By My Hands Read Free Page B

unfair. She had been returning home from a
study session with a friend. Lisa was enjoying her senior year at
Madison High School. A grade point average of 3.8 had allowed her
the luxury of choices in colleges and universities. There was
little that could make her life better, but many things that could
make it worse.
    One such thing was a drunk driver on Interstate 15.
The MG Midget Lisa’s father had bought for her eighteenth birthday
offered little protection against the three-quarter-ton pickup
truck as it crossed over the center divider and crashed headlong
into her. Her last second maneuvering had kept her from being
killed instantly, but it could not keep the gas tank from
rupturing. The ensuing fire engulfed her. The image of uncontrolled
flames rising around her was etched deeply into her memory. The
fire had not only scarred her body, but scarred her mind, searing
an image of hell into her brain.
    She relived that night every time she fell asleep.
The ending was always the same—she lived. Why had she not died and
saved herself and her family this ordeal? If she had died, she
would be buried and her family would be going on with their lives.
But now, every day they came, dressed in the green sterile clothing
that all visitors wore, to see her grotesquely charred body.
    The accident had burned all of Lisa’s hair from her
head, as well as her eyebrows and lashes. Both legs were deeply
burned and, if she continued to live, they would be amputated. The
swollen and charred skin had made her unrecognizable to family and
friends. Bill Payne, the high school’s first-string quarterback and
Lisa’s steady boyfriend, had come by to visit the day after the
accident; he had not been back since. They had secretly planned to
be married after their first year of college, but that dream was
over.
    John Hailey, Lisa’s father, had said good-bye to his
red-haired daughter at 6 o’clock that tragic evening. When he
arrived at the hospital four hours later, he found the strange
figure the doctors told him was Lisa. They had also told him it was
a miracle she had lived. John wasn’t so sure.
    Morphine quieted the noisier patients that evening.
For a few hours they were oblivious to their environment and their
pain. The hall lights had been dimmed and the nurses of station
B-West had settled into their heroic yet dismal watch.
    No one noticed the nondescript man in a white smock
emerge from behind the stairwell door. He moved down the dim hall
and into room 015 only to exit a few moments later. The unknown
visitor made his way up the stairs and withdrew into the cool
moonlit night. His task for the evening was finished.
     
    Monday, March 2, 1992; 6:30
A.M.
    WORD CIRCULATED QUICKLY THROUGH the hospital. With
each telling of the story, the details were slightly altered, but
the truth of the tale remained the same. Somehow, the horribly
burned and disfigured body of Lisa Hailey had been changed. Skin,
soft and pink, had replaced the scorched black flesh. The morning
duty nurse, accustomed to seeing the worst that fate could deliver,
lost her composure as she stepped into Lisa’s room. Her scream
echoed through the burn ward. The nurses and doctors rushing to her
aid were greeted by a perfectly healthy Lisa, who met each outburst
of disbelief with an immense smile.
    After gathering his composure, one doctor suggested
that a camera be brought to the room to record the event. A nurse,
sensitive to feelings that many miss, returned to her station and
pulled a mirror from her purse and, making her way through the
crowded doorway, slowly raised it so that Lisa could see what she
had not been allowed to see for the last two weeks—her face.
     
    Monday, March 2; 11:00
A.M.
    “BECAUSE I NEED THE CHALLENGE.” Priscilla Simms
spoke the words slowly, enunciating each syllable. Irwin Baker, the
station’s news director, leaned back in his leather chair and
stared at the woman across the desk. She was the epitome of the
television anchor