Adam & Megan: A Story of One Family's Courage

This story originally was printed in The Gazette Telegraph on Jan. 8, 1989. It was written by Dave Curtin.

♦♦♦

Six-year-old Adam Walter and his 4 year-old sister, Megan, were burned severely along with their father on June 21 when a propane-gas explosion ripped through their Ellicott home east of Colorado Springs. Their lives were drastically changed.
Now, the Bill and Cindy Walter family is looking to the new year with great hopes and optimism. This is the story of their courageous triumph over disfiguring burns, and of the strength they have received from the warm responses of friends and strangers.

Megan Walter carefully arranges brightly colored ornaments three and four deep on the Christmas tree branches within her reach. Consequently, all the branches at the 3-foot height bend toward the floor from the weight.

"Megan, we need to spread out the ornaments a little more," her mother, Cindy, says gently, rearranging the bulbs.

Members of the Walter family had hoped to be back in their ranch home for Christmas, but construction is not completed. They are trimming their tree in an Ellicott rental home on a crisp, clear night, as they listen to a church-service program over the radio. In the room illuminated only by the blinking of the multicolored lights on the tree, Cindy turns on a cassette tape. It is one the children had made to their father, Bill, five months earlier when they were in hospitals 1,100 miles apart.

In the background on the tape is the humming and beeping of hospital monitors. The children's voices quiver, their breathing is labored. Their words are more like gasps.

In the explosion , all suffered third-degree burns: Megan over 75 percent of her body, Adam over 58 percent and Bill over 38 percent of his body.

Third-degree burns — the most severe — destroy all skin layers. Bill, Adam and Megan were in critical condition for several weeks.
The blast killed the family's black Labrador retriever, Max.

"Dad, I think you're the specialist dad in the world," Adam begins on the tape. "And you're the only one I have. I'm glad we're still one family. I'm glad I don't have a stepdad or a stepmom. I'm so glad you guys don't fight and that we can be together. And that we can see each other, and that we can pray for each other, and that we can try to be better."

Then, Megan begins: "Dad, you know what? Max is dead, Dad. And do you know why he's dead? Because he was standing right behind Adam and the wind blew him. The wind blew him so hard that it blew him right out the door and he broke his back. And now he's dead, Daddy. I'm really sad about that. I bet Adam's sad, too. When Mom talked about it to me, I got really scared. I thought Max got his fur burned. Mom told me his fur didn't get burned, he just got killed. Don't be sad, Dad, because when we get home, we're gonna get another puppy. Do you know what Dad? When you come see me, I'm going to start walking, and you're going to see me walk."

Bill, sitting by the twinkling Christmas tree, quietly weeps as he listens to the tapes.

"What's wrong with Dad?" Adam asks.

"This tape is very special to Dad," Cindy says. "He has special feelings when he listens to it."

JUNE
It is another summer evening on the plains 16 miles east of Colorado Springs. Ominous, black clouds roll in as a weary Bill Walter comes in from the fields of the 1,120-acre cattle ranch he manages. Bill, 36, the son of an Illinois dairy farmer, is a big man with a hearty laugh.

His 34-year-old wife, Cindy, arrives home with groceries in one arm and 7-week-old Abby in the other. Adam, 6, and Megan, 4, scramble into the house ahead of her. Cindy and the children have been in Colorado Springs shopping and getting Megan a new hairdo.

Cindy and Bill, married for 14 years, met at Grand Rapids (Mich.) School of Bible and Music. They sing in their church choir, and she is a director of the youth ministry.

The family likes living on the Ellicott ranch, their home of three years since moving from Savanna, Ill. In the mornings, sunlight decorates the sprawling fields. In the evenings, thunderclouds rattle the windows like a temperamental neighbor.

But most importantly, the children are happy here. Adam loves horses, riding his bicycle and helping his dad feed the cattle. When he grows up, he wants to be a policeman, "so I can go fast and not get a ticket."

Megan can't wait for Abby — "my baby" — to grow up so she'll have a girl to play with. Megan loves to play hide-and-seek and, like her mother, she is meticulous. She follows her mother around the grocery store straightening the cans on the shelves. And Megan loves to hug, especially Abby and the family dog, Max.

Now, Adam and Megan are sitting on the floor of the mud room at the top of the basement stairs to change their shoes before going out to play. Max is wagging his tail, waiting for them. Adam is hoping his mother will make his favorite dinner, macaroni and cheese. Megan wonders what will be for dessert. Even after breakfast, she had asked, "What's for dessert?"

