View Two

I think it may been a Friday when an awful thing happened in our family. I was helping the neighbor lady with her plumbing, and Diane, my eldest daughter, came racing in the door screaming that Melanie was dying. She screamed that my wife wanted me to come right away. I dropped my tools and ran across the grass to our duplex and into the house. First off, I heard my wife trying to comfort Melanie, who was wimpering. She was sitting on the toilet, holding Melanie on her lap--holding her very gingerly because her skin looked horrible--translucent, peeling and bubbled up. I could see that she was badly burned. As I looked at her, I was grateful that I had been a medic in the Army and had been taught what to do for burns. Melanie was turning pink and looked like really dazed. My wife kept looking at me with pleading eyes, hoping that I'd know what to do. Well, I did.

Scooping up Melanie, I ran into the kitchen and reached into the refrigerator for the oleo. I was in a real hurry, spreading it all over her burns, just like I had been taught to do. I wrapped Melanie in a towel and rushed to the hospital. Even though I was sick at heart about how terrible Melanie's skin looked, I felt good that I'd been able to help prevent her burns from doing the worst damage possible. As I ran into the Emergency Room, the doctor was there to meet us. As I handed Melanie to him, I gave him a rapid report, just like I would have given the doctors in the Army. I told him that she had been scalded in the bathtub in our home, and that it appeared that she had second degree burns over most of her body. He looked inside the towel and asked what was on her. I was glad that I could tell him how I had administered First Aid just like I had learned to do. The doctor snatched her from me. "You've got to be kidding!" He yelled, as he ran behind the double doors into the ER with Melanie. "That was the very worst thing you could have done!" And he disappeared.

I was so bewildered. I had done exactly how I'd been taught in the Army. Why was this the worst thing I could have done? It didn't make any sense. I had just been humiliated in front of my wife, who looked up to me. My mind was spinning as I sat down next to my wife to wait until we could see Melanie. As I was trying to figure out what I had done wrong, and how to save face with my wife, I could hear Melanie crying and wailing in the distance. It made me almost throw up, I felt so helpless and unable to do anything to help her. Even my efforts hadn't been good enough. It was just like so many other things in my life: I tried to do well and it blew up in my face. If what I had done with the Oleo made Melanie's burns worse, I just didn't know what I'd do.

We sat there for a long time waiting for Melanie to get out of there. I wasn't sure what was happening, but I imagined that all the Oleo that I had put on her had to be scrubbed off. It had to be terribly painful for her because her skin was fragile and tender. When she finally came out, she was bandaged all over, including her chest, arms, hands, legs and feet. She was one big gauzey lump. I felt so guilty and helpless. She looked up at me with big eyes that were frightened and distant. I had let her be hurt. In fact, I had hurt her. I wondered if I could ever make it up to her, or if she would ever trust me again.

I had to run home that night to pick up the older two children and get them to bed. So I kissed my wife goodnight and drove over to the neighbor's home to get Diane and John. They were full of questions about what had happened to Mel and when they could see her. I got them to bed that night but it was hard to sleep. My wife stayed in the hospital. I had to work the next morning, so I got the kids up the next morning in order to get them to some friend's house for the day.
When I got to the hospital my wife looked haggard and bedraggled. She was pretty far along in her pregnancy and I didn't think she could manage the stress of staying with Mel and the worry about whether or not she would survive. One look at her face, and I asked the doctor to order a sleeping pill for her so I could take her home and put her to bed.
Apparently, that was the wrong thing to do too. My dear wife went home and miscarried because of the medication that I suggested. I tried not to think about two bad decisions I'd made but I felt terrible. Tears and loss at home, fear about Melanie's survival (I knew that burns over 40% of a toddler's body could be fatal), trying to keep up with my job, and take care of the kids. It was almost too much. And I'd been wrong again.

The next day I took the kids over to some friend's house for the day. They had a farm menagerie of sorts and the kids were thrilled. As I was leaving them off I heard screaming. It was John. There he stood on top of a picnic table with hissing and clucking Tom turkeys closing in on him. His hair was so blond it was almost white and it sparkled in the sun. I think they were entranced by his hair and they followed him across the yard and up onto the picnic table benches, trying to get close to his shining head. I laughed my head off and got him away from the turkeys. He was hysterical.
A few days later, after my wife was well enough to go back to the hospital to be with Mel, I took Diane and John to the hospital lawn. My wife held her up to the window so the other two down below could wave at her. They were thrilled.

I got over to the hospital every day to see Mel. The doctor told me about her singing everywhere, and my wife told me about Scotty hearing her sing in the night. It was beautiful and brought tears to my eyes to think of her singing like that. The doctor allowed Mel to come home early because I knew how to clean her wounds, since I had been an army medic. Taking care of her burns when she got home was one of my best memories of being a father. She trusted me back then, and she would look at me while I talked gently to her, taking off her bandages very carefully. I'd get the Phisohex and a sponge, and slowly lower her into the bathtub to wash off the dead skin from her burns. She'd just look at my face very seriously. She'd never cry, just watch my face and then look down at what I was doing. I think she knew that I was trying to help her and she knew that I was trying not to hurt her. I loved her so much for how much she trusted me...it makes me cry now just to talk about it. I was very faithful with the debridment--so much so that she has almost no scars now--even over her knee where she lost quite a bit of skin. Her fingers had coalesced on one hand--burned together--and looking at her hands now, you'd never know she was burned. I think it was due in part to how carefully I managed her care when she got home. It was such a pleasure to do this for her.

We could have lost her. When she was a pre-teen, she hated showering and bathing. She'd go to bed with dirty feet from running around bare footed and I'd tease her that she had a complex about not wanting to bathe--still turned off from the tub since she was burned in one. She always laughed or rolled her eyes at me.

Those were the best and most frightening of times for me as a father.