by Brent Runyon
Surgery again. They're putting skin on my legs, but it's not my skin. It's from a pig, and they're supposed to take my skin off me and send it to Boston.
I hurt. I need something. Lisa gives me something to stop hurting, and it's working, but now I can't see, everything is double.
Ice. Mom is giving me ice, and I never realized this before, but ice is the best-tasting thing in the entire world. I could eat ice for breakfast, lunch, dinner, and dessert. I wish I could live on ice. They didn't take my skin off. Maybe tomorrow.
The nice old doctor is here, Dr. Randolph, I think his name is, and the scary-looking tall guy with the glasses. I want to make a joke, but I can't figure out how to say, What's up, Doc? with these tubes in my mouth. They've come to take my skin. They're going to put me to sleep for a little while.
I'm standing. I don't know how, but I'm standing in the street and Tina is there and we're walking together.
I'm awake. Tina is standing over me, and she's so beautiful. She says it's Valentine's Day and I want to ask her if she'll be my valentine, but I'm worried that she doesn't think I'm handsome enough, so instead I ask if I can see my face in the mirror. She holds it up and says it looks so much better than when I first came in, but I don't like to look at it. I hate the way it looks and I cry. She puts the mirror down and puts her face near mine and says she thinks my face looks so good now, and it's going to keep getting better and I won't hardly believe it when I see myself in a few weeks, I'll be so handsome. And when I get better and I can walk again, we'll go out on the town together and get some ice cream because she knows I like ice cream. Do I like Ben & Jerry's? When we get the tubes out, we'll have Ben & Jerry's together, how about that?
I tell Mom with the message board about my dream about standing, and she's really happy about that. I don't tell her I was with Tina.
My friends from school are sending me stuff all the time. Stephen sent me a tape, and they put it on the stereo for me. He put all these Aerosmith songs on it because he knows how much I like them. I miss him and Megan. I hope they're happy.
Dad is reading the comics when I wake up. It's the Sunday comics because it's in color. He holds up the pictures so I can see and starts reading what Charlie Brown says to Lucy and what Lucy says to Charlie Brown and what Garfield says to Odie. I'm getting frustrated with the way he's reading to me like a baby, so I make him get the message board and I write, I can still read, you know.
He laughs and says he's sorry and we read the rest of them together, silently.
They're taking me to surgery. This big bed can fit inside this elevator. But why are we going up? The operating room is down. We're up on the roof now, where the helicopter lands. I remember what it was like up here, flying. I remember the wind. Now we're going back down to surgery. We got lost.
Mom and Dad are holding my hands. I can't talk because the tubes are still in from the surgery, but they ask me how I am and I say, I hurt, with the message board. That makes them sad. They're looking at me with so much love in their eyes, which is so much better than when they look scared. They say they love me, and I use the message board to say I love them too.
Everything hurts, and it's so much worse than before. All I want is for there to be less pain and for them to stop hurting me. I know they mean well. I know it. But God, it hurts.
Mom says they're going to try and bring Maggie down to surgery again. I see the nurses going in and out of her room. Sometimes I wish they came and saw me as much as they see her.
Dad is sitting next to my bed again when I wake up. He's reading and he smiles at me and asks if I need anything. I try to say something, but I always forget that I can't talk, so I try to ask him with my eyes if he'll put the cool cloth on my forehead, and at first he doesn't understand. He grabs the message board, but I don't want to use that stupid thing, I just want him to understand me. I say again with my eyes, Cloth, and this time he hears me and gets the cloth from the bedside table and puts it on my forehead. He says, “Brenner, you've got the most expressive eyes I've ever seen.”
The old doctor comes by, Dr. Randolph, and says he's really happy with my progress, and my parents start asking questions with very serious voices and taking notes, but he stops them and starts talking to me. He tells me that I have an infection in my lung and that it's nothing to worry about and I'll get better soon, but I'll have to stay on the ventilator until I get a little stronger. He says I can't eat or drink anything for a while, but that'll change too. He says he's really proud of me and he knows I'm going to get better.
I just realized how many tubes are coming out of me. There's a big one in my mouth, a smaller one in my nose, something in my shoulder they inject medicine and blood into, a thick plastic one in my rib cage that drains fluid into a little yellow bag, and then there's a little one coming out of my penis. I'm glad my penis didn't get hurt in the fire.
During burn care, Tina puts on some music. She says it'll help relax me. Piano, some guy named George Winston. She really likes it, and I like it too. We have a lot in common.
There are people running around and shouting something. Code Blue. Code Blue. I wonder what that means. They're running into Maggie's room. Tina comes to see me and tells me not to be scared. She changes my ventilator. I've got to close my eyes for a little while.
