Fields of Grace

by Hannah Luce

  27

  Four Funerals

  Every man dies but not every man truly lives.

  —AUSTIN ANDERSON’S FAVORITE QUOTATION, FROM THE MOVIE BRAVEHEART

  RON’S STORY

  The funerals began five days after the crash. Four funerals in four days. I was asked to speak at all of them, and, as much as I didn’t want to leave Hannah’s bedside, I wanted to comfort the families and honor those wonderful young men.

  I did my best to give some peace to the families. I could only imagine the heartache they felt. Hannah’s life had been spared, and even though we knew she had a long and troubled road to travel, at least we still had her to hug and to care for. We could still hear her voice and try to cheer her when she was sad. I could still hold her hand when she woke up tearful and afraid.

  Austin and Garrett and Stephen and Luke were four extraordinary young men. They were on their way to rescue a generation, quintessential soldiers in the battle for souls. What happened didn’t make sense, and that’s what I said at their funerals. Only the Lord knew why they were gone. It was up to all of us to keep them alive in our memories.

  Luke was an avid pilot who was pursuing a career in aviation. His family said he had a joy for life and loved helping people. In his obituary, they wrote, “For those that knew Luke, words like spiritual, godly, intelligent, kind, and humble only start to describe the kind of man he was.” I added “courageous.” I’m sure he was barely clinging to consciousness, with the smoke pouring in his face, but he held on long enough to get that plane on the ground.

  Stephen had a wonderful smile that started with his eyes. He was on the Cheer Team at ORU and had graduated with Luke and Austin a week before the crash. He led a youth group at his hometown church and aspired to spend his life witnessing to people. I was proud to have hired him for Teen Mania, and I know he would have made a real difference in the world.

  While I was preparing for Garrett’s funeral, I learned that one of his favorite quotations was from Jim Elliot, the evangelical missionary who was killed while ministering to a savage tribe in the jungles of Ecuador. “He is no fool who gives what he cannot keep to gain what he cannot lose,” Elliot said. It was one of my favorite quotations as well. One of Garrett’s own quotations inspired me as much as Elliot’s words. “I don’t want to save the world,” he said in the weeks before he died. “I want to help children every day of my life.” Garrett was selfless with his time. His calling was helping children around the world, and his passion was the El Niño Emanuel orphanage in Peru, where he spent vacations adding rooms and donating books and food to help the children living there. I wasn’t surprised that more than a thousand mourners came to his funeral at the chapel at ORU. Speaking to them, I said, “Today we have a fallen soldier. My question to all of us: Who will rise to take his place?”

  Who would rise to take all of their places?

  The hardest funeral for me was Austin’s. Every news organization had picked up on the interviews about him pulling Hannah from the burning plane. He’d been lauded as a hero in virtually every story about the crash. As far as his family knew, the news reports were true.

  I’d read a news interview with Austin’s fiancée, Elizabeth. It was heartbreaking.

  The story said, in part:

  Elizabeth rushed to a Kansas hospital to be at Austin’s bedside.

  “It was hard, because it didn’t look like him,” she said.

  That night—with a broken heart—she knew was the long good-bye.

  “It was so hard to say good-bye,” she said. “I kept leaving the room, went back in the room. All I could tell him was how proud I was of him, that I loved him so much, and I was so sorry this happened to him.”

  Elizabeth says Austin lived with purpose. She says the former Marine set out to graduate from ORU because he promised his father he would. Austin graduated from ORU one week prior to his death.

  Although Austin was badly burned in the crash, he carried Hannah from the wreckage. She is the only survivor.

  Family and friends say he’s a hero, but Elizabeth says Austin has always been, and will always be her hero.

  “It’s moments like that where true character is really revealed,” she said. “That’s who he was.”

  It all started with that one quote from Austin’s friend. “She couldn’t talk, but they gave her a pen and paper and all she wrote, over and over, was “Austin saved me. Austin saved me,” she told a reporter.

  I’m sure her intentions were pure and good. But the story just wasn’t true.

