Forged with Flames (13 page)

I'd become finely attuned to how people were reacting to me and what was going on with them, so one day I looked up at Graeme and, sensing something was troubling him, asked, ‘Has anything happened to you today?' Graeme told me his son had been badly injured in a motorbike accident. His leg, in particular, was badly damaged, and was amputated some weeks later. It reminded me that I wasn't the only one hurting. The personal struggles forged a bond between us.

Roger and Graeme kept me trusting in something beyond myself, but neither had the answers I craved at the time, the biggest of which was: Why? Why did God let this happen to
me
? Why hadn't He protected me? Why was I the only one beside that pool who was so savagely burnt? What did that say
about God—that he let me burn, a mother who would have done anything to keep her children safe? Did God want me to suffer? Was there a purpose to this suffering, something that would come out of it?

Just as others wondered whether I
should
have been saved in hospital that terrible night, I wondered why I
had
been saved. I desperately needed to make sense of all that had happened, on a spiritual level. My faith had been the foundation of my life, nurtured since I was eighteen; I needed to believe now that I could sort things out enough to keep drawing strength from it. Sadly though, at times I had no sense of God loving me. Instead, I felt abandoned, bewildered and despairing that life could have changed so drastically in such a short time. Ultimately though, I had to trust that I could keep believing. Roger and Graeme provided the vital spiritual care to steer me back to my faith and through all that lay ahead.

13

SARAH AND RACHEL

T
he roller-coaster ride in hospital would have been far scarier were it not for two friends who became regular visitors. Liz and Jane made me think of an insightful quote I once read by the author, Donna Roberts: ‘A friend is someone who knows the song in your heart, and can sing it back to you when you have forgotten the words.' Liz and Jane came into the Alfred almost from the time I was admitted, visiting daily when I was in the ICU. Sisters, and friends of Terry's since childhood, they were down-to-earth, level-headed and good communicators. Because I had no sense of time in the ICU, their reliable presence seemed a connection with normality. Liz was an occupational therapist and familiar with hospitals, which helped. She would comb what little hair I had left on my scalp after surgery. That felt wonderful. None of my other visitors, except Terry, actually touched me—I really felt I had become untouchable.

I first registered Jane's presence when I saw her sitting in the Burns Unit and realised she was staying through the night. Jane wasn't working at the time so could spend the night with me and
sleep during the day. Nights in those early times were petrifying. It was a huge comfort knowing that she was there, almost like having a parent around. She was also a wonderfully steady presence and seemed quite at ease with the idea that I might die while she was in the room. It was actually very reassuring to know that if I died someone would be there to calmly see me through it; my soul shivered at the thought of dying alone.

Knowing how anxious I had become, Terry had arranged for our friends, Val and Laurie, to come in and sit with me during the evenings before Jane's ‘shift' started. He kept other visitors, mostly from Upper Beaconsfield, at bay because he didn't think it was in my best interests to have them there. He'd apparently spoken to a psychologist who cautioned that there'd be friends who'd insist on seeing me for their own sake rather than mine—and that wasn't what Terry thought I needed. As a consequence, he made himself rather unpopular turning people back. One of the nurses confronted him about it.

‘You know she's likely to die and you're stopping her seeing her friends before she does.'

‘Well, I want to make sure that she lives so that they
can
see her,' Terry retorted.

Liz and Jane were an excellent sounding board for him, helping to smooth his way with the hospital staff. Terry had a bit of trouble communicating with the staff at times because he was so concerned for me and my welfare, and could be passionate about what he believed I needed. He had a lot on his plate: looking after the girls, returning to work after only one week, dealing with the concern of others—all on top of the awful reality that was me, his wife; not to mention the dislocation of his own family's lives in the immediate aftermath of the fire. He's
a practical person who probably found it helpful to deal with the ongoing trauma by doing something useful when he visited: helping out with a blood transfusion or holding bloodstained sheets the nurses were changing after I came back from surgery, or getting them some skin out of the fridge. He'd then have to drive back across town to work and carry on as if everything were normal.

