The Almost Murder and Other Stories (6 page)

He looked happy—a man proud of a job well done. I tried not to cry or glare at him. It was pointless.

The doctor volunteered that if my keloids started to grow back again he could inject them with cortisone. If that didn't work, there were other options. Mom thanked him. I nodded.

Dr. Katz took a few polaroids, then showed us my “before” photos. He considered the improvement to be significant and said that now the scars would be much easier to cover with makeup.

I was buying none of this. I stared at Dr. Katz, still silent. I knew he sensed my disappointment, which, from the look on her face, Mom seemed to share.

As far as I was concerned, the surgery had been a failure. I felt foolish for deluding myself. If this was as good as I'd ever look, I was a monster for life.

Dr. Katz asked me not to look in a mirror for a week. I agreed, no longer expecting magic, anyway. At home, I watched television day and night: soap operas, movies, MTV—it didn't matter.

A week later, to the day, I again sat at my vanity table and lifted the bandages. There was less redness and swelling, but to me the scars looked as grisly as they'd been before.

Post-op days became weeks and months. My scars were red, but not as thick and ropy. They were prominent, though, and dominated my face and neck.

I saw the truth: there was no magic wand. I wasn't just a badly injured accident victim, but a young woman scarred for life. For life. Tiny, dreadful words that meant forever.

Depression ruled. I was fed up with being brave.

I no longer cared who saw me. Since I was to be a monster forever, I finally allowed my cousins to visit. Before they came, I scanned photos of myself, my first “after” photos, shot by my dad. Then, I e-mailed them to the Ts, so they'd be forewarned.

My cousins came and weren't too freaked out by my face. Their hugs felt good. We played cards and board games, watched DVDs, listened to pop and rap. I didn't blame them for glancing over at me when they thought I didn't notice. I'd have done the same if things were reversed.

My Aunt Tilda came over with her kids one day and innocently said, “Time heals all.” I met the remark with sullen silence. Who was she, with skin that covered her body like seamless hose—not a rip, mark or jagged edge in sight—to venture an opinion?

The curse of my forever-deformity tortured me in a way I couldn't explain to my parents. I believed I'd never marry, adjust or reenter the normal world. Refusing to return to Fairview, I finished high school at home and didn't attend my own graduation ceremony or let my parents throw me a party.

Mom and Dad kept trying to convince me to start therapy. I told them it was pointless: no shrink could take away my scars. They couldn't argue that point and didn't force me. I knew I was acting like a brat, but felt I had the right to it.

I returned to the hospital for surgery to remove and biopsy a growth under my armpit. One more thing to add to my list of negatives. The doctors felt it was benign, but had me stay for two nights, to await results.

My procedure was swift. I awoke briefly in the recovery room, flinched, watched a nurse push meds into my IV, and went under again. When I next opened my eyes, I was in a private room. Mom and Dad were there, one on
each side of me, looking relieved. Mom exclaimed that all had gone well. They put the TV on and I tried to watch with them, but mainly dozed, still half-sedated.

The next morning, I barely stirred as nurses checked my vitals. The doctor came by very early, inspected my wound and ordered lab work. My parents dropped by, then went off to work. Nothing life-threatening was going on. I even dozed when a lab tech came and expertly drew three vials of blood. I didn't really wake up until after 11:00 a.m.—very late for a hospital patient.

I got out of bed, used the restroom, showered, and pulled on a blue sweat-shirt and jeans. Stiffly, rolling my shoulders I walked to the tray table to check out my Get Well cards. Delgado strode in, shook her head and snapped, “Guess you never felt like callin'!”

I shrugged.

As Delgado checked my vitals, I kept my head down, trying to hide hot, unexpected tears.

“Still feel sorry for yourself?” she asked. There was no edge in her voice.

I sniffled, “Yep. So would you.”

She was silent.

A nurse's aide dropped off my food tray just then. Delgado picked it up and moved toward the door, beckoning me to come along.

“We're eating with friends,” she said.

I followed her pink-uniformed, chunky frame into the elevator. She pinned a “Volunteer” button on my T-shirt and said, “There's your title. Try living up to it.”

