Read Online After the Fire: A True Story of Love and Survival by Robin Gaby Fisher - Free Book Online Page A

of Kenny and his concerns, but while her ex-husband might have been clumsy in conversation and negligent as a parent, underneath it all was a heartfelt recognition of the stakes. Kenny had lost two of his children from his first marriage, and he had prayed every day that God save his son.
    “My prayers have been answered,” he cried.
    Shawn’s eyes widened when his mother walked into the room. She knew what he was telling her: I’m so glad you’re here.
    “Baby boy, I have been waiting weeks for this moment,” Christine said, tears flooding her eyes.
    As relieved as she was, she felt helpless. Mothers were supposed to make their children feel better. She had always been able to do that. But now she saw such pain and fear in Shawn’s eyes, and there was nothing she could do except trust in God and the doctors.
    Tears trickled down Shawn’s badly burned cheeks as he looked from his mother to his father. He tried to speak but couldn’t.
    “The respirator,” Kenny explained. “You won’t be able to talk until you’re taken off it.”
    Shawn blinked his eyes hard.
    “Your glasses,” Christine said. “You can’t see very well, can you?”
    She took the wire-rimmed glasses from the table beside Shawn’s bed and placed them on his face.
    He wiggled his bandaged hands.
    “As long as you can move them, that’s good,” his father said.
    He raised his hand to his head. His curls. Where were they? “It’s okay,” Christine reassured him. “They’ll come back.”
    Shawn looked pleadingly into her eyes. He seemed desperate to say something.
    Horvath left the room and returned a moment later carrying a large sheet of paper with the alphabet printed on it. Shawn’s eyes brightened.
    Christine placed the paper in front of Shawn, and slowly but deliberately, he pointed out letters.
    W-h-e-r-e h-a-v-e y-o-u b-e-e-n?
    “Right here, every day,” Christine replied.
    Shawn had another question.
    H-o-w i-s A-l?

Chapter 10
    D aisy Llanos was a devout woman. She spent hours reading the Bible and praying over her son, and she had decorated his hospital room with rainbow-colored rosary beads. When she wasn’t in the burn unit, she was at the altar in Saint Joseph’s Roman Catholic Church near her home in Paterson. “Please, Jesus, if you love me and you love my son and you love my family, please help us through this,” she prayed in Spanish. “Please leave my son with me, no matter how burned he is.”
    Daisy’s prayers had been answered two years earlier when she begged for her husband to survive his life-threatening stroke. She needed another favor now. Alvaro’s injuries were grave. His body was mutilated and he was barely alive. He would suffocate if oxygen weren’t being continually pumped into his lungs. His eyelids were sewn shut to protect the soft tissue of his burned corneas from hardening. If God let her son live, she would take care of him the way she had taken care of her husband. She would give up everything to help him get better.
    Mi niño bello, nadie jamás te hará daño. My beautiful boy, no one will ever hurt you again. She would make sure of it.
    As Alvaro waged his lonely fight to stay alive, friends and family members confessed their fears and frustrations in letters that were tacked to his hospital room wall. “Waiting for your response to our presence, but not a single movement has occurred,” his sixteen-year-old sister Shany wrote. “Out of everyone in the family, you are the last person we expect to give up . . . I know that when we are in the room with you, you can hear us and I know you’re trying to respond.” Angie wasn’t so sure. “When I lie down I try to hug myself so I can feel your body close to mine,” she wrote. “But somehow no matter what I do I can’t find you. No matter how hard I try I can’t see you.”
    It was Angie who delivered the news to the Llanoses that Shawn was awake. Daisy tried to be happy. Privately she wondered why it couldn’t have been Alvaro