After the Fire by Robin Gaby Fisher

Author:Robin Gaby Fisher [FISHER, ROBIN GABY]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: BIO000000
ISBN: 9780316032797
Publisher: Little, Brown and Company
Published: 2008-08-25T04:00:00+00:00

Chapter 18

Hello. Hello. Hello.” The words spilled out of Alvaro’s mouth like a river released from the ice after a spring thaw. A moment earlier, Michael Marano, a burn surgeon, had removed the breathing tube from Alvaro’s trachea, allowing him to speak for the first time since the morning of the fire. It had been ninety days. “Okay, Alvaro, come on now, can you say something to us?” Marano had asked. Eager to test his new freedom, Alvaro didn’t hesitate. Hello. Hello. Hello.

The first words had been a long time coming. First, Alvaro had to be weaned from the respirator that had kept him alive for the past thirteen weeks. Little by little, the settings had been lowered, decreasing the volume of oxygen the machine pushed into his fragile lungs. Every adjustment forced him to work harder to breathe with the machine. Then he was taken off the respirator completely for short spurts of time, forcing him to do all the work himself, pulling air into his lungs, pushing it out. At first, it was fifteen minutes. Then an hour. Then two hours. The process was exhausting. Sometimes he felt as if he were suffocating as his lungs struggled to do what the machine had done so effortlessly, and no amount of reassurance from the nurses or the respiratory therapists could completely calm him. At times, Alvaro slept the rest of the day after a particularly grueling session off the vent. “You have to work harder,” the therapists would tell him. “Once you’re off the vent, the healing will go faster. The quicker you’ll be able to go home.” Home, Alvaro would say to himself, then drag in another mouthful of air and blow it out again. Finally, ten days after the tube was removed for the first time, the machine was put away. The sickest patient in the burn unit was ready to breathe on his own.

Alvaro’s throat was swollen and raw. His voice was tentative and his speech robotic. But to the doctors, the hellos spilling from the boy’s lips were melodious. Those first words, though fleeting, said everything. Alvaro had survived merciless odds, and his eagerness to communicate told them how much he yearned to return to life.

Once Alvaro started speaking that morning, he didn’t stop.

“It feels good to talk.”

“Please wipe my eyes.”

“The TV, please.”

“Cream for my lips.”

Shawn arrived in Alvaro’s room for his regular noon visit after his occupational therapy. No one had told him his friend was talking.

“Al, how you doin’?” he began, as he did every day.

“Chillin’,” Alvaro replied, the word spoken softly but deliberately.

Shawn did a double take. “What did you say?”

“Chillin’,” Alvaro said again, this time with more force.

Shawn wanted to shout with happiness and relief. He knew how important it was for Alvaro to be able to communicate, how much it meant in terms of his recovery, and he was anxious to start bantering with his friend again.

“Oh no!” Shawn cried. “It was so nice and quiet when you couldn’t talk. Now I’m going to have to put up with all your whining again.

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