. Race plays no role at all on the unit. In fact, burns literally peel away the layers of color which can pull people apart. Those who suffer, and others who help them, are bound together by grit, determination and love.

  Grandpa González was a World War II veteran. Often, he would say, “There’s no atheist in a fox-hole.” And, in my experience, there’s no racist on a burn unit.

  Scars—my own and those of others—play a major role in my life. They teach me to forgive unkindness, endure pain and handle sorrow by helping others. Each night, I bless every one of my scars and know they were granted to me as a special gift. Without them, I wouldn’t be the person I am today.

  Never in my life, before becoming a part of the Burn Unit, would I have thought that scars—big or small, fat or wide, gnarled or flat—could be wildly, spiritually beautiful. But today, I do.

  The Almost Murder

  I’m a child of violence, but I refuse to let it take me down. I was thirteen when my father tried to kill my mom. It happened two years ago, but every second of that night is implanted in my brain.

  It was a Thursday and almost time for supper. Mom was at the stove, and I was helping Abuela make the pastelillos, meat pies, we made together once a week. Abuela was wearing her everyday red floral housedress and, as always, she smelled like baby powder.