Healing Journey : Topanga blaze: Ron Mass emerges after five painful months at burn center, thanking his once-estranged family for helping him on the road to recovery.

Slowly, like a wounded soldier who had outlived the war, Ron Mass walked unflinchingly Thursday from a Sherman Oaks hospital where he has endured more than five months of painful rebirth since being severely burned during last fall’s Old Topanga blaze.

His feet wrapped in bandages, his face, neck, arms and hands showing the blotchy red ravages of countless skin grafts, Mass ended a 163-day recuperation that was the longest inpatient stay in the 25-year history of the Sherman Oaks Community Hospital Burn Center.

Despite obvious pain, the 40-year-old carpenter’s brown eyes shone brightly in a sudden flash of pride and recognition that he is still alive--this dogged survivor who had finally beaten the cruel flames.

On that November morning, Mass had rushed into what was nearly ground zero of the blaze--a Topanga Canyon ranch--in an unsuccessful effort to save his friend, British screenwriter-director Duncan Gibbins, who eventually perished trying to save his cat.

Mass suffered burns on 75% of his body and spent the first eight weeks after the fire in a tortured half-sleep as doctors worked around the clock to salvage enough healthy skin to replace what had literally melted away.

But as Christmas and Easter passed, as winter turned to spring and once-charred Malibu and Topanga canyons became green and filled with wildflowers, Mass continued to heal.

On Thursday, as he moved to nearby St. Joseph Medical Center to continue his physical therapy and long road to recovery, he embodied a final closure to the tragic fire that scorched a wide swath of the Santa Monica Mountains, killing four, charring 18,000 acres and causing millions of dollars in damage.

To the applause of hospital staff, Mass padded gingerly down a tiled corridor, out into the harsh sunlight and glare of television cameras. In an adjacent parking lot--his trembling right hand held by a sister he had not seen for 12 years before the fire--he stood silently and soaked in the adulation that must have felt like some postwar victory parade.

In a weakened voice, Mass thanked his family and doctors, several of whom stood behind him, for helping him reach deep inside himself to find a resolve not to die, to not let the flames have the final say.

“I’m feeling pretty overwhelmed by all this,” he said, shooting a glance at his sister, Pat Anderson, who squeezed his hand in gentle inspiration. “Without the support of my family and friends, their being there all the time, I wouldn’t have made it. I would not have pulled through.”

Under a revealing morning sun, Mass showed the vestiges of his half-year battle. His black hair was matted, his face showed the blotches and veins that suggested his new skin was still painfully thin. Dressed in a violet printed shirt that hung out over baggy black trousers, his purplish hands shook uncontrollably.

Still sensitive about his injuries, Mass had asked that cameramen refrain from close-ups of his face, especially his burned nose and ears.

“Ron still feels sort of funny about his looks,” said his friend Peter Alexander, who owns the 10-acre ranch where Mass once worked and lived in a trailer and where Gibbins had rented a small bungalow. “His most difficult moment came a month ago, when he saw a reflection of himself in a pane of glass. He still doesn’t want to look into any mirrors.”

But Mass has come a long way from the morning of Nov. 2, when he was rushed to the burn center with what doctors now say was “about a zero chance of survival,” a patient whose feet were the only part of his body left untouched by the fire. They were later used for skin grafting.

Fighting 104-degree fevers, Mass began the first of about 35 surgeries to combine donor skin with comparatively healthy skin from his chest and upper thighs to cover the rest of his body--twice-weekly surgeries that became increasingly painful.

At first, there was more bad news than good. Mass developed an infection that caused some of the newly applied skin to slip away. “The more conscious he became,” Alexander said, “the more he dreaded those operations.”

As the skin finally started to heal, Mass began the agonizing therapy to relearn to move his wounded hands, which suffered such severe tendon damage that he needs help eating, injuries that still leave his shaky signature unrecognizable.

Throughout his recovery, Mass was haunted by images of his unsuccessful attempt to save Gibbins--bitter scenes of flames roaring around him, melting the tires on his Jeep during his escape, forcing him to run the last 500 feet to safety with his arms over his eyes.

“He remembers that day but he doesn’t like to think about it,” Alexander said. “He doesn’t like fire.”

For months, Mass has been reminded of his friendship with the good-natured Gibbins, how Mass yelled at his rescuers that Gibbins was still somewhere in the fire zone. And how the director’s last words to rescuers--”Did they save my friend?”--referred to Mass.

But he received the most helpful therapy when he awoke one day to see the faces of his long-estranged family over his bed. Anderson explained that a sister in the San Francisco area had seen a newspaper photograph of her brother covered in flames.

Despite 12 years of not knowing where Mass was living or what he was up to, the family rushed to his side. Mass recalls their presence as an ocean of calm amid his pain.

His six sisters, he said, “all started talking to me like we had never stopped talking, like the conversation had just kept going all those years. They were very supportive. They didn’t bother me with questions about what I had been doing.”

While doctors marvel at his recovery, Mass sees his survival as a chance to make up for past mistakes. And, most of all, to reunite with his family.

Anderson said her brother’s ordeal has taught her a lesson. “Don’t ever let something silly come between you and your family. Do something now to make amends.

“Don’t wait, like I did, until you almost lose them.”