The Burn Journals

by Brent Runyon

  She goes to the sink and turns on both faucets and I try to concentrate on the sound, and it is helping. It's working. Thank God.

  Sometimes I think about Megan and about how I liked her so much and then how Stephen liked her so much. And how she's going out with him now, and I hope they're both happy. But sometimes I think about how much I liked her and how much she liked me and how, at the end of last year, she asked me to write in her yearbook and I only wrote three words, Brent. Lumpy. Later. Lumpy is what she called me when I was wearing the dress and the fake boobs in the talent show. And how she was so upset by that because she liked me and she wanted more than three words for her yearbook.

  I thought about her all last summer. I couldn't stop thinking about her. But I never asked her out and I never kissed her or felt her up. She's got the nicest boobs, and now Stephen gets to do anything he wants with her, and I sit in here and think about what he's doing to her.

  Calvin's here to take me into the bath. But I'm watching Cops, and it's a really good episode. There's this guy who beat up his wife, and the cops are there and the woman is in the other room, crying. The guy is wearing red sweatpants and no shirt and he's really upset with the cops for coming into his house and messing with him.

  Calvin says, “Brent, time to take your bath.”

  “I know, just let me finish watching this.”

  The cops are trying to calm him down, but the guy is just getting angrier and angrier. They decide they're going to arrest the guy because there's also a warrant out for him or something, and he starts to put up a fight and tries to climb out the bathroom window, which is about as big as a doggie door, and the cops pull him back in and arrest him.

  Calvin looks like he's getting pissed. I forgot he was still here. He says, “Okay, Brent. Time for your bath now.”

  “Can I just finish watching this episode?” I want to see the next segment. I think there's going to be a gunfight.

  “No. You have to take your bath and I have to do my paperwork.”

  I say, “Well, go do your paperwork now and then come back to take me to my bath. I'll be ready then.”

  He says, “No. You've got to take your bath now. This is nonnegotiable.”

  I say, “I don't want to take my bath now.”

  “You have to.”

  “No, I don't.”

  “Yes, you do.”

  “I'm not going to.”

  “Yes, you will.”

  “But I want to watch Cops.”

  “Take your bath, then you can watch as much TV as you want. You can stay up all night watching TV.”

  I can see Calvin's getting really pissed off and I don't want to make him pissed off. So I say, “Fine. I'll take my bath.”

  He brings in the gurney and a couple of other nurses and they lift me onto it, being careful about my grafts.

  Calvin takes me to the bathroom, gets me all set up, and starts lowering me into the water. As soon as my skin hits the water, I scream, “It stings. It stings so much.” And Calvin stops the winch.

  He says, “Where does it sting?”

  “On the new grafts and on my legs. It stings so much. Jesus Christ. Goddamn it, it stings.”

  “Are you all right?”

  “No. I can't go in there—it hurts too much.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Yes, I'm sure. It hurts too much. Don't do it. Don't make me do it.”

  “Okay, I'm going to give you a minute to get yourself together and then we'll put you in the bath and get it over with.”

  “But, Calvin, please, I don't have to take a bath today. Come on, you know I don't have to take a bath today. We could tell them I took a bath and we could get my hair wet and nobody would know the difference.”

  “Brent . . .”

  “Calvin, come on, listen to me, nobody needs to know. Come on, Calvin. Please?”

  “Brent, we have to do this. Now take a deep breath and relax. I'm going to lower you into the water.” He presses the button and lowers me a little farther into the water.

  “Jesus Christ, it hurts it hurts it hurts. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. This hurts too much. Fucking Jesus Christ this fucking hurts. Oh, fuck God, this fucking hurts.”

  He lowers me all the way in and the water covers my chest. Everywhere it touches, I sting. It never felt this way before. My nerves must be coming back to life. It's like the bath is filled with salt water.

  Finally the sting starts to go away, and I say, “I'm sorry, Calvin. I'm sorry. I didn't mean to swear like that. I didn't mean to yell at you.”

  He says, “I understand, buddy.”

  I look up at the ceiling and think, If there is a God, I hope he understands too.

  Mom brings in pictures of us at our family reunion last summer. We're all wearing our pink shirts with Runyon Family Reunion printed on them. Why did they have to pick pink? There's me and all my cousins sitting on the deck. Why do I look so sad in all those pictures? I didn't have anything to be sad about. But in every picture I look like I'm about to cry.

  I remember, we stayed at a little cottage right on Lake Michigan, and we all stayed up and watched a thunderstorm come across the water. We could see the lightning way in the distance, like flashbulbs in a stadium, and then it got closer and we started to hear the thunder so far away and out of sync with the lightning. And then they just kept getting closer and closer together until the lightning was so bright and the thunder was so loud that no one could really believe it. I wanted to go outside and stand in the rain and have the light and the noise all around me, but my parents wouldn't let me.

  The next morning, I woke up early and walked on the beach, listening to my Walkman. Everything was so still, like nothing had ever happened, and I remember how I had the music turned up really loud to help get out my bad feelings, and I started dancing around in the sand with my eyes closed like a crazy person. Just spinning around in circles and falling down, over and over again. I got so exhausted finally that I fell down and just lay there and stared at the sky, which was white and blank. And then all these bad thoughts came into my head and I started thinking about dying.