Cindy removes Abby from the blanketed infant seat in front of the kitchen window and places her in her crib in the children's bedroom. As Cindy prepares dinner at 5 p.m., she realizes there is no hot water. Bill, still wiping the sweat from his sun-drenched brow, heads down to the basement to light the pilot light on the hot-water heater. He doesn't know that propane has leaked into the basement. He lights a match.

Suddenly, a fiery explosion rocks the house.

"There was a boom and I saw a fireball," Cindy says later. "I didn't know what happened. I thought the house was hit by lightning."

"Call the hospital!" Bill shots breathlessly. Trying to run, he staggers up the basement stairs. Only the collar of his shirt is left dangling from his neck.

The children are swept up in the sudden tunnel of fire. Most of their clothes are plastered to the walls of the mud room. The rest are melted onto their bloody bodies.

Six windows and a door are blown out into the yard. The blanket that had covered Abby moments earlier shoots through a shattered window and lands about 100 feet from the house.

Megan, her eyes stinging, wonders why Mommy is talking on the phone now. She thinks her mother is calling a friend.

The children and their father blindly stumble to the shower. They stand under a stream of cold well water to douse their burns.

"Daddy, my knees are weak. I'm falling," Megan cries.

"Hold on to me, Meggy," Bill says. "Hold on to me for support."

"I'm cold!" cries Adam. He has little skin to keep him warm.

Paramedics wrap the screaming children in wet sheets and carry them to the ambulance. Megan is crying out that her eyes hurt. Her corneas are burned, and doctors at first fear she will be blind. But that fear will disappear after further examination.

In the ambulance, paramedics work desperately to keep the three conscious.

When Cindy sees her children at the Penrose Hospital emergency room in Colorado Springs, they are burned beyond recognition.

She can't tell Adam from Megan.

"They didn't look anything like them" Cindy later recalls. "But their eyes, their eyes were the same and I knew it was Adam and Megan inside."

Megan is calm. "Look Mommy, my foot's burned," she says, not knowing that her entire body is burned.

Adam is calm until he sees how badly burned Megan is. Then he becomes hysterical. He is struggling against the doctors, battling the oxygen, fighting the intravenous tubes. "His eyes, they were crazy," Cindy remembers.

"Adam, it's Mommy," Cindy calls to her son. But she can't make contact with him.

Not far from his children, Bill is hallucinating from the morphine anesthetic and shivering so violently that he is bouncing on the gurney.

Cindy walks alongside Megan into the operating room. Just one tuft of hair is left from the girl's new hairdo. When Cindy tenderly strokes it, it falls out.

"They're very critical," Dr. John Marta, an anesthesiologist, tells Cindy. "They might not make it. They're your kids out here. But they're mine in there," Marta says, pointing to the operating room. "I'll do everything I can. But I can't make any guarantees."

Cindy to this point has had unfaltering strength in living out this horror story. But now, she feels her strength pouring out as if through a sieve.

She buries her head in her hands.

"I prayed," she says later. "I prayed that my children would die.

"I didn't want them to have to go through it. I knew they had accepted the Lord as their savior. I knew they were going to heaven, that they would be with him. I didn't want them to go through all the pain and disfigurement. I didn't pray for Bill to die. He wasn't going to leave me all alone."

"I have to change my thinking," Cindy thinks the next morning when her children are still alive. "The Lord has not taken them to be with him. We can work through this."

Later, Bill is put in a wheelchair and pushed in to see his children. Megan doesn't recognize her father.

"Megan, it's Daddy," Cindy says.

The girl seems unconvinced. Then Bill speaks.

"Megan, honey, I love you," Bill says.

Megan's eyes keep circling her father's face, trying to piece it back together as she remembered it. Finally, she speaks.

"Daddy, you stepped on me!" she moans, remembering the frantic moments on the basement stairs after the explosion.

Since Megan did not immediately recognize her father, Cindy decides to prepare Adam for Bill's visit.

"Adam, your Daddy's coming to see you," she tells him. "He'll look different. Just look at his eyes."

Six days after the explosion, Megan and Adam are transferred to the Shriners Burn Institute in Galveston, Texas, which is 1,100 miles away. But doctors warn they may not survive the flight.

Bill sees his children moments before they are boarded onto the specially equipped medical jet. "I knew it might be the last time," he says.

"Am I going to die?" Adam asks daily from this Galveston hospital bed. "I'm not going to see Dad again, am I? Either I'm going to die or Dad is."

Nanny — the children's grandmother, Audra Shoemaker — and Cindy cannot truthfully tell Adam that he is not going to die. Instead, they work to calm his fear by changing the subject — "The Lone Ranger" is on television. This seems to brighten the boy.

"How come he's called the Lone Ranger when he always has a friend with him?" Adam wants to know.