  On the night before the funeral, Hannah told the story of the crash for the first time to a nurse and, the next morning, on the day of Austin’s funeral, she told it again and in more detail to Katie, while I listened in by speakerphone. As Hannah wrote, and Katie translated her notes, it became clear that Austin hadn’t pulled her from the wreckage. She had climbed out herself and was yards away, alone in a cornfield, when she turned and saw Austin stumbling from the plane. The fact that he hadn’t rescued Hannah from the plane certainly didn’t make him any less a hero to us or to her. He’d kept her calm and led her to the road, and she credited him with saving her life.

  But I was headed into a room full of people who’d believed what they’d read in the news accounts and wanted to hear more about it from me. The task before me was difficult and awkward. I wanted to somehow prepare Austin’s loved ones, before the funeral, that they wouldn’t be hearing a harrowing story of Austin pulling Hannah from the plane.

  I met his family in the back room of their church in Enid, Oklahoma, before the funeral. We were all hugging, and I was trying to comfort them as best I could. I could feel their anticipation, so I said, “You know, we’re still figuring out what the real story is. We’re sure Austin helped in some way.”

  The funeral was standing room only. The whole town came out for Austin, and the Marines were represented well. Soldiers in full uniform carried Austin’s coffin into the church. I felt such pride. I walked to the lectern with trepidation when it was my turn to speak. I asked the Lord to help me with the words. After a brief silence, I said how Austin had talked to me about how Hannah had saved him when he returned from war by helping him to process his feelings and encouraging him about his faith. I said, “So we’re not really sure exactly what happened in those final moments, but I’m confident that, in the end, Austin returned the favor.” Everyone in the church jumped to their feet and cheered Austin, and that is how it should have been.

  Ironically, we later learned that both the medical examiner and the fire chief believe Austin tried to save Stephen. Stephen’s body was found outside the plane, on the port side, and his body was less burned than all of the others. In a letter to the Marine Corps, requesting that Austin be recognized for making “the supreme sacrifice,” Chief Duane Banzet wrote: “When the coroner’s findings of cause of death for the three men was made known to me, it was clear that Staff Sergeant Anderson had to have attempted to remove from harm Stephen Luth, as he was killed instantly (in the crash) and there is no possible way he could have crawled to his position (outside the plane) as he was already dead.”

  That didn’t surprise me. I knew Austin. He was a hero. He would give his life for his country and he would give his life for a friend.

  28

  Nightmares, Flashbacks, and a Frightening Reality

  Hell is a state of mind—ye never said a truer word.

  —C. S. LEWIS, THE GREAT DIVORCE

  The flashbacks and nightmares kept coming while I was in the hospital. I’d imagine that Austin and I were in the cornfield. It’s just him and me under a dazzling blue summer sky. He’s smiling that “I love life” smile of his, the one that reminds me of sunshine. His brown eyes sparkle and his nose crinkles up, and he holds out his hand to me.

  “May I have this dance?” he asks. “Of course!” I say. I fall into his sturdy tan arms, completely content to be with my dear friend. That’s when I realize we are both naked and covered with blood
.

  I was terrified of sleep because I knew the next nightmare would be even worse than the one before. They always were. I’d see myself back in the burning plane, draped over Garrett’s lifeless body, when he’d jerk his head up and begin talking to me, as if we were back under the Forty-first Street Bridge, smoking cigars and drinking cans of Pabst Blue Ribbon beer. Or I’d dream I was hobbling away from the fiery plane as it was about to explode. I was almost far enough away to survive the blast when the movie in my mind would rewind, and I’d begin running backward toward the crash with no way to stop the film.

  After every terrible dream, I woke up on soaked sheets, screaming. What was even more horrifying than those gruesome, frightful images were the times when I woke up from a good dream, a dream about laughing at one of Austin’s jokes, or walking hand-in-hand with Garrett through a park beside a river, and then realized that my reality was my nightmare.

