Sometime between 2 and 3 a.m. I was sitting on the floor in the hallway, praying, when an Army general walked past me.
After the medical retirement issue I dealt with earlier, I was a bit leery of anyone in uniform walking into ICU. So I always stopped them and asked if they were there to see Colonel Birdwell, since he was the only Army active-duty man there.
Since this was a three-star general, however, I tried to be a little gentler—since three-star generals are a little more powerful than the average colonel!
I stood and stopped him. “Excuse me, Sir. Are you here to see Colonel Birdwell?”
“Yes, I am. Are you Mel?”
“Yes, I am.”
“Nice to meet you, Mel. I’m General Peake, Surgeon General of the Army. Have you seen Brian yet?”
“No, not here. I did see him at Georgetown, though.”
“Let’s go in and see Brian together.”
Finally, after almost ten hours of waiting, I was able to see my husband.
I didn’t think he could look worse than the last time I saw him. I was wrong. Brian was still swollen but not as badly as before—mostly because the surgeons had cut excisions to release the fluids that had built up around his burns, to keep his body from rupturing. They had cut open a majority of his body. Most of his body was bandaged, but the rest was horrific to see. No skin, bloody, cut, and oozing. And because of all the bandages, my normally thin husband looked huge.
Brian was heavily sedated and had no idea we were there, so we stayed only a few moments.
As we left, General Peake stopped me at the nurses’ station. “How are you doing?”
“Well, pretty crappy, as a matter of fact,” I answered truthfully. “This is horrible.”
He nodded, then asked, “How’s your son?”
“Not great either.”
“Has he been here yet to see Brian?”
I shook my head.
“Well, you need to get him up here soon.”
“That’s not going to happen, Sir. This is not what he needs to see.”
“You need to start thinking about getting Matthew up here, Mel. Now, is there anything the Army can do for you?”
“Well, Sir, a medical retirement issue came up tonight,” I said, thinking he would tell me not to worry about it, that he’d set the people at Walter Reed straight.
Instead the general said, “You understand, the medical retirement issue will have to be looked at again.”
That certainly wasn’t the answer I wanted to hear.
“Sir, then I’d like an active-duty Army person to hold my hand through this. That way, the next time it comes up, I won’t be caught off guard and will have a clue about what’s going on.”
I needed someone who was active-duty—someone whose job it was to be in the Army—because a full-time, hard-charging “green suiter” would completely understand what was going on and would give me the straight scoop.
General Peake nodded and said he would take care of that for me.
I couldn’t help but wonder what would come of my request.
Then we walked out of the ICU. Back out in the hall, General Peake put his hand on my shoulder. “Mel, you need to try to get some food and sleep. You should get at least six hours of sleep a night. The colonel is going to need you to be healthy and strong.”
Then he left.
But I didn’t sleep. I spent the rest of the night waiting for Brian’s various test results, watching CNN, and using that GMAC notebook to start a journal.
It would be the first of many sleepless nights.
Five
The Day After
* * *
Journal 9/12/01
Got in to see Brian this morning. He is in tremendous pain.
* * *
Mel
I spent that first night in the hallway and the waiting room by the ICU. I was able to sleep every so often for about fifteen minutes or so. Throughout the night the families received periodic updates from Drs. Jordan and Jeng and some of the nurses.
They told us that the first forty-eight hours after a burn injury are always the most critical. So the families waited with the knowledge that while their loved ones had survived the crash, they weren’t out of the woods yet.
There were medical personnel everywhere. The hospital had called in every available staff person, including visiting nurses. Anybody who could possibly treat a burn wound was working twelve-hour shifts. And everyone seemed to be working on full adrenaline. Each person had a nurse assigned right outside his or her room. So Brian had a nurse who sat and looked at him the whole time. They stationed nurses for each patient around the clock.
Finally Kristi Montgomery, one of the ICU nurses, asked me if I wanted to see Brian. I jumped up. “Yes!”
Although he was still heavily sedated, I could tell he was in tremendous pain. And he hadn’t opened his eyes up to this point.
Kristi was a wonderful nurse. She told me everything that was happening to Brian. She explained that when Brian first arrived the day before, they had evaluated his injuries, taken him directly into what’s called the tank to debride him, then moved him into surgery for further debridement and excisioning.
“What’s that?” I asked.
“Excisioning? Doctors Jordan and Jeng, the officiating physicians, cut Brian to keep him from exploding. This is normal procedure. Basically, the fluid builds in a burn victim’s body, so the doctors need to cut where the most fluid gathers. They can drain it and begin to work.”
I didn’t say anything. Cutting Brian to keep him from exploding? The words rang in my head. I wasn’t even sure now I wanted to know any more about excisioning.
We walked into room 6, Brian’s room. It was filled with all these strange beeping and blinking machines to monitor every part of his body.
Kristi explained the importance of everything the medical staff did for a burn victim. They had to remove his burned skin as soon as possible so it wouldn’t form a tourniquet. She told me how vital it was to keep Brian hydrated. As long as they could keep his cells hydrated, they could reduce the amount of tissue death. This is especially imperative since burns continue to burn, or deepen, if they aren’t adequately hydrated.