Jane and Liz would listen to him and calm him down when he was stressed. They urged him to come in even when he felt it was pointless because I was unconscious or not responsive. They would say, ‘Ann would just love you being there; it doesn't matter that she's in a coma'. Jane took the pressure off Terry's parents too, replying to worried phone calls coming through to them when he and the girls were staying at their house straight after the fires.

Terry and the girls moved in with friends back in Upper Beaconsfield two weeks after the fires so that Sarah could resume her First Grade at school, and Rachel could go back to kindergarten, now in a portable as the building had burnt down. Liz and Jane continued to see the girls regularly, playing games with them that Terry or the others couldn't, acting out stories that Sarah mostly made up, which helped them make sense of what had happened and allowed them to freely express their feelings. As it turned out, they repeatedly played ‘fires', in which somebody took on the starring role of Mum, rolling around on the ground, screaming!

Months later, Liz revealed to me that some of these games culminated in the characters finding dead seagulls on the beach. At the end of the game Rachel simply said, ‘Well, Mum really did nearly die, didn't she? And Mum might get better and she might not get better.'

About a month after I was admitted, Liz and Jane helped Terry bring the girls into the ICU for me to see for the first time. Until then the doctors and nurses would play with Sarah and Rachel in the corridor, making paper planes and flying them from one end to the other while Terry came into my room. Or the girls would sit at the front desk of the ICU and play with stamps that said things like ‘KIDNEY FAILURE' or ‘CARDIAC INFARCTION', and make pictures on the hospital forms. All the staff became very fond of them, their childish sense of play and their innocence lightening up the grim realities they were dealing with daily.

I was always reassured that they were faring well, whenever I asked. They were fine; they were getting extra attention and care at kindergarten and school, that sort of thing. What I wasn't told—mercifully—was that Sarah and Rachel had been teased one afternoon while playing with their friends with taunts like, ‘The nurses are bad. Your mother's going to die.' Horrible things.

Even without knowing this, I worried about them and yearned to see them, to hold them close. Liz and Jane understood my anxiety and carefully encouraged and prepared the girls for a visit, knowing how they reacted the first time they'd seen me. They explained to the girls that I had virtually no hair, which was a significant thing to them, and that I was all wrapped up in bandages, for example.

The hospital had waived the rules about children not being allowed in the unit by now, so Liz and Jane let them play with the ‘special clothes' they'd have to wear into the ICU, then showed them to the window. They still got a shock. I had
second-degree burns on my face and scabs. Sarah immediately declared, ‘I'll put my clothes on!' and came in with Terry; but Rachel just shook her head. There was a bench near the window and Rachel stood on it to look in. I smiled and waved a tightly bandaged hand at her. Rachel put her hand up briefly, then got down and walked off into the Intensive Care corridor by herself without saying a word.

14

TORTURE BY X-RAY

A
s a burns patient there are many hideous procedures to be endured but about the worst of all for me was being X-rayed. Since I had burns to the inside of my body as well as the outside, my lungs weren't able to function normally for some time. To make matters worse, a few weeks after admission, I contracted a fast-growing thrush infection in both lungs that filled them with so much fluid, the medical staff couldn't understand how I was getting enough air to breathe. This meant having a chest X-ray every day so the doctors could closely monitor what was happening in there—an apparently simple procedure but one that caused more pain than just about anything else at this stage.

