Fire Is Your Water

by Minick, Jim;

  Will lifted four fingers, and the nurse gave him a shot. Then Nurse Hallett lifted his right hand. “Now, I won’t lie—what we need to do is going to hurt like the devil, even with that shot. You’ll probably want to scream.” She started pulling bandages off of his hand, and even with his ears covered, Will heard the ripping of his scabs. It felt like she tore whatever remained of his flesh right off of his skeleton. And he couldn’t scream because of the damn tube. He twisted his head, but that hurt, too. Shit, woman. What are you doing? He jerked against the binding on his good wrist, but the other nurse put her whole weight on his arm.

  “You better get used to this, Mr. Burk,” Nurse Hallett said. “Every morning, one of us nurses is going to have to pull off the scabs and old bandages. If we don’t, your flesh won’t heal right, and it might grow over the old bandages, and then you’ll be in even worse shape.”

  She kept unwrapping, throwing the bloody strips into the trash. Nurse Young watched. She didn’t release his good arm.

  “And I’ll be honest some more. What we have to do next will probably hurt even worse.” Nurse Hallett worked round and round his arm, the bloody bandages soaking her fingers. Will gave up flinching. The painkiller numbed, but not enough.

  “Once we get all of these off, we’re going to walk you over to the whirlpool and give your arm a good soaking. We have to get all of the dead tissue off, and that means hot water and scrubbing.” More unwinding, more ripping, more bloody gauze. “Everywhere you’ve been burned, Mr. Burk.” Soiled bandages tossed into trash. “That means your face, too.” She stepped closer, and Will heard the snip of scissors on his neck bandages. “You’re going to think you hate Nurse Young and me, but we’re here to help you, not be your friends.” With that she slowly ripped off the layers around his neck.

  “Now let’s see what’s around those pretty blue eyes.” She scissored the thick bandages from jaw to temple, and then it was as if she pried his whole, swelled-up face right from his head—his ear and cheek and eyebrow and nose and then the same on the other side. The nurses’ silhouettes played across his eyelids. He could only surrender.

  Dr. Roberts entered. “Let’s have a look at Mr. Burk.” He squeezed the thumb. “Can you feel that?”

  Will heard the doctor but couldn’t form an answer. Surely this wasn’t his hand, his arm? Dr. Roberts held a black piece of flesh, dark char mottled with pink and waxy yellow, all of it swollen. Will gagged on more than the tube. He tamped down the bile in his throat.

  The doctor squeezed his thumb again, repeated, “Can you feel this?” Will flinched and nodded. They did that with every finger. But on the little finger, Will shook his head no. There was no feeling. “Look at me. Are you sure you can’t feel this?” The doctor pinched again. It was his little finger, but nothing registered. “We need to keep an eye on this swelling,” Dr. Roberts told the nurses. “Check this every hour and let me know if he loses sensation in any other fingers.”

  To Will he said, “Now, I need you to move your fingers and thumb.”

  Will did.

  “Good. Bend your elbow.”

  Again, Will complied, this time with a sob.

  Dr. Roberts examined his neck and face. He pinched dead tissue, paused to pry a scab off Will’s cheek, the doctor’s breathing close like the wide pores of his skin beneath his eyes.

  He sat on the edge of the bed and placed his stethoscope on Will’s chest. “Deep breaths, now.” This caused a different ache, and Will could only manage shallow breaths. “Try again. Breathe deeply, Will.” Each breath burned, pain welling up.

  Dr. Roberts leaned back. “You’ve been through hell, boy, but we’re going to get you fixed. It’ll take some time, but you have to trust us and work with these nurses. They’re some of our best. They’re going to pinch your fingers every hour, and you tell them the truth, now, you understand? If you lose any more feeling in your hand, it means the swelling is cutting off blood circulation and we’ll have to do an escharotomy to relieve the pressure. We don’t want to lose that hand, now, do we?”

  He tapped on Will’s chest. “And I need you to breathe deeply, like you’re blowing up a balloon. We have to keep stretching those lungs or they’ll permanently contract and you won’t ever be able to breathe as well. So, big breaths, OK?” He waited until Will gave a slight nod.

