After the Fire: A True Story of Love and Survival (7 page)

Chapter 12

P
lease take me to see my roommate.”

Shawn had been awake for a week, and the morphine haze was finally clearing out of his head. He had been plotting to see Alvaro all day. Now it was late at night and his mother had finally gone home. Every time he had asked her about Alvaro, she had said he was fine, okay, getting better every day. The lights in the burn unit were dim, and the respiratory therapist was listening to his breathing. “My roommate is Alvaro Llanos,” Shawn said, persisting. “Can you take me to see him?”

The therapist hesitated. He realized that Shawn wasn’t about to give up without getting an answer.

“You don’t need to worry about him now,” the therapist said. “You need to concentrate on yourself.”

Shawn had been taken off the critical list that day. His life was out of danger, but he still had a long recovery ahead of him. He promised himself that as soon as he could walk, he would find Al.

The nurses had met few patients as determined as Shawn. Mansour had planned to wean him off the respirator on his third day awake, but Shawn yanked out his breathing tube before Mansour had the chance. On his second day, his feeding tube had been removed and he had asked his girlfriend, Tiha Holmes, for grilled cheese sandwiches. So much of a burn patient’s success depended on his psychological makeup. Shawn was smart and he was stubborn — traits that were certain to test the staff but also hasten his own recovery. His face was scarred from second-degree burns, and both of his hands were covered with skin grafts, so he would need extensive physical therapy, but with luck, he would go home in three months, Mansour told Shawn’s mother.

Shawn had other ideas. “Give me two weeks and a couple of days, and I’ll be out of here,” he promised Andy Horvath. “I always set ambitious goals for myself and I usually meet them.”

“Why doesn’t that surprise me?” Horvath asked rhetorically, and they both laughed.

Shawn took his first steps two days after his late-night request to see Alvaro. A nurse propped him up, keeping her hand under his arm, and led him around his room. He took eight steps, rested a minute, and then took another three. He was shaky and weak and it took all of his concentration to put one foot in front of the other. The next day he felt a little better, but he was discouraged by his overall lack of strength. The day after that, he managed to take fifteen steps on his own, using sheer will. “That’s it,” the nurse said, clapping her hands. “You’re getting better every day.”

Shawn hadn’t mentioned it, but he was motivated by a single goal: to see his roommate. He also hadn’t told anyone that he couldn’t sleep at night, wondering why everyone was so vague when he asked about Al. He had started to remember the morning of the fire and how, in his panic, he had turned right out of their third-floor dorm room, toward the elevator he always took downstairs. There was a stairway to the left of their room. He hadn’t even thought about it as he fled for his life, and Alvaro had followed him. Had they turned left, they might have escaped the fire unharmed. How would he forgive himself if Alvaro was badly hurt? What if he had died and no one was telling him?

One month after the fire, a nurse asked Shawn if he would like to try to walk to the tank room for his daily treatment. It would be a big step in his recovery, she said. The tank room was twenty-five feet away.
This is my chance,
Shawn said to himself.
My chance to try to see Al.

With the nurse next to him, Shawn took ten steps to the door of his room, then ten steps down the hallway of the burn ICU. He wasn’t sure if he could make it any farther. Those twenty steps had taken him several minutes. His legs were giving out and he was breathing hard. Shawn remembered hearing someone say that Alvaro was three doors down from his room, and he had put that information away for when he needed it. Now he needed to keep moving. He had to keep going. He counted each door he passed. The steps between the rooms seemed like miles.

Finally he reached the third door. Room 4. Shawn turned and glanced through the glass wall. The nurse immediately guided him away. Shawn said nothing, but he had seen what he had wanted to see. He was sorry he had. The patient in the bed was wrapped head-to-toe in gauze and hooked up to a maze of tubes and machines. Shawn recognized the steady whir of the respirator. Then he saw a collage of photographs on the wall. Photographs of Alvaro. Now he knew why everyone had been so evasive: Al was in bad shape.

I should have turned left,
Shawn said to himself as the nurse steered him into the tank room.
What was I thinking? Why didn’t I turn left?

Shawn decided he would tell no one what he had seen, not Tiha, not even his mother. He would tell no one of the terrible remorse he felt. But every time he got the chance to pass room 4, he would take it so that he could check in on his friend.

Chapter 13

T
he day arrived faster than everyone had anticipated — everyone, that is, except Shawn. Christine had always told her son that he could do whatever he wanted to do, be whatever he wanted to be. When Shawn was thirteen, he decided that the street life, and selling drugs and stealing cars and all of the other things that went with it, was a dead end. At the risk of being ridiculed, he walked away from the boys in the neighborhood who had tried so hard to recruit him to their lifestyle, and he never looked back. Having realized that his mother was right, that he could be somebody, and that college was the way to get what he wanted, Shawn hit the books and kept hitting them until his name was on University High’s honor roll.

