Refined by Fire

by Brian Birdwell

  Just as you blister on the outside when you get burned, the same thing happens to your lungs when they are burned. Water from your body rushes to the burn site to heal it, which causes you to blister. My lungs were filling with fluid, and I was beginning to blister on the inside. Basically, I was drowning without ever being in water. So the medical staff was rushing to drain the liquid from my lungs. With that fluid going to my lungs, I was unable to process the oxygen.

  Dr. Williams, the trauma surgeon, and other members of the team began basic resuscitation care, securing the airway, IV access, and beginning diagnostic tests.

  The first thing was to intubate me and put me on a ventilator for my breathing. I could still taste the jet fuel. I couldn’t smell it, but several staff members commented on how strong it was. A lot of people were talking back and forth, but I didn’t understand most of it because they were using medical language.

  Then they began fluid resuscitation. Due to my burns, all of my bodily fluids were sucked into the blood vessels to make up for the fluid I’d lost. So they set up another IV to start giving me a large amount of fluid right away. They knew if they got behind in my fluid, I could die because my organs would begin to shut down.

  As they were evaluating me for other injuries because of the explosion, they discovered a lump on the back of my head. They decided to schedule a CAT scan to check for head trauma.

  Dr. Williams, who was standing next to me, said, “Brian, I’m Dr. Williams. I’m the trauma surgeon. You’re hurt badly, but we’re going to take care of you. We have to put you under anesthesia soon because we need to take you to surgery.”

  When he said, “put you under,” I knew what that meant for me. I knew there was a serious possibility that if they anesthetized me, I might never come out. I knew I might be speaking my last words.

  That was the most difficult moment for me up to this point. When the blast hit the Pentagon, that tough moment of dying was thrown upon me. But this moment lying in the emergency room at Georgetown wasn’t. In a way I had known this moment was coming. I was badly injured; to take care of my wounds completely, I’d have to be anesthetized. So I’d had an opportunity to think about this moment on that trip to Georgetown.

  I realized what I did and said right then may be my last words and actions, my last living act, so I wanted to make them count.

  “Wait,” I told Dr. Williams. “I need to do two things first.”

  I asked for the hospital’s chaplain. Then I could see John Collison standing behind Dr. Williams, so I called for him to come to me. I asked him to take off my wedding ring. Because my skin was burned so badly, a nurse, Judith Rogers, had to do it. Some of the skin came off with the ring. Then Judith handed the ring to John.

  “John,” I said, “you make sure my wife gets this ring.”

  “Yes, Sir, I will,” he said.

  I knew there wasn’t much time. While I wanted to talk with Mel, to hear her voice one last time, I knew calling her would have prolonged the trauma, and we were out of time. So I made my peace with her when I gave John the wedding ring to pass to her.

  “Tell Mel . . . ,” I started and choked back a cry. “Tell her . . . that I always loved her.”

  Mel

  I continued to walk—and run whenever I could. I focused only on the next step my feet were taking because I couldn’t look up at the twisting, winding hill I had to trudge up to get to my husband. Then my trek would seem impossible.

  Thankfully, the police officer had seen me waving wildly, so he turned around and came back. I looked into the full car of four police officers and thought, Great! If you four weren’t in one car, there would be somebody available to take me to the hospital. I knew that wasn’t a nice thought, but I was so angry. So yet again I explained the situation, and the police officers told me to get in. They would drive me to the hospital, which I found out wasn’t four miles away. One of the officers said, “Why didn’t you call someone from your home, and they would have brought you in?” When I heard that, I couldn’t help my anger and frustration. “I didn’t know the Virginia State Police were an escort service.”

  He got the clue about my emotional state. He just said, “Okay.”

  I sat in the backseat of that squad car, sweaty and stinky because it was so hot that day. My face was blood red. All my emotions whirled, and I wept out loud from the stress—of trying to make it to Georgetown and not being able to, of not knowing how Brian was, of the guilt of not being with my son, to knowing I was finally going to make it to Georgetown and wondering what I’d find when I got there.

