The Burn Journals (23 page)

“What happened to your face?” I'll say the house fire.

“I was burned in a house fire.”

“Really? That's terrible.”

“Yeah.”

“How'd it start?” Oh Jesus.

“Um, it was electrical.” Did my voice just crack?

“Electrical?”

“Yeah.”

“What do you mean?” Shit.

“Something happened in the electricity circuits.”

“Really? How?”

“Um, the toaster.”

“The toaster?”

“The toaster shorted out and the whole house just went up in flames.”

“Did everyone in your family get hurt?”

“No. Just me.”

“Just you? That's terrible. Did you sue?” Did I sue?

“No.”

“Why not?”

“I don't know. I didn't ask.”

“Oh. Well, I had a cousin that was burned really badly in an accident at the gas station where he worked, and he sued the company and got, like, a million dollars.”

“Oh yeah?”

“Yeah, and he also said it was the worst pain imaginable. Was it really bad?”

“Yeah.”

She's cutting around my ears now, and I'm sure she's going to cut me. She's just cutting and talking the whole time.

“My cousin said when he was on fire, he could really feel himself burning up, but then he found the fire extinguisher and put himself out and drove himself to the hospital.”

“Oh.”

“The doctors said it was a miracle he was still alive. He got this great tattoo of this bird on fire, what is that thing called?”

“The phoenix?”

“Yup, that's right, he got a tattoo of the phoenix on his right shoulder, which is so cool.”

“Yeah.”

Now she's got out the electric shaver to shave the back of my neck, and she's talking about her cousin the tattoo artist who does designs for all sorts of people. He did one for the drummer from KISS.

I wonder if it's okay to use that shaver on my scars. I'm not sure that she should use that on me. When she gets near the big hypertrophic scar on my right cheek, she stops talking and tries to be careful. I try not to look at what my face looks like, but I'm sitting here right in front of this mirror, and when she turns the chair, I can see all different sides of my scars that I've never seen before. There's so much redness on my face. So red and so heavy. The scars are so heavy they're pulling my eye down.

I don't really believe that it's me. Except for my eyes. I recognize my eyes.

She's brushing off my neck now. I guess that means we're done. She takes the twenty-dollar bill Mom gave me to give her and hands back a pile of ones. I'm supposed to leave a tip. I hand her two dollars, turn around, and walk out without saying anything.

Mom's waiting for me in the car when I come out. She says, “Your haircut looks good.”

“Thanks.”

“How was it in there?”

“Sucked.”

“Why?”

“Let's just say, never get a haircut from a woman wearing a hat.”

“What do you mean?”

“It's a joke. Can we go home?”

Today we're starting my new schedule. Mom's taking me to an elementary school for physical therapy. I'll do it twice a week here and twice a week at Children's. I have to go to see a therapist this afternoon, and next week I have to start with a tutor.

Mom walks in with me. School is in session, and it's only eleven o'clock, so all the kids are in their classrooms. I can smell the lunch cooking. Green beans and mashed potatoes.

We walk into a room down the hall from the cafeteria. There's a girl in a helmet drooling on a mat. This must be the place. A blond woman in tight jeans walks over to us. She's way too old to be wearing jeans that tight.

“You must be Brent. I'm Cathy, I'll be your PT.”

“Hi.”

Mom says, “Well, I'll be out in the car. Come out when you're done, okay?”

“Okay, bye, Mom.” All of a sudden, I don't want her to go. Never mind, I'm not a baby.

“So, Brent, what kind of exercises have you been doing?”

“Um, well, I guess, up at duPont, this place I was at, I was doing a bunch of dorsal flexion to release the bands on my trunk. I'm a little tighter on my right side than my left.” I show her how I can lift my left arm pretty high above my head but my right arm doesn't go as far. “With passive motion I can get almost a hundred degrees out of my left shoulder but only like eighty, eighty-five out of my right.” I bet she didn't expect I knew all those medical terms.

“Well, that's pretty good. I guess we've got something to work on. How are your lower extremities?”

“About the same. My right leg's tighter than my left.”

“Okay, why don't you take off your shoes and lie down on the mat, and we'll do some stretching?”

