-Caveat Lector- an excerpt from: Loud and Clear Lake Headly and William Hoffman�1990 Henry Holt and Company 115 W. 18th St. New York, NY 10011 ISBN 0-8050-1138-2 272 pps � out-of-print/one edition --[22]-- 22 Inferno "You dirty son of a bitch!" I roared. "I'll kill you!" I had awakened when they took me off the ambulance, unconscious but thrashing about, calling everyone foul names. I broke a restraining strap, punched an attendant, hard, and knocked him down. Then I passed out again. They got stronger straps�they knew how to deal with this sort of nut�and wheeled me into the emergency room. The alarm that June 21 never went off�no, the alarm must have gone off, because we figured that's what woke Terri up. I didn't hear it. Terri Lee doesn't remember any of this, nor do I. But we pieced it together from what the neighbors and people at the hospital told us, and the fire department report. She woke up to an apartment in flames. The blaze had started in the kitchen and roared down a hallway toward the bedroom where we slept. She tried to wake me up, but couldn't. The place was filled with choking smoke. Our apartment had two doors to the outside: one exiting from the kitchen, the other opening into a little foyer, which led to the living room. Terri opened the living room door, then fled through the one in the kitchen. She ran to a neighbor, having an early-morning cup of coffee on his patio, and shouted at him, "Call the fire department! My apartment is on fire!" She raced back to the kitchen door, a life to save, but the intense heat drove her away. She ran around to the front. A man stood there, mesmerized by the flames. When Terri started through the front door, he grabbed and held her. "You can't go in there! That place is going to burn to the ground!" "I got to!" she screamed over the roar of the fire. "My old man's in there!" Terri jerked away from him and plunged inside. She fought her way through smoke and terrific heat to reach me, attempted to shake me awake, and that's where they found her, collapsed at the foot of the bed. She was still on fire, a human torch. Overcome by smoke, she had fallen on her left side, and her nightgown was in flames. They found me still lying on the bed. Terri and I were each lifted onto a gurney and carried from the apartment. Outside, the man who had tried to stop Terri Lee asked a fireman, "They're going to be all right, aren't they?" "I don't think so," the fireman said. "Both their hearts have stopped." It really hit the guy hard. He blamed himself. In fact, paramedics had to give him first aid. He threw up, cried, sat down, and just fell apart. He moaned, "I should have stopped her. I shouldn't have let her go in there. I knew something like this would happen." After literally jump-starting our hearts to get them beating, they took Terri Lee and me to the nearest hospital, Phoenix Baptist. From there a Medevac helicopter flew her to Maricopa County General Hospital and its highly rated burn unit. That afternoon, a doctor at Phoenix Baptist phoned George Vlassis and asked the name of my next of kin. He told them Lake III, and said they might reach him through my friend Nick Behnen in Las Vegas. "He's right here," said Behnen to the caller from Phoenix Baptist, and handed the phone to my son. "Your father and his girlfriend have been in a fire," the doctor told Lake. "Can you come to Phoenix?" "Sure, I'll be there tomorrow." "You better come today, if you want to be sure of seeing your dad alive. We can't be certain how long he's going to live." Behnen drove Lake to the airport and paid for his ticket on the next flight to Phoenix. Vlassis met the plane and brought him to the hospital. A doctor asked Lake, "Who was this woman at the apartment? What's her relationship to your father?" "She's his girlfriend, Terri Yoder. What do you mean, what's the relationship?" "Well, how does he feel about her?" "He cares a lot for her. Why?" "Because the girl can't live. She's going to die any minute now. We don't expect her to survive the rest of the day. Your father has a fifty-fifty chance of pulling through, so we want to know that if this girl dies, or when she dies, how your father will react. If he regains consciousness, we don't know whether to tell him about her condition, because we don't know how the news will affect his recovery." "I can't tell you how to handle that. I know Dad thought a lot of Terri; otherwise, he wouldn't have been living with her." The doctor gave Lake permission to see me in the intensive care unit. I was strapped down, with IVs running into me, and a catheter running out. Lake later said that when he came into the room he noticed handfuls of Thorazine bottles and liquid Valium ampules all around the bed, scattered on the floor, and left on trays. He knew they were keeping me pretty loaded. My son stayed with me until I regained consciousness late that first night. When I came to, he said I crashed against the restraints, screamed obscenities�" Let me loose, you motherfuckers!"