Adam and Megan will spend seven weeks in the burn institute. Both are suffering from pulmonary edema, an excessive buildup of fluid in the lungs. Megan has a partially collapsed lung, and Adam had a cardiac arrest earlier.

Doctors work around the clock to prevent a collapse of circulation, a shutdown of the stomach and bowel system, upper lung and wound infections, kidney failure, pneumonia, and prolonged shock.

The children are covered with cadaver skin as a temporary covering, and they undergo several blood tranfusions and skin-graft operations. Back in Colorado Springs on one July day, 104 people from the Walter family's church, Mesa Hills Bible Church, respond to a call for blood.

The children are suffering from relentless nausea, burning fever and excessive chills. An automatic cooling blanket and fans control Megan's 104 fever.

The children relive the explosion in nightmares that might recur for months or even years.

Adam says the hospital isn't the solution — it's the problem.

"Get me out of this hospital," he demands of nanny.

During the final weeks of their first stay at the Galveston hospital, Adam and Megan are taught to sit up, to feed themselves and eventually to walk.

One day, Megan sees her reflection for the first time in a bedside cart and exclaims, "I think my hair's growing faster than Adam's."
On a bright day, Megan announces her wedding plans. She will marry "Dr. Bill" — surgeon Bill Baumgartl. Cindy and Nanny tell her she can't marry Dr. Bill, but she can have him for a boyfriend for now. Megan considers this for a moment and then declares, "I'll be a kid nurse!" Surely that would be next best to marrying Dr. Bill.

Each child is given 3,200 calories of milk a day as part of a special diet rich in calcium, protein and potassium. Megan and Adam are fed a pint of milk an hour, 24 hours a day, for six weeks through a gastric-nasal tube.

Burn victims use calories at two times the normal metabolic rate. Not only is their rate of protein breakdown increased, but they lose protein through their wounds, says Shriners dietitian Megan Duke.

Doctors have learned how to replenish the tremendous amount of fluids lost through burn wounds. Before that, some severely burned people starved to death because they couldn't be fed fast enough, Duke says.

Adam is horrified when he sees the silicone-rubber face mask he and his sister will wear.

"Take it away," he demands. "It scares me."

The masks, made from plaster molds of the children's faces, put pressure on the skin to control scarring.

The children will wear the $800 masks 23 hours a day for 1 ½ to three years, until the scars are mature and can no longer be changed.

"It's hot, it's itchy, it burns, it makes people afraid. There's a lot of reasons not to wear it," says Roland Morales, the medical sculptor who made the masks.

"It comes down to the parents. Kids start telling their parents, ‘I hate you,' and the parents let it go and say, ‘A plastic surgeon will correct it later.' A lot of people think a plastic surgeon can correct anything. That's not true."

The children also will wear pressure garments called Jobskins. Invented 20 years ago by an engineer, Conrad Jobst, the $1,000 elastic suits are custom-made to tightly fit their bodies like second skins to control scarring.

When skin is severely burned down to the third underlayer, it loses the benefit of the tight skin pressure that once was on top. The underlayer literally grows wild as it heals and forms a scar. If no pressure is applied when a scar is forming, skin will grow into irregular knots and swirls.

Without the mask and Jobskins, ugly, disfiguring and constrictive scars will develop.

The Jobskin must be worn for 12 to 18 months. Before pressure garments were used, burn victims were forever unable to function and grotesquely scarred.

Megan and Adam will wear a mouth spreader, a taut rubber-band contraption that keeps the mouth opening from growing shut. "You won't be able to eat a Big Mac unless you wear it," Morales tells the children.

They also will wear pads underneath their arms to prevent their armpits from growing shut.

Meanwhile in Colorado Springs, Bill is able to feed himself applesauce for the first time since the explosion five weeks ago. He now can shake hands, brush his teeth and blow his nose.

On Aug. 11, Adam, Megan, Cindy and Nanny return from Galveston.

But before they had left the burn institute, Cindy and Nanny were reminded that the children are returning to a world that may not be ready for them — a world that values physical beauty. They were told that severely burned children are stared at and often avoided. Other children may ask them why they look like a Martian, or a mummy or a monster.

Cindy and Nanny learned that some children live through their burns only to die a slow, social death.

"Do you know how they're going to feel when they get home?" asks the children's aunt, Candy Entingh. "Like misfits. They're going to feel ugly, different, like they don't fit in. We want people to see them and say, ‘Hi Adam! Hi Megan!'"

AUGUST
"Hey!" Danny Spanagel shouts to Adam. "You lost two teeth, too!"