  One of my many dreams was a recurring one, and I HATED HAVING IT. Every time I did it took days to recover from it. In this dream, I’m frolicking in a meadow, and I notice there’s a little medieval festival going on nearby. It’s like a scene out of The Chronicles of Narnia, with magicians and mythical beasts and talking animals and a big feast spread out over a long, wooden table in the middle of it all. People are playing musical instruments and skipping and dancing through the tall, verdant grass, and the women all have fresh, pastel-colored flowers in their hair. I join them, and they welcome me with applause. I’m running and leaping through the field with the others, my heart bursting with the joy of a blissful child. I feel so beautiful. My skin is like milk, soft and fluid. And my body feels like the body of a dancer, nimble, lithe, free. This must be Heaven, I think. But where is God?

  That’s when I wake up to my living nightmare. I can’t move my limbs, and my body throbs with the pain of my burns. I am alone in my room, without the comforting presence of my family or my friends. I wonder if I will ever be able to run through a field, or dance, or love. I want to know when—if—I will ever look in the mirror and see myself as I once was. Healthy. Undamaged. Whole.

  The dream reminded me of everything I couldn’t do that I once could. It reminded me of everything—and I loathed this thought—that I feared I would never do again. So therein lay my dilemma. I slept to escape my reality, but I fought sleep to avoid the nightmares that awakened me to my nightmare. I was trapped in my own personal Hell, one that I did not choose for myself, thank you, C. S. Lewis.

  Even the drugs I took for the pain—and they were potent and addictive—didn’t give me respite from my grim perception of reality. The drugs made me delusional and gave me psychedelic hallucinations. At first they were vivid, wildly colored dreams, but then the beautiful colors darkened and became tainted and murky. In one hallucination, I was at a freak show. The whole show was colored with bright, matted cloth made from different kinds of material, brocades and silks and lamés and swanskin. The ringmaster, a little person, was navigating me and pointing out all the different characters. A four-legged woman. A human unicorn. A bearded lady. A boy with the face of a horse. I heard circus sounds, elephants trumpeting, lions roaring, the crack of the trainers’ whips and the rapid-fire chant of an auctioneer. Beautiful white pearls and colorful jewels of all shapes and sizes were everywhere, and the ringmaster encouraged me to stuff my pockets with them, which I did, but then I put all of them back, because they weren’t mine to take. The further into the show we got, the narrower and dirtier it got, and I began to see its real colors, which were dark and murky. The ringmaster got shorter and shorter, shrinking with every step, and his voice, which had been friendly and welcoming, dropped menacingly. I didn’t understand what had changed. Then the ringmaster leaned in close to my face and told me why I was there. He wanted me to be part of the show. Because I was a freak.

  There were times that the hallucinations blended with reality. When I was first hospitalized, someone had tied a Get Well Happy Face balloon to a post near the foot of my bed. It was an eerie, burnt yellow, shiny Happy Face with little circus flags around it, making it look like a Happy Face sunshine. I was barely lucid at the time, but I hated that balloon, and it became a character in a lot of my dreams.

  I’m still fuzzy about a lot of my early days in the hospital, but I remember I had this one nurse. She was really young, with dark hair and long, polished nails. I thought she was gorgeous, but she was really mean to me. She treated me as if I was mentally retarded, and sometimes she became impatient with me, as if it was my fault that my body smelled like burned flesh and waste and I couldn’t do anything for myself. I couldn’t even talk, because I had a breathing tube jammed in my throat, and when I motioned for something—usually I was just looking for a reassuring smile—she’d yell at me, saying, “What? I don’t understand what you want!” Of course, I couldn’t tell anyone, because I couldn’t talk, but I dreaded every time she was on the floor.

  I can’t swear to every detail of those early memories, so I’m keeping a lot of them to myself, but the next part of my story—as confirmed by my mom—is completely accurate. After one of my skin graft surgeries, unbeknownst to me, I was moved to a different room. When I awakened, everything looked different—the placement of the window, the pictures on the wall, the furniture, everything except the scary Happy Face balloon tied near the foot of my bed. And the mean nurse. I thought I was having a nightmare, and I kept opening and closing my eyes, trying to change the dream. When it didn’t happen, I got really frustrated. My mom was in the room, and I tried wiggling whatever I could to get her attention. I’m gesturing to say, “Get the restraints off! I feel like I’m in prison. I’m trapped!”

