Dr. Zuker said that one of the many effects of severe third- and fourth-degree burns is they completely knock out the body’s immune system. Every disease fighting cell is destroyed, and nobody knows why. Maybe it’s the body knowing that after suffering that kind of extensive damage it convinces itself that survival is not an option it wishes to pursue, so it ensures its demise by destroying its only means of defence against disease, in a way, committing suicide. If that’s true, does that mean that Joey’s medical miracle may have been a monumental act of interference against the will of his own body?
For years, I’ve often wondered what would have happened if Joey died in the fire. How would the lives of Linda, Danny and my dad have gone? Would Danny and Linda still be alive today? Would my dad and Linda still be together? Or, if Joey survived for only a few days, weeks, or even months before succumbing to his injuries, would Linda have gone with him just as she told him? Would he still have been viewed as a hero to countless people, or would he have been written off as another sad story, another tragic statistic, another young victim of fatal burns?
In order to know if heart transplants, kidney transplants, lung transplants, or any other ground-breaking medical procedure worked, people almost always had to die. But in Joey’s case, he lived, and continued to live, granting the doctors at the Shriners Institute the opportunity to continue experimenting and learning from him. For many months and many surgeries, Joey was a living, breathing, feeling organ donor.
All of those experimental procedures performed on him led to monumental progress in how to treat burn victims, especially when it came to cultured skin and the methods from which it could be utilized. Many of those methods are still used today, and over the last three decades they have saved the lives of countless severely burned people around the world. The benefits of Joey’s survival for complete strangers have been staggering, but the price of that survival, including the tragic losses of his mother and brother, have been arguably just as staggering, raising the question: was his survival and subsequent agony worth it?
The ravenous fire on that early March morning was determined to not only devour the house on Cleveland Avenue, but the entire family residing inside, and even after the final flame was doused, the fire was never truly extinguished. It was an elemental beast that Joey openly challenged. Not used to such insolence, the fire did not give up its pursuit and ended up eventually claiming both Danny and Linda. Still not satisfied, it tried to consume my dad as well. But he, like Joey, managed to survive its wrath, but not without suffering immensely. Just like Joey, my dad also endured a number of scars, except his cannot be seen, but they remain, and will remain always. Meanwhile, for surviving the fire at its most vicious, whether out of respect or spite, it rewarded or cursed Joey with 34 more years of life before it finally claimed him during his eventual cremation. But the price was steep. It was a devilish deal because those years were filled with agony beyond measure, but his will to live and his desire to survive for his mother, fueled by absolute love, proved immensely powerful.
A closeness between me and Joey never developed like it did between Danny and I, but I’ve always respected him. I’ve always been in awe of his strength and courage, of his stubbornness to live in this world on nobody else’s terms but his own, and of his utter defiance against death itself that lasted longer than anybody could have ever imagined. Do I believe he is a hero? It’s a question I’ve thought about for as long as I can remember, and the answer constantly shifts and changes like the seasons. What doesn’t change however, is my only memory of Joey before the fire.
It was a grey day in October of 1987. He was babysitting me. I was only five years old at the time, and he took me on a ride on his dirt bike. I clung to his back, and before I knew it he was racing around the quiet roads of Cumberland Beach, while I wrapped my tiny arms around his midsection. Throughout the ride, because I was inexplicably wearing shorts, I was constantly raising my legs as the hot metal of the bike’s crude engine kept burning them. After about fifteen or twenty minutes Joey stopped the bike after noticing the gas tank was leaking. With the supreme confidence of a carefree teenager, he reached into his pocket and took out two pieces of Bazooka Joe bubble gum. He tore them open, gave me the little comics inside, chewed both pink pieces for a few moments then took the wad out of his mouth and firmly pressed it against the tiny hole in the gas tank, plugging it completely. After that, he noticed me gently touching the burns on my legs, wincing every time. He told me I’d be okay before revving the engine loudly. I told him the burns hurt. He reassured me that I would be fine, that I would survive, then he smiled and asked me if I wanted to go back home, or if I wanted to keep enjoying the ride.