They are at children's church at Mesa Hills Bible Church on West Uintah Street. Adam and Megan are being reunited with their friends for the first time since the explosion eight weeks earlier.

Danny doesn't seem to notice Adam's face, blotched red with open wounds. Or his shaved head. Or his awkward two-legged hop forced by constrictive scarring of the joints.

Danny sees only that Adam has lost his two front teeth.

Adam smiles and and pats his best friend on the shoulder as only 6-year-old pals can do.

There are three dozen children ages 4 to 8 sitting in tiny chairs in the crowded room.

When Megan walks in, she sees little girls with long, flowing hair. Their skins are silky, their complexions radiant. They are in their Sunday dresses.

Megan's head is shaved. Her scalp has been used for donor skin for most of her five skin grafts. Her hands are gnarled and knobby, her fingers webbed together. Her face is scarred. Her body is bandaged from neck to toe.

The children stare. A tear rides unevenly down Megan's pockmarked cheek.

"Hi Megan," comes the squeaky call of a young, hesitant voice from across the room. This starts a flurry of greetings, and Megan quietly acknowledges them.

On the bulletin board is a poster of the Walter family with the the words, "Can You Help?" In the portrait, the family is smiling, unburned, unscarred.

The children in the class look at the poster, then at Adam and Megan.

"Kids are curious by nature," teacher Sybil Butler says after class. "They've heard Adam and Megan have been burned. Now here they are in front of them, and they're trying to figure it out. I told them that Adam and Megan will look different. But they're still Adam and Megan."

After church, family members go tot heir temporary home — the house of "Auntie" Candy and Uncle David Entingh. There, Adam and Megan are shuffling around in rigid, robotlike motions with their cousins. Adam can't push his Hot Wheels cars along the floor as he used to. So he cradles them in his bent arms, drops them on the floor and pushes them with his feet.

"Eight weeks ago, we didn't know if they were going to live," Bill says. "Now they're running around. It's a miracle."

Then Bill turns solemn. "You don't wake up everyday and say I might die today. People are too preoccupied with what they're doing — where they're going — to think like that. What happened to us took 30 seconds and changed our lives forever. Things will never be the same for us," he says.

"We don't want to just be alive," Cindy says. "We want to be normal."

SEPTEMBER
"How come your face is the same?" Adam asks his father during a two-hour therapy session at Penrose Hospital. "How come you don't have to wear the Jobst thing?"

"Because I'm not burned as bad as you are," Bill tells him.

Later, as Bill waits for his therapists, he tries to explain Adam's questions.

"What he's getting at," says Bill, "is ‘How come you weren't burned as bad? Weren't you in the same explosion? You lit the match.'"

Adam denies he is burned, his father explains, and becomes angry when he is reminded. Sometimes Adam goes into uncharacteristic rages when he is forced to wear the mask or when he must go through another painful daily bath, Bill says.

"Sometimes ... he'll yell and scream. I'll pick him up and Adam won't be inside."

One day, when Bill paddles him, Adam screams. "I hate being burned!"

"Then this look comes over his face like ‘Oh-oh, I admitted it,'" says Bill.

Another day, Bill asks his son, "How come you never say ‘Thank you' anymore?"

"Why should I say ‘Thank you' for something I don't want?" Adam fires back.

"It's like he's saying, ‘I didn't ask for this,'" Bill says. "He doesn't want this anymore. He just wants to be a kid."

While Adam is at times overcome with denial and anger, Megan struggles with feelings of shame, Bill and Cindy say.

Earlier in the week, when the children were going to a monthly checkup in Galveston, Megan was following her Auntie Candy through the Colorado Springs aiport. But Auntie wasn't aware that Megan, in her mechanical straight-legged gallop, was trying desperately to keep up with her. Finally, Megan stumbled, falling breathlessly to the cold tile floor. She was unable to pick herself up.

On the plane, a disheartened Megan muttered for an hour, "I want to be burned. I'm glad I was burned. Take my ears off."

In an effort to relieve such feelings, the family is seeing a psychologist. "The kids have feelings that they don't know why they have," Bill says. "Sometimes I think if the Lord took them, they wouldn't have to go through this. They're tired. Tired of the pain."

"They don't know this is going to last a long time," Cindy says. "They think it's just for now."

Across the Penrose Hospital therapy gym, therapist Cathy McDermott asks Megan to make a fist. The girl strains with all the fury a 4-year-old can muster and succeeds in cupping her hand. "That's very good!" Cathy says.

Recognizing her own progress, Megan wiggles the knuckles on her right hand as if to wave and exclaims, "Look!"

