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Heart of Fire

A SOFT BREEZE cooled Lesia Stockall's face as she emerged dripping from the blue waters of Carlsbad Beach in San Diego. It was one of those stunning California days, full of hope and promise. But as the blond, blue-eyed 34-year-old made her way to her towel, she felt an old fear rising.

Oh, no, it's washed off, she thought suddenly, her hand rising to her face. My makeup.

She knew what that meant. Gawks from some. Turned-away glances or stares of pity from others. Now, as she crossed the beach, she looked toward the man she was dating. It would be the first time he'd see her scars exposed. Would he turn away too?

Mask of Anguish. Twenty-five years earlier, on a snowy December day, nine-year-old Lesia was in the basement of her grandmother's suburban Detroit home. She and her five-year-old cousin, Kim, needed to be out of the way when the gas-line repairman came to check a bad odor in the home. Lesia grabbed Kim's hand. "Let's play hide- and-seek!" The little squealed, her eyes shining with excitement. Lesia counted backward from ten, peeking through her fingers while her cousin hid.

At that instant a blast from the furnace lifted her off her feet, flinging her across the room like a rag doll. Chunks of concrete and metal showered around her. "It's hot in here!" Lesia screamed.

Barely able to see through the thick smoke and flames, she pulled herself over the rubble and through a hole in the wall. Her clothes on fire, Lesia dropped onto the snow-covered lawn and rolled over again and again. "My parents! Kimmie!" she cried as a medic scooped her up and into an ambulance, where she passed out. The rest of her family had suffered only minor injuries.

Two weeks later, when Lesia regained consciousness, she felt a shocking pain throughout her body. A white-coated doctor leaned over her. "Lesia, you were burned very badly," he said gently. She looked down, her eyes following charred arms to swollen and blackened hands second- and third-degree burns covered nearly 60 percent of her body.

Day after day the nurses scrubbed away the dead tissue while she bit back screams. Day after day they plunged her into a whirlpool bath she came to dread more than memories of the fire that had put her there.

But nothing prepared her for her changed appearance. The flames had gouged swirling scars on her back, arms and face, leaving her skin discolored and rubbery, her hair in stringy wisps. She had no eyebrows, and her lips held no color.

Ten months after the accident, Lesia returned to school. Despite extensive plastic surgery, her face remained a motionless mask of bumpy tendrils and hard, twisted ridges. Now a fifth-grader, she had looked forward to being with her classmates, but was horrified by their reactions. "Monster!" one child hissed. "She's ugly," sneered another. She wanted to defend herself, but emotions choked her. Instead she would stand mute, her face wet with tears.

The worst came one day when her teacher walked her to the front of the room. "Class, I want you to look at Lesia," she said as her classmates snickered. "This is why you shouldn't play with matches."

Panicked. Nearly as bad as the taunts was a fear Lesia felt whenever her parents pulled into a gas station. Her nose would crinkle at the sharp smell of gas. She imagined a customer tossing a lit cigarette butt, a spark catching, then explosions. Terrified, she would sink down in her seat.

It was even worse on the family boat, where the smell of diesel fuel sent her heart pounding and made her palms damp. What is wrong with me? She wondered.

By the time she was 18, Lesia had undergone 17 surgeries. Slicing skin from her thighs and back, doctors had reconstructed her face and softened the scars. Patches of smoother skin replaced the tendrils that had once curled on her face. Her blond hair had returned, framing her face in soft waves. But a patchwork quilt of seams remained-on her arms, hands, back, face-marking the pieces of her skin that had been sewn together.

Meanwhile, her phobias worsened. At gas stations she was afraid to pump her own gas. And once at a friend's house, as a fire crackled in the fireplace, Lesia felt her heart hammering with fear. "I'm going to have to go," she told her friend. A few days later at a barbecue, the same panic seized her.

Soon she felt shaky at every flick of a lighter. She knew she would have to overcome her fears. But how?

Healing Steps. In her late 20s Lesia, then working as a secretary, attended an "image enhancement" program for burn victims at Rancho Los Amigos Medical Center in Downey, Calif. The result was a remarkable transformation. A heavy foundation like that used on movie actresses covered her scars and evened her skin tone. Carefully applied lipstick rounded out her lips. Eyebrow pencil gave her face symmetry.

Encouraged by what she saw, Lesia asked a plastic surgeon whether more surgery would help. But he balked. "I don't think more surgery is needed," he said. What was necessary was for her to heal inside. He suggested she contact San Diego's Burn Institute, which provides activities for children with serious burn injuries.

"You have a special understanding of what burn victims go through," the doctor added. "There's not a better person to help these children heal, inside and out. Would you be interested?"

In 1994 Lesia gave up her secretarial job and, through the institute, formed a camp for young burn victims. Children who arrived depressed left feeling strong and self-assured. And if there was one place where she was loved unconditionally, Lesia soon realized, it was here. Still, she wondered if she would ever meet someone on the outside who could love her scarred face with such acceptance.

A Stupid Idea. She gave little thought to this concern in April of that year as she arrived at a fire-training convention in San Jose, Calif., to represent the Burn Institute and hand out literature about the camp.

Relaxing at the end of the first day there, she and a friend were in the lounge when her thoughts were interrupted by a booming laugh. Bruce Cartelli, seated nearby, had just bellowed out the punch line to a joke, and the crowd around him erupted.

