The Burn Journals

by Brent Runyon

  “What? Keep who out?”

  “I don't know.”

  “Jesus, you're taking me to a prison.”

  “We're not taking you to a prison.”

  “It looks like a prison. Are there Nazis in a tower somewhere?”

  “Brent, it's not that kind of place. It's nice. It has a bowling alley.”

  “Great. Does the bowling alley have armed guards too?”

  We park the car and get out. It's hot here. Really hot and really humid. This place better be air-conditioned. Oh good, okay, it's air-conditioned. There's the cafeteria, I wonder what kind of Jell-O they have. Probably just green and red. I hope they put whipped cream on it.

  We wait for the elevator.

  My parents told me there's another burned kid here. He's eight, and he was at school when a senator's plane crashed into a helicopter above his school and he got covered in flaming jet fuel. Compared to me, I mean, compared to the way I got burned, it's like the complete opposite.

  Okay, here we are, this is it, this is the new place. For one thing, it's much bigger than the Burn Ward at Children's. And for another thing, Children's has lots of fun stuff on the walls, like cartoon characters and that cute bear with the stethoscope, and it's got green carpet. But this place is awful. It's just white walls and gray linoleum.

  Dad introduces himself to the woman behind the nurses' station. God, I hope he doesn't flirt with her.

  “Hello, I'm Don Runyon, this is my wife, Lin, and my son Brent. Brent's going to be staying here.” I feel like I'm checking into a hotel.

  “Hello, Mr. Runyon, we've been expecting you. This is Brent? Hi, Brent, I'm Rose. I'll be your nurse.” The words she says are fine, but the way she says them is a little harsh, like she's angry inside and just barely keeping it in, but maybe that's because she's a smoker.

  She shows us into my room, which is right next to the nurses' station, and leaves us alone so Mom and Dad can say good-bye.

  The room is okay. It's got a TV and windows and at least I don't have a roommate, I was nervous about that. I sit on the bed and start looking for the remote control. Wait, maybe I should say good-bye to Mom and Dad first.

  “What do you think, Brenner?”

  “It's okay.” Actually, the bed isn't as nice as the one I had at Children's, but it's all right. I wonder how many channels we get here.

  Mom's already put all my clothes in the drawers and Dad's opened the drapes to let some light in. Mom brought the signed Magic Johnson picture and the Get Well Soon balloon. They both come over and sit on the bed with me, one on each side.

  Mom says, “We're going to go, honey.”

  “Okay.”

  “Are you going to be okay?”

  “Yeah.”

  She's starting to cry.

  “We love you and we're so proud of you. We're going to miss you so much.”

  “Me too.”

  “And we'll be back in a few days to see you, okay?”

  “Yeah, okay.”

  “And we'll call you tonight.”

  “Okay.”

  “Okay.”

  Dad says, “We love you, Brenner.” He slips a couple of folded twenties into my hand. “Don't tell your mother.”

  We all laugh and they both kiss and hug me one last time on their way out the door. I can tell Mom is going to break down in about fifteen seconds, probably Dad too.

  “Bye, honey. We love you.”

  “I love you too.”

  “Bye, Brenner.”

  They're gone. I turn on the TV and start flipping through the channels. Someone's knocking.

  “Come in.” It's Rose. “Hi.”

  “Hello, Brent.”

  “What's going on?” I hope I don't sound as nervous as I feel.

  “Well, I'm going to get you all set up and then Dr. Cawley is going to come in and do a complete physical. How's that sound?”

  “Fine.”

  “Good because you don't have a choice.” I'm not sure if I should laugh or what. “First, we have to get you undressed.”

  “Okay.”

  “Can you do it yourself, or do you need my help?”

  “Um, I can get my shirt and shorts off, but I need help with my Jobst garments.”

  “Is that what those things are called?”

  “Yeah.”

  “And what do they do?” Shouldn't she know that?

  “I guess they keep my scars from swelling up, and they keep my circulation going.”

  “Like support stockings.”

  “I guess.”