The children's burns cause severe pain when they try to move their arms, legs and fingers. Thick scarring of the joints keeps them from moving normally. Therapists will work to mold the scar tissue while it is still active. When the scars mature, they will turn white and cannot be changed.

Cathy asks Megan what she is going to do on her birthday. Megan shrugs and says, "I'll eat cake."

Megan also hopes she will get earrings for her birthday. "Before I was burned, I used to have lipstick," she says in her best ladylike manner.

Later, another therapist, Janese London, places Megan on a large mat and removes her bandages. She encourages Megan to lie on the mat and point her toes "like a ballerina."

"I don't want to be a ballerina," Megan says.

"Why?" Janese asks.

"Because," Megan giggles, "they wear purple shoes and a pink dress!"

Megan tells Janese that she bathed herself today. "But I couldn't put the shampoo on," she laments. Which reminds her, "I have more hair than my baby does," she says of her sister Abby. "I'm gonna have long hair. Before I was burned, I had it all the way past my back."

As the therapy session comes to an end, Adam and Megan eagerly ask if they get to dance. Their father asks also, because he knows how much dancing means to them: During these minutes, Adam and Megan can forget they are scarred and burned. They can forget the painful struggles of eating, brushing their teeth, bathing. They can escape.

Adam and Megan put on oversized sunglasses that dwarf their shaved heads, and therapist Patti Stafford leads them in energetic, gyrating moves to the thumping sound of "Walk Like An Egyptian."

The children's excited laughs fill the gym. Without realizing it, their sudden exuberance equates to therapeutic exercises that it is hoped will one day will allow them to do the things others take for granted — walking normally, dressing without pain, grasping a fork and a spoon.

As the session ends, Patti waves goodbye and the music fades.

Adam and Megan silently continue their high-stepping, arm-flinging liveliness. Into the elevator, they're still dancing. Down three floors, they're still shaking their heads rhythmically to the imagined beat. Then they bop out of the elevator and into the parking lot of the hospital — the same hospital where 10 weeks ago, 80 friends had gathered to hold hands and pray for the two critically burned children. Praying that Adam and Megan would again smile and laugh. And dance. Adam arrives at his seventh birthday party wearing the hated mask. Ten other first-graders are with him at The Boardwalk, an amusement center.

Adam at first had demanded, "No girls." But his mother had explained that girls will be there and that he will be nice to them. The party is the first time he has seen all but one of his school friends since the explosion.

Sharing the party is Adam's friend Roy Webb, also turning 7. Cindy didn't want Adam to think he was being showered with gifts because he had been burned. The joint party should help dispel such a notion.

"I don't want him to be ugly, and I don't want him to be spoiled. I just want him to be normal," Cindy says.

"Mom, take my mask off so I can go play," Adam says. His mother relents. After all, it is his birthday.

"Adam wants to get this over with by forgetting about the mask," Bill says. "With Adam, it's ‘Bring on the scars. I'm going to play This isn't going to last.'

The first impression you get of someone is by the expression on their face. But if you can't see the face, Adam thinks the mask scares people."

The maskless Adam has made his way to a bumper car. His gloved hands clutch the levers. At first, the other children are afraid to bump into his car, afraid that perhaps his frail body will break. But Adam quickly sets them straight. He bumps their cars with reckless abandon and sports a large smile that everyone can see.

In contrast to her brother, "Megan wants to get it over with by wearing her mask," Bill says. "She is very conscious of being pretty. She wants everyone to know that she's a girl. She saw what the Jobst gloves did for my hands."

Megan has been hiding behind her mask, Bill says. The masks must be removed to eat, and when it's time for meals, she says she's not hungry.

Megan arrives at the party fashionably late, with her mask on. She's wearing a party dress over her Jobskin and a ribbon - not in her hair, but atop her Jobst hood. Her fingernails are painted red, and her earrings sparkle.

Auntie had fashioned the ribbon following an incident two nights earlier. A pizza delivery man, upon leaving the Entingh home, waved goodbye to Megan and said, "See ya later, fella!"

"I hate it when someone calls me fella," Megan says, rolling her eyes.

Her eyes tell it all. You can tell whether she is smiling or frowning underneath her mask by the glint or sorrow in those sky-blue eyes. At the moment, she is frowning.

Some of the children at the party shy away from the masked girl. But not Justin Herl, one of Adam's classmates. Without a word, Justin grabs Megan's gloved hand and, gently but deliberately, marches her to a video game. He has become her protector.

"Kids are so compassionate," says Jan Henderson, Adam's kindergarten teacher who is at the party. "How come we can't carry that compassion with us all our lives?"