  “The nurses need to finish debriding, and the whirlpool’s in the next room. A young, strapping fellow like you should be able to walk to it.” With that, the doctor left.

  You’re joking, right? he wanted to shout. He could hardly lift his head, let alone his feet. The morphine muddled everything, his tongue a tangerine next to the damn tube. And you want me to walk to the next room?

  Nurse Hallett shifted his feet. “Here we go, now. Roll onto your side so you can sit up.” The two nurses lifted and pushed his body, and soon he sat, his feet hanging over the edge. The movement dizzied him, and dry retches burned his throat, the heaving shooting spasms of pain. He leaned heavily on Nurse Young.

  “I don’t know about this,” she said.

  “I see what you mean. Can you steady him like that?”

  Nurse Young nodded.

  “Then let’s just debride that arm right here.”

  Nurse Hallett laid towels under Will’s arm, and with moist gauze, she scrubbed his fingers. Gently she removed the crusty blood and charred skin on each finger, on the rest of his hand, and up his arm. Will moaned and bit down on the tube. Nurse Young held his good hand, his fingernails digging into her palm.

  On his neck, Nurse Hallett had to pry the scabs with her fingernails, they were so thick. When she finished, his flesh oozed, all of it pink and red and raw. Will collapsed onto the bed, and the nurses covered the pink flesh with fresh bandages, wrapping round and round from fingertip to head top. The white gauze immediately yellowed with the seeping fluid.

  “Now, Mr. Burk.” Nurse Young startled him. “I’m going to pour some liquid over your bandages. It’s called silver nitrate, and the doctor says it’s what’ll heal your skin. But I have to warn you, it’ll be cold. We’ll cover you up as best we can.”

  The fluid seeped into his bandages around his fingers and hand. The coolness soothed. As she ladled more over his arm, the chill rose like a slow tide. For a moment he floated the calm waters of Lake Caledonia, just his face above water.

  “I need to do your head, so keep your eyes closed.”

  The silver nitrate slipped through to touch his cheeks and nose. The comfort turned to the cold bite of ice. A wave of shivering rushed over him. Nurse Young covered him with the cage and tucked him in.

  Will slept through Dr. Roberts’s next visits. He slept through the nurses pinching his fingers. And he slept through Nurse Young giving him another shot of morphine. Even the coldness of more silver nitrate roused him only slightly.

  Later, the nurses allowed Ada and Aunt Amanda to visit. Will slept through his aunt’s prayers and her touch on his knee. In his dream, he felt something hot in his left hand. But he didn’t return Ada’s grip.

  ADA walked. At first she paced the waiting room from one wall to the other. When she realized this agitated others, she whispered to Aunt Amanda that she’d be back in a bit.

  She wandered the hospital, slipping into different wings, climbing stairs to different levels. Always, the chant for taking out fire ran through her head. And always she avoided the elevator, that tiny, moving coffin. Better to tackle ten flights of stairs than to ride in that.

  On one floor, the wailing of an old man over the body of a woman, her hair matted, thin and gray. In another wing, the laughter of children in their playroom. They threw a beach ball, some of them in wheelchairs, some covered in bandages, one without a speck of hair. Ada kept moving. After a while, she would run downstairs to Aunt Amanda, who just shook her head. Ada plopped beside her, and the two waited, Ada motionless, but her mind wondering how long this walk ahead of them would be.

  Cicero

  God of all ruint things, that sta
tion, the day after, smelt like burnt rubber. Fog settled in again, and that cloud just tamped us down into a bowl of scorched tires and melted metal, ground us so we became that smell, took it home with us, breathed it in our dreams.

  They had to winch the truck onto a flatbed, the damage was so bad. Window glass glittered across the lot like fallen stars. The pumps closest to the fire, they looked like globs of aluminum and copper. The island roof and little shack the Esso boys huddled in—the heat and flames blackened and warped them both. All that remained of the toy tigers in that shack was a row of hanging heads.

  They didn’t close, though. Too much money to lose to do that. Customers lined up for the one island still open, cars backed up all the way to the restaurant.