  I got up and started running as fast as I could, faster than I've ever run, all the way down the beach, and I just felt so good and free, and I thought, I've got to remember this. I've got to remember how this feels. If I ever get so sad again that I want to try and kill myself, then I've got to remember how good this feels and that'll help me get through those feelings.

  Somehow, I never could remember how good that felt, though. I remember thinking that it felt good and trying to remember, but I never could.

  I've been asking my mom about Pump Up the Volume, that movie that looks so good with Christian Slater as the pirate DJ, and she says that whenever she goes to the video store, it's already rented. I don't believe her. I ask her about it and she admits that, yes, they have the movie, but she's decided not to rent it.

  “Why?” I ask.

  “Because . . . we don't think it would be appropriate.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “We've heard that there's some objectionable material.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “There are some things that we don't think you should be watching right now.”

  “Like what?” This is making me angry.

  Her voice is getting really monotone, so I can tell she's getting angry too. “Well, we talked about it, and Dad and I decided that you aren't ready to see some of the things that are in that movie yet.”

  “Why? What do you mean?”

  “Well, there's a boy in the movie who hurts himself.”

  “How?” So that's it.

  “With a gun.”

  “So?”

  “So, Dad and I don't think you should watch movies about that right now. Maybe in a few months when you're feeling better.”

  “I'm feeling fine.”

  “Well, Dad and I don't think you're quite ready.”

  “Well, I am.”

  “Okay, we
ll, I'll talk to Dad about it again.”

  “Great,” I say in my most sarcastic voice.

  One thing I'm really good at is doing impressions of people. I can do Jack Nicholson, and I can do President Bush almost as good as Dana Carvey. I can also do a great impression of my friend Stephen, but my best impressions are probably of my mom and dad.

  For my dad, I make my voice low and gruff, I scowl a little bit and try to push my eyebrows together so they wrinkle in the middle like his. Then I flare out my nostrils and clench my teeth. My favorite line to say is, “Goddamn it, Brent.” That sounds exactly like him.

  For my mom, I open my eyes really wide and flutter my eyelashes. We have the same color eyes, my mom and I, so I just have to make my voice a bit higher. I speak in very even tones, like a teacher (which she is), and I keep my mouth tight and pointed downward. I say, “How are you feeling, honey?”

  Dr. Rubinstein is here again to make me talk about things I have no interest in talking to her about. Here we go. Round one.

  “Good morning, Brent.” God, I hate her voice.

  “Good morning.” Flat tones. No emotion.

  “How are you feeling?”

  “Fine.”

  “That's good. You're feeling better since being turned over?”

  “Yes.” You can't fool me—you don't care about me.

  “And how is the pain?” Don't ask me about pain.

  “Hurts.”

  “You're in a lot of pain?”

  You don't care, but since you're asking, I'll tell you. “My back still hurts the worst, but my legs are still hurting a lot in burn care. And the other day, being in the bath stung so much I almost died.”

  “Yes, I read that in your chart. Calvin said you were very angry that night.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Do you want to talk about why you were so angry?”

  “No.” Why is Calvin ratting me out to Dr. Rubinstein? That's not cool. I look down at my hands. The fabric is so intricate in these Jobst gloves. There are about a thousand little pieces of elastic running through each glove, and there's little holes cut in the end of the fingers and thumb so I can get the tips of my fingers out. I can touch the tips of my fingers to my thumb with every finger on both hands. Becky says that's almost a miracle. People call me the Miracle Man because I'm getting better a lot faster than anybody ever thought I could, but I don't think it's a miracle. I don't think it's fast, either.

  “Brent, what are you thinking about?”

  They like to tell me how proud they are of me. But I don't think I had anything to do with it. They've got all this medicine and all of these machines and the Six Million Dollar Man skin from Boston that they put on me. It's not like I decided one day to get better and then after that I just started getting better. I wish they'd all stop saying how proud they are of me.

  She's gone.

  Ever since that day in the bath with Calvin, where everything stung so much, burn care really hasn't been that bad. I mean, it's not like I wake up every morning and say, Hey, guys, when is burn care? I can't wait. But it's nowhere near as bad as it used to be. I guess that's because they covered most of my open spots with skin, that's what made it stop hurting. It's weird I got so used to being in pain all the time, now I'm just uncomfortable.

  Mom and Dad have decided to let me watch Pump Up the Volume, but they're going to watch it with me. They don't like the part where a kid calls Christian Slater's radio show and talks about how he wants to hurt himself and Christian Slater tries to talk him out of it, but the kid is so sad that he shoots himself in the head. And then everybody gets upset at Christian Slater, except this one girl, who takes her shirt off and has really nice tits. And there's this other part where a popular girl puts all her jewelry into the microwave and turns it on and she explodes her kitchen, and a bunch of stuff catches on fire.

  The part with the fire really freaked me out. I felt hot and sick and like I was going to throw up, but then it was over and I started to feel better. I didn't tell Mom and Dad.