In Galveston the night before, she and Adam go through their monthly clinic at the Shriners Burn Institute, Megan stares at her dinner. She quietly describes the other children she has seen at the institute.

"I see little children with no feet and no hands." She pauses. "Children with their ears and noses burned off."

The family is eating at Western Sizzlin'. Megan sticks a piece of steak with her fork and struggles to lift it to her mouth. Others in the restaurant watch curiously. Although it is a battle for Megan to feed herself, Bill and Cindy believe their children must learn to do everyday tasks for themselves.

During dessert, a chocolate chip takes a long plunge from atop Megan's sundae to the table. It takes her 30 seconds to pick it up in gloved fingers and hoist it to her mouth. "I got it!" she boasts.

At the daylong clinic, Megan and Adam go through a painful, comprehensive examination. They will undergo the checkups indefinitely. The Shriners will pay for their care at the burn institute until they are 18 years old.

The possibility for reconstructive surgery won't be known for at least two years, when the scars mature, says Dr. Bill Baumgartl. But the surgeons are optimistic.

"They were burned very severely, and they were here initially for only two months," Baumgartl says. "People with half the burns have stayed six months. Their progress has been remarkable."

Therapist Stephanie Bakker, who three months ago had taught the children to walk again, today will lead them in exercises to increase their range of motion, strength and endurance.

"The family as a unit must be very involved with the burned victims," Stephanie says. "Cindy was a rock through the whole thing. She's a great source of strength. She was determined they were going to make it. ... She's been a real inspiration for the other parents, and she's been admired by all the staff. Because we're so impressed with Cindy and Bill, that tells you about the rareness of their strength," Bakker says.

"These kids are really a pleasure to work with — their smile, their big hug. That's the reward for working here — seeing them go from critically ill to being independent children again."

When the children go to therapy, they think it's a place to play. But therapists with psychology backgrounds are trained to learn what the kids are thinking by how they play.

"If a 4-year-old is playing with dolls, and the doll who's supposed to be mommy is nagging the doll representing the child saying, ‘That's what happens when you don't mind Mommy,' we know that's something we have to work on," says Sara Bolieu, a hospital spokeswoman.

"Children think that everything bad that happens to them is a punishment," says Andrea Royka, head of the child-life development department. "We had one boy who dressed up for Halloween as Freddy Krueger, the burned character in ‘Nightmare on Elm Street.' Then he was burned two months later. He thought God was punishing him for dressing up as Freddy Krueger.

"The kids will ask, `'When I'm 21, will my scars go away?' Then it's time for reality therapy."

Across the room, music therapist Rocio Vega hands Adam bongo drums and instructs, "Beat it like you're really mad."

The exercise serves as a release for anger and tension, she explains.

"Music therapy is actually psychology," she says. "The kids will handle stress through music and often are encouraged to write their own songs. Maybe they're real angry and have no other way to express it. It's OK to be mad or sad, and Adam and Megan know that."

Therapists have made a "re-entry" video that will reintroduce Adam and Megan to their classmates at home.

"You can prepare a child only so much for going back to school," Andrea says. "But when you don't prepare everyone else ... everything we've done with Adam and Megan is shot. It's scary to the other children because their friends look different."

In Adam's re-entry video, the therapist tells Adam's first-grade classmates that he is "scared about going back to school. He wants people to know he is the same inside although he looks different on the outside. Adam is still the same Adam, and Megan is still the same Megan."

At the end of the film, Adam, dressed in hospital pajamas, tells his classmates, "I hope I can see you soon. Maybe the first day, I won't come."

Adam and Megan usually do not display an abundance of affection for each other. But on this day, after having gone through so much together, they are being separated for the first time. Adam is going home. Megan is staying in Galveston 10 more days. She will have skin grafts tomorrow on her chest, elbows, knee and thigh. She is devastated by the unexpected turn of events, and she is crying uncontrollably. Adam is trying not to cry.

Adam limps toward the van parked near the hospital entrance. Megan waddles after him the best she can. Because of contractures in the elbow joints, she can't straighten her arms and he can't bend his.

Megan stops at the curb. Adam, bawling, turns to his sister. As he works desperately to curl his frail arms around her, Megan tries just as hard to unfold her bent arms to receive him. Finally, they hug.

As the van rolls away, Adam tells his father through gasping sobs, "I didn't think it would be so hard."

OCTOBER
Five days before Halloween, the family goes to see "Bambi" at the Super Saver Eight theater at Citadel Crossing.

The cashier looks down at the two masked children. "Oh, great masks," he says. "I've never seen one of those before. Those are funny. Hey, those are great."

As the family walks in, Cindy corrects him. "Those aren't Halloween masks. My children have been burned."

