by Devney Perry
I felt that familiar shudder as I read through the rest of his injuries. It was the same twinge I got whenever I’d hear a patient cry or scream in agony. My tender heart always hurt for these patients. Their pain was nearly unfathomable, considering how much I’d cried the one and only time I’d been careless with my curling iron and had barely skimmed my forehead.
Working in the burn unit had nearly broken me at first. I’d gone home numb each night, my eyes full of unshed tears. I was surrounded by pain so intense it was impossible to comprehend. It seeped out of the walls. It clouded the air. Those first two weeks working here, I’d been convinced I’d made a mistake. I’d been days from putting in my notice when my first patient had been discharged. She’d hugged me and told me how much she appreciated my tender touch.
It was then that I’d realized the importance of my job. These people were going through one of the worst experiences of their lives. It didn’t matter how I felt. It wasn’t about me.
It was about helping people like Milo Phillips return to a healthy, normal life.
I knocked lightly on his door, pushing it open a few inches to peek inside. The lights were off but there was a faint glow coming from behind the window blinds, enough for me to see he was asleep.
I eased back into the hallway, not lingering long in his room. The night crew had changed his dressings less than an hour ago, and from the notes, it sounded like he’d had a fitful night. If he was resting comfortably, I’d leave him for the moment.
I didn’t bother reviewing Luna’s chart as I walked to her room. She’d tell me all about how she was feeling. I tapped on her door and opened it a crack, just in case she was asleep too. It was only seven in the morning, but as she always was, Luna was propped up in her bed, a tablet on her lap. The moment she spotted me a wide smile spread across her face.
“Sara! You’re back. Finally,” she drawled dramatically.
I laughed. “I was only gone for a week.”
“Longest week ever.” Patients had their favorite nurses too.
“I brought you a present.” I walked over to her bed, smiling as she shimmied her shoulders. I handed over the tea light carefully, like it was a precious gem, not a dollar-store bargain-bin find. “For your collection.”
“You found me a purple one.”
“To match your hair.”
Her smile faltered just a bit, but she recovered quickly.
Luna had been burned in a car accident. She’d been coming home from a concert with a friend and her friend’s mom. They’d been struck at an intersection, T-boned by a drunk driver. Luckily, neither vehicle had been going too fast; otherwise the collision would have killed them all instantly.
The other car had caught fire, and Luna had been trapped between her door and the other car’s grill. Her friend’s mom had been able to pull Luna out, but not before she’d sustained burns all along the entire right side of her body.
Her head and face had been singed on one side. Two weeks ago, she’d had plastic surgery to reconstruct her melted ear. She’d already had plastic surgery to repair the skin on her cheek and neck. But since the follicles on half her head had all been killed, her hair would never grow back.
Luna’s mom had suggested a wig and they’d tried four. But each one hurt Luna’s burn scars too much. So rather than go through any more pain, Luna had decided to embrace that she would only have half a head of hair. Her mom had brought in a stylist and they’d taken her blond locks and dyed them neon purple. It fell to her waist in loose curls, something her mom came to wash and redo every night.
She was a kaleidoscope of rainbow colors in a hospital full of beige and white. Luna didn’t wear the standard faded-blue hospital gown. Her clothes were every bright color she could find. Yellow socks. Blue pants. Orange tee. Pink hoodie.
I’d asked her parents once if Luna had worn the same array of colors before the accident. They’d told me that before this, her closet had been packed with black and gray.
“It’s so pretty.” Luna smiled at the small tea light in her hands, turning it over to flip on the switch and illuminate the plastic flame. “Can we turn them all on?”
“Yes, of course.” I took the tea light from her hand and placed it next to the row of others on the table by her bed. Then one by one, I flipped them all on until the table was aglow.
“Perfect.” Luna pulled the blanket on her lap up higher, snuggling into her pillow. “My very own rainbow.”
“How are you feeling?” I asked, sitting on the edge of her bed.
“I’m sore. Physical therapy has been hard this week. My leg . . .”
“I know.” I placed my hand on hers.
She didn’t need to finish explaining. Her leg had sustained the worst of the burns, not only from the heat of the fire, but from the number of cuts and scrapes in the accident itself. She’d been unable to walk until the burns and grafts had healed and was now going through physical therapy to rebuild her strength.
It was just one of the hurdles she’d jumped since coming here months ago. Her right hand would never be the same again. Her fingers had been burned and crushed. Luckily, she was left-handed. But there were things she was teaching herself to do again, like holding a fork in her right hand so she could cut a piece of chicken with her left.
She was trying so hard to do the things most people took for granted.
“Want me to fill you in on all the gossip?” she asked, a smile pulling at her lips.
“I’ve been waiting all week. I hope you have some good stuff.”
As she started in on her stories, I took her vitals and recorded them in the hospital’s system. Then I resumed my spot on her bed as she spent twenty minutes telling me how the man in room 508 was still getting caught stealing his neighbor’s dinner dessert off the cafeteria cart. She was certain the woman who worked in the gift shop was in love with her physical therapist based on the dreamy stares and finger waves she was constantly throwing his direction. And she told me how Dr. Vernon had mentioned on more than one occasion he was looking forward to when I came back from vacation.
