A Youth With the Will to Survive, No Matter What

In a couple of weeks, Chris James will get a mask.

“It looks a little like a hockey goalie’s,” says his doctor, Peter H. Grossman.

But this mask is soft, not hard.

It will shield the scorched flesh on Christopher’s face, but mainly it will help tighten the new skin.

Outside the burn unit, Chris, 17, is wearing a smile on that disfigured face Tuesday as he finally gets to go home.

“How long will he have to wear the mask?” I ask his doctor.

“Six months to a year.”

“Even while he sleeps?”

The doctor nods.

He says, “Twenty-two, maybe 23 hours a day.”

This means Chris must wear the mask when he eventually goes back to school.

The last time Chris went to school, he never came home.

*

At the burn center, adjoining Sherman Oaks Hospital, a man acting on Chris James’ behalf says, “OK, here are the ground rules: Chris asks that there be no questions about the accident, about his teachers or about whether he is going to sue the school.”

He just wants to go home.

Five weeks after a Hart High School physics class experiment literally blew up in his face, Chris steps out into the sunlight. He is wearing a baseball cap and a loose-fitting jacket and pants. More than 35% of his body has been seriously burned.

“Hi. I’m Chris James,” he says cheerfully, even though every word and movement make him wince.

He thanks everyone at the hospital for everything they have done. Then he says hello to all his friends at school.

“Did their encouragement help?” someone asks.

“Yeah,” answers Chris, somehow finding the strength to crack a joke. “I didn’t think they liked me.”

Chemistry classes are the ones that usually inspire jokes about laboratory experiments blowing up. Someday maybe Chris will be able to find some humor about that himself.

It was just a typical Wednesday and a typical school day in Newhall, or so it seemed Nov. 25 when a classroom accident nearly cost Chris his life.

His physics class at Hart had actually gone outdoors, to the football field. An experiment was conducted in which a couple of cans, soldered together, were used to shoot out tennis balls, like a toy cannon. Methanol--sometimes referred to as wood alcohol--was used with the launcher.

It exploded.

Chris, a senior, was rushed to intensive care. He ended up undergoing surgery seven times. He had countless skin grafts. Cadaver skin was used to replace his own. He required 38 units of blood. His respiration valve was closed and it was necessary to breathe through a tube. Plastic surgeons worked on him; psychologists worked with him.

“There was a period of time in the last 36 days,” Dr. Grossman says, “when I was not sure Chris was going to survive.

“I wasn’t sure, but Chris was.”

Doctors had to worry not only about the physical trauma, but the psychological trauma. Yet according to Grossman, “Chris was able to comfort those who were here to comfort him.”

His hands and upper torso were badly burned, but his willpower remained strong. It might have saved him. More than once, Chris’ condition became so weak that doctors were unsure he would live through the night.

By the holidays, George James says of his son, Chris was already feeling “antsy” and eager to return home to his neighborhood of Stevenson Ranch.

Curling an arm around his wife Carolyn’s shoulder, he stands waiting Tuesday to take their boy home from the hospital.

Chris’ mother says, “This is better than taking him home the first time.”

*

A parent endures all kinds of panic about sending a kid off to school. There are so many dangers out there.

The last thing one expects is that the danger would turn out to be a class science experiment.

Watching his son step outdoors, to a waiting limo and cake and clapping friends and doctors, George James aims a camera and snaps pictures.

“Did Chris get to have Christmas?” I ask.

“Not yet,” he says, “but we’re going to have it in a day or two.”

“What do you get a boy who’s been through something like this?”

A boy who will wear a mask for much of the next year.

“Well,” Chris’ father says, “he usually gives us a wish list that asks for a little too much. But this time, I’ve got a feeling he’s going to get most of what he wants.”

Mike Downey’s column appears Sundays, Wednesdays and Fridays. Write to him at Times Mirror Square, Los Angeles 90053. E-mail: mike.downey@latimes.com

* GOING HOME: Chris James meets well-wishers. B1