  I wanted to fly over the mountains to Aunt Amanda’s—she might tell me something, give me a little food. But I didn’t trust my wings. So I stayed. Scoop and Woody, they came out to the incinerator that morning after. They didn’t call my name, but I knew they were looking for me. Woody waved a hamburger up in the air and threw it on the ground near the fence. As soon as they backed away, I flew down to inspect and eat. They watched awhile before returning to pump more gas.

  44

  Ada woke with a crink in her neck. She stretched before checking her purse for aspirin. If only she had a stick of gum for bad breath, she thought. On the sofa, Aunt Amanda softly snored. At least she was getting some sleep.

  The waiting room had two other families—one that had been there when Ada arrived, and another couple who had come in the night, whose son had been in a wreck. The nurses had brought blankets and pillows for everyone. But there were only two sofas, plus people coming and leaving, and lights that glowed even through closed eyelids. She doubted she’d slept three hours.

  The night had brought another blanket of fog, a gray darkness filling the window. High on the glass a soft tapping—a bright yellow moth threw its body against the pane. Why do they always go to light? Ada wondered. What do moths know that we don’t? She remembered summer nights, catching fireflies with her brother, filling a jar with their blinking. One time, her father brought out a candle to read by while they played. The moths dove into that flame without hesitating. Ada gave up chasing fireflies to watch their wings light up and sizzle, the flame flaring, the moth becoming a wick.

  What would it be like to fly into light, to send brief stars up into the sky? What would it be like to have a hundred thousand sets of moth wings, so that you could burn them away every night?

  But then she remembered Will. He had only one set of wings and had almost lost one of them. That alone caused too much pain.

  WILL slept. That was all he wanted—that and morphine to take him there. He used to hate needles and still did if Nurse Hallett held one. But when Nurse Young flicked that tip and lowered it to his arm, he would smile if he could.

  A fox slipping through his veins—that morphine. It knew the secret lairs of rabbits. How to flush them out and snatch a mouth full of meat. How to eat pain.

  When he used to trap, he would wake early to run the line before the school bus came. He’d caught muskrats and coons, sometimes skunks, and even a mink once. Never a fox, though. He’d seen them often enough, usually at dusk. On a snowy morning, one had sat atop a knoll and watched him hike the creek. No matter how well Will covered his scent, scouted the trail, or hid the trap, he never caught a fox.

  And the fox never caught all of his pain.

  IN the cafeteria, Ada sipped her coffee. She sensed how much she would enjoy a cigarette, if she smoked. Once, at work, a scrawny trucker had placed his half-smoked cigarette on the windowsill, just outside the door. He came inside, took care of business, and bought a coffee. When he stepped back out, he took that cigarette off the windowsill and just kept smoking. At the time, this had appalled Ada, but now, something made her love that act—a simple fidelity to a little fire.

  The coffee steam curled around her face. No cream, no sugar this morning, just dark bitterness. Ada stared into the black circle and remembered when Will had disappeared. It was one of the last times he’d helped milk, and he, Ada, and her father were inspecting the progress on the new barn. The builders had just strung the rafters, so Will walked with his head tilted back, peering up through the ribs of the almost-roof. He was beside her, talking about Cicero. Then, he just disappeared—no body, no shadow, no words, just gone. He had stepped into the hay hole, fallen straight down into the lower barn.

  His laughter floated up first.

  She knelt and peered into the darkness, her father beside her. “Are you all right?”

  “I think so,” his voice muffled. “Guess this is what I get for always looking up.”

  She couldn’t see more than the glow of his shirt.

  “Did you break anything?” her father hollered.

  “Don’t think so. Thanks for piling up this hay. It made for a soft landing.” Then he disappeared again. Ada ran down to find him outside brushing off his clothes. She hugged him so hard that he fell again, this time onto the grass, her on top.

  “Don’t you ever do that again, Will Burk.” She wanted to clout him. Instead, she gave him a quick peck and stood up before her father found them.

  “You startled me,” her father said when he came around the corner.

  “I startled myself.”

  They headed in for supper, her father saying he had put a sawhorse over the hole. “I’ll ask the builders to cover it tomorrow. Don’t want anyone else disappearing like that.”