That one gave me pause, but I didn’t let on to Luna. Dr. Vernon was a great doctor and necessary to her recovery. He’d taught me a lot since I’d started here and I had a lot of respect for him. There was just . . . something. A change in his recent behavior that made me uneasy. I couldn’t quite put my finger on it.
Lately, he’d become friendlier. Not a bad thing, but it was almost too friendly. Too forward. I was anxious when he was in the same room. I kept one eye on him, not trusting he wouldn’t move too close when I wasn’t watching.
Or maybe he’d been that way all along and I was only now clueing in. He was the only doctor I worked with frequently who I didn’t call by his first name.
“You’ve been busy keeping up on everyone.”
She shrugged. “It doesn’t take me long to get my work done for school and then there’s nothing else to do until Mom and Dad come here after work.”
Luna had become the gossip queen of this unit and the physical therapy center on the first floor. She might have been missing high school and bored throughout the day, but she’d found a way to entertain herself and the rest of us with her stories.
“You’ll be back to school and normal soon enough. Then you’ll wish you had boring days.”
“Gonna miss me?” she asked.
“So much. No matter how long I work here, I’ll always consider this your room. You better keep in touch after you go home.”
“Duh.” She rolled her eyes again. “We’re friends.”
I squeezed her hand, then stood from the bed. “I’d better get back to work. They should be here with your breakfast soon. If you have any trouble, just call for me. And I’ll be back in a little while to help you to the shower and then we’ll get you all greased up.”
“Can we add the eucalyptus oil today?”
“Did it irritate you at all while I was gone?”
She shook her head. “No.�
�
“Then yes.”
We’d been mixing some essential oils in with her lotion treatments. Her scars would always show, but her mom had hoped the oils might lessen them some. Luna was at the stage in her recovery where the skin had healed and the grafts had taken. Soon she’d be able to go home, but for now, she had a bit of time left here for rehab.
I’d check her vitals and monitor her sites for any swelling. But mostly, I would be applying special creams to her skin and making sure she was comfortable.
I smiled over my shoulder. “See you in a bit.”
“Wait,” Luna called. I turned as she hesitated over her array of tea lights, picking a yellow one. “I, um . . . have a new neighbor.”
“Yes, you do.”
“I heard him in his sleep last night,” she admitted quietly. “He’s got it bad, doesn’t he?”
I couldn’t tell her details about Milo’s situation. But I didn’t have to. Hospital walls weren’t soundproof. The hallways weren’t private. She’d know before the week was over just how bad his burns were.
“It’s bad before it gets better.” It was the same thing I’d told her on the worst of her own days.
Her fingers toyed with the long ends of her hair, a sign of her anxiety. She’d stroke her hair over and over when she was working through something in her mind.
Luna’s physical injuries had nearly healed, but the mental battle was far from over. Most burn patients spent months, if not years, in therapy after they left the hospital. Luna’s parents had already started her counseling sessions.
She would forever look different. She would forever be the girl with strange scars and missing hair. Plastic surgery had helped smooth out the skin on her cheek. She could hide the scars on her legs and arms with clothes. But her right hand would always be misshapen. Her ear would never look like the one she’d been born with.
Luna’s biggest challenge would be finding peace with this new appearance, not something easy for a teenaged girl.
She dropped the strands of hair and lifted a hand to hover over the tea lights, assessing them all. She finally decided on a yellow one. “Here, give him this one. And tell him I said welcome to the Candle Palace.”
“The Candle Palace.” I frowned at the name, causing Luna to giggle. “You’re awful.”
The corner of her mouth on the burned side wouldn’t rise as high as the other when she laughed, but her crooked smile was uniquely beautiful. I hoped she’d see that for herself one day.
“See you in a bit.” I waved, then made my way to the door, the tea light in my grip.
The Candle Palace was a nickname Luna had given this unit about a month after she’d arrived. I’d been working an evening shift for a change, covering for one of the regular nurses who’d been on vacation, and Luna had been having a hard night. She’d realized that night that she’d never be a network news anchor like she’d dreamed.
I’d tried to encourage her to look beyond her visual appearance, but we both knew it was true. In today’s society, a woman with a scarred and slightly deformed face would not find her place on the nightly news.
I’d sat with her for hours that night, pitching different careers to her. She’d decided working at a newspaper might be her forte. Or writing fiction. And the first story she was going to write when she landed herself a job out of college would be about me and the patients here at the Candle Palace.
She’d come up with the name because she considered herself a candle.
A human torch.
She was here in this palace to keep her light from going out.
I walked down the hall, once more peeking into Milo’s room. In the time I’d been with Luna, he hadn’t moved. I left his door open a crack then went to check on my third patient.
By the time I finished with him, an hour had passed. If Milo was still asleep, I’d be forced to wake him up to check his dressings. So I went to the center of the unit to stock up on bandages.
Opening the supply closet, I pulled in a deep breath of the sterile smell. The papery scent of gauze rolls and bandage packs was my favorite. The linens were washed without any softeners, leaving behind only the crisp scent of clean cotton. Most people wouldn’t find this scentless room comforting. But to me, it had become my solace.