Mom says Maggie died last night. She says that's what all the yelling was about. It's hard to remember what happened last night. It's hard to remember anything. I think it's the drugs they give me. The drugs make it hard to remember anything. I'm waking up from surgery. They were supposed to cover part of my back and my left shoulder. The tubes are out and I'm awake, but something's wrong. I feel dizzy and I can't talk and my chest hurts and my lung feels like someone is standing on it. I can't talk. Someone needs to help me. Get help. My chest, I can't breathe. Mom is here, she's asking me what's wrong, but I can't talk. I try to say, My chest hurts, but there's no air to say it with. She's yelling for the nurses. Now there's a doctor here. They're pushing my parents out of the room. Mom calls out that she loves me. I still can't breathe. This guy is asking me questions. I don't know. I don't know. Just fix it. Just fix it. They're yelling at each other and someone is sticking something through my rib cage. Oh God, that hurts. I can feel it pushing through the skin and the muscle between my ribs and into my lung. Oh God. This hurts too much. I'm so scared.
Mom says I had a punctured lung from something they did wrong in surgery and my lung collapsed and that's why they had to put the tubes through my rib cage, but I'm better now and that shouldn't happen again. I hope that never happens again.
Everybody is worried because my temperature is so high, but forty doesn't seem very high to me, or maybe it is because it's not Celsius or it is Celsius, I'm not sure which.
The tube in my throat is out, and my voice works again. But my voice sounds so scratchy and old now. It hurts to say too much, so I'm not going to say much. I sound like a smoker.
Dad is here, Mom's not. I want to talk and I want to tell him about what I did and that I'm so sorry, but I can't figure out how to say that, so I ask him if he ever wanted to kill himself, and he says that he must have once, a long time ago, and I feel better because even if he's lying, then it's nice of him. I try to tell him about what happened, but it's so hard to say out loud. I don't even remember why I did it now. Because of school and because of my friends, but those don't seem like good reasons anymore. Because I was going to be expelled, but I think I'd rather be expelled than be here. Dad seems like he understands, and he cries and I cry. I'm so sorry, Dad. I'm so sorry.
Craig still hasn't come to visit me. I ask my mom why and she can't really answer me and I ask if he hates me, and she says no, of course he doesn't hate me, but the way she says it, I can tell he really does.
Barbara the nurse who calls me Gorgeous is here. I like the way she says that because it sounds like she really means it. She's going to clean my wounds. She puts on some music, she says it's from Dances with Wolves and that I should i
magine I'm in the middle of a field with horses and buffalo and there are wide-open spaces and mountains in the distance and I should explore the field in my mind and tell her what I'm seeing. I tell her I see a field with grass up to my waist, everything is waving in the wind and I can sort of float through it like I don't have any legs, and the mountains in the distance are huge icy peaks with sharp rocks sticking out. There's a beautiful black horse in front of me that looks like he wants me to ride him, and I float over to him and I see that someone has shot him and there's a big hole in his side from where the shotgun blast was, and the hole goes all the way through so I can see the mountains out the other side.
I open my eyes and look down and I see everything. I see the purple skin and the big open wounds. I lay my head back, close my eyes, and try to think of something else.
Mom says the night Maggie died I saw angels in my room. She says that Tina was there changing my ventilator and I looked up at the ceiling and said, “There are people flying around my room looking for someone who died, but it's not me.” Now Mom and Dad wear little angel pins on their shirts every day.
Craig is here and Mom and Dad are going to leave us alone for a while. He doesn't seem so mad at me anymore. He talks about his job at the movie theater and his new girlfriend, Valerie, who works at the movie theater with him. He thinks I'll like her. She thinks he wears too much blue, and every time he doesn't wear anything blue, she gives him a kiss. So now, every time he goes to work, he gets a kiss. That's nice for him, that he's getting kisses. He says he hasn't had sex yet, but they're going to. It's too bad that no one will ever want to have sex with me, but I don't really care. I hope Craig can love me again.
Mom sits by my bedside and I can tell that she wants to talk about the fire and everything about it. So I start by asking her the same question that I asked Dad, and she says she wanted to kill herself too a long time ago when she was a girl, which I don't think is true, but I know she's trying to make me feel better. And I try to say why I was so sad, and how I thought that the principal was going to expel me and how I didn't want them to be mad at me because they both wanted me to be so smart and I'm sorry I couldn't be what you wanted. And she says, “You are everything we wanted.” And we both cry together.
Surgery. They took part of my scalp and moved it to my left leg, over that big gaping wound, the one as big as a mailbox. They almost didn't take me in because my fever came back and I've got a lot of stuff in my lungs, but then they changed their minds and took me. They had to shave my head to cut the skin off. Then they put this stuff on my scalp called scarlet or crimson, I can never remember which, and they say it will help the skin grow back in a few weeks. I'm worried about my hair. My parents are happy that I'm not on the ventilator anymore.
The thing about being in the hospital is that people come into your room in the middle of the night, take your blood and urine, and leave again. People stick things to your chest, hook you up to machines, and don't even introduce themselves.