“All right.”

She starts with my ankles, doing some heavy stretching on my right ankle. She's kind of straddling me with her legs, and she's got her butt facing me. That's nice.

After she's done stretching me, she goes and cuts some dark blue Thera-Band, that's the stretchy plastic band that you use to stretch and strengthen yourself. The different colors mean different strengths, like black is the thickest and white is the thinnest. So dark blue is pretty good.

She shows me my exercise I'm supposed to do at home, wrapping the Thera-Band around my foot and pulling up on it. She shows me how to stretch it over my shoulders to work on my arms, and how to push against the tension to make me stronger. Yeah, right, like I'm ever going to do any of this shit. I might take it home and make a slingshot out of it.

Mom takes me to the appointment with my new therapist. He meets me in the waiting room.

“Hi, Brent. I'm Mark Nusbaum, you can call me Dr. Nusbaum.” Another Mark, another mustache.

“Hi.”

“I'm glad you could be here. We're just going to have a short session today, nothing too intense. How does that sound?” We walk into his office and sit down.

“Fine.”

“Great. What I'd like you to do is take this Magic Marker and this paper and draw a few pictures for me.”

“Oh yeah?” He must think I'm a total idiot.

“I'd like you to draw a house, a tree, and a person, okay?”

“Okay.” Jesus, I am so fucking sick and tired of these fucking psychologists and their stupid little fucking games to try and figure out what's going on inside my head. If they really want to know, they should just ask me.

“Great, go ahead.”

I shouldn't say anything, but I can't help myself. “Dr. Nusbaum?”

“Yes.” He tilts his head like my dog when she wants a treat.

“You don't really expect this to tell you anything about me, do you?”

“Hmm?”

“You don't really think that these drawings are going to tell you anything about me, do you?”

“Well, Brent, all I'm asking you to do is draw some pictures. What they mean is up to you.”

“Oh, come on, you and I both know that whatever I draw on this paper is supposed to tell you something about me.”

“I think it's interesting that you think it's going to say something about you.”

“I don't think that. You think that.”

“Brent, all I'm asking you to do is draw a picture of a house, a tree, and a person, all right?”

“How about a boat, a bush, and a dog? How about I draw that?”

“Well, I'd really appreciate it if you'd draw a tree, a house, and a person, but afterward you're welcome to draw whatever you like.”

“Does this work on little kids or something? Because it's pretty obvious to me what you're doing.”

“What am I doing?”

“You're trying to figure out stuff about me.”

“What am I trying to figure out?”

“Oh, Christ, just give me the paper.” I sit down and draw a nice little house with a door in the middle and a chimney. I draw a tree that kind of looks like a lollipop and a normal-looking person, standing off to the side.

“There,” I say when I'm done, “how's that?”

“That's fine, thanks. Now, please draw a man and a woman.”

“Fine.”

They look like a bride and groom on top of a wedding cake and also a little like the drawings on the signs for restrooms.

I wonder if I tried hard enough if I could be an artist. Probably not, I've never been able to draw too well. Maybe I could be a writer, though. I'd like to write something, like a book or something.

When I was in fourth grade, when I was just starting with the acting classes, I used to tell people that I wanted to be a writer and an actor and that I'd write stories and then act them out, but I'm not really sure what I meant by that.

Anyway, it's about time for this fucking therapy session to be over. Jesus, what do I have to do to get out of here?

“Are we done yet?”

“Yes, we're done. Nice to meet you.”

“Yeah, likewise.” God, I hate psychologists. I hope I don't have to see him again.

Mom and Dad and I are driving in to Children's for a meeting with my old plastic surgeon, Dr. Boyagen. I like him. He's the one that did my hands.

I turn on the radio and go to Howard Stern. Mom and Dad think he's too crude, but I think he's funny.

He says, “So, what kind of shoes are you wearing?”

The woman he's talking to is a stripper. She says, “Black pumps.”

“Oh, very nice. And you're wearing a little tube top. Stand up so I can see, and a little black miniskirt. Very nice. So have you done women?”

A bunch of people laugh.

“I've experimented.”