They had to flush large amounts of fluids through his kidneys at a rapid rate or else his cells would continue to die, which would cause him to go into renal failure. In addition to watching the amount of fluids going into Brian’s body, they had to monitor the amount of urine going out. Brian had to have an hourly minimum of 30 ccs of urine coming out to make sure the kidneys were still functioning and they were getting hydrated.
Because of all the fluid moving through Brian’s body, the nurses had to monitor closely the amount of fluid that could build in his lungs, called pulmonary edema, which becomes a life-threatening problem because of the long-term involvement of all the hydration.
Brian had suffered an inhalation injury when his lungs were burned. So they had to drain liquid off his lungs because his body was rushing fluid to that part to heal it. Unfortunately, with the fluid moving to his lungs, he was unable to process oxygen.
I couldn’t keep track of all the different types of fluids and medications. But I was impressed by how closely the nurses monitored Brian to make sure everything was in balance for his survival.
Before now I hadn’t realized all the problems involved with critical burns. I always thought a burn was bad, but you put some salve on it, do some skin grafts, and it heals. I never thought about the effects burns have on all the organs of the body. The skin is the largest organ in the body, and it affects everything. So a burn is actually a multisystem injury. A burn affects every organ, the respiratory system, even the cardiac system. It changes a person’s fluid status. The intercellular, extracellular fluids are affected. Plus burn injuries can cause muscle death. They can shut down a body.
While I had heard of first-, second-, and third-degree burns, I didn’t realize there were also fourth-degree, which go through every
layer of skin and reach the tissues and muscle, and fifth-degree burns, which go all the way down to the bone. Some of the victims had fourth- and fifth-degree burns. Those patients had to have amputations. Brian was fortunate to keep all his limbs.
Kristi was patient as she explained what she was going to do next: “Let’s see if he can do anything we tell him to do.”
“Okay,” I said, unsure of what she was going to tell him.
All of a sudden she said loudly, “Brian! I need you to wiggle your toes for me.”
I looked down at his feet, the only part of him that wasn’t burned or bandaged.
“Brian!” she said again, loudly. “Wiggle your toes.”
Brian’s toes began to wiggle a little.
Kristi and I looked at each other, our faces lighting up and showing huge smiles.
I was so excited I started to cry.
Brian, I knew you weren’t going to die! I thought. Those people at Walter Reed were wrong. I knew it!
Kristi said, “Okay. Let’s wait a little while and do it again.” So we waited, and she asked him to wiggle his toes again. Sure enough, he did. We did the wiggle-your-toes bit several times. After that she said, “Talk to him all the time because if he can hear your voice and he knows you’re here, that will help to keep him calm.”
So I walked to the side of his bed and began to talk to him. He didn’t turn his head toward me but kind of leaned it a little toward the side I was on. Again, I was delighted to know he wasn’t going to die. How could he? He was responding to my voice.
I wasn’t able to stay with him long because Kristi needed to do his dressing change, and she told me, “This is going to be very painful for him.” So back out into the hall I went.
I decided to walk over to the hotel to be alone and spend some quiet time praying.
It was about 10 a.m. when I returned. Eloise, Antoinette’s mother, came over to me and said, “There’s some Army guy named Rota looking for you. He said he’s a friend of yours.”
Oh, great, now what? I thought. I had no idea who this person was, so I certainly wasn’t going to go out of my way looking for him. I figured I’d resume my place in the waiting room, and if he found me, then I’d talk with him. Not five minutes later, here came this full colonel bounding into the room like a hurricane. He blew right over to me and took charge.
“Hey, Mel!” he said. “How are you doing? Good to see you.”
“Who are you?” I blurted out.
Unfazed, he said, “Come on out to the hallway. I want to talk to you for a minute.”
I must have hesitated because he said, “My name is Dane Rota. I work in the resource division in the office of ACSIM (Assistant Chief of Staff for Installation Management). Jan Menig and Major General Van Antwerp sent me here to help you.” Jan Menig was Brian’s boss, and the general was the boss over Brian’s department.
“Are you the person I asked General Peake to send to help me?”
“Yes.”
I was stunned, not sure I’d heard him correctly. I had never known the Army to work that quickly.
“But that was only about seven hours ago,” I said.
“Yeah, the Army works fast, doesn’t it?”
That’s an understatement, I thought. Last night when I’d asked for an active-duty Army guy, I figured I’d never see anybody. And if I did, he’d show up, say, “Hey, what do you need?” then act like, “Okay, so I’ve done what was requested of me. Now let me go.” I just couldn’t believe they’d really sent someone—and a colonel at that.
We stood in the hallway and talked about the medical retirement issue and some other things, when Jan Menig and her husband, Bob, arrived.
“Hi, Mel,” Ms. Menig said. “How are you?”
She gave me a brief hug, then handed me a bag. “I brought you some things.”
I looked in the bag. It was filled with magazines and essentials, such as hair gel, Tylenol PM, and deodorant, which I was extremely thankful for, considering I hadn’t yet taken a shower and was still in my clothes from yesterday morning.
Then she handed me some cash and said softly, “This is for you while you’re here.”