  Brian

  Now that I’d passed my ring and my message to John, I was ready for the second important thing I needed to do: I needed to pray. This is it, I thought. This will be the last prayer I ever pray.

  Okay Lord, I know this is not a mission you gave me, but you allowed me to receive it. If you will it, guide Dr. Williams’s hand as he does what he has to do to me so I can live. And if not, then call me home from this operating room table so that the manner of my death will be a witness to your grace in my life.

  Chaplain Linda Cirillo and I prayed, acknowledging God’s sovereignty. And as we prayed I felt the presence of God so strongly it was almost tangible.

  After the prayer I looked at Dr. Williams and said, “Okay, I’m ready. Let’s get on with it.” Dr. Williams directed someone to administer the anesthesia. A woman gently placed a mask over my face and carefully adjusted the head straps around my singed ears. She told me just to breathe. That was the last thing I remember.

  Mel

  Unbeknownst to me, while I was in the backseat sobbing, one of the officers sitting up front called the hospital to let them know I was almost there. Moments later the police car pulled up to the Georgetown emergency room entrance and dropped me off. I quickly wiped my eyes and face with my hands, thanked the officers, then stumbled out of the car. There at the door stood a physician and Judith Rogers, the nurse who had called me more than two hours earlier.

  “Mrs. Birdwell?” Judith said.

  “Yes.”

  “Let’s take you in to see your husband. He’s in ICU. We have to go upstairs to get there. Let me try to prepare you for what you’re going to see when you see him.”

  “Okay.”

  “But first, I need to tell you, your husband loves you. He was conscious until we sedated him, but he asked me many times to tell you he loves you. Actually, he insisted we tell you that,” she said. “Now, he will look nothing like he looked this morning when he left your house. He is very badly burned and very, very swollen.”

  They had already told me this on the phone. But every time they told me, it didn’t register because I’d never dealt with a burn before. I really knew nothing; I couldn’t even tell you which was worse—a first- or third-degree burn. So as she told me he was burned, that truly was just a word to me. He’s burned. Okay. What does that mean? I thought.

  She said, “We’ve already debrided him a little.”

  That word debrided also meant nothing to me.

  She continued, “He is sedated. He has a tube down his throat. And it’s going to be very frightening to you when you go in.”

  Fine. I was just glad I had finally made it to the hospital and Brian was alive. Nothing else made any sense to me.

  As we got to the ICU on the fourth floor, C 4-3, Judith stopped walking and turned to look at me. “Is there anything you need before you go in there?”

  “Yes. I’d like to go to the bathroom and throw some cold water on my face.” I knew my face had to be bright red because I was so hot. And I needed to regroup and pull myself together before I saw Brian.

  Judith continued, “He’s not going to know you’re there since he’s sedated. And you’ll only be able to see him for just a few moments because we have to keep this as sterile an environment as possible.”

  She directed me to a public restroom down the hall from the ICU. I went in and stood for a moment. I stared in the mirror at my bloodsho
t, puffy eyes, my oversized and damp T-shirt, my messy hair, and red face. My eyes started to fill again as I grabbed the side of the sink. God, I need your strength to get through this, I prayed. I took a deep breath, turned on the faucet, and stuck my fingers under the water as I waited for it to get cold. Then I bent over the sink and splashed the cold water on my face.

  I grabbed a paper towel and dabbed my face. Then I took one more look in the mirror. I look horrible, I thought. Then I stepped into the brightly lit corridor of the hospital ICU unit.

  Judith was waiting for me. “Okay,” she said gently, putting her arm around me, “let’s go.” As we walked she explained that a burn/trauma specialist resident and a burn staff nurse, who both had recently transferred from the Burn Unit at Washington Hospital Center, were working on Brian. The nurse, Debi Trichel, was washing him down to remove the remaining traces of jet fuel that were on him, as well as making sure his head was propped up to reduce the swelling since that would further challenge his airway. She had also finished removing the dead skin, with scissors, and was redressing him with new bandages.

