Tina Turner Fire

735 Words2 Pages

She reached forward and grabbed my wrists. I cupped my hands together, and Abby poured what was left of the bottle into them. The liquid was room temperature, and felt lighter than water. I tried to swirl it in my hands but it reacted strangely. It was more viscus than expected and had a half second delayed response to each jerking hand motion. When she lit the fire it felt cold at first, the way snow scalds your exposed skin. The fire was eating the surrounding oxygen, forcing cooled air onto my hands. I felt powerful holding my little blue flame. As the Acetone started to burn down and evaporate, the heat was growing more intensely. That’s when the pain started. I could feel the pool of fire starting to melt the non-wet skin along the sides …show more content…

After the second minute, I was unconscious. … I spent the summer in recovery. A handful of surgeries, different doctors, different hospitals, all the same prognosis. While retinal transplants were available, the eyes themselves were beyond repair. They took skin grafts from my legs and applied them to my chest, neck, and face, piecing me back together. I asked my nurse if my hair would grow back, or if I needed to get a Tina Turner wig. She didn’t answer, but I could hear my mom quietly start to weep. Earlier that year when my grandma called on my birthday, she asked me, what do you want to be when you grow up? I had said I wanted to fight fires. This was because my neighbor had a Dalmatian, and I thought their daughter was cute. It made sense that as a fireman I would simultaneously impress her and her dog with my heroic deeds. She came to pay her respects, and I reminded her of the conversation. She didn’t laugh. Wayne, the tutor for the blind the hospital assigned me, came by daily. We’d walk the halls and I’d trip over my feet or the cane. It took a while to get use to the scratching the ball at the end of the cane made as I pendulum-ed it back and forth in front of me. He’d work

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