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He didn’t look sixteen.

That was my first impression of Johnny Cade, aged sixteen. His chart said that was his age, but I couldn’t believe it. He was thin, with large eyes and a closed look about him, and I wouldn’t have taken him for any older than fourteen.

According to his chart, he had partial and full thickness burns over sixty-five percent of his body, a spinal fracture at T12 and L1 and had suffered through a debridement so horrible the other nurses told me you could hear his screaming at the other end of the hall.

He hadn’t said a word since I’d come on shift that morning and found he was face down on the suspended bed, the worst of his wounds from his mid-back down wrapped in gauze. Nancy, my senior RN, told me I’d have a hard time changing the bandages. Burns are never pleasant, but they can turn even the hardest stomachs.

I was selfishly glad I hadn’t worked last night. I found myself selfishly glad about a lot of things the past few months, like when I wouldn’t get a assigned a particularly difficult patient, or a change in my schedule meant less hours for the week … and worst, when ornery and demanding patients slipped further into their illnesses, so that their demands were fewer. I wouldn’t admit to the relief when they would die.

They had told me he wasn’t much of a talker, and when I’d arrived in his room that morning, he’d proved them right. He hadn’t said a single word since I’d met him.

His gaze always followed me though. He’d look away when he’d catch me looking back at him, but he watched me as I came into the room, took blood pressure as best I could over the gauze on his less severely burned arm, and changed his IV bottle out. He’d gone through three overnight, and according to his charts, his levels were still not right. Burns destroy the chemistry of your body. In the end, all we are is chemicals and electrical impulses, and his were failing him.

Doctor Bryant had told us all at morning rounds Johnny Cade wouldn’t survive.

It was hard to believe that with those brown eyes boring into you.

“Do you need anything Johnny?” I asked him for the third time, looking into the mirror one of the other nurses had set up so he could see everyone.

He shook his head slowly, gasping a little.

“More pain medication?” I asked.

Those liquid brown eyes looked at my own and he nodded slightly. I left the room and returned with the vial of morphine, injecting it into the line. I noticed the skin around the IV site was already an angry red. Infection sets in fast in burn victims.

He saw me staring at the arm, then looked up at me again. I tried to keep my face impassive – a nurse is no good to you if she’s a bumbling mess of emotions. I had learned years ago not to get attached, not to care too much. Now I was afraid I didn’t care enough.

I couldn’t read his look, so I smiled tightly, then discarded the needle.

“Do you think you’d like something to drink?” I asked, trying to keep my voice level. “Some water with ice chips maybe?”

He, of course, said nothing. I walked closer, and he nodded.

I left the room and went to the kitchenette and filled a cup with ice and water, quickly returning it to Johnny’s room. I placed it so he could reach the straw with his lips.

“I’ll be back in about fifteen minutes,” I said.

I spent time at the nurse’s station updating his chart. The small black and white television in the lounge was on, and I saw reporters telling the story of these boys and their heroic actions from right out front of the hospital. The morning paper had carried the story as well – Juvenile Delinquents Turn Heroes. Whoever thought that sweet kid was a JD was soft in the head.

“Hey.”

I turned around and saw an honest-to-God JD standing in front of me, looking both impatient and slightly nervous.

“Can I help you?”

“Cade kid around here?” he asked

“You can’t see him,” I said. “He’s in critical condition.”

“Winston, then?” the guy said impatiently, toying with a cigarette.

“He’s down on the next floor,” I said. I had already heard the rumours he was terrorizing the nurses on the Medicine floor below. He was probably fast friends with this one, but how he knew Johnny was a mystery to me.

“That his room?” the guy said, gesturing towards Johnny’s room.

“Yes, but you can’t go in,” I told him again, more firmly this time.

“Don’t get your panties in a twist lady,” he said with a sardonic grin.

He turned on his heel and walked back toward the elevators, passing Johnny’s room.

“Hey kid,” he said, leaning into the room, his hands bracing him against the frame. “Nice job with that Soc.”

He continued walking, turning around to give me another smile. It made me uncomfortable, and I hadn’t the faintest idea why.

Johnny had more visitors later that day.

“I’m sorry, but you can’t see him,” I said again. “He’s in critical condition.”

I recognized the blond boy from the photos in the newspaper. He was one of the ones that had rescued the kids.

“Come on now, Johnny ain’t got family more than us,” the other was saying, a tall boy with a stocky build and rusty sideburns which were a little out of fashion. “I know he’d want to see us.”

“It doesn’t matter,” I said. “Burn patients can’t be exposed to possible contaminants or bacteria. He’s in a vulnerable state.”

“We’ll wear them gowns and masks, come on!”

“I’m sorry, I wish I could – “

“Mary Louise.”

I looked over to see Doctor Bryant coming out of a patient’s room. “Let them go in. He’s been asking for them. It can’t hurt now.”

I could’ve slapped the man for his insensitivity, and for a split second I thought the blond one was going to pass out on the floor. His friend clapped him on the shoulder, and I gestured towards Johnny’s door and followed them inside.

I raised the blinds a little so they could see. There was no need to cloak the burns in darkness now that they knew.

“Hey Johnnykid,” the older boy said.

“Hey y’all.”

I couldn’t help but smile. “So he can talk after all.”

The older boy looked over and grinned at me, and I could’ve sworn Johnny hid a smile too.

“They treatin’ you okay, kid?”

The older boy said it while looking right at me, as if challenging me to treat him any less than okay. I smiled at him again, then left the room, giving them their privacy.

I went back into Johnny’s room a few minutes later, after I saw the older boy leave.

“Johnny,” I said. “Your mother’s here to see you.”

I had wondered where she had been. No mother I’d ever seen had let her child be hospitalized for almost a day without showing up. She was small and dark like her son, but her eyes were nothing compared to his.

“I don’t want to see her,” he said, with more firmness and direction than I thought possible in his scratchy and singed voice.

“She’s your mother.”

“I said I don’t want to see her,” he said again, his voice sounding unnaturally high as he struggled for air. “She’s probably come to tell me about all the trouble I’m causing her and about how glad her and the old man’ll be when I’m dead. Well, tell her to leave me alone. For once … for once just to leave me alone.”

I rushed in as he tried to get up, his eyes widening, then glassing over as he passed out.

“I was afraid of something like this if he saw anyone,” I muttered.

The blond boy rushed out of the room just as the older boy returned.

“You can’t see him now,” I said, directing them both to the hallway.

The older boy’s grey eyes looked alarmed. He was holding a book.

“Make sure he can see it when he comes around,” he said, handing it to me. I closed the door as they left, then looked down at the book. Gone With The Wind.

I went back to Johnny’s beside, took his pulse and his blood pressure and was satisfied he’d only passed out due to the exertion.

I sighed, sitting down in the chair next to his bed. What kind of mother inspires a child to spurn her on his death bed? What kind of a child reads Gone With The Wind and saves the lives of a group of children, lying in a hospital bed for his trouble, covered in dead and dying skin?

I don’t know how long I sat there, but the sky had darkened when I left to finish my rounds.