  Mom hadn’t expected that I’d wake up so quickly. I saw the terror in her eyes the same moment she saw the terror in mine. She ordered the nurse to loosen the restraints. “Please,” she said. “Take them off now. She’s awake and she’s afraid.”

  That nurse was so patronizing. She talked to me as if I were two, not twenty-two. Looking down at me with her big hair and her cat eyes, she asked, “Now, Hannah. Are you going to be a good girl? If I free your hands, you’re not going to pull your breathing tube out, are you?”

  I shook my head no. How I hated that woman. Why in the world was she a nurse? I wondered. She obviously hated her job.

  With my hands free, I pointed to the balloon. “So you like the balloon,” she asked, her big, fake smile more for my mom’s benefit than mine. I pointed to the balloon again, poking my finger harder in the air. Mom looked puzzled. She handed me a piece of paper and a pencil. “What is it, honey?” she asked.

  I drew a circle and pointed at the balloon. Get it out!

  The balloon was taken away, and the nurse turned to look at the monitor beeping above my head, because my heart was racing. When she did, I drew an arrow on the paper that pointed to the nurse and hoped my eyes said what my mouth couldn’t.

  Get her out, too! I don’t like her! She’s mean.

  29

  Healing

  “Hearts are breakable,” Isabelle said. “And I think even when you heal, you’re never what you were before.”

  —CASSANDRA CLARE, CITY OF FALLEN ANGELS

  Toward the end of May, the doctors were talking about releasing me from the burn unit in Kansas City and sending me to a rehabilitation hospital in Dallas. I had been through thirty hours of skin graft surgeries on my back, right arm, and leg, and I looked like a bad patch job. At one point I had temporary skin on my arm from an African American cadaver. My skin is as white as snow, so it hardly matched, but I liked it. I called myself Calico Hannah.

  I was thankful to be alive (sometimes) and I tried being upbeat for the sake of my family, but the pain from my burns and my surgeries, coupled with my emotional agony, made me pretty unpleasant to deal with sometimes. The doctors and nurses in the burn unit had more patience than anyone I’d ever met before. It’s amazing what they deal with every day, the terrible things they see, yet they still continue to smile. I couldn�
��t have imagined just how debilitating being burned could be until it happened to me. I was maimed, and the physical and psychological toll it took was mind-boggling.

  In his dispatches to the ministry, Papa always put a good face on my progress, but his positive thoughts weren’t necessarily my thoughts, and I often critiqued them when I was alone in my room.

  “Thank you all for praying for Hannah—I can’t tell you all how much it means,” he wrote on his blog in the third week of May. “Hannah went through a five-and-a-half-hour surgery yesterday. The doctors said she did very well, and they did a lot of skin grafting. The whole process causes extreme pain for her, so since the surgery, she has been pretty heavily sedated (translation: completely out of it!). She is on a ventilator again for the next couple of days, and tomorrow she goes in for another skin graft surgery. (Woohoo!) We think that may be the last one she’ll need to have. (Praise Lord God!)

  “I stayed the night in the room with her after her surgery, just to be with her (Papa is an angel) and she slept very well. (Not! I never sleep well, even when I’m as drugged up as Lindsay Lohan on her worst day!) A few times she woke up, and of course with a breathing apparatus, she can’t talk. (Lucky you, Papa! I had a lot to say! ‘More meds, please!’) So, she’s trying to write notes, expressing what she needs or how we can help her. (Get me outta here!!!)”

  A few days after that, Papa updated his blog with this note:

  “I want to thank you all so much for praying! As we have heard from people praying from all around the world for Hannah’s recovery, she continues to be in the burn center of the KU Medical Center in Kansas City and is making significant progress. She’s still in quite a bit of pain, but she is beginning to use her limbs more.” (If that meant wiggling my fingers and my toes!)