  Will had walked away laughing. She missed that sound now, the smile that hid in his voice.

  45

  Nurse Young pulled back the shades with the usual too-bright “Good morning.”

  Will didn’t want to open his eyes, the sunlight so bright.

  “You’re looking better, Will,” she said. “I can tell the swelling is going down.” She gave him another shot.

  Nurse Hallett examined his face while taking his blood pressure. “I think you’re going to walk today, Mr. Will.”

  He couldn’t tell if she was joking. This lady never lies, he remembered, and hardly jokes.

  “The doctor’s already checked on you this morning, and he gave us permission to take out this tube. That’ll be a relief, now, won’t it?”

  Nurse Young unwound the tape that held it in place. “Say ah.” With a steady hand, she pulled the tube from his mouth.

  Will swallowed. His throat was raw and his tongue now felt like a plum instead of a grapefruit. His left hand was free, the constraint gone.

  “How about some water?”

  Will swirled it inside his mouth before letting it slip down his throat. “Thank you,” he whispered, his first words since he’d entered this place. How many days ago? Two or three or five? He took another sip. Yes, thank you. Good god, if there is a god, thank you for this good cool water. He drained the cup. I need to teach Cicero that. Thank you. Teach him some manners.

  “Here we go.” Nurse Hallett lifted his feet. “I need you to sit up.” With a swift ease, the nurses had Will perched on the side of his bed. The dizziness came in a wave but soon disappeared. A nurse called for Roscoe, and a young man hurried in. “Lean on me, Mr. Burk. We’re taking us a stroll to the other room.”

  Will tottered, while Roscoe ducked under his arm and stepped into Will’s weight. Each step jolted, but the smell of aftershave distracted—what was it? Vitalis, like his dad used to wear? He could smell. He sucked in another breath and winced.

  “Come on, now. We can make it.”

  In the mirror, a white mummy wobbled out the door.

  “This way now.” Roscoe guided him. “You’re gonna visit the whirlpool today.” In the next room, Will thumped into a hard chair. The nurses lifted his arm onto a table and started unwrapping. He looked away. He couldn’t close his ears, though—the ripping of bandages, scabs, and dead tissue. He gripped the chair with his left hand.

  Nurse Hallett guided him to a tub that looked like a cattle trough but not
as long. Steam rose from the water.

  “Mr. Will, I need to warn you. This water will make your skin feel like it’s burning again, but it’s not hurting you. It’s just doing a better job of debriding than we can do. So brace yourself and slip that arm into the water for me.”

  Will dipped his hand into the bath. He flinched and stopped.

  “All the way in, now.”

  Will lowered his arm and yelled, “Shit, woman.” Again the searing of flesh, a roar in his ears. His curses turned into moans.

  Nurse Hallett clicked a switch, the water swirled, and steam hid his arm. “We’ll let this run for fifteen minutes,” she spoke over the motor. “So just relax.”

  Bubbles glided along the surface. They swirled and burst—tiny explosions. They took him back to hot summers, his beat-up bike, and the tar bubbles popping under his tires. Will rode as slowly as he could, weaving the front tire this way and that, handlebars wobbly. He liked the pop-pop-pop of so many bubbles just inches from his feet. He liked his green bike even though it was too big and had belonged to his father. He liked that he wasn’t supposed to do this, riding his bike back and forth on that lonely country lane under a sun that blistered the road and burned his skin.

  Nurse Hallett shut off the whirlpool. “Let’s have a look.” His arm glowed in the cool air of the ward. She patted him dry. “This is looking better, Mr. Will. The new skin is growing.” Will saw only the same bright red ugliness.

  Both nurses debrided his neck and face, scrubbing off black flecks of skin. I feel like a roasted chicken slapped on a plate and set before two starving women. He wanted to laugh, but he couldn’t even smile, the throbbing around his mouth was so great.

  Rebandaged, Will leaned heavily on Roscoe as they staggered back to his room, where Aunt Amanda greeted him. “Look at you! Up and walking! No tube in your mouth. I can’t believe it.” She scurried out of their way. Nurse Young poured the silver nitrate and covered his body. Before leaving, she gave him another shot.