�and created a big fuss. A nurse rushed in, popped me with another needle, and I went off again to lala land. This went on for three days. During my early momentary slips out of the drug haze and into coherence, I tried to figure out what had happened to me and where I was. I could scarcely move or turn my body. Looking down, I saw padded leather straps at each elbow holding me to the bed; my arms were black. I thought I'd been in a car wreck and couldn't remember it. I saw IVS in both arms, knew I'd been connected to a catheter, and didn't have any clothes on. The restraints prevented me from sitting up to examine my body, but I didn't feel any bandages or sharp pains from an incision. I looked over at the wall beside the bed and was puzzled further by what appeared to be a jagged, silver-colored lightning bolt streaking across a bright, electric blue background. I thought, Jesus Christ, who's got me? What is this place? A military unit, the Strategic Air Command? What the fuck am I into here? Then I faded out again. The discoloration of my arms had been self-inflicted from constantly pulling against the restraints. Both arms were black, much darker than any bruise I'd ever seen. And on my right arm the bruising extended across the back of my hand and down my middle finger, the result of punching an attendant in the head as he unloaded me from the ambulance. Lake visited the doctor and said, "Listen, lighten up on the drugs you're giving him. I'll be here. When he comes to, I'll reason with him." After a big dead-end hassle with the doctors, Lake called George Vlassis, who came over to the hospital and talked to them. The dosage got reduced. When the drugs wore off and I became lucid, I looked up at a pretty young woman wearing a little white bonnet. "You're Mennonite, aren't you?" I asked. "Yes. How did you know?" "I grew up with Mennonites in my hometown. Where did you go to school?" "Goshen College. In Goshen, Indiana." "Well, how about that. I was born and raised in Goshen. Say, they tell me I've been spitting out some real nasty language in here. I know you dislike vulgar talk, and I want to apologize for using it." "That's all right," she said, as her cheeks turned a deeper shade of pink. "I hear a lot around here. You were hurt so badly you didn't have any idea what you were saying. It's okay. Don't pay any attention to that, just get well." Also, one night in intensive care, after I had calmed down enough for the restraints to be taken off my arms, I woke up-I'm generally a pretty light sleeper�and glanced down at the foot of my bed. A husky guy who resembled a crouching football player was moving slowly toward my bed. I said, "Is there something you want, pal?" "Just a look at you. I don't know what they told you, but I was on duty the night you were brought in. You busted that restraining strap and hit me right here on the forehead and decked me. I want to tell you, I've never been hit that hard before. I worked here eight or nine years and have had plenty of scuffles, but I've never been socked like that." "Geesus, I'm sorry. I really am." He stayed and talked to me for a while. "I hope," I said, "you don't want a rematch. You can see I'm not in shape for one." He laughed and said, "No, I don't." When Lake left me and first saw Terri on Sunday evening, he said she looked "weird." They had her lying facedown in a sling, like a hammock, up over the bed. She had been burned on the whole left side of her back, from the bottom of her buttocks to the top of her shoulder, and down her left arm. He asked the nurse, "How is she?" "Not good. Any minute now. She's a goner." The nurse pointed to a heart monitor and said, "See the line going across the screen, and that little blip in the line. That's all the heartbeat she has left. When that line flattens out, she's dead." Lake said he wished the nurse hadn't explained this; he couldn't take his eyes off the monitor. Terri Lee looked horrible. After they began letting her have visitors, her ex-husband heard the news (reports of the fire appeared in all the papers) and came to the hospital. When he walked into the room, he took one look at Terri's charred body and fainted. He fell against a table and gashed his head, which required stitches. This isn't to say he lacked heart. Terri