Read Online After the Fire: A True Story of Love and Survival by Robin Gaby Fisher - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Robin Gaby Fisher
Tags: United States, General, Social Science, Medical, Personal Memoirs, Biography & Autobiography, Biography, Criminology, Patients, Technology & Engineering, Fire Science, Emergency Medicine, Burns and scalds - Patients - United States, Burns and scalds
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who was getting better, and then she prayed to be forgiven for her selfish thoughts.
The Simonses and the Llanoses had bonded in the weeks since the fire. Except for vigils at their sons’ bedsides, the families had spent every day together in the burn unit waiting room. They watched Jerry Springer, Divorce Court, and Oprah Winfrey. They shared trays of fried chicken and macaroni and cheese brought in by a local church. And they talked endlessly about their sons, somehow managing to surmount the language barrier to share their stories. Their boys had been burned together as they crawled their way through the fire and the smoke at Boland Hall, and the families believed they would heal together as well.
Angie had dropped some of her classes to be with Alvaro. When she wasn’t sitting beside her comatose boyfriend, saying, “Keep fighting, baby,” to encourage him, or chattering about what she had done in school that day, she sat beside Daisy, patting her back or holding her hand. Angie was brave, but Christine was everyone’s rock. What she hadn’t been able to tell Shawn when he asked about his roommate was that the doctors had given Alvaro only a 40 percent chance of surviving.
On the same day that Shawn woke up, signaling the beginning of his recovery, the nurses in the burn unit debated whether it would be better if Alvaro died. They were sitting around a table in the break room, sharing a pizza for dinner, when the subject came up.
“Al — he gets to you,” one of the nurses said. “Have you seen his pictures?” She was referring to the photographs Alvaro’s family had taped to the wall in his room. “He was so handsome, a gorgeous kid.”
“His father told me he wanted to be a professional baseball player and he was really good,” another said.
“His mother keeps asking, ‘Will he look the same? Have you seen other people this bad?’ I tell her Alvaro is very, very sick. It’s day to day. Hour to hour. The next day she asks the same questions all over again.”
“From what I know about him, I don’t think he’ll be able to adjust,” said Laura Thompson, a nurse who had worked in the burn unit for fifteen years.
“I’m afraid his parents are too fragile to cope with what’s ahead,” said Andy Horvath. “I can’t even look at them anymore,” he added. “They keep asking me when he’ll wake up, and I don’t want to give them false hope.”
Shawn had turned the corner. His life was no longer in danger. Now it was a matter of healing, which could take months. But if Alvaro lived, he would be defined by his burns for the rest of his life. It’s time to start separating the families, Chris Ruhren, the director of the burn unit nurses, told the staff. “This can no longer be treated like one case.”
Chapter 11
T he burn nurses had quickly become attached to Shawn and Alvaro. They celebrated Shawn’s victories and they agonized over Alvaro’s setbacks. “You’re all angels,” Christine Simons would say at least once a day to the nurses. One former patient had lapel buttons made up for the staff that read, “There is a special place in heaven saved for those who treat burns.”
Burn nurses were a special breed. At Saint Barnabas, they were an eclectic bunch of men and women. They were fifty-five acutely different personalities with one thing in common: the burn unit was in their blood. They were closer to one another than any other group of nurses in the hospital, and because of the impossible stress of their jobs, they were a little bit wilder than any other group as well.
With all the time they spent together in the unit, they knew everything about one another. They knew about Kathy Hetcko’s new boyfriend and they knew that Sharon Iossa ate a bowl of mashed potatoes for lunch every day. They gossiped about one another, and they bickered sometimes. They laughed at one another’s raunchy jokes and cried on one another’s shoulders. One night, on a whim, a group of them
The Simonses and the Llanoses had bonded in the weeks since the fire. Except for vigils at their sons’ bedsides, the families had spent every day together in the burn unit waiting room. They watched Jerry Springer, Divorce Court, and Oprah Winfrey. They shared trays of fried chicken and macaroni and cheese brought in by a local church. And they talked endlessly about their sons, somehow managing to surmount the language barrier to share their stories. Their boys had been burned together as they crawled their way through the fire and the smoke at Boland Hall, and the families believed they would heal together as well.
Angie had dropped some of her classes to be with Alvaro. When she wasn’t sitting beside her comatose boyfriend, saying, “Keep fighting, baby,” to encourage him, or chattering about what she had done in school that day, she sat beside Daisy, patting her back or holding her hand. Angie was brave, but Christine was everyone’s rock. What she hadn’t been able to tell Shawn when he asked about his roommate was that the doctors had given Alvaro only a 40 percent chance of surviving.
On the same day that Shawn woke up, signaling the beginning of his recovery, the nurses in the burn unit debated whether it would be better if Alvaro died. They were sitting around a table in the break room, sharing a pizza for dinner, when the subject came up.
“Al — he gets to you,” one of the nurses said. “Have you seen his pictures?” She was referring to the photographs Alvaro’s family had taped to the wall in his room. “He was so handsome, a gorgeous kid.”
“His father told me he wanted to be a professional baseball player and he was really good,” another said.
“His mother keeps asking, ‘Will he look the same? Have you seen other people this bad?’ I tell her Alvaro is very, very sick. It’s day to day. Hour to hour. The next day she asks the same questions all over again.”
“From what I know about him, I don’t think he’ll be able to adjust,” said Laura Thompson, a nurse who had worked in the burn unit for fifteen years.
“I’m afraid his parents are too fragile to cope with what’s ahead,” said Andy Horvath. “I can’t even look at them anymore,” he added. “They keep asking me when he’ll wake up, and I don’t want to give them false hope.”
Shawn had turned the corner. His life was no longer in danger. Now it was a matter of healing, which could take months. But if Alvaro lived, he would be defined by his burns for the rest of his life. It’s time to start separating the families, Chris Ruhren, the director of the burn unit nurses, told the staff. “This can no longer be treated like one case.”
Chapter 11
T he burn nurses had quickly become attached to Shawn and Alvaro. They celebrated Shawn’s victories and they agonized over Alvaro’s setbacks. “You’re all angels,” Christine Simons would say at least once a day to the nurses. One former patient had lapel buttons made up for the staff that read, “There is a special place in heaven saved for those who treat burns.”
Burn nurses were a special breed. At Saint Barnabas, they were an eclectic bunch of men and women. They were fifty-five acutely different personalities with one thing in common: the burn unit was in their blood. They were closer to one another than any other group of nurses in the hospital, and because of the impossible stress of their jobs, they were a little bit wilder than any other group as well.
With all the time they spent together in the unit, they knew everything about one another. They knew about Kathy Hetcko’s new boyfriend and they knew that Sharon Iossa ate a bowl of mashed potatoes for lunch every day. They gossiped about one another, and they bickered sometimes. They laughed at one another’s raunchy jokes and cried on one another’s shoulders. One night, on a whim, a group of them
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