A bear of a man, with silver hair and blue eyes that flashed mischief, the 44-year-old San Diego fire captain was one of the area's best and most well-liked firefighter. Now he was loudly holding court.

"Hey," she said as he drifted within earshot. "You know you are the loudest man in this room? I can't hear myself think!"

"Nice to meet you, too... Lesia!" Cartelli said, scanning her name tag. "You're from San Diego. Me too."

Lesia regarded his smiling face, the droopy mustache. She wanted not to like him - she did not care for the boisterous type. But there was something different about this man. When he sat down beside her, his expression softened. "How did you get burned?" he asked bluntly.

"I was in a gas explosion," she stammered. "I was a little girl."

How did he know? She wondered. Her makeup masked her scars.

Cartelli, a 26-year veteran of the fire service, had often dashed into buildings with temperatures as high as 1500 degrees and saved burn victims, some scorched so badly they didn't look human. Cartelli had become one of the area's foremost experts on the behavior of fire and its destructive force. But he had never confronted its aftermath in such a personal way.

The two talked for hours, at one point Lesia told him about her phobias with fire. "It's funny," she said. "I've tried to think of a way to confront fire - face the dragon one more time, you might say. I once asked a fire chief whether he would let me go into a burning building. He said, 'No way. You've already had your battle with fire and lost.' I guess it was a stupid idea."

Reaching out for her hand, Cartelli looked straight into her eyes. "No, it wasn't," he said. "In fact, I can do that for you. It's what I do." Part of his job was to teach fire fighters not to fear fire by taking them into a burning building. "If you want, I'll take you in. "

Lesia stared back at him. "Really?" she asked.

Slaying the Dragon. In the following weeks Cartelli helped Lesia prepare. He gave her a breathing mask to wear around the house so she wouldn't feel claustrophobic. At the firehouse he put a hose in her hand so she could feel its heft, while he explained how fire behaves and what to expect.

On the day of the training session, May 16, 1994, Cartelli took Lesia's hand and led her in front of the assembled firefighters. "Twenty-five years ago she lost a battle," he told them. "We are here today with Lesia because she's going to win the war."

Dressed in her baggy firefighter's gear and breathing apparatus, she approached the three-story training structure. Black soot charred its windows and doorways. Lesia could already feel the heat pouring from the cement building like hot breath. She could smell the first whiffs of smoke.

As they were about to enter, Cartelli glanced over and saw a single tear streaming down her cheek. "You don't have to do this!" he yelled, his eyes radiating concern.

"Yes, Bruce," said Lesia. "I do. Take me in there."

On her first try she stopped just inside the door, stared at the flames briefly, then ducked out. A half-hour later she tried once more. This time black smoke billowed around her. Suddenly she was a little girl again in the basement of her grandmother's house. Frantically she pushed her way past Bruce and the others, out of the building.

"Get her equipment off her," Bruce commanded his crew. "And get her some water!" then he turned to Lesia. "You did great," he said.

"No," she answered. "I can't leave like this. I have to go back."

Once more they went in. this time, her jaw set, she went into a crouch as she entered the building. Smoke swirled and flames leapt from the burning pallets. Bruce handed her a hose. "Here," he said through his mask. "Slay that dragon."

   Lesia gripped the hose with her thick gloves. She aimed it at the flames that licked at her from the pallets a few feet away. Slowly the fire yielded to the high-powered spray. Eventually the last of the blaze died to embers.

"You did it!" yelled Bruce.

Exhausted and sweaty, she hugged him. "You'll never know how much this meant," she said, feeling an exhilaration that she had never known, as if she were free for the first time.

Her True Face. The next day, when a colleague at the Burn Institute asked if she would share the experience before a gathering of 45 firefighters, she jumped at the chance. But as she began telling her story, she felt tears rising from somewhere deep inside. What is happening? She thought. I should be so happy. She couldn't continue.

In the days that followed, her sadness grew, and she turned to Bruce for comfort. "You've never fully grieved over this," he explained. "Now you have."

Lesia realized he was right. She had never truly mourned for her lost childhood.

 But she knew something else was keeping her sad as well. "My fear of fire may be gone," she said, "but there are other fears."

"Lesia," he replied, looking into her eyes, "I want you to know I think you're a beautiful women."

Lesia smiled, but she could not quite trust his words.

A month later, in July 1994, Lesia walked across Carlsbad Beach toward Bruce Cartelli. For most of her life she had covered up her face with powder and makeup. Now, as she approached him, he'd see her true face, the real Lesia - not the painted mask she presented to the world.

Fearing his reaction, she sat beside him. Then she lifted her face to the bright sunlight, exposing every line, every tortured ridge and bump. He gazed at her, not at the scars, but into her eyes. And for the first time Lesia believed that a man fully loved and accepted her.

TWO YEARS LATER, on a promontory not far from that beach, a soft breeze ruffled Lesia's flowing white dress. Her face radiant, she walked down a flower-strewn aisle toward Bruce, waiting in a tuxedo. Before them stood the fire department's chaplain. Soon a siren on a special carriage - a big red hook-and-ladder truck decorated with bows and crepe paper - would announce the newly married couple.

"You held my hand and carried my heart through the flame and smoke," Lesia said during the ceremony. "Because of you, I am free of the beast that imprinted the scars on my face and body."

    From Reader's Digest, 1998, 8 (欧美版)

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