really did look awful. After I came out from under the medication fog they moved me from intensive care onto a ward. Vlassis and Lake were waiting for me. I asked Lake, "What happened?" "You were in a fire, Dad." "Fire? Where?" "Your apartment. The place was totaled." "What about Terri? Where is she?" "Terri's okay. They've got her in another hospital. She's not here." "Why not?" "She had a little burn on the cheek of her ass, and they wanted to treat her at the burn center. But you're not burned." "How is she?" "Fine. Doing real good. I was just over there. She told me to check on you and come back to let her know how you're getting along." "Tell Terri to call me." "Okay." Terri didn't call that day. The next day, when Lake came in, I said, "Did you get over to see Terri last night?" "Yeah." "Did you tell her to call me?" "Yeah, but she was busy. They were dressing her burn. She couldn't use the phone right then." "Well, tell her to call me today." The third day I greeted Lake with, "Terri didn't call." "I guess she didn't have time." "Fuck that! What's happening here? She can't be busy all the time. I mean, I know what condition I'm in. She's gotta be in worse shape or she would have picked up the phone." Lake had stalled as long as he could. "Dad, she's hurt worse than I led you to believe. The doctors didn't want me to tell you, so I didn't." "Give me the truth. How is she?" "Not good." He hesitated again. "Tell me." "Terri suffered third-degree burns over thirty percent of her body, and a bad head injury. During the Medevac ride to the county hospital, she was unconscious and hadn't been secured to the gurney. She came to briefly, jerked the trachea tube out of her throat, and was deprived of oxygen for a period of seven or eight minutes." What I heard made me weak with guilt and a feeling of helplessness. Worse, I couldn't talk to Terri on the phone to say "I love you" or "I'm sorry." I couldn't even talk to her doctors. On a ward with three other patients I had plenty of visitors: Max and Barbara Dunlap, Vlassis, Stuhff (he said he knew right away something was wrong when our investigative report didn't arrive on the bus), Devereux, Dunlap Committee members. Max told me, "This is because of the Bolles case. I'm sorry. I can't tell you how sorry I am." Barbara cried. She told me how badly their kids felt for us. The Dunlap children liked Terri; several were her age. Jim Robison phoned me from the prison. I enjoyed hearing his gruff voice: "What you doin' in there? I didn't know you needed a vacation that much." Molly Ivins called, and Bill Helmer. I had access to a phone and dialed all over the country talking to people. Trouble was, I didn't make sense. I called friends, talked to them, then couldn't remember what I had said. My incoherence was caused by smoke inhalation. As it was explained to me, breathing in toxic fumes�mainly carbon monoxide and cyanide, released from burning carpet, wallpaper, and other synthetic materials�had caused the brain to swell. The pressure of the brain pushing against the skull made me goofy at times. The doctors prescribed medication to reduce the swelling and minimize the pain, but the slow recovery process required time and a lot of rest. I had already used up a lot of time. After hospitalization for ten days, seven in critical condition, I was up moving around and anxious to leave. I desperately wanted to be with Terri, and for some reason thought I could talk the doctor into releasing me because Bill Helmer was coming to town. So I made my pitch, promising no driving a car for thirty days, no working for six months, and no smoking, ever. I also agreed to take it easy and see him as an outpatient every day for the next month. I said, "Yeah, yeah, yeah," to anything he wanted, just to bullshit my way out. "I probably shouldn't release you. But since your girl needs you, and your friend is coming to Phoenix, I will. You have to keep the promises you've made." Lake, who had faithfully pushed visiting hours to the limit for me and Terri, stayed in Phoenix for two weeks after I got out of the hospital. He never hesitated to chauffeur me places or run errands�requests I didn't always make at the most appropriate times. And my son kept his broad shoulders available for me to lean on, which I did often. The day after I checked out, Lake took me to see Terri. As he pulled the car into the parking lot at Maricopa County General. Lake laughed and said, "Dad, don't get me wrong. You know I love hearing your stories. But that's the sixth time straight you've told me the same thing." "Back-to-back?" "Yeah. You finish it, and then start again without skipping