|
 |
| Taking off in the helicopter felt kind of like going up in an elevator, only more intense. I could hear the whirring and chopping of the propeller's blades, and the engine's high pitched whine. Monitor's were beeping and flashing quietly while the EMT worked silently at his paperwork on my left. I tried to lie still but it was my first chopper ride and I wanted to have a look around. I wanted to sit up and ask what each monitor was for. I wanted to look out the window that was just far enough above and to the right of my head, all I could see was that it was dark outside. But I was afraid to move around too much. So far the only pain I felt was on the bottoms of my feet and I wanted to keep it that way. So I settled for just looking at the wall of the chopper on my right, and the EMT on my left. He would look up every time I moved and ask, "Are you hurting?" and I would say, "No, just my feet." Every now and then the EMT would tell me, "Hang on, we'll be there before too long." For most of the trip I kept going over in my mind how I had come to be in a chopper. The accident seemed at the time to take several minutes but had actually taken only seconds. I started imagining if one of the kids had been in the kitchen with me and I pushed the thought of it away. I was so glad it was God's Will that they be outside when the flash fire occurred. We landed in Tulsa about 20 minutes after leaving McAlester. As they wheeled me into ER, I heard one of the EMT's say, "She has family on the way." They immediately started stripping away the dead skin, and cleaning me up to prepare me for surgery. They must have given me something because I started feeling whoozy and very relaxed. There were several people working over me, but the only person I remember was a guy standing on the right side of me. He saw me watching him and he smiled and said, "My name is Tyler, just relax." Whatever they had put in my IV didn't give me much choice. I lay quietly looking at the ear ring in Tyler's ear and thinking to myself how pretty his green eye's were, and how his voice was soothing to hear. Someone, I think it was the surgeon, leaned down close to my ear, I felt a hand on one side of my head, and a voice said softly, "Kemii, your burns are third degree and it looks like you're going to be here at least thirty days." I just kept my eye's on Tyler till the anesthesia began to take effect and my eye's started to close. As I drifted off, I heard someone say, "We're going to have to put her on the breathing machine." I was too weak to breathe on my own under the anesthetic. |
 |
         |
 |
 |