As tenacious as he was proud, Shawn wasn’t about to go back on his promise to himself that he would be out of the burn unit in weeks, not the months the doctors had predicted. On a Monday afternoon, days before the staff had thought he would be ready, he left intensive care for step-down. His mother arrived early to escort him on the short walk between the two units. It was a watershed moment, the few steps representing so much in terms of how far Shawn had come on his journey back from the fire. Dressed in a blue hospital gown and slipper socks, with a nurse carrying the oxygen tank that was fitted to a mask over his mouth, Shawn walked the corridor as if in a victory march. Mansour had told Christine that once Shawn awoke from his coma, he would probably progress fairly quickly to step-down. That’s when the hard work of recuperation would begin. But no one had expected him to move
this
fast.

“So soon?” Sue Manzo asked as Shawn passed the nurses’ station on his way to his new room.

“I told you,” Shawn said, grinning.

“Yes, you did,” Manzo said.

But Shawn had still not told anyone — not even his mother, and he told his mother everything — that he had seen Alvaro. He had stopped asking about his roommate after he had glimpsed him that first time. He knew no one would tell him the truth. Sure, they were trying to protect him, but they should have known he would find out. Shawn couldn’t get Alvaro off his mind, and he couldn’t forgive himself for turning the wrong way out of their dorm room, either. He would keep that to himself, too, until he could tell Alvaro that he was sorry, sorry that he had let him down. But every time he passed room 4 and peeked in, nothing seemed to have changed. Alvaro lay there, tubes snaking between bags of fluids and blinking machines and his mummified body, a nurse or doctor always at his side.

Now, walking past room 4, Shawn glanced sideways, looking at the bed where his friend lay motionless, still unconscious. This was Shawn’s last chance to look in on his friend; the ICU was behind closed doors, and once he walked through them to the step-down side, he would have no official reason to return except to see Al. After today, he would only be able to wonder about Alvaro — wonder about how he was doing — and Shawn knew he would be wondering about him all day long, from the moment he first woke up in the morning until sleep finally overtook him at night.

“C’mon, Son,” Christine said, pulling on Shawn’s arm. “This is so exciting, Shawn. We’re going to step-down. Before you know it, you’ll be home.”

“Yeah,” Shawn said, trying to sound happy.

The nurses applauded as mother and son passed.

Shawn whimpered like a baby on the morning he was rolled into the OR for surgery on his hands. Pins had to be put in his fingers to immobilize his damaged joints. Otherwise he would lose his fingers. The procedure was relatively easy and would require only local anesthesia, Mansour said. “Aren’t you going to knock me out?” Shawn asked, incredulous. “That’s not how it’s normally done,” Mansour answered. “I’m not doing it unless you knock me out,” Shawn insisted. Hani relented.

The surgery went as planned, and Shawn was back in his room in two hours. When he woke up from the anesthesia, his mother and Tiha were waiting with pizza. But the next day, Shawn’s mood was dark and raw. He complained about his bandaged hands. Eating was awkward, he said. He was having trouble picking up the telephone. His mood wasn’t helped by his lack of sleep at night. “What’s the trouble?” the nurses asked. It depended on the day, sometimes the hour.

“My forehead stings.”

“My fingers ache.”

“The skin grafts on my hands are ugly. My mother always said the first thing a woman notices about a man is his hands. Where does that leave me?”

The doctors had said there was no reason Shawn would not, at some point, be able to lead a fairly normal life. His only real physical challenge was getting back the use of his hands, and that would take commitment by him to the painful daily therapy sessions. The therapy, which required the stretching of his taut new skin, would help keep Shawn’s hands from constricting and shriveling up. He knew that. But the pain of bending and straightening his fingers was excruciating, and Shawn was finding there were limits to his tolerance and his perseverance. For the first time in his life, he felt powerless. There was nothing he could do to change what had happened. Nothing he could do to erase the scars. No matter how hard he might try or how much he wanted to make something right, his hands would always remind him that there were some things he couldn’t control. They would never look better. And he couldn’t return to the dorm room and turn left instead of right.

“I need to go to the bathroom,” he said one day as the physical therapist pulled and pushed on his bandaged fingers. “I need you to open the door for me.”

“No,” the therapist said. “You have to at least try to turn the knob yourself.”

“Mom?” Shawn asked, looking at Christine, who was seated in a chair near his bed.

“No,” the therapist said, looking from Christine to Shawn. “You try, Shawn. You’re not doing as much as you should be. You need to start trying harder. You need to start doing things for yourself. If you don’t start exercising your hands more, they’ll tighten up and you’ll lose the use of them. I thought you were a tough guy. Everyone said you were the star patient in ICU. What happened?”

Shawn glared at the therapist.

“Ever have anyone kick you?” Shawn asked through clenched teeth. “Because I’m about to kick you right out of this room.”

Christine gasped. This was not the Shawn she knew.

“Shawn!” she snapped. “I’ve never known you to speak to someone like that. I’ve never known you to be violent.”