a beat." The doctors had told me that smoke inhalation had a disastrous effect on short-term memory. I could remember vividly where I was born and raised, but had trouble recalling day-old events. And Vlassis said, "You're pretty good in the mornings. We talk and you make some sense. But by noon I'm watching you fall apart mentally." Before I got to Terri, her chief physician, Dr. Salazar, took me aside. "I want to prepare you," he said, "for what you're about to see." "What's the matter? Is Terri worse?" "No, not exactly. Physically, she has made remarkable progress. Her lungs and air passages have sloughed off dead tissue nicely; a lot of the burned, blistered skin on her back has been removed in the whirlpool, which contains Betadine solution, antiseptic, and chlorine bleach to hold down infection; and we've pumped gallons of fluids into her system to counteract dehydration." I shifted on my feet and thought, Give me a break, Doc. I'm not up to a med school lecture. "Basically," Salazar said, "we've stabilized Terri, and by this time should have completed the skin grafts on her back. But . . ." I watched the furrow in his brow deepen. "What's the delay?" I asked. "Her mental condition. We don't know what effect the anesthesia will have on her mind." Specialists from the Barrow's Institute, a prestigious neurological clinic in Phoenix, had been called in as consultants. They visited Terri every day. She suffered some sort of amnesia and brain damage due to oxygen deprivation during the fire and the subsequent helicopter ride to the hospital. The neurologists had a medical library full of complex theories about what had caused the brain damage, but no one knew whether, or to what degree, it would be permanent. "Doctor Salazar," I said, "may I please see Terri?" "Yes, of course. She's been asking for you. But I want you to understand, what you see might be what you get. On her good days, Terri has the mental age of a fourteen-year-old. On bad days, which are more frequent, her mental capacity is that of a child of five or six. Mr. Headley, you need to think about that seriously, and about who is going to take care of her. We won't release her unless you tell us she will be well cared for. Believe me, she will require a lot of attention." Dr. Salazar turned me over to a nurse who showed me how to get suited up for entrance into the burn unit. To protect patients from infection, each visitor had to put on a long gown, face mask, shower cap, shoe covers, and rubber gloves. When I walked into Terri's room, I knew the doctor had been right to warn me: she didn't have a good grip on anything. Taped on the wall beside her bed, at eye-level, was a sign someone had printed in big block letters on a sheet of typing paper: MY NAME IS TERRI YODER. I WAS IN A FIRE. Whenever she awakened, Terri couldn't remember her name. She had no idea why she was here. I followed the nurse into the room and around the foot of the bed. Terri lay on her stomach, her eyes closed. "Ms. Yoder," the nurse said loudly, "you have a visitor." Terri opened her eyes and tried to figure out whose face hid behind the sterile mask and cap. "Hello, sweetheart," I said softly. "Oh, Lake, where have you been?" She squirmed around in the bed and groaned several times as she positioned her body on the right, unburned, side. "I'm so glad you're here. A terrible thing happened." "What, Terri?" "You know Michelle "Yes." Michelle had lived near our apartment. "It's just awful. Michelle had a fire." "No, she didn't, Terri." "Oh, yes. She did. Michelle had a fire, and her little dog burned to death." "Honey, you have some things confused. Michelle didn't have a fire, and she didn't have a little dog that was killed. But, Terri, you had a fire. And you were hurt very badly." She made a painful, sighing sound, rolled her eyes back and dozed off. Thank goodness, I thought. I took deep breaths and walked around the room. Get a grip on yourself, Lake. You've got to be strong for her. Terri looked so tiny, so wounded, so defenseless. She opened her eyes again and said drowsily, "Lake, please give me a cigarette." "Terri, I can't. The doctor said positively no smoking." "Please, just one." Lake had told me about how Terri constantly bugged everybody around her: "Please, oh God, please. Can't I have a cigarette? Look at me; what's the difference? Please, please, please. Don't take that away from me, too." Terri had to lie on her stomach most of the time, and nurses had given up trying to keep an oxygen mask on her face. So they had placed large cylinders in each corner of the room and opened the valves, making the entire enclosure a giant oxygen