I read the words “Burn Unit” over the archway of a door. Delgado led me through it and down a gleaming corridor. We took a right turn and walked into a small cafeteria. Delgado whispered that this place was nicknamed “The Burn Café” by residents of the ward and their families.

Delgado found her sister, Marta, the Burn Unit's charge nurse, as she was finishing a poster she'd taped to the wall announcing an activity. She introduced us, telling Marta I was the girl she'd told her about. Her sister was as slim as Delgado was plump, but just as energetic. She smiled and told me she was glad to meet me at last.

Delgado told us she had to fly and headed out the door. Marta asked if I'd like to meet some people my age, and I nodded; there wasn't much else to do.

She led me to a table of patients: two girls and a boy.

All three looked me right in the face, without judgment or shock, and smiled. I looked at them, too, really looked. For the first time since the crash, I saw people like me: scarred, torn, kindred spirits. I felt indescribable comfort and a buzz of excitement.

Jordy and Barbara had facial scars. Ellen, in a wheelchair, had both legs and one arm bandaged and splinted. Their eyes said everything.

I put my tray down, and we ate lunch together. No one was nervous or timid around me. No one looked away from my face.

After a while, Jordy said, “All of us were burned—obviously. Do you mind telling us what happened to you?” For no reason I could figure out, I laughed. And then, I told them.

We went around the table, briefly saying what we'd been through. They were accustomed to doing this, but taking part in this tiny, powerful support group was a first for me. We were interrupted by a candy striper, who announced that my three new friends were late for occupational therapy.

I told them that I'd be getting discharged the next day. Jordy seemed disappointed and invited me to come up to the unit that evening. There was to be a lecture and rap group. I agreed, eager to see them again.

Delgado was about to clock out but told the charge nurse, Tiffany, where I wanted to go. She also okay'd me to attend the group. I rode up in the elevator, my stomach fluttering.

In a big meeting room were patients of all shapes, sizes, colors, ages, along with many family members. All of them had gathered to hear a speaker.

The subject was “humor in the face of adversity.” Our speaker, who'd written of her experience and been published, had lost her two children and husband in a freak accident. She told her story and handed out free copies of her book.

During a break, my three friends introduced me to everyone there. I met an Asian man who had much of his face, including his nose, burned off. I was touched by him. He had beautiful eyes, a soft voice, a shy wife and a toddler who crawled all over him, unfazed by his scars or missing nose.

I wasn't the only one who'd been through pain, who still felt it.

After the break, we were invited to share stories related to our experiences. I told them that I'd hidden in a stifling, damp garden shed in my own backyard for two hours just the week earlier because I didn't want the cute landscaper's son to see my face. I laughed and cried. Others understood and commiserated.

At the end of the evening, we chatted as we stood in line for the author's autograph on our books.

I felt sad to leave the warmth of the Burn Unit, but it was my curfew: 9:00 p.m. I had to get back to my own room; twelve hours later, I'd be discharged. It felt natural to hug my friends goodbye.

Jordy said, “Well, you're getting sprung—come visit us.”

I said that I would—and meant it.

In my room, I thought of the difficulties I'd been through over race and ethnicity before my accident. Then I remembered all the faces I'd seen that evening on the Burn Unit. Black, Asian, Anglo, Latino. None of this mattered. We all hurt. We'd all been altered. We were all alive. Our pain and survival linked us.

In the morning, my doctor told me that my growth was benign and bloodwork was excellent. While he filled out discharge papers, I went up to share my news and say goodbye to my friends again. They could tell I didn't want to leave. I found myself crying as they hugged me. It was a good sort of crying—tears of love, recognition and connection.

The first thing I did at home was to call St. Joe's Volunteer Center. Luckily, the coordinator, Chantel Green, was in. I asked to become a Burn Unit volunteer, giving Delgado as my reference. A new training session would be starting that Monday.

My parents had overheard everything and were beaming. I didn't know it, but Mom had come to visit me the night before. Tiffany had told her where I'd gone and that I might become a volunteer. Nothing could have pleased them more than for me to be involved in service and with people much like myself.