“I’ve never hurt like this before,” Shawn responded.

Mansour heard about the incident. He had watched with great hope and admiration as Shawn struggled back to life in the ICU. He had even told his wife, “This boy has the mettle to come all the way back.” But now Hani was becoming impatient.

“He is sitting in there like a little king,” Mansour griped at a weekly meeting of the burn team. “Everyone is doing everything for him. That’s not helping. There’s always someone feeding him. Reading to him. I don’t know what happened to him. When he was in intensive care, he did everything we asked and more, and he was always so calm and polite. Now he’s getting better and he’s being impossible.”

For her part, Christine was worried about Shawn’s state of mind. He had never seemed so angry, so belligerent. Shawn usually handled everything by forgiving and carrying on. But now her easygoing son was a stranger. The more he healed, the more miserable he seemed to become.

In the past, Christine had always known how to make her son feel better. And as recently as a couple of weeks ago, he’d been cheered by the scores of greeting cards he’d received. Schoolchildren from all over the state were sending notes to the Seton Hall students burned in the fire. Christine picked a card from the pile.

“Listen to this one, Shawn,” she said, chuckling. The message was written in crayon. “Dear friend,” it read. “My name is Evan. I am a Michigan fan. I suppose you like Seton Hall. If you need a good laugh, I strongly suggest the movie
Dumb and Dumber.
Now that is a great movie.”

Normally, Shawn would have giggled along with her, but he was stone-faced.

“Humph,” he said, turning his attention to the TV.

“Do you want to tell me what’s going on?” Christine asked, rubbing her son’s head. “Shawn? . . . Shawn?”

Tears rolled down Shawn’s cheeks. He wiped them away with his bandaged hand, but they continued to fall, drenching his face and his sheets.

“I guess I’m just getting tired of all this,” he said finally.

“But Shawn, you’re getting better. You’re doing so well. You’re alive. We have so much to be thankful for.”

“I’m not sleeping, Mom,” Shawn said, trying to choke back sobs. “I can’t sleep.”

“Why, Shawn? What is it? Are you afraid?”

“Mom, I saw Alvaro. I saw him a long time ago. No one would tell me anything about him, so I looked in his room. And I kept looking in after that. I know. I know how sick he is. That’s why I don’t sleep. I can’t sleep because I think he’s going to die. And I blame myself. What happened to Al is my fault because I turned the wrong way out of our room.”

Shawn’s secret was out.

It was a normal Friday night at the Hall. Hundreds of students crowded into the college bar, just down the street from the Seton Hall campus, mingling and drinking three-dollar beers.

Jennifer Lopez’s “Waiting for Tonight” was blaring when cops burst through the front door at 1:23 a.m. and swarmed the bar.

“Nobody leaves until we see some ID,” one officer shouted. The crowd went quiet.

It had been weeks since the fire, and investigators were frustrated. They were focusing on a small group of students, but no one was talking. The longer the investigation dragged on, the harder it would be to crack the case. Frucci didn’t sleep most nights, wondering what to do next. He tossed and turned in his bed, trying to think of ways to move the investigation forward. With the case hopelessly stalled, investigators had finally decided to resort to an old trick, hoping the guise of a raid on underage drinking would shake loose a fresh lead.

One of their chief suspects was Sean Ryan, the kid who had admitted to tearing down the banner, then rushed out of police headquarters, never to return. He had since gotten an attorney and had nothing more to say to investigators. But he had told four different stories to fraternity brothers about where he was when the fire started.

The forensic part of the probe had given up little, except that the fire had started on a couch and had quickly engulfed the entire lounge. It had told investigators that the fire was most likely set, but nothing about who started it. Arson is the hardest crime to prove. According to the International Association of Arson Investigators, arrests are made in only 16 percent of arson cases, and less than 2 percent end in a conviction. Frucci and his team needed people to help them bring this case to justice. But the students who knew things — including Ryan’s fraternity brothers — had clammed up after those first interviews. Some had hired lawyers. Others hid behind protective parents when investigators called on them for follow-up interviews. Everyone, it seemed, had circled the wagons.

“We have nothing to move ahead on and won’t unless something gives,” one law enforcement source told the
Newark Star-Ledger
newspaper.

Frucci and the other investigators had come to see the case in terms of good versus evil, because what kind of kids hid the truth about a crime in which fellow students had died? What kind of people could ruin so many lives, yet continue to live their own as if nothing had happened? Investigators hoped the raid might push something — or someone — into the light.

The Hall was a popular hangout for the Pikes, Ryan’s fraternity. The officers had brought with them a dozen grand jury subpoenas naming students who they believed knew more than they were saying.

They corralled a group of students in a back room, many of them Ryan’s fraternity brothers, slapped subpoenas in their hands, and walked out.

At least now prosecutors could bring the reluctant students before a grand jury, where they would be asked questions without their parents or their lawyers present —
if
the prosecutor’s office could ever make a case strong enough to convene a grand jury.