tent. "Terri," I tried to reason with her, "if we light a cigarette, these oxygen tanks will launch us into outer space. You can't have a cigarette in here; you can't have one anyplace." Her bottom lip stuck out in a little girl pout, and I thought she was about to cry. "Honey," I said, "you look tired, and it's about time for the nurse to come and run me out. Get a good night's rest. I'll see you in the morning." "I love you, Lake." "I love you, too. Sleep well." But how could she rest or sleep? I wondered as I left the hospital. How could anybody who had half her back and left arm burned away? Lake told me Terri constantly had tried to convince hospital personnel of two things: one, she was in much better shape than she actually was; and two, she needed more drugs. Every time they came around with morphine, she pleaded for more. One time after the nurse gave her a shot for pain, Terri got out of her bed, walked down the hall to a bathroom, unwrapped the bandages, and took a shower. When she finished bathing, she fell and hit her head, and they found her lying on the floor. After that, they didn't listen to any talk about feeling well. Later, the nurses told me they were absolutely amazed Terri had been able to get to the bathroom unassisted and take off the dressings by herself. She had been bound like a mummy. The next morning Terri said, "Lake, did you bring those accident report forms?" "What?" "In this state, you have only twenty-four hours to file a report after you've been in an accident." "I don't think we need to report this." "Of course we do. I had an automobile accident and have to file a report. I don't want to lose my driver's license." "Honey, you didn't have an auto accident. You were burned in a fire. Our apartment burned." "Oh," she said wistfully. "Is that what happened?" After they removed the restraints, Terri developed a habit of slipping out of bed and prowling through the corridors late at night, when the nurses thought she slept soundly in her room. Several times they caught her on the roam. Once she went to the room of a man who had been fried when he hit a high tension power line. Terri stood over his bed, quietly looking at his charcoaled body. "One of these nurses hates me, you know." "What do you mean?" "She does. I know she does because she comes in here every night�and hurts me. She puts stuff on me that burns." "Terri, that's medicine. The nurse doesn't want to hurt you, but she has to put a silver nitrate solution on your back so the burn won't get infected." "No. I know she hates me. But I got something that will hurt her. Look here." She pulled out a sock filled with used hypodermic needles she had collected on one of her middle-of-the-night scavenger hunts. "When that nurse comes in to hurt me again, I'm gonna stick her." "Terri, you've got to stop this," I said and took the weapons stash away from her. I went to see the chief of the burn center, hoping to achieve an objective for Terri that Lake had earlier accomplished for me. "Look, Doctor, I don't mean to tell you how to run your business, but Terri Lee's not progressing very much. She'll lie there for the rest of her life telling you she needs more morphine. As long as you give it to her, she'll take it. If you back off the drugs a little, maybe we'll see some improvement." "Okay," he said. "We'll try it." That afternoon Terri's mother, Terri Raife, came to the hospital. She had arrived from Las Vegas a few days earlier. Over a cup of coffee in the hospital cafeteria, Terri Raife told me, "There's nothing I can do for her." Had my hearing been impaired by the fire? This was a mother talking about her daughter. "Mrs. Raife," I said, "you know I'm not up to par yet myself. If you could stay around and help me with Terri when she gets out, I'd appreciate it." "No," she replied firmly. "If you can't take care of her, then you'll have to put her into a home. I'm sorry, I just can't handle this." Someone claiming to be a reporter had convinced the nurses to let him into Terri's room, but she'd been too exhausted after a physical therapy session to talk with him. It turned out to be a good thing. He was a cop posing as a newsman. When I found out about the incident, I posted a sign: NO ONE IS ALLOWED TO INTERVIEW THIS PATIENT WITHOUT HER LAWYER PRESENT. A doctor tore it off the door. "Don't be putting signs up," he ordered. "Then don't let strangers in to see her," I said. After tapering her off the drug overload, Dr. Salazar told me, "Terri is showing definite improvement, and we're ready to proceed with the skin grafts. She's more rational now and in much better spirits." "How long will it take to do the grafts?" "It's hard to say for sure, but barring any complications, such as infection or rejection, we should be able to finish in three or four surgeries. If all goes well, I'd think you can take Terri out by the end of July. That is, of course, if you agree to care for her." "I love her. Of course I will. But, frankly, it's scary." 