'The Accident'

After several months of getting to know Mr. Aries again as friends, I was getting closer and closer to him. Mr. Aries was showing me he could be the kind of man that I needed. He was talking to me, being attentive, spending time with me and my friends. Now instead of sitting on the computer doing fantasy sports for hours at a time he was playing cards with me. We were going places, doing things, enjoying life and living in the moment. I decided I was willing to give Mr. Aries another chance, he had been so wonderful to me over the past months, I decided to move forward slowly with caution. I moved back into our old house with him, although now it was his brother's house so we were actually sharing the guest room of our old home. One day Mr. Aries told me he had a house he wanted me to look at with him. We pulled up outside of a small red brick house, built in 1939, about a half mile from where we were currently residing. I wasn't really impressed but was waiting to see the inside before I made any decisions. When we walked in I immediately disliked the house. It was disgusting! The previous owners had not taken care of the house at all, it was filthy and hadn't been updated since 1940. As we were walking around I was thinking to myself there was no way I wanted to live here, I didn't even want to set my purse down. Imagine my surprise when Mr. Aries informed me had already decided to buy the house and that was the end of the discussion for him. He promised me he had big plans for the house, he was going to gut it and transform it into a completely different house. So, for the next three months we stayed in the guest room of our old house and Mr. Aries tore our new house completely apart. Once floors and walls were up we moved on in to live in our 'work in progress'.

Two months after moving in I was running around cleaning up my one quarter of the way finished house for some family and friends to come over and play some poker. I was expecting Mr. Aries home around 5 so he could help me prepare and realized that it was already an hour past and I hadn't heard a word from him. I checked my cell phone only to discover six missed calls from an unknown number. Upon checking my voicemail I heard the unfamiliar voice of a man telling me he was a paramedic trying to reach me because he was with my husband, there had been an accident and he was being care flighted to Parkland Hospital in Dallas. He said to please call as soon as possible. I was freaked, shaking and fearing the worst I called his brother and we headed immediately to the hospital. When we arrived at the ER I was greeted by a nurse who told me to be prepared, Mr. Aries was in pretty bad shape but it was going to possibly look worse than it actually was. I learned that he had been working on a field house electric panel when a city worker turned the power back on. He was blown back in the electrical explosion and was suffering from 3rd degree burns on his face, arms, and stomach where his shirt had blown up. I rushed to his side and immediately my senses were overcome with the smell of burnt skin. I could hardly recognize him. His face looked completely charred, his skin was black and all the hair on his face and arms had been completely burned off. He was completely disoriented, they said he was in so much pain that he had gone into shock. He just kept telling me that he got to ride in a helicopter. The nurses said they really weren't prepared to deal with him in the ER, they were waiting for a bed to come available upstairs in the burn unit where the burn experts could evaluate the damage and do what they can. The first night in the burn unit was one of the very worst. I remember going to a waiting room at the end of a long hall, about 8 rooms away from the "hell room" they took Mr. Aries in. The "hell room" was a large room with absolutely nothing on the floor or walls. It was all white tile with a huge stainless steel table in the center of the room. This is the room where the burn victims had to go several times a day to have their skin scrapped off and then cleaned so that eventually they can begin healing. At the end of the hall that first night, I could hear the muffled screams coming from Mr. Aries as they scrapped. It was a sound like nothing I had heard before, it was a pain that I know is indescribable, a pain that is so intense the doctors and nurses claimed there wasn't anything they could give him that would be strong enough to cover the feeling of the process.

A few hours later when they were done, until the next round, they brought Mr. Aries back into his room. Seeing him lying in the hospital bed, knowing he had been moments from death, I felt in that moment how lost I would be without him. I decided in that moment that I was going to completely recommit myself to him. I was going to be there for him through this entire process. I was convinced that if we could come out alive on the other side of this event then there would be nothing that could ever happen to us again that we couldn't get through. For two weeks Mr. Aries endured trips to the "hell room", surgeries, and painful physical therapy. I was by his side the entire time. Before his dismissal we needed to know if we would be hiring a nurse to scrape, clean, and treat his burns at home. I knew Mr. Aries wouldn't want a stranger helping him in such vulnerable situations such as bathing and using the restroom. He had had enough of that during his stay in the burn unit. So, I was there with the nurses in the "hell room" his last few days at the hospital, learning how to do it all on my own when we got home. I know the scrapping was painful for Mr. Aries but there is just something I can't explain about how awful it is to be the person inflicting such pain on another human being, especially someone you love.

Time continued to move forward. I did everything I could to make Mr. Aries as comfortable as possible. Eventually, his physical wounds began to heal. To say we kinda lost a couple years of our life would be an understatement. Mr. Aries unfortunately never dealt with or addressed the emotional wounds that he had endured due to such a traumatic experience. I put all my needs on the back burner because no matter what I felt, I hadn't been the one burned, therefore I couldn't be feeling sorry for myself or expect anyone else to pity me.

Two years after what we call 'the accident' our first son was born. I had visions of this new member in our family being powerful enough to encourage Mr. Aries to start living his life again. Naive, yes, but if anything could make you want to be the best person you can be, I can't think of any better reason than our beautiful baby boy.