A pallor stretches across the cashier's face, and he is speechless. After the movie, he approaches Bill. "I'm sorry. I didn't know. I really didn't know."

After the movie, the family goes shopping for tricycles. Therapists at Penrose Hospital have recommended the tricycles for the children to exercise their knee joints and improve their ability to grip by grasping the handlebars.

For Adam, the decision to accept a tricycle is tough. He was adept at riding his bicycle "very fast." He already had picked out a new bicycle for Christmas. It was the bike of his dreams.

"It's very fast," he had said. "And it has very good brakes. ... It's an adult bike."

Bill explains to Adam that he's not yet strong enough to balance a bicycle and that he wouldn't be able to grip the handlebars.
After much consternation, Adam decides he'll accept a trike. But not until Bill tells him he can pick out any horn he wants.

While they are shopping, a small boy spots the children. "Look Mom, they're wearing masks," he says.

"They have to wear the masks," his mother explains, "because they have ‘owies.'" The boy appears to accept the explanation.

Moments later, a little girl sees Megan and says, "Look Mommy, she has a pig nose."

Megan's feelings are hurt, and she runs to Cindy. "Mommy, I don't have a pig nose."

"No," Cindy assures. "You don't have a pig nose. She just doesn't know about your mask."

On a moonless night, the family returns to the Ellicott ranch for the first time since the explosion four months earlier. Megan naps during the 16-mile ride. When she awakens, she's home — at last.

But she's troubled because it doesn't look like home.

The mud room — at the top of the stairs where Megan and Adam were nearly killed by the fireball — is dark, vacant and hollow. It echoes. The doors and windows, blown out by the blast, are boarded.

The washer, dryer and freezer have been moved into the kitchen.

Megan walks into the kitchen. Cindy opens a cupboard, and scorched, wilted rose petals come fluttering out. She had kept a basket of the petals on top of the refrigerator.

"What a mess!" Megan says. She limps quickly across the kitchen and into the children's old bedroom. She is comforted when she sees her bedroom is undisturbed.

Adam, meanwhile, has romped straight to the big wooden toy box made by his father and is digging feverishly for his cars and trucks. Megan soon arrives at her toy box. Side by side, they are absorbed in their long-lost toys.

This is Bill's second visit to the house. He had been here a couple of weeks ago. He had spotted melted pieces of clothing and skin, plastered to walls from the force of the explosion, and removed what he could.

Now he hesitates before going into the basement. 'How will this make me feel?' he asks himself. 'Can I handle this?' But he continues down, each of the 11 steps taking him closer to the source of the tragedy that so drastically had changed their lives. A cardboard box next to where Adam had been seated on the stairs is unscathed. The blast also hadn't disturbed a plastic bag, tennis rackets and baseball mitts in the basement.

"Sometimes I think the kids would have been better off if they were standing right behind me," Bill says. "But I can't change it."

For Cindy, this is the fourth trip to the home since the explosion. She had gone to the house the day after to get some clothes and at other times to clean up the rooms.

"It doesn't bother me anymore," she says. "I didn't like to go at first because of the smell. It was the smell of burned flesh. It was a people smell. It was the same smell as in the burn unit."

The family walks out the door of the mud room and stands at the evergreen bush where Max had gone to seek his final refuge. Max, with broken back and scorched lungs, had crawled under the evergreen to die.

NOVEMBER
Adam and Megan are wearing new winter coats and mittens on a cold, windy day in Ellicott. Their old coats were destroyed in the explosion. They each carry a sack lunch, and Adam carries a book bag for both on his back. Today is their first day of school.
Cindy and Bill escort them to their classrooms at Ellicott Elementary School.

Adam and Megan are not wearing their masks so their new classmates can see that they have features and hair.

Without hesitation, Cindy introduces Megan to the hushed kindergarten class. Then she holds up Megan's mask and carefully explains that her daughter must wear it.

"If she doesn't, the bumps on her face will get real big and ugly," Cindy says.

The 20 kids watch Cindy put the mask on Megan.

"Megan knows that when she wears her mask, you can't see her smile," Cindy says. "If you don't know how she's feeling, ask her. Ask her if she's feeling sad or happy."

Teacher Jan Henderson asks the boys and girls whether they are glad to see Megan. They respond with a resounding "yes!"

"Megan, are you happy to be here?" Mrs. Henderson asks. Megan nods, but unconvincingly.

The teacher tries again. "Megan, are you happy or sad?"

"Happy," Megan says, softly.

Her classmates, still silent, continue to look at the masked girl for several minutes.

Down the hall, Cindy repeats the introduction in Adam's class, where he is a celebrity, at least for today, among the 18 first-graders who are competing for his attention.