Becky is here to stretch my arms and hands. She tells me about an episode of Monty Python's Flying Circus that she just saw, about a guy who buys a dead parrot. She's very funny and does a great English accent. I wonder why I thought she was a Hispanic boy.
Dad wants to stay during burn care because he wants to see what I look like, but I don't want him to see what I look like. I'm afraid he'll get sick or get scared and he won't want to come visit me anymore.
I think we used to say we loved each other too much. Mom and Dad used to make us say we loved each other every night before we went to bed, and since we said it all the time, it was like it didn't mean anything, but now when we say it, it feels like we really mean it.
This short woman just came to visit me, her name is Dr. Rubinstein and she's a psychologist. I don't like her. The first thing she did was sit down at my bedside and start asking me questions about what happened in the fire and what I was thinking about. She asked me about drugs and my friends and whether I told them I was going to do it. Most people who come to visit me lean forward in the chair, but she leans away.
Surgery. They took more skin from my stomach and moved it to the spots that were open on my arms and legs. When I wake up, the tubes are already out of my mouth, extubated, which is good, I hate those fucking tubes. Everyone says I'm becoming an old pro. I've done this five or six times already. They said I'll have at least ten before I'm done.
Today is the day that Tina and I will eat Ben & Jerry's together. Mom and Dad are here too, but they're not going to have any. Tina brings her favorite flavors—Heath Bar Crunch, Cherry Garcia, and New York Super Fudge Chunk. She pushes a button so the bed makes me sit up a little bit and gives me a spoonful of Heath Bar Crunch. Oh God, that's good. I forgot how good ice cream was. I'm feeling a little dizzy, but I ask Tina for another bite, this time New York Super Fudge Chunk.
I forget that people are watching me for a second while I'm enjoying the ice cream and then I remember and so I try to ham it up and look really, really happy. Everyone laughs when I raise my eyebrows and look like I'm going to faint from pleasure. But then I realize that I actually am going to faint from sitting up so straight and I make them put me back down flat.
The doctors are here to look at my hands. Mom and Dad are here too, and a couple of nurses, and everybody seems really excited to see how my hands are doing. The doctors unwrap the bandages. They're purple and spotted and covered with blood and staples. They start talking about how great my purple skinny hands look and how I'm going to get full range of motion back. It makes me feel sick to look at them. God. I close my eyes.
When all the doctors leave, Mom sits close to my bed and starts talking really softly and quietly to me. She says, “This is just the first day. Everything is going to look so much better in a few weeks. And in a few months your hands will almost be back to normal. You're going to be okay, honey.”
I'm crying a little, but it's not because of my hands. It's because of this other thing that I'm afraid of, that I haven't said to anybody yet. “Mom, no one's ever going to love me, are they?” And I can't help it, I just start crying all over the place like a baby.
But Mom puts her hand on my fingertips and whispers, “Brent, listen to me, honey, you are so smart and so kind. You will fall in love, and someone will fall in love with you. I promise.”
It makes me feel better to hear her say that, but I can tell that she's not really sure. It'll be okay, I tell myself, I can live in the basement when I get older so people don't have to look at me.
Carol, the social worker, got me a phone so I can call my friends. I can't use a regular phone because of the bandages over my ears, so they had to get me this bear speaker phone. When the person on the phone talks, the bear's face lights up and its mouth moves like it's talking. It's pretty cool.
The first person I want to call is Stephen, to see how he's doing and to see if he's dating Megan or what. Carol sits the bear on a table in front of me and moves the head of my bed up a little. When she pushes the dial tone button, the bear's eyes and mouth open and it looks like it's ready to talk. I tell her the phone number and she dials for me. I'm excited. I haven't talked to anyone at school since I got into the hospital. Stephen answers the phone and I try to think of something really funny to say, but I can't come up with anything, so I just say, “Stephen, it's Brent.”
The bear lights up a little, blinks, and says, “Brent,” with an Australian accent, but I can tell from how he says my name that something's different. His voice is tight and he doesn't sound as excited as I thought he would.
I say, “What's up?”
The bear says, “What's up, dude?”
So I say, “How's it going?”
And he says, “How's it going with you?” The bear's mouth is a little behind the words and it blinks in all the wrong places, but it's still kind of cool.
“Going good. How about with you?”
“It's good. It's good. What's new?”
“Not much. What's new wit
h you?”
“Nothing,” says the bear.
“How's Megan?”
“Megan's good. She misses you.”
“I miss her too. I miss all you guys.”
The bear blinks but doesn't say anything for a second, then says, “When are you coming home?”
“Soon. Soon.”
“Good. Well, get better.”
“I will. See you, dude.”
“Bye, dude.” When he hangs up, the bear's mouth closes, the eyes close halfway, and the little light inside its face goes out.
Some girls from school made me a tape of their everyday life and sent it to me. It sounds weird listening to all the noises of school all smacked together. I wonder why no guys talk on the tape.
“Hi, Brent, it's Jennifer reporting from D hall and there's a bunch of us here who just want to say hi.”