That afternoon, instead of surfing the Web and watching TV, I cleaned out my closet and tried on outfits suitable for the classroom and hospital.

Saturday morning, I went to St. Joe's. Stopping by the third floor, I asked Delgado if I could go up to the unit. She beamed and said it was fine, that I should go find Marta there.

I went up and found Marta at the nurse's station. She looked pleased to see me and suggested that I join an art therapy class. Since I still saw doctors at St. Joe's for
follow-up visits, she could list me as an outpatient, qualifying me for activities.

Lousy as I am at painting, the thought of splashing a brush around sounded good to me. I followed Marta's directions to a big, bright studio with artwork and easels everywhere.

The teacher gestured for me to take a place. Of my trio of friends, only Jordy was there. I felt right at home, though, and painted a pastel, modern-art watercolor. It wasn't a masterpiece, but I liked it. Jordy waved before going off to physical therapy.

Afterward, I met Dad outside and chattered about my day, just as I used to do before the crash. He smiled and told me my face was glowing. I accepted the compliment and didn't call myself Monster Girl as I used to.

On Sunday, the slowest day on any hospital ward, I went back to the Burn Unit. A game of Monopoly was starting up in the recreation room. There was a spot for me. We played and talked about nothing and everything.

On Monday, I started training. There were six of us: three seniors, a young married girl, a college intern and me. We had lessons in the classroom and tasks on the floor, where we learned on our feet.

Patients, fellow volunteers and staff members were interested in me, my scars, my story. I told it again and again and didn't feel embarrassed. After classes, I would visit my friends in their rooms, or watch TV in the lounge with them.

By day, I helped patients as a student volunteer. At night, we were peers. We had dinner together in the Burn Café often. Afterward, I'd go home for dessert with my parents.

When I called my cousins, I raved about all the new friends I'd made. They were glad for me, and when they visited, all three noticed that I seemed less shy about my
appearance. Training and working at St. Joe's had adjusted me to being around people, even unscarred ones, like my classmates, the staff and family members of patients.

Four weeks later, training complete, I became an official Burn Unit volunteer. I'd found a place in the world where I could feel good about myself and be of service to others. I had found people to connect to, for whom my scars were a link: something to help me help them and let them help me.

I assisted the nurses and heard cries, held hands, touched souls. Anything I did to help was given back to me manyfold. I made the closest connections of my life—we were more like sisters and brothers than friends. I talked, watched and learned from patients whose deformities disappeared when I came to know their hearts.

Jeremy, a boy my age, had come back to St. Joe's for a third skin graft on burns he'd gotten a year earlier when his legs and feet were scalded by boiling water at his dad's restaurant.

He and I compared scars: mine jagged, sharp and dry; his swirly, leaky, multicolored and raw from multiple skin grafts. Jeremy is African American; the dark pigmentation of the areas which had been burned was gone. That skin was pink and white, not deep brown-black like the rest of him.

I told Jeremy that my scars reminded me of snakes. Jeremy confided that he thought his looked like a blotchy mess of lava and lumps of molten clay. To him, some parts of his body looked polka-dotted. He called himself the Human Domino.

Neither of us said, “Oh, your scars are just fine.” Instead, we listened, scrutinized, commiserated. Our heads and souls were linked. We finished each other's sentences.

After his skin graft, Jeremy was in awful pain. He asked me to stick around one day when he was about to have his dressing change. He couldn't take it when his mother came to these procedures, since she cried so hard, making him feel worse. I told him I'd been through the same thing.

The charge nurse, Marta, set it up so that Jeremy's dressing changes took place during my shifts. I was his buddy, holding his hand, never wincing. Instead I distracted him or just kept quiet—whatever he seemed to need.

One day, his mom, a tall, beautiful, religious lady, burst into Jeremy's room and smothered me with hugs and kisses. She said the Lord had sent me to her son and him to me. She declared that the South Central Baptist congregation had me and Jeremy in their prayers at every service. Jeremy grinned at me, wondering if I felt overwhelmed. I didn't; I just felt good.