  We walked into ICU and around the nurses’ main desk, toward the back of the unit to Room 12.

  Dr. Williams and Dr. Clark, another attending physician, came to introduce themselves to me. They told me they had found a bump on the back of Brian’s head and were worried about a concussion or a possible brain injury, so they had just given Brian a CAT scan.

  Minutes clicked by like hours. I was desperate to see him—but also anxious.

  A lot of people came up to advise me, but everything was just blurry to me. I was so overwhelmed with all the people around and everything that was happening. All these people kept saying, “This is what’s happening. This is what the plan is. This is what we’re doing.”

  Finally Judith said, “Are you ready to go in and see him?”

  “Yes!”

  She explained that more than 60 percent of Brian’s body had been burned—and that almost 40 percent of the burns were third degree. Then she told me that they have to take care of the burns immediately because degree burns continue to burn—so consequently, a second-degree burn can turn into a third-degree burn. They had cleaned up Brian—bathed him, cut away some of the burned tissue, and dressed him in bandages.

  Judith handed me gloves, a gown, a hat, a mask, and shoes—everything sterile—and helped me put them on.

  Then she led me to room 12.

  There were people everywhere. As I walked into that dimly lit room and then over to the left side of the bed, I saw a figure lying there. But there was nothing about that figure that resembled my husband. Nothing. He was so incredibly swollen, his head was almost as wide as his shoulders. And he was white, so white his forehead was almost transparent. They had already scrubbed some of the skin off his face and put salve on him. But he just looked transparent. It was the whitest white I had ever seen in my life.

  He still had hair, but it was pretty singed. There was a tube down his throat, and he was covered in bandages. Everything was bandaged.

  I drew in my breath. God, is this real? I half prayed, half thought. Is this really happening? I was scared; it was so horrible. And Brian couldn’t say anything to me since he was sedated; he didn’t even know I was there.

  I had prayed for Brian to be okay. But seeing him like this, okay seemed far from the Pollyanna thinking I’d had earlier. What would lie ahead of us?

  I wasn’t in the room that long because I couldn’t handle seeing Brian like that. Judith escorted me from the room. I sat down in a chair outside his room and started to cry again. I felt so overwhelmed. I had to tell myself, Mel, you can deal with this. You’re going to be fine. Brian is going to be fine.

  “Are you okay?” Judith asked.

  I looked up at her and nodded slightly. “I guess I’m as okay as I can be. I didn’t really know what to expect.”

  “We’re going to medevac your husband to Washington Hospital Center. They have a burn unit that specializes in trauma.”

  “How can you fly him there? Isn’t all airspace closed?” I asked, remembering what I’d heard from the radio on the way to the hospital.

  Judith explained that they had requested the FAA to open air space to medevac him to the Washington Hospital Center. Yes, while the FAA had closed all air space, they gave Georgetown special permission to fly Brian across town.

  “We’re trying to get a DC police escort to take you over.”

  “Can I fly with him?” I asked.

  “No, I’m afraid not.”

  A social worker, Glenda, approached me and said, “Let’s go into a more private room outside the ICU.” I think they weren’t sure how I was doing so they wanted to limit my exposure to all the activity around Brian.

  She took me down the hall to a small room that had a phone. “Do you need to make any phone calls?”

  “Yes, I need to call my son and my family.” She helped me settle in the room, then walked out and closed the door.

  I called Matt at Debbie’s and told him, “I’ve seen Dad and he’s alive, and that’s really all I know right now.”

  “Tell Dad I love him,” Matt said.

  “Okay, I’ll do that.” I couldn’t tell Matt how bad everything was.

  Then I called Brian’s mom and his brother, Wade.

  At that point a different physician knocked on the door and stepped in. “Mrs. Birdwell, I’m Dr. Plotkin. We have the results on Lieutenant Colonel Birdwell’s CAT scan. I thought you might want to know it came back negative, which is good. Frankly, Mrs. Birdwell, I’m amazed that Brian has no broken bones—especially given the force of the explosion.”