In my drug-affected state, I began to see the staff doing the X-rays as almost evil. A radiographer in white gown would appear—the portent—wheeling in the X-ray machine, their favoured means of torture. The nurses would prop me up in bed, which in itself was excruciating. Any movement, even the slightest tap on the leg of my bed, was enough to send sharp pain reverberating throughout my body. Next, a cold metal plate was
placed behind my back, which felt as if I were being sliced in half by a guillotine. And lastly, I had to remain as still as possible so that the X-ray could be taken successfully. I could barely contain the agony of it all; it may have only taken a few minutes but it seemed endless. Once it was over for the day, I slumped back into my pillow with relief until a terrible dread took over soon afterwards as I envisaged the whole procedure being repeated the next day. It must be vital, I reasoned, otherwise why else would they put me through so much pain? And so often? I longed for it to end, but day after day that radiographer wheeled the machine in again.

As it went on I began to distrust the staff involved, these unknown people in masks, inflicting so much pain. I imagined that the nurses and technicians looked flinty and unkind. I tried to catch their eyes and detect a glimpse of remorse or unease with what they were doing. I listened for words of concern, and for any hints that they
had
to carry out this procedure for a good reason, but didn't really want to. Unfortunately, there were none—no clue at all.

The trips to the operating theatre could have a similar effect. The movement involved in being wheeled to theatre and lifted onto the operating table, and the process of having various apparatuses connected or disconnected, was unbearable. The theatre staff, in their dark green masks and gowns, were intimidating and appeared to loom menacingly above me. Once I laughed out loud at what I suddenly saw as men all dressed up in funny clothes—probably another drug-induced reaction! If death wasn't waiting to get me, the staff at the Alfred were, I thought in my crazed state.

15

RECOVERING MY FAITH

I
'd been struggling on and off with my faith ever since the night of the fires but a crisis that began in early March was to push this—and my life—even further to the limit. Questions about God plagued me at times as I lay in bed and cast doubts where none had existed. Why, when I needed God more than ever, had He apparently abandoned me? Where was He? He'd betrayed me, yet He had spared me—there were so many times I could have perished. My neighbour, Alan, had been there just at the right time to lift me into the pool; the fireman had appeared from nowhere to rescue me; I'd been resuscitated dozens of times in hospital.

It was a paradox, yet however confused I was, the thought of what happened on the night of the fires kept bringing me back to my faith. I'd read about near-death experiences before and was quite fascinated by them in an abstract way, but never expected to come closer to one than that. In the midst of the fire, however, an amazing thing happened. One part of me was deep in pain, with seemingly no way out, while another part was walking
along a track in the middle of an emerald green field, perfectly at ease. Ahead, a man was approaching me on the track and, even though I wasn't close enough to see his face, I knew who it was. I've always believed that if Alan hadn't picked me up when he did, I would have died and that this figure had come for me. When He drew closer, I looked at Him and saw that it was Jesus. Later, people asked me how I knew; all I could answer was that I recognised Him. We came very close together but suddenly, before we could meet, I was fully back in the pool, surrounded by burning bushland. I never doubted that I had been dying and perhaps had glimpsed what was to come. Nothing would persuade me that this experience was not real.

A tangible reminder of my faith in hospital was given to me when Terry brought in a hand-carved sculpture that a friend, Robyn, wanted me to have. It was a wooden carving of a child nestled into a curved hand. The hand was strong and protective; the child defenceless and vulnerable. For me, the hand was God's and the child was me. I stared endlessly at this little statue, drawing comfort from its image and its serenity. I turned to it the day I heard the doctors talking about what they obviously thought was my imminent departure from this world. They were all standing around the room in their gowns, talking very seriously about the
situation
. They had to operate to stop the poisons from deeply infected areas on my shoulders going through my body, and they were talking about whether I'd survive the operation or not. I just got drifts of it. ‘No, I don't agree, we've got to clean up this area NOW' … ‘The septicaemia… ‘But she won't get through any more surgery' … ‘We
have
to operate or she's going to die from the infections' … ‘It's spreading too fast' … ‘But she's simply not strong enough to
survive the procedure' … Why did they imagine that I couldn't hear? I was lying there, just wanting to say ‘Right, so I'm going to die, then!' Of course, at this time, I still couldn't speak or communicate in any way.