The Burn Journals Read Online Free Page B

breathe, I forgot how hard it was. I try to talk, but I can't say much, so I just keep trying to breathe deep so the number is high. The cold air feels good on my face, and Dad is reading, this is so much harder than I remember it. Maybe the tubes aren't so bad. Maybe they should put the tubes back in so I can breathe again.
             
    Surgery again. They're putting skin on my legs, but it's not my skin. It's from a pig, and they're supposed to take my skin off me and send it to Boston.
             
    I hurt. I need something. Lisa gives me something to stop hurting, and it's working, but now I can't see, everything is double.
             
    Ice. Mom is giving me ice, and I never realized this before, but ice is the best-tasting thing in the entire world. I could eat ice for breakfast, lunch, dinner, and dessert. I wish I could live on ice. They didn't take my skin off. Maybe tomorrow.
             
    The nice old doctor is here, Dr. Randolph, I think his name is, and the scary-looking tall guy with the glasses. I want to make a joke, but I can't figure out how to say, What's up, Doc? with these tubes in my mouth. They've come to take my skin. They're going to put me to sleep for a little while.
             
    I'm standing. I don't know how, but I'm standing in the street and Tina is there and we're walking together.
             
    I'm awake. Tina is standing over me, and she's so beautiful. She says it's Valentine's Day and I want to ask her if she'll be my valentine, but I'm worried that she doesn't think I'm handsome enough, so instead I ask if I can see my face in the mirror. She holds it up and says it looks so much better than when I first came in, but I don't like to look at it. I hate the way it looks and I cry. She puts the mirror down and puts her face near mine and says she thinks my face looks so good now, and it's going to keep getting better and I won't hardly believe it when I see myself in a few weeks, I'll be so handsome. And when I get better and I can walk again, we'll go out on the town together and get some ice cream because she knows I like ice cream. Do I like Ben & Jerry's? When we get the tubes out, we'll have Ben & Jerry's together, how about that?
             
    I tell Mom with the message board about my dream about standing, and she's really happy about that. I don't tell her I was with Tina.
             
    My friends from school are sending me stuff all the time. Stephen sent me a tape, and they put it on the stereo for me. He put all these Aerosmith songs on it because he knows how much I like them. I miss him and Megan. I hope they're happy.
             
    Dad is reading the comics when I wake up. It's the Sunday comics because it's in color. He holds up the pictures so I can see and starts reading what Charlie Brown says to Lucy and what Lucy says to Charlie Brown and what Garfield says to Odie. I'm getting frustrated with the way he's reading to me like a baby, so I make him get the message board and I write, I can still read, you know.
    He laughs and says he's sorry and we read the rest of them together, silently.
             
    They're taking me to surgery. This big bed can fit inside this elevator. But why are we going up? The operating room is down. We're up on the roof now, where the helicopter lands. I remember what it was like up here, flying. I remember the wind. Now we're going back down to surgery. We got lost.
             
    Mom and Dad are holding my hands. I can't talk because the tubes are still in from the surgery, but they ask me how I am and I say, I hurt, with the message board. That makes them sad. They're looking at me with so much love in their eyes, which is so much better than when they look scared. They say they love me, and I use the message board to say I love them too.
             
    Everything hurts, and it's so much worse than before. All I want is for there to be less pain and for them to