'I know. You'll be surprised, however, at how well the two of you will manage to cope with the problems. The staff will give you plenty of pointers for in-home care. We don't expect you to become Dr. Kildare overnight." "Is there anything I should do now?" "Yes. After surgery, which begins tomorrow morning, she'll need exercise, especially supervised walks. Since she responds to you better than to the physical therapist, get her out of bed, get her moving around." When Terri was overcome by smoke and collapsed on our bedroom floor, she landed on her side, and flames from her burning nightgown consumed all three layers of skin on the entire left side of her back and left arm. If only the outer and middle layers had been burned, I was told, the skin could have healed itself. But with third-degree burns, healthy skin must be harvested from another part of the body, in this case the right side of her back, and placed over the exposed fatty tissue. Hence Terri's whole back became raw flesh. It reminded me of meat-market round steak. I had never seen a skin graft before. I thought the surgeon would skin one side of her back and slap it, like wallpaper, over the burned area. I felt stupid when a technician explained the procedure to me while Terri was in the operating room. I learned the doctor uses a roller instrument to shave off small pieces of healthy skin only one one-hundredth of an inch thick. Then what's called a mesher perforates the sheets of tissue with a fishnet pattern. "Sort of an ultra-refined version of how I put meat through a machine to make cube steak when I worked in my father's grocery store as a kid," I joked. "Exactly," said the technician with a smile. "The doctor will drape patches of tissue over the prepared area where she was burned. Tripling in size, they connect with each other, and blood vessels underneath, to form Terri's new skin." The next day I started walking Terri up and down the halls. Bandaged over most of her body, dragging one foot in what is called the "burn ward shuffle, she held her left arm bent at the elbow, out in front of her. Her pace was agonizingly slow, like a zombie. My heart was breaking for her. We stopped at a blackboard near the nurse's station. I took a piece of chalk and wrote in big letters: T. L. YODER, P.I. "Terri, what does that say?" She looked at it for a long time, concentrating hard, and finally said, "I don't know." After minutes of repeating that she didn't know what any of it meant, she said, "That's my name.." "Right. Now, what does the p.i. mean?" "I don't know." "Sure you do." We stood there, talked about it, discussed it, fooled with it, and I asked, "What kind of work were you interested in? What did you want to be?" "A private investigator." "What's the p.i. stand for?" "Private investigator!" she said triumphantly. "You're coming along all right. See? We'll beat this, honey." Before Lake returned to Las Vegas, he and I went shopping for Terri, anticipating the day she would be released. Bulky bandages and pain from the burns would make getting into any of her clothes impossible. Lake helped me select an assortment of brightly colored, loose-fitting muumuus that would be cool and not restrict movement. We hoped Terri's new wardrobe would help cheer her up. It did. The grafts took and Terri got better. More skin was grafted. Her body and spirit continued their gradual mend. Twice a day I went to the hospital and we walked the corridors. We'd taken the steps so many times we could have done it blindfolded. Terri begged me to let her outside. "The doctors won't allow it; you might pick up an infection." "Please let me go outside. Please, just for a minute. I want to be out of here." She had been so strong and endured so much pain that finally I could no longer deny this simple request. "Okay. But not for very long." I opened the door on one of those odd Phoenix days when the sun shines through a light drizzle. Terri shuffled away from the building. She lifted her head and right arm skyward and said, "I love the rain. This feels wonderful." Her tears and mine mixed with the rain on our faces as she radiated the pure happiness of a little kid. Checkout day finally came, as Dr. Salazar had predicted, at the end of July. Terri had spent five weeks at Maricopa County General and was overjoyed to get out. As we drove away from the hospital, she said, "You know what I'd really like?" "Name it, honey." 