Chapter 2: Surgeries and prayers

When Stephanie's sisters found her in the hospital, she was wrapped in white gauze, a mummy.

They could not see her green eyes, her lips, the face filled with freckles they all shared. They stared at her dark brown ponytail, the red polish on her toes.

Lucy Beesley, her youngest sister, cried in the corner of Stephanie's room.

Courtney Kendrick, the second-eldest sister, made jokes, trying to mitigate the panic they all felt.

Page Checketts, the eldest sister, comforted Stephanie's parents in the hallway.

Stephanie and Christian were in medically induced comas.

Doctors at the Maricopa Medical Center's Arizona Burn Center said that Christian would recover fully after skin grafts to his lower arms, hands, legs and a corner of his face. Dr. Daniel Caruso, director of the center, said that Stephanie had a 50-50 chance.

Her heart had stopped twice already in the helicopter on the way to the hospital. Her lungs or kidneys could fail. Hypothermia could kill her. Caruso worried about infection.

Stephanie's arms, legs, hands and face were covered with third- and fourth-degree burns. The fire spared almost nothing, only her toes, the back of her neck and small portions of her thighs and torso.

A third-degree burn, Caruso explained, goes through the upper and lower layers of the skin. A fourth-degree burn sinks deeper: through skin and fat, down to muscles, tendons and even bone.

Stephanie had exposed muscles all over her body.

If Stephanie lived, she would look different, Caruso said. Her family listened, numb, as he talked about trying to save Stephanie's ears, her nose. That sweet face, so like her sisters', was gone.

Her family tried not to feel angry at Christian for taking her up in that plane.

The sisters focused instead on her children and how Stephanie would want them to be loved.

There was Claire, then 6, a mini version of her mom - shiny dark hair, graceful already. Stephanie worried that no one understood Jane: a 5-year-old redhead with a temper to match. But when Jane was happy, she could make the days glow.

Oliver, 3, was just like his dad, and Stephanie was happy whenever he came into a room. Then there was Nicholas, almost 2, fat and blond and grumpy. Stephanie loved his chocolate-colored eyes.

Lucy didn't have any children. She took Nicholas.

Courtney, mother of a newborn, took Claire, Jane and Oliver.

Page, a nurse, stayed in the hospital with Stephanie and their parents.

A week after the crash, Courtney and Lucy piled the children's suitcases into the car and drove across the desert to their homes in Utah, where the children could attend Stephanie's old elementary school, play with cousins and escape talk about the accident.

Claire and Jane made rings and bracelets out of beads and sent them to the hospital for their mother to wear over her bandages.

As the children settled into her home, Courtney heard Stephanie's voice in her thoughts, helping to mother the children.

Have Jane help you vacuum if she gets too hyper.

Whisper something in their ears before they go to sleep.

Courtney posted news of the accident on Stephanie's blog and asked for prayers.

Meanwhile, in the operating room, Caruso and Dr. Marc Matthews were still at work.

They began the day after Stephanie arrived at the hospital. Using an electric knife and a straight blade called a Weck, they spent a total of 14 hours cutting and scraping the dead, burned tissue from Stephanie's body - a process called excision.

They cut until they reached living tissue that bled. Where the fire had burned bone, they used a fine drill bit to degrade it until they reached the deep place where the bone bled, too.

They would think they had finished, only to find new patches of gray as the burns settled in.

They put pins into her fingers to hold the shape of her hands.

They stopped at her face.

For a long moment, the doctors were still.

Three times they had to excise her face.

It hurt them to do it.

In the recovery room, Caruso didn't think Stephanie would live another three days. Her body battled hypothermia, blood clots, pneumonia. Stephanie had surgery every other day for three weeks.

While Stephanie and Christian remained in comas, their story spread.

People flooded Stephanie's blog, reading about the things she used to enjoy: cakes and bicycles and homemade toys. Letters came to Courtney from England, Australia, Germany. The mailbox in Utah began to fill with clothes, blankets, even handmade dolls that looked just like Stephanie.

Lucy kept a diary of Nicholas' days, so Stephanie wouldn't miss anything. He turned 2, had a party.

Claire turned 7. They hiked up to the Y on Stephanie's mountain - Claire's only request.

Fellow bloggers organized online sales of cookies and crafts to help the family. Benefit concerts were held.

There was $50,000, then $100,000, then a quarter-million.