  “The kind old ladies wear.”

  “Yeah. I guess.”

  “Okay, show me what I need to do.” I pull my shirt over my head and throw it on the bed. I look down at my chest with the Jobst jacket on. And just for a second, I think that it's my actual skin.

  “I need you to unzip my arms.” There's a zipper that runs all the way from the back of my wrist to the top of my shoulder, and it's too hard for me to unzip.

  “You can't do it yourself?”

  “No.”

  “You sure?”

  “Yes.” There's something about her I don't like.

  She unzips the arms and my skinny purple arms start showing through the space.

  “Oh my, you really did a number on yourself, didn't you?”

  “Yeah.”

  “You set yourself on fire.” I can't tell if it's a question or a statement.

  “Yeah.”

  “Why'd you do that?”

  God, I can't believe she's asking me that. “Um . . . I don't know.”

  “What do you mean, you don't know? You did it, didn't you?”

  “Yeah.”

  “So?” She's got my jacket off now and I'm just wearing my Jobst gloves, my shorts, and a bunch of Ace bandages on my legs. “Take your shorts off.”

  “Okay.” I pull down my shorts, but I'm kind of embarrassed by my Stars-and-Stripes boxers. I wonder if I should get another pair of those glow-in-the-dark boxers. No, I don't think I want them.

  “So, why did you set yourself on fire?” She's unwrapping my legs now.

  Not this again. “I don't remember.”

  “You don't remember?”

  “No.”

  “Did your penis get burned?”

  God. “No.”

  “Lucky guy.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Were you trying to kill yourself?”

  “Yeah.”

  “You were?”

  “Yes.”

  “Why?”

  “I told you, I don't remember.” I wish she would shut up already.

  “Well, don't try anything like that here, or you'll have to deal with me.”

  “Okay.”

  “How do you get these gloves off?”

  “Um, usually they grab them around the wrists and pull them straight off, you know, kind of turning them inside out.”

  She grabs the glove around my wrist and pulls. She pulls it so hard that my whole arm comes with it and my hand lands right on her breast.

  “Sorry.”

  “And don't try anything like that again either.”

  “I'm sorry, it was an accident.”

  “Sure it was.”

  “It was.”

  “The other burned kid tried the same thing his first day. Lie down, the doctor will be here in a minute.”

  I lie down and look up at the ceiling. I hope the doctor's nicer than Rose. I've never met anyone who's so mean the first time you meet them. Usually people at least pretend to be nice, even if deep inside they're really mean.

  When I was little, my brother and I would lie on our backs and imagine what it would be like to walk on the ceiling. We'd have to walk around the chandelier and step over the doorways. It always seemed so cozy to live on the ceiling, up where nobody could bother you.

  Here's the doctor, come to inspect me. He's tall and blond. “Hi, Brent, I'm Dr. Cawley. How are you doing today?”

  “Fine.”

  “How
was your drive up from D.C.?”

  “Fine.”

  “Good. Well, what we're going to do here is a complete physical. We're going to check you inside and out and make sure everything's working all right. How's that sound?”

  “Fine.”

  “Do you have anything you want to talk about before we begin?”

  “Like what?”

  “Physical complaints. Concerns. Questions.”

  “I itch all over my body all the time and my big right toe is screwed up.”

  “Okay, we can give you medication for the itching. What's wrong with the toe?”

  “It got screwed up when I had to lie on my stomach and now it's hard to walk.”

  “Okay, we'll take a look at that a little later on. Hold on, let me go get Rose.” Great. She comes in carrying a notebook and a pen.

  He says, “Okay, Brent, if you could step up on that scale, please. I'm just going to take a few measurements.”

  I get up off the bed and stand on the big doctor's scale.

  “Height is one hundred fifty-nine point five centimeters.”

  What is that in inches?

  “Weight is, let's see . . .” He moves the little weight to the right with his index finger. “Fifty-two point six kilograms.”

  I'm trying to get down to fifty-two point four, but Weight Watchers isn't working for me. That's funny. Should I say that?