“Oh, very nice, tell me about your first lesbian experience.”

“I was fourteen, at a boarding school.”

“Oh?”

Mom says, “Brent, this is terrible. Turn this off.”

“Come on, Mom, it was just getting good.”

My dad says, “Brent, listen to your mother.” I think this is the first time they've yelled at me since I was in the hospital. I turn it off.

We're getting off the highway. “God, this is far.”

“Yup.”

“You drove this every day to come see me?”

“Yup.”

There it is. I recognize the building. We park, and Mom says, “Okay, you guys, you go up to see Dr. Boyagen, I'm going to go give platelets. I'll meet you on the Burn Unit, okay?”

“Okay.” Mom started giving platelets when I went into the hospital. She said she wanted to do something for the kids that have cancer.

Dad and I get in the elevators and head up to the fourth floor. It's weird being back here. It seems like a few years since I was in here, but it's not, it's only been a few months. We follow the signs to Plastic Surgery and Dad signs us in at the desk. There's a TV with CNN on, but no sound.

“Mr. Runyon? Dr. Boyagen will see you now.”

Dad and I go into the examining room. The walls are painted yellow. And there are a bunch of paintings of lions and tigers and other jungle animals on the wall. I sit up on the examining table and Dad sits in a chair right next to me. Dad brought a magazine with him. That was smart, I wish I'd thought of that.

Dr. Boyagen comes through the door with two young doctors in white coats. Dad and I stand up and shake his hand.

“Hello, Mr. Runyon, good to see you.”

“Hello.”

“Hello, Brent. You're looking much better than the last time I saw you.”

“Thanks.” When was that?

“Good. So today, let's just talk about our options for scar reduction, scar excision, and scar management.”

Dad says, “Great.” He takes a yellow legal pad out of his briefcase. Dr. Boyagen looks at me. “But what I first need to know is, how much do you want to have done? What are the areas that you find most problematic in your everyday life, and what do you want to do about them?”

I say, “Um, well, I guess I really don't like this scar on my left thigh. This one here.” I unzip the Jobst garment on that side and show him and the young doctors. “I really don't like this one. This is the one that really bothers me.”

Dr. Boyagen says, “Well, unfortunately, Brent, we don't have any recourse in that area. Mostly what we do here in plastic surgery is work with facial reconstruction, scar excision around the face especially.”

“Oh.”

“Why don't I tell you about your options.”

“Okay.” These paintings look like a kid could have done them because they're so simple, but the way the animals look, maybe an adult did them. The lion's eyes in the painting are so big and green.

Dad says, “That would be helpful.”

“Well, the first thing we have to consider is the availability of donor sites for scar revision. This is different than what you've gone through before, where we removed sections of skin, meshed them out, and applied them to the open wounds. What we'll be doing now is using full-thickness grafts, excising the existing scar tissue and
placing the full-thickness normal skin in its place. Now, the problem, obviously, is how much skin are we going to be able to use, and in Brent's case, in your case, we don't have a lot to work with.”

The lion looks so lonely in the painting. He's just sitting there staring right at me.

“So, I can do a few things. Probably the most effective is to insert what's called an expander, which basically is a balloon, and what we do is we insert the expander underneath a viable graft area and fill it slowly over a period of, say, two to three months, and so at the end of the process, we have two to three times the amount of skin as we did at the beginning.”

I'm looking right into the lion's eyes and he's looking back. We're having a staring contest. I always win in staring contests because I don't care if my eyes get dry and start hurting. I can keep my eyes open with my willpower.

He goes on, “The other option we have is something called a Z-plasty, which is a fairly straightforward procedure. What we do”—he takes a ballpoint pen out of his pocket—“is excise the scar tissue in a Z shape, which is why it's called a Z-plasty.” He draws what feels like a Z on my right cheek, like Zorro. “And what that allows us to do is release whatever banding might have accumulated in the area.”

My eyes are starting to hurt. They itch and they're getting dry, but I'm not going to look away. I'm going to keep staring at the lion in the painting.

Dad asks a question. “So does the Z-plasty procedure include the expanders?” He always picks up the vocabulary quick.