'A Big Mac." When we stepped up to order at McDonald's, the girl behind the counter asked Terri, "What happened to you?" Terri started crying. I led her over to a booth, sat her down, and finally managed to calm her. "Why did she ask me that?" "Look at you, all bandaged up. She's just curious, and feels bad for you." "I don't want anyone to pity me." This went on all the time. Even much later, after the bandages came off, she wouldn't wear short sleeves. People often asked, "Were you in a fire?" or, "What happened to your arm? "�questions she continued to have trouble answering or ignoring. We moved into a guest bedroom at George and Nancy Vlassis's house, which had never been air-conditioned. Knowing Terri couldn't survive there in the late summer heat, George had a window unit installed to cool our room. That evening Terri grew very restless and wanted to see our apartment. I said, "Why don't we forget that? I'll take you over there, if you insist, but I don't think you ought to go. It won't make you feel any better to see our place destroyed." "No. That's okay. I need to see it." She wouldn't let up. Got very fussy about it. "Okay, if that's the way you feel, I'll take you right now." I pulled into the parking lot in back of the apartment and set the headlights on high beam. The electricity in the apartment had been disconnected, but by the car lights we could see everything in the kitchen and living room. We got out and walked to the back door. When I unlocked it, I asked one more time, "Are you sure you want to go in here?" "No." She dissolved into tears and we left. The next morning we piled into the car to make our "hospital rounds." I still had to stop at my doctor's office once a week for a quick exam and chest X-ray, and Terri went to the burn center every day to soak and remove bandages and have her skin grafts checked. On this day, after two weeks of our trekking to the hospital, a nurse said to me, "It's time you start removing the bandages and redressing her wounds." "Ma'am, you're talking to a man who flunked Band-Aid in army first-aid training. I know nothin' about none of that. I doubt I'll be able to do it." "Sure you can. We'll show you how." They did. The hospital loaded me up with half a dozen shopping bags full of medical supplies. At the Vlassis home, Terri and I used the large spare bathroom, ideal for her soaks. Nancy helped me maneuver her in and out of the deep old-fashioned tub. At first all three of us were clumsy, slow, and exhausted by the time we blundered our way through. But after a few assisted runs, I became quite adept at doing it alone. Soaking off the bandages took a long time. They were practically glued to her skin by dried blood and fluids oozing through the gauze. I'd help Terri out of the tub and lay her face down on the bed to dress the wounds. First I covered her raw back and arm with Silvadene ointment�to guard against infectionand medicated gauze pads. Then I rewrapped her in yards and yards of stretchy gauze strips. We had a helluva time getting the wrappings to stay on her frail legs. In good shape Terri weighs about 120. After the fire she dropped down to 90 pounds and looked as if she had just left a concentration camp. Occasionally she'd go through McDonald's withdrawal and have a Big Mac Attack, so I'd take her there for a burger and fries; she'd eat two or three bites and push it aside. Every morning after the soak-and-bandage routine, I drove Terri out to the mall, where she could walk around, not feel so cooped up. We window-shopped, drank coffee, people-watched, anything to get her mind off the pain. We tried going to the mall cinema, but she couldn't sit on her burned backside to the end of a movie. The mall visits stopped. She didn't like people staring at her. I'd say, "Come here and look at this dress." She would move slowly, like a robot, and say, "Yeah, that's nice. But I'll never get into another dress like that; I'll go to my grave wearing one of these damn muumuus." And then she'd cry. Lots of tears. We stayed at George's house for three weeks. Mike Stuhff, who visited us frequently, suggested, "Why don't you bring Terri up to Flagstaff? It's a lot cooler than Phoenix. And I got my new office going, with plenty of work for you." We put what could be salvaged from the apartment into storage and moved to Flagstaff. pps. 231-249 --[cont]-- Aloha, He'Ping, Om, Shalom, Salaam. Em Hotep, Peace Be, Omnia Bona Bonis, All My Relations. Adieu, Adios, Aloha. Amen. 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