  He takes my head in his hands and tilts it. “Scalp is clear. Facial features are slightly asymmetrical, with burns to both sides of the face. Ear canals are clear. Tympanic membrane is gray with a good light reflex.” I've always said my tympanic membrane had a good light reflex, really, always said that.

  He's shining a flashlight in my eyes. “Pupils react directly and consensually to light. Look to the right. Look to the left. Extraocular eye movements are intact. Acuity is grossly intact.”

  Grossly intact. Is that good or bad? I wonder.

  “Nasal membranes are pink and noninflamed. Open wide.” He sticks a tongue depressor in my mouth. “Gag is strong. Say ah. Soft palate rises symmetrically. Tongue protrusion is midline.”

  Fantastic.

  I'm beginning to feel like one of the dead people they cut up in that movie Gross Anatomy.

  His hands are around my neck. “No lymphadenopathy.” Now he's using the stethoscope on me. “Breathe deeply. Chest is clear bilaterally, with decreased audibility in the right base. Chest wall excursion is equal bilaterally. Respira-tory rate is twelve. There is no stridor. No retractions.”

  This is getting old. He asks me to stand up, sit down, roll over, stand up again, stand on one leg, then the other leg, touch my toes, touch my fingers to my thumb, push down on his hand, touch my head, and on and on and on. I think he can tell I'm getting sick of this because he says, “Only a few more things.”

  He asks me to lie down again and starts touching different parts of my body first with his finger and then with a pin to see if I can feel it. I'm pretty good at figuring out where he's touching me, especially in the arms and back, but my legs aren't so good. They told me at Children's that I had lost some feeling in my arms and legs and that was normal, but I can't feel anything at all in my right foot and through most of my right leg. Sometimes I can feel a light pressure when he pushes down on the thick scars, like someone's touching me through a wet suit.

  “Okay, Brent, we just have a few more tests and then we'll be all done.”

  “Okay.”

  “I'm going to say five words and then you repeat them back to me. Crust. Tree. Ball. Scissors. Footprint.”

  “Crust. Tree. Ball. Scissors. Footprint.” I've always been good at stuff like this.

  “Good. Now count upward from seven by sevens. Okay, you understand?”

  “I think so. Seven, fourteen, twenty-one, twenty-eight, thirty-five, forty-two, forty-nine, fifty-six, sixty-three, seventy, seventy-seven, eighty-four, ninety-one, ninety-eight. Want me to keep going?”

  “No, that's fine. What's four times five?”

  “Twenty.”

  “Eight times six?”

  “Forty-eight.”

  “Okay, great. That's it. You're done. You can relax. Hope you enjoy your time here at duPont. I'll be checking in on you from time to time.”

  “Okay.”

  “Someone will be in later to show you around and to bring you dinner.”

  “Okay.” They leave and shut the door and all of a sudden I feel like having them come back in and do more tests on me. It's not that I really want more tests, I just don't want to be alone in here. This room, this whole place, it all seems so, I don't know, empty, or not empty exactly, but hollow.

  I turn on the TV. News, no, too boring. Golf, definitely too boring. Some science-fiction show? Oh, Quantum Leap, I've heard about this show. It's the one about the guy that goes back in time to help people who've had problems and he fixes them and then goes somewhere else. This looks good. I'll watch this.

  I wonder if it's real, I mean, I wonder if there is someone out there who's figured out how to travel in time and who goes back and fixes people's mistakes that they've made. Someone who could jump into your body just when you were about to make the biggest mistake of your life and keep you from doing it. That would be great. That would be amazing. I wish that was true.

  There's someone in my doorway. She says her name is Lisa and she's going to be my nurse for the next couple of hours. “First things first,” she says. “Let's get you in the shower.”

  “It's been a long time since I've taken a shower,” I say. I'm not going to tell her about the last time I was in the shower, I think it would freak her out. “I'm not sure I can do it.”

  “Well, we've got a shower chair if you want to try that.”

