Now, anyone who knew Carrie knew that she always stayed hot no matter what the weather. She could be outside in her night shirt and no shoes on in the middle of winter and it wouldn’t phase her in the least.
But, as we lived in an older house, it didn’t retain the heat that well. Just after she had made breakfast and we ate she wanted to go outside and gather some wood for the fireplace. So I went with her to get it because we had just run out of kerosene for the heater that morning and no way to get to the store yet.
A thousand times…A thousand times she had always been careful when she was lighting the fireplace. She had just seconds before sent out emails to her father in New Jersey thanking him for bringing us up there for Christmas, and to our friend Rhonda to thank her for watching our animals for us while we were gone.
A thousand times she had done it before and had always been careful. As I walked to the kitchen for more coffee, I had told her to be careful because the gas she had just put on the logs could explode on her. She had made a smart-aleck remark as usual, “If it does, then I’ll be in the hospital and I’ll be warm.” I told her not to talk like that. Why? Why did she say it?
As I returned to the living room and sat down, I happened to look over and told her that she needed to move the jug away from the fireplace before she lit it. In a split second, she had already lit the match and the gas jug exploded.
This is the part in which each time I think of it, I get angry with myself. I was trained for things such as this in the military, but my mind simply went blank as the explosion knocked her three feet back away from the fireplace. What to do? What on God’s green earth do I do?
Immediately I told her to lie down and roll. Isn’t that what they say to do; to stop, drop, and roll? It wasn’t working. Water. I’ll get water. As I ran to the kitchen to get water I heard her screams and saw her trying to crawl from the living room to the kitchen to follow me. She must have thought that I was abandoning her. When she got to the kitchen, I was trying to put out the fire that had now almost entirely consumed her. She lay down on the floor and it seemed as if she had just given up, screaming for me to help her and how bad it hurt her.
I could not in my wildest dreams imagine what my princess went through that day. As I finally got the flames extinguished on my Carrie, I asked if she could stand. “Yes” she said. That’s a good sign isn’t it?
I got her to the back porch and told her to wait there. I had to go back in and get my cell phone to call 911. As I returned to the living room I poured water on a suitcase that had caught fire from sitting too close. I grabbed my cell phone and headed back outside.
By the time I got outside (no more than 30 seconds) she was already at the neighbor’s house screaming for someone to help her. I knew that shock had already set in and she was telling me that she was still cold. Her jogging pants that she had on were completely burned off of her; the only thing remaining was the elastic bands around the waist and ankles.
I ran back to the house to get a blanket for her. God, how the nightmares still plague me. Her standing there wrapped in the blanket and huge pieces of skin hanging from her face and hands as if someone had cast her in wax and had started to melt her.
But I guess it is true that you get what you ask for in life. I begged the Almighty God that day to give me the nightmares and not to let her remember them. I still wake in the night in a cold sweat remembering my beautiful Carrie that way.
Then, I was being pushed myself by a paramedic into an ambulance. They had said that they would be bringing Carrie to the hospital by helicopter and that I was to be checked out for smoke inhalation. Three hours later I refused any more treatment as the doctor tried to put a long tube up my nose to check my passages for blockage.
I had to see if my princess was alright. I had heard them bring her in and she was only two rooms down from me. I heard her screams and tears filled my eyes as I felt her pain too. By the time they had discharged me to go and see her; they had already taken her upstairs to the burn unit. Another four hours went by.
Finally, they said they had her sedated and bandaged in a room. I had to scrub up and put on one of those backward gowns, but I was finally going to get to see my Carrie.
As I walked into the room I almost lost control myself. There was my beautiful princess, stretched out on a bed with a tube in her throat and bandaged from the waist down. Bandages were on her arms from the elbow to her fingertips and her face, burnt and swollen now so badly that her eyes were swelled shut.
As she heard my voice enter the room she came to a little bit. She tried to open her eyes but she couldn’t. She knew she could not talk because of the tube in her throat. I asked her, “Do you know who I am?” She nodded her head slightly in response.
“Are you in pain baby?” She shook her head no.
“You know that I still love you with all my heart princess” I said to her, and she nodded again as she lifted her hand to hold mine. Then the sedatives took hold of her and my princess was asleep.