  His words, just as everyone else’s, really meant nothing to me. How much worse could it be? I’d just seen a figure who looked nothing like my husband, but was my husband. How could the man who had happily kissed me good-bye in the morning now look like some swollen mess?

  I thanked Dr. Plotkin for the news, then phoned my sister, Connie. “I don’t know how I’m going to do this,” I wept into the phone. “You should see him, Connie. It’s awful.”

  Just then my cell phone rang. It was Steve Ener, Brian’s best friend from high school and college. I told him what I knew.

  Another social worker, Mary, came into the room and asked, “What can we do for you? What do you need?”

  “I want a Bible.” I hadn’t brought my Bible with me because I didn’t think I would need it. Now I realized how badly I did need it.

  She left and a few moments later a Catholic priest entered. “Mrs. Birdwell, I’m going to find you a New Testament.”

  “No, I want a full Bible,” I said.

  “Why?” he asked, puzzled.

  “Because I like the stuff in the Old Testament, too,” I answered quickly.

  When the priest left to find a full Bible, Glenda returned. “Mrs. Birdwell, you mentioned you haven’t had a shower or brushed your teeth, so I thought you might want this. Here’s toothpaste and a toothbrush for you. And here’s twenty dollars. This is all the money I have with me. You’re going to need some money because you’re going to be at the hospital for quite a while.”

  I couldn’t believe it—yet I was so grateful. When I’d left my house, I had only two dollars and my checkbook. I never carry cash in my wallet, and I didn’t have an ATM card.

  I immediately left to brush my teeth. Even that simple task made me feel so much better. What really made me calmer was when the priest brought me the Bible. I clutched it like I was holding onto a life raft in the middle of a raging ocean.

  Afterward I returned to that private room and waited for them to find my transportation to the Washington Hospital Center. Mary and Glenda kept making phone calls to the DC police but were told, “We can’t take her over there.”

  Finally the hospital administrator, along with the chief of security, William Cody, found out what was happening and intervened. William told the social workers, “Stop making phone calls. We’re taking her over.” He arrange
d for one of his security people to drive me to the hospital.

  By mid to late afternoon, after Brian had been at Georgetown four or five hours, and I’d been there a little less than an hour, one of the nurses came to the room and said, “We’re getting Brian ready to transport. You go on ahead so you can be there when he arrives.”

  The staff transported Brian to the hospital’s helipad, which was outside the hospital by Georgetown University’s football field.

  The security guard escorted me to his car and we left. The drive was especially eerie. We watched as armed Humvees and other military vehicles sat on most corners of DC. Everywhere I looked, National Guard soldiers were holding M-16s.

  I am in Washington DC, and this is like martial law, I thought. It was a very surreal drive down what were once normal streets. But there was no normalcy that day.

  Four

  The Transfer

  Mel

  Finally, between four and five o’clock, after what seemed like hours, I arrived at Washington Hospital Center, where Brian was being medevaced. Hospital security personnel surrounded the emergency room entrance. I couldn’t believe how much security I had to go through just to get into the building. It might as well have been Fort Knox!

  They weren’t allowing anyone through the doors since the hospital was on disaster alert, Code Orange. The scene was chaotic.

  As soon as the plane hit the Pentagon, the hospital expected to have thousands of casualties. So they discharged everyone who wasn’t in a life-threatening situation, sent every visitor out of the hospital, and called in every available staff person. That meant anyone who wanted to get into the hospital had to have a very specific reason.

  I walked over to a man at the door who seemed to be in charge and explained, “My husband, Lieutenant Colonel Brian Birdwell, is being brought over from Georgetown Hospital.”

  He glanced through a listing, then dismissed me with, “We don’t have anybody by the name of Brian Birdwell here, and we’re not expecting anybody by the name Brian Birdwell.”

  “Look again harder!” I said and again explained the situation.