  “That sounds good.” She leaves the room to go find the shower chair and I look down at my body. I'm still un-covered from the physical, only wearing my red-white-and-blue boxers. At Children's, I got really used to people seeing me naked, I didn't care who it was, Tina, Lisa, Barbara, even Reggie and Calvin, but here I feel a little self-conscious.

  She's back with what looks like a plastic lawn chair. She goes and puts it in the shower, which is connected to my room, and then comes back to get me. “Can you walk, or do you need some help?”

  “Well, the circulation in my legs isn't so great when I don't have the bandages on, so maybe a little help.”

  Lisa brings over a wheelchair to get me into the bathroom and then helps me into the shower chair.

  Everything is going smoothly enough. Just as she's about to turn on the shower, she stops and asks, “Want to take off your boxers? You don't have to if you don't want to.”

  “Oh no, I will.” I scoot up in the chair and push them off my butt and down to my ankles and then I kick them off and catch them in the air. She laughs.

  “Ready?”

  “Yup.” The hair down there is still growing back from when they shaved it for the graft sites. My penis looks small too, probably because it's so cold.

  The shower is so nice and warm, but not too warm, and it feels so good falling down on my head, like warm rain. I close my eyes, suck some of the water into my mouth, and spit it against the wall, like I used to.

  I wonder if they painted the bathroom at home. Did they get a new shower curtain? Did they cover everything up? God, I hope so.

  “What are you thinking about?”

  “Oh, nothing, just enjoying the shower.”

  “Is it too warm? Too cold?”

  “No, it's just right, like the Three Bears.” She smiles. She sort of looks like Ellen Barkin, the actress in that sexy movie Sea of Love.

  When I'm done, she takes me out of the shower and back into my room. I lie on my back while she wraps my legs in new Ace bandages and helps me into my Jobst garments.

  Lisa says she'll come back a little later with some dinner and I say that sounds good, even though I sort of wish she'd stay.

  “Do you need anything?”

  “No thanks.” I h
ope she didn't hear my voice shake when I said that.

  I watch Entertainment Tonight and part of Current Affair, and Lisa comes back with some dinner, chicken potpie, a carton of whole milk, and a container of vanilla pudding. It tastes almost exactly the same as the crappy food at Children's. At least some things stay the same.

  Lisa says that I'm going to be on a schedule here and that I'm going to be responsible for going to the places I need to go and for making sure I get there on time. She's got a chart of all the day's activities on the door. I've got a lot to do. Every morning I get up and have a massage, that sounds good, then I have occupational therapy until ten, then physical therapy until noon, then lunch, and then school from one to four. On Tuesdays and Thursdays, I have a therapy session for one hour. That'll be fun. Lisa says someone will come to my room in the morning to get me up and take me to my first appointment and she says I should try and get some sleep because I have such a big day tomorrow. I just hope the night goes fast because I know that if I can get to tomorrow, I'll start to feel better.

  There's a woman standing over me. She's got crazy red hair, like Medusa, and long Lee press-on fingernails that she keeps poking me with.

  “Wake up. Wake up. It's time for your pills.”

  “What?”

  “It's time for your pills.”

  “But it's not morning.”

  “I know. It's time for your pills.”

  “What?”

  “Your pills. For itching. You're supposed to take them at midnight.”

  “What?”

  “Wake up and take your damn pills.” Oh God, she's mean. Her name tag says her name is Laurie. “I'm your night nurse. Now take your damn pills.”

  She picks up two little gray pills between her fingernails. When the nails touch my hand, I get chills from my toes to my scalp. I take the pills quickly and roll back over and try to go to sleep. She's like Freddy Krueger with those things. Going to give me nightmares.

  More knocking but now it's light, is it morning? I think it's morning. “Come in.”

  “Hi, Brent.”

  “Hi.” It's Rose.

  “Get up and get moving. Time for your first day.”

  “Okay.”

  “Get up. Get up. Get up.”

  “Okay. Okay. Okay.”

  “Let's get you in the shower.”