Stephanie's story appeared in People, the New York Times. Her brothers and sisters went on the "Today" show. The hospital's foundation paid the portion of Stephanie and Christian's medical bills not covered by insurance.

Money was raised for the family Doug Kinneard left behind. His wife sent it to Stephanie and Christian.

Some of the funds went to winter coats for the children, to Stephanie and Christian's house payment, to airplane tickets. Christian's Mesa family visited often, but doctors said it would help Stephanie to have her own family near. Her brothers and sisters spent September and October taking turns, hoping that Stephanie could hear them while they talked to her. If she moved her toe, they thought it was a sign.

Stephanie's brother Jesse Clark was the last sibling to come. Just two years older than his sister, Jesse and Stephanie were close friends.

Jesse put his hands on his sister's head and said a prayer, asking for blessings for his sleeping sister.

Jesse told Stephanie that she had a choice: She could choose to go, or she could choose life - changed and bittersweet. Her path would be tough, he told her, and she would hurt every day. But she could see her children grow.

He begged her to choose life.

He talked to her about someday.

In a year, he told her, she could be at the BYU homecoming parade. She could be getting ready for Halloween.

"One more year," he remembered telling her. "Time - it's the hardest thing."

Stephanie's family felt like she made her choice.

Doctors began to cover her body with skin grafts. The body responds best to its own skin, and Stephanie didn't have much left.

Caruso and his team cut a silver-dollar-size piece of Stephanie's remaining skin and sent it to a lab in Boston, where it was harvested and grown for grafting. The lab sent back skin in 75-centimeter-square sheets. Each sheet cost about $2,000. Doctors used more than 200.

They shaved Stephanie's head and used a thin layer of skin from her scalp to cover her face. Her hair would grow back later. They sewed her eyes shut until she was well enough for a surgeon to reconstruct her eyelids.

They took more good skin from her back and put it through a perforating machine, turning it into a web that they stretched over her arms. The perforation helped the skin cover more surface area. Scar tissue would fill in the web, and cover her arms.

Her body was pumped full of drugs: morphine and methadone for pain, a Vecuronium drip to paralyze her while she healed, and Versed, a sedative that would help her forget. There were medications for nausea and nerve repair, an entire alphabet's worth of antibiotics: Cipro and imipenum, tobramyacin and linezolid.

The doctors waited for complications that never came. They started to talk about miracles.

Though Stephanie remained in a coma, Christian woke about a month after the crash. Nurses wheeled him to Stephanie's side.

He found his wife covered in bandages. Her little body looked lost in that big bed.

He thought about how he had wanted to be a pilot. He had taken Stephanie up in the airplane. He had turned away from the burning airplane door.

A nurse had to lift his hand to put it on Stephanie's.

He wept.

"Come back," he pleaded. "Come home."

He couldn't do any of it without her: Claire, Jane, Oliver, Nicholas.

In Utah, Stephanie's children were chattering about Halloween.

"Will our mom be home for Halloween?" Claire asked her Aunt Courtney.

No, Courtney said.

"Thanksgiving?"

Maybe Christmas, she said.

The children colored piles of pictures and sent them to the hospital. Claire drew her mother at home, standing over a pot on the stove, smiling.

At night, Courtney played Stephanie's favorite lullabies as she tucked the children into bed. The songs made Jane think of her mother. Jane stared at a framed photo of her mom on the nightstand, and Claire held her while she cried.

Just before Halloween, there was a benefit concert for Stephanie and Christian in Mesa.

Courtney and the children came from Utah. Claire and Jane had planned something special in honor of their mother: a song she used to play for them.

They walked up to the stage and stood in front of almost a thousand people. Claire was so nervous that she couldn't let go of Jane's hand. On that stage, their voices shaky and slow, the daughters sang a song to their mother - the Beatles' "Golden Slumbers":

Once there was a way to get back homeward. Once there was a way to get back home.

Sleep pretty darling, do not cry. And I will sing a lullaby.

* * *

On the mountain, Stephanie and Christian are rounding the first corner.

She swallowed Percocet before the hike, but the skin on her calves is tight, burning as she walks.

"Mom," says Claire, "what if you can't make it?"

"Claire! I'm gonna make it!" Stephanie says.

"I know, but what if you don't?" Claire replies.

Stephanie asks, "Then will you carry me?"

Read Stephanie Nielson - Chapter 3: She wakes >>