Free Kenton by Kathi Barton Page A

nurses with them.
    The one closest to him had her hand over her mouth. She looked horrified. Bart
    wanted to tell her to get out, but since this thing had happened, he’d been unable to do
    more than just grunt. He avoided doing that as much as possible, as he thought it made
    him sound like he was deranged. Then he looked over at the other one.
    She looked sick. Her hand was over her mouth as well, but even Bart could see that
    she was close to losing her lunch. Before he could think how to get her out of the room
    and away from him, she leaned out of his vision and he could hear her retching. Bart
    looked at his doctor, who was still staring at him.
    “The damage is extensive, as I have said.” Bart wanted a mirror. Then he didn’t.
    When the doctor suggested one, it was all Bart could do not to beg for them all to go
    away after covering him up again. “Now, before I show you, you have to understand
    that when you came in you were burned badly and some of the damage was
    irreparable. You know that you lost the eye and ear, but there was extensive damage
    done to the remaining tissue as well.”
    The mirror was suddenly in front of him. Bart immediately closed his eyes, not sure
    even now that he could look at himself. When he opened his eye and looked at the meat

    in the reflection, he knew that someone was playing a cruel and disgusting joke on him.
    There was no possible way that this thing looking back at him was him.
    His eye socket was gone; it looked glued shut, like one of those masks the kids wore
    at Halloween, cheaply made and bunched together. His face looked like wet rubber or
    melting plastic. The doctor explained how later there could be an artificial eye put in if
    things healed the way that he thought they should.
    His cheek was a mass of red puckered flesh. Blisters were still there, small ones, as
    well as some as big as a quarter. The brow had been singed away over the bad eye, and
    the hair on the side of his head was gone. In its place was nothing more than more
    stringy flesh that looked like someone had made it from wax and smeared it over him.
    His upper lip was missing. It was a part of the mess his cheek had become, and his nose
    looked to him like someone had smashed it to his face and didn’t even bother putting in
    an air hole for him to breath. On top of that, if that wasn’t bad enough, it looked as if
    the entire side of his head had shifted lower than the other side. Bart looked at his
    doctor.
    “You’re going to lose your teeth on this side as well. The jawbone was damaged
    enough that it’s brittle and won’t be able to support the teeth there. Your tongue, as
    you’ve been told, is also severely damaged so that you won’t be able to talk without a
    slur. Drooling will also be an issue you’ll find, but something that you can live with.”
    Bart heard the door open and close, and realized that he could not smell the nurse’s
    mess. Then he looked back at the doctor, who seemed to understand what he was
    thinking. “The receptors in your nostrils are burnt from the fire. Smoke inhalation has
    also damaged your lungs. You can get surgery, as I have said, but you will never be
    able to repair the damage that was done internally. I’m sorry.”
    Bart threw the mirror at him. He wanted to yell and scream—needed to, really—but
    all he could do was grunt, like an animal, like the monster that he’d become. This
    wasn’t fair. This was not the way it was supposed to be. He should have been in bed, at
    home, when this broke out, and here he was suffering the most from it. Damn it, why
    didn’t this happen the way he’d planned for it to? Why did he have to suffer when his
    father had been so lucky and had been killed? It wasn’t fucking fair.
    Bart needed for them to be gone; he wanted to think, to plan, and tried to make
    them see what he wanted. As the bandage was put back in place, this one cooler feeling
    than before, he tried to keep his mind from dwelling on what