"Adam's face is red because his blood is working hard to heal it," Cindy tells them. "Underneath his suit, his skin is OK. It's just real red. After a year, Adam can take the suit off. You can touch Adam's skin if you want. Adam will let you.

"If he needs help, he will ask, ‘Will you please help me?' but don't rush up to do things for him because we make him do a lot of things for himself," Cindy says.

After Cindy and Bill leave, the first graders are asked by teacher Lynda Grove what they learned.

"He can do most things we can do," says one student.

"You can touch his skin and it won't hurt," another says.

"He can do things by himself," another says.

When first-grade teacher Jolynn Olden brings her students into the room to meet Adam, she asks the children if they have questions for him.

"Can you go across the monkey bars?" asks one.

"Not yet," Adam replies.

"Can you go down the slide?" asks another.

Adam nods.

"Can you run?" another wants to know.

"Yes," Adam says.

Now the true measure of worth for a first-grader becomes evident. "Fast" to a 7-year-old is everything important.

"Can you run as fast as in kindergarten?" a youngster carefully queries.

"Faster," Adam says unflinchingly.

"Can you ride a bike?"

"No," Adam answers reluctantly. "We're still working on balance."

Miss Olden turns Adam's answer into a lesson. "Class, what's balance?" she asks.

The answer is universal. "It's staying up on two wheels," the pupils chime.

"Were you scared to come to school today?" a classmate asks.

"A little at first," Adam says. "But I got over it."

The questions continue to pour in. "Do you have fingernails? (Yes). What do you do at home? (Homework). Does your neck get tired of holding your mask up? (No).

"Can we touch you?" one boy asks.

Adam nods.

The children scramble to their feet and rush to circle Adam. All at once, they begin touching him. They are convinced that he's just like them.

A cutback in their daily therapy allows the children to attend school three days a week. Cindy and Bill want to get their children back into the mainstream as quickly as possible.

Though Adam and Megan are starting school two and a half months late, they have been working math problems and reading books at home in rare moments when not consumed by therapy and treatment.

Adam needs no practice at art. In art class today, the students are drawing what they will eat for Thanksgiving. Adam uses crayons to draw a dinosaur and what he describes as "worm pie."

Meanwhile, Megan is learning to write V's in her class. But gripping the pencil hurts her right hand. "Megan will learn by watching," says Luann Dobler, a student teacher.

In the cafeteria at lunch time, all the kids are eager to sit next to Adam. Roy Webb and Jason Harding are the winners. They and Adam recall the old days.

"Do you remember when the girls attacked?" Adam asks.

The two nod furtively and smile. Undoubtedly, it was a memorable event.

Two tables away, Megan wrestles with her sandwich baggie over possession of a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. A third-grade boy who enters the lunchroom fails to notice Megan's effort to look pretty; she's wearing her ribbons, earrings and her best dress. Having not heard Cindy's earlier lesson, he asks no one in particular, "What's wrong with Megan? She doesn't look too good. Her face is all red."

The harsh words fail to distract the little girl. Minutes later in math class, Megan is called to the blackboard to draw two of anything. On this blustery, gray day of this devastating year, Megan shuffles up to the board and draws two smiling suns.

EPILOGUE
"You always hear the cliche, ‘Life isn't fair,'" says Bill Walter. "I guess I've learned that. Even though it isn't fair, it doesn't mean your world has to go to pieces. This has helped me gain a better appreciation of life, what's serious and what's not.

"For my children, for myself, for my family, it doesn't seem fair. But being a Christian, I feel there's a reason for things to happen. The lives you touch and those that touch you — I wonder what the purpose is behind it all?

"More than anything, it was such a shock to me. I never really felt it was my fault. Just a freak accident. When you read of people who are hurt or see it on TV, you feel bad about it, but only for a little while. Then you go on. You never think of something like this happening to you.

"I was the one who lit the match. It seemed so unfair to the children. I've woken up many times at night with a real great sorrow. If I could, I'd like to back up to June 21 and go on from there. But in reality, you can't change that. The Lord has given us the strength to pick up the pieces and go on. Bitterness isn't going to help anyone — my being bitter or Cindy and I being bitter toward each other. Why destroy the kids with bitterness?

"It's good to be alive. More and more, the kids see that. They realize life will come back to a point of being normal. At first, they doubted if anything was ever going to be good again. Now they see that it will be.

"One thing that's really neat is to know that our community — El Paso County, Colorado Springs, Calhan, Ellicott — was pulling for us That's hard to express. I thank everyone so much. ‘Thank you' seems awful small for what we feel at a time like this."