  These days they like to put me in the blue chair and roll me into the Child Life room. It's fun because I don't have to sit in my stinking room all the time and also because there's much more to do in here.

  Today I'm just hanging out watching Jeopardy with Mom and Dad. I'm really good at this show, much better than they are. I wonder why that is. In the commercial break, I tell Mom and Dad I have to pee, and they leave the room and I wait for a while before Barbara comes in. She says, “Urine patrol,” and I laugh.

  She grabs a urinal and I pull up my hospital gown. I'm getting better at this. I can pee with anyone around now. I start to go and she holds the urinal. I can hear by the sound that I really had to go. It sounds like a Super Soaker squirting into a metal bucket. I can hear the urinal filling up.

  “You really had to go, didn't you?”

  “Uh, yeah.”

  “Are you almost finished?” She sounds a little nervous.

  “Not really.”

  “Well, you're filling up this urinal pretty fast.”

  “I am?”

  “Yeah. Can you hold it a second?”

  “I'll try.” I squeeze down and I feel the pee start to stop. It feels like the emergency brake on a runaway train. Finally the pee stops and Barbara looks around. There's no toilet in this room, only a sink, and she dumps the urinal in one big gush down the sink and puts it back between my legs.

  “That was exciting,” I say.

  “Yeah, but you can't tell anyone I did that.”

  “Okay, it'll be our secret.” She smiles at me.

  It has been decided by someone, I'm not sure who, maybe my mother, that I should start wearing clothes. No more sitting around in Ace bandages and nasty hospital gowns. My mom went shopping for loose-fitting shirts that I can get over my head and extra large pants with elastic waistbands, the kind that weight lifters and football players wear, with the funny prints on them. Dad got me a Michigan State basketball jersey.

  Becky comes in wearing a green dress and holding a pair of scissors. She says she's going to give me a haircut. Since my last skin graft, when they shaved my head and took my skin off, my hair has grown a lot, way too long on the sides and shaggy up on top. I think that all the vitamins they're always giving me are making it grow faster than ever. My fingernails too are getting really long and thick. They're about four times as thick as they used to be.

  She presses the button that makes me sit upright in bed, comes behind me, and starts cutting.

  I say, “It must be getting warm outside.”

  She says, “It's hot.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Really hot.”

  “What's today?”

  “May fourth.”

  “Wow.”

  “What?”

  “I was just thinking, it's been . . . one, two, three . . . three months since I came here.”

  “Long time.”

  “Yeah.”

  “You should go outside soon.”

  “What? No way. I can't.”

  “Yes, you can.”

  “What about my skin—they said I have to be careful of my skin in sunlight.”

  “We'll get you some sunblock, a hat, and a wheelchair, and we'll wheel you out there. How does that sound?”

  “Sounds good.”

  “What about your dog? Don't you have a dog?”

  “Yeah. Her name is Rusty.”

  “Rusty Runyon? Good name.”

  “Yeah. My brother named her. I wanted Cinnamon.”

  “Cute.”

  “Why is that cute?”

  “Just is. How old is she?”

  “We got her when I was eight.”

  “Getting old.”

  “No, she's not.”

  “You should get your parents to bring her to the hospital and you can go out in a wheelchair to meet her.”

  “That sounds good.”

  “I'm full of good ideas.”

  She goes to the bathroom, gets a m
irror, and holds it up for me. My hair looks better. I try not to look at my face.

  I'm lying here thinking about that red-haired girl on the cruise we went on for Nanny and Grandpa's fiftieth anniversary, where we went to Disney World and the Bahamas. Her name was Krissy, I think that was her name. We were watching a movie in the movie theater, it was Working Girl, and she leaned over and whispered, “If we were on a date right now, what would you do?”

  She was sixteen, and I was thirteen, and I don't think I'd even hit puberty yet. No, I definitely hadn't. And I didn't really know what I would do if we were on a date.

  She did, though. She put her hand on the inside of my thigh and started rubbing it up and down. It sort of surprised me, but I put my hand on her thigh too and rubbed it up and down. She was wearing these tight jean shorts, and I kept rubbing up and down her whole leg because I wanted to touch her actual skin and not just the jeans. Then she put her hand on top of my penis, outside my pants, and I put my hand on her where I thought her vagina should be. She sort of giggled and said, “It's lower.”

  I tried to giggle too, but I was getting light-headed, and I could barely pay attention to what was going on in the movie. And then she unzipped my pants a little and stuck her hand inside. She didn't really touch anything, just put her hand inside. I tried to figure out how to unbutton her jeans and unzip them too, but they were so tight I couldn't get the zipper to go down. And then she just stopped. I don't know why, she just did. I kept trying to get her pants off, but then she leaned over to me and whispered, in a really mean voice, “Stop,” and I stopped. I never saw her again after that.

  I have to pee. I press the call button. Janice comes in and grabs the urinal and pulls down the sheet and I put my penis in the hole. She looks down for a second, then away, then back again and says, “Are you feeling all right?”

  “Yeah.”

  “You sure?”

  “Yeah. Why?”

  “Your penis looks a little swollen.”

  “What?”

  “It just looks bigger than it normally does.”

  “You sure?” I look down. “It looks the same to me.”