She began to tell me her own 9/11 story. Ms. Menig and General Van Antwerp worked in the same office area as Brian. Their windows also had flames shooting from them. Fortunately, though, they were in a hotel across the street from the Pentagon for a conference when the plane hit. She had spent most of the day trying to account for her staff and then trying to get home, and had not been able to get in touch with her husband. Meanwhile her husband had gone over to the area where her office was, thinking she was inside and dead.
“I’m glad I had that meeting,” she said. “Otherwise, I would have been dead—especially since the plane crashed into the building right next to my office. When I finally made it home last night, I walked in and Bob started to sob. We just held each other.”
It was an amazing story as she told it. I realized she must have been in shock, too, to come that close to death. And I could definitely understand what her husband had gone through.
“Can we go in to see Brian?” she asked.
We tried to get her in to see him, but the nurses wouldn’t allow any visitors because they were changing his bandages. They stayed and visited with me for a while, making sure I was okay and asking if I needed anything. Then they left.
Dane turned to me and said, “Have you eaten anything yet this morning?”
I told him I hadn’t—and wasn’t interested in doing so. I hadn’t eaten in two days.
“You have to eat,” he said. As he began to usher me to the cafeteria, Sheila Little and Debbie Vance arrived—without Matt. I missed my son, but I knew he couldn’t handle seeing his dad right then. Debbie assured me that Matt was okay and was welcome to stay with her family as long as he needed to. I called him right away and could hear the strain and struggle in his voice.
“Son, your dad’s burned pretty badly, and he’s in the ICU,” I told Matt. “I saw him this morning, and he wiggled his toes, but I think he’s going to be here awhile, which means I’m going to need to be here too. Do you understand?”
“Yeah, Mom, I understand.” Then he paused. “Mom, I really miss you.”
My heart ached. I tried to comfort and reassure him as much as I could. “We both love you very much,” I told him. “Do you think you can hold on until Friday, just two more days, to spend some time with me?”
He said he could.
Dane kept pestering me to eat something, so finally we went to the cafeteria, where I picked out a small salad. I was able to eat only a few bites before I became nauseated. I didn’t want to eat anyway; I wanted to go back to the ICU to be near Brian. I was uncomfortable being so far away—especially in case something happened.
We returned to the waiting room. Most of the day was spent updating visitors and others who called. I was able to see Brian periodically until the nurses kicked me out to do his wound care.
Some FBI agents showed up and wanted to know if I had any pieces of Brian’s clothing from yesterday. I told them I didn’t. They were extremely interested in retrieving anything they could since his clothing was considered evidence and was part of an official crime scene. Apparently, the agents also went to Georgetown and tried to retrieve his clothing there as well, but what hadn’t been burned off his body had been cut off and thrown away.
Later that day a representative from the hospital came to the waiting room to talk with all the family members. He informed us that because of the significance of 9/11 and the injuries our family members had suffered, the hospital was going to hold a press conference. There would be only one—then they would ask the media to leave the families alone. The rep asked if anyone would volunteer to act as the family representative to answer any questions the press may have. Mike Kurtz, Louise’s husband, volunteered.
Louise, an accountant, had just started working at the Pentagon a day before 9/11. That morning she went to a fax machine to send some
files and was engulfed in a fire ball that burned her severely.
Even though I really didn’t want anything to do with the media, I offered to go downstairs and sit with Mike for moral support, to be his cheerleader.
The hospital assured us this would be the only interaction we would have to have with the press.
Later, one of our pastors, Jack Elwood, came and offered comfort and prayed with me. He let me know that our church, Immanuel Bible Church, was going to hold a prayer vigil that night specifically for Brian.
Many friends and church members came by to offer their support, concern, and prayers. I felt so uplifted by those prayers and words of comfort. I’m not sure I would have made it through that day emotionally intact without them.
Debi Davis, a friend from our church, offered to pick me up on Friday to get Matt and spend the night with him at our house. I figured that would also give me a chance to get some paperwork together and to pack a few clothes. I had realized late last night that Brian always kept our bills at his desk in the Pentagon to pay them from there, which meant all our bills had burned. Somehow I needed to figure out which bills he had, how much we owed, and pay them.
Karen Foley also stopped by to offer support and explain some more financial information. Colonel Rota and Karen walked me through the financial aspect of medical retirement again. And again I told them both my decision had been made. No retirement. Period.
Dane Rota stuck by me every minute—sometimes so much that he drove me crazy! He was there too much! He was like my shadow. But even in those moments, I knew I desperately needed him with me. I’m not sure I could have made it through without him. But I felt bad because I couldn’t get his name straight. My brain was so overwhelmed with the stress, I felt as if it was working at about one-third the capacity. So I kept calling him Rota Dane—and he kept saying, “It’s Dane. Dane Rota.” Then I’d have to say, “Sorry. I knew that.”
I talked to Brian’s family. They were still concerned and kept telling me they were praying for Brian and me. I told Brian’s brother, Wade, that he and his family needed to come. He said they were on their way. It would be a few days before they could arrive, since they were coming by car from Texas. All airplanes were still grounded.
Refined by Fire Page 7