This smell had become home.
I’d lived in Spokane my whole life. I’d gone to college here and earned my two-year registered nursing degree. Then I’d started working at this hospital as a float nurse, drifting from one floor to the next. I’d done that for about a year until the nursing manager had announced this small unit was starting. I’d applied, thinking I had no chance of being selected for one of the few nursing spots.
But I’d hoped to get into a more regular routine. The chaotic shift of a float nurse bouncing between shifts and floors wasn’t for me. Dad had always said my middle name should have been Routine.
With no experience in a burn unit, my manager had warned me that things would be gruesome. Then she’d offered me the job with another warning that it was likely only temporary. The hospital administration had agreed to start this unit as a trial, and unless it did well, it would close within a year.
So far, it had exceeded everyone’s expectations. Families in remote places in Montana or Idaho no longer had to travel all the way to Seattle or Salt Lake City to visit their injured loved ones. And while those cities had burn units four or five times bigger than ours, we had location on our side. Even though our unit was a fledgling start-up, they preferred to stay here and be closer to home.
That the hospital had gone into this as an experiment was likely the reason they’d picked me as a nurse. As a float, I’d been easy to replace, which was lucky for me. This job had become the most interesting thing in my life.
I didn’t have many friends. I preferred the comfort of my small condo on my days off, surrounded by my books and movies and assortment of teas.
Everything about me was dull, even my name: Sara Foster.
I didn’t know how to add spice to my life. I wished to go on vacation and come back with tales of adventure. But how? I avoided crowds because they made me nervous. I didn’t have the money to travel. And a twenty-three-year-old single woman doing adventurous things alone came with risks. Now that Dad was gone, I didn’t have a companion to drag along. And until I found one, I was content to stay at home in my comfort zone.
The only thing exciting about my life at the moment was working here. I was special to my patients. Here, I didn’t feel quite as dull.
With my arms loaded with supplies, I walked into the hall, focusing on keeping the sterile packs off the floor. I adjusted a package of gauze to keep it from slipping, then looked up just in time to crash into a tall figure.
“Ah!” I gasped, staggering backward on my heels, fumbling not to drop anything.
“Sara.” Dr. Vernon’s hands clasped over my shoulders to steady me. “I’m sorry. I didn’t see you there.”
“It’s fine,” I breathed, regaining my balance. “I’m okay.” I gave Dr. Vernon a small smile, signaling he could let me go, but his grasp remained firm.
“You’re sure?” His eyes lingered on my lips.
I nodded, shimmying my shoulders until I was free. Then I ducked my gaze, wishing my strawberry-blond hair was down to hide behind instead of up in a ponytail. “Um, thanks.”
That was weird, wasn’t it? He’d probably only hung on for an extra three seconds too long, but that uneasy feeling I’d had around him lately came back full force in those seconds. Was my introverted lifestyle making me paranoid? Maybe if I got out more, I would be better at assessing a man’s attention.
“I’m heading into our new patient’s room,” he said, smiling.
“Great. Me too.” I forced a smile, following him to the room but keeping a few steps back.
Dr. Vernon rapped on the door with a sharp knuckle. His hands matched the rest of his body, lean and long. He had a handsome face, and while most single women around here seemed
to gush and fawn over him, he just didn’t do much for me. It was his eyes. They were too sharp.
I’d always had a weakness for men with kind eyes.
“Morning,” Dr. Vernon announced as he strode into Milo’s room.
Milo flinched as Dr. Vernon flipped on the lights. His abrupt entrance was definitely not my style but I kept my mouth shut. Milo turned his head slowly, his eyelids struggling to open against the sedatives.
I set down my supplies on the counter along the far wall and stayed back from the bed. Dr. Vernon’s tall form and lab coat obstructed much of my view as he bent over Milo and assessed the wounds.
“How are you feeling today?”
Milo’s response was a pained groan.
Dr. Vernon leaned against the side of the bed. “We’re going to start debriding the burns on your ribs today, Milo. We’ll make sure you’ve got some local anesthesia. But with the amount of damage to the nerves in that area, I doubt you’ll feel much. So have a good breakfast, eat as much as you can, and then I’ll be back in an hour or so to get started. In the meantime, Sara here is going to check on your dressings.”
A muttered agreement came from the bed and Dr. Vernon stepped away. “Be back in a bit.”
I nodded, waiting for him to leave the room before gathering up my supplies and stepping closer to Milo. “Hi, Mr. Phillips. My name is Sara. I’ll be your nurse today.”
He nodded, his eyes cracking open, then falling closed, lacking the strength to keep them open. “Milo.”
Milo. His gentle voice captured my attention. It was only a whisper but it filled the room with a rich, smooth hum.
I took a minute while his eyes were closed to study his face. He kept his dark hair short, buzzed close to his scalp. Long enough to feel soft, with a hint of bite, like velvet. His jaw was covered in scruff. The line of his nose was straight except for a small, flat spot just beneath the bridge. His eyelashes weren’t long, but they were full and dark. The envy of this fair-haired girl who had to wear multiple coats of mascara to accent her green eyes.