Steve Mellon, Post-Gazette
	Crystal Hauser and sons J.J., left, and Lee, are together at Western Pennsylvania Hospital's Neonatal Intensive Care Unit, nearly two months after the fire destroyed their home. Crystal saved herself and J.J. from the flames although both suffered extensive injuries. The baby was born six days later.

By Anita Srikameswaran
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

It's just a house.

Crystal Hauser can say that and mean it now, after spending 53 days -- she was counting -- in Western Pennsylvania Hospital's burn unit. She had five operations, re-learned how to walk and grappled with unrelenting pain.

	Click image above to a multimedia report documenting Crystal Hauser's journey through fire and pain to recovery and a return home with her two children.

She couldn't prevent her trailer home from burning down. She and her husband, John Hauser, had bought the place -- in Bayard, W.Va., in the eastern panhandle -- on the first of the year and were days away from getting it insured.

But 22-year-old Crystal saved what was most important: herself -- nearly seven months pregnant -- and her 3-year-old son, J.J.

"What am I getting for Mother's Day?" she teased her husband last week. John smiled, but offered no hints.

It was Saturday, Feb. 24, around 2 p.m. Crystal had been having off-and-on contractions, and her doctor wanted her to take it easy. A friend had just left and it was time for her and J.J. to take a nap.

She lay down with him in the bed she shared with her husband, but soon had to get up to use the bathroom. Not wanting to disturb the boy, she decided to finish her nap on the living room couch, which was near the bedroom door so she could still watch out for him.

Lying down, Crystal closed her eyes in a sleepy blink. What she saw when she reopened them would haunt her. The entire ceiling burned orange.

She jumped up and ran for the bedroom. Her son was on the bed, engulfed in flames. He sat up when he saw her, and cried, "Mommy, help me!" Crystal reached into the inferno and pulled him close to her body. He was so hot a pillow had melted to his legs.

Crystal headed back to the living room, toward the front door. Behind her, the bedroom collapsed, roof first, and she tripped on something, falling to the floor. Ceiling insulation landed on the exposed skin of her back. She was wearing only a sports bra with her pajama pants.

Days seemed to pass as she navigated the 15-foot walk to the door.

Somehow, she got there without letting go of J.J. But despite her frantic yanks, she couldn't get the door open. (She had a habit of locking both front and storm doors.)

Crystal couldn't grip the handle. She could see skin melting, peeling off her arms. But tenacity and terror paid off. The front door finally popped open, and she began struggling with the storm door.

If she could at least bust out the glass portion, she figured, she could throw J.J. out the window. All she could think was, I have to get him out. She threw her weight against the door and it finally gave.

Once outside, Crystal stuck J.J. in a snowbank. He was smoking. She plunged her head into the snow to extinguish the insulation smoldering in her hair.

Then she made her way to a neighbor's house across the yard, almost dragging the toddler because her arms were too burned to pick him up. No one was home.

She sat on the step and yelled for help. Soon, another neighbor came to her aid. He took Crystal and J.J. to his house and called emergency services.

Perhaps five minutes had passed since a dozing Crystal had opened her eyes and seen orange. Her courage got her and her children out of the trailer alive. But until her husband arrived, she didn't feel safe.

A fire in Bayard
About the same time that his wife was winning her fight to survive, John, 25, was getting ready to head home from his job as a coal truck driver. He planned to take J.J. four-wheeling. (J.J. stands for John Junior although the boy's proper name is John Edgar Eugene Hauser.)

John was going to meet with a lawyer in a couple of days to square away the deed, taxes and home insurance on the trailer. The plan was to pay off the property and start building a larger home, ultimately renting the trailer for extra income.

In a week or so, he would start training as a volunteer with the local fire department. A co-worker who was also a firefighter shouted at him in the parking lot to turn on his scanner.

The radio traffic was hitting far too close to home.

Relaxing in his recliner in nearby Oakland, Md., John's father, "Big John" Hauser had heard it, too: A fire in Bayard. On John's street. His son phoned to say he was racing home.

Not two minutes after that, John called again. "My God, Dad. It's J.J. and Crystal and it's bad."

John found his wife and son, both conscious, at the neighbor's house. Crystal told him how sorry she was that they had lost everything.

"I don't care," he told her. "All that stuff can be replaced. It don't matter to me."

At the time, John was most worried for his frightened son, who kept crying, "J.J. got burnt." The neighbor had cut the pillow away from the boy's legs. Firefighters had arrived, but the medical rescue squad was taking too long. Confusion about where to direct emergency calls isn't unusual in that region, a stone's throw from the West Virginia-Maryland border.

A fireman with whom John had gone to high school drove the family halfway to meet the ambulance. Doctors at Garrett County Memorial Hospital advised sending J.J. by medical helicopter to West Penn in Pittsburgh. Like John, they thought the boy was injured more seriously than his mom.

Crystal, accompanied by John, followed in an ambulance, a 2¹/₂ hour journey. Her burned clothes had adhered to her body, making it hard to assess how much damage was done. The pain soon had her screaming.

The doctors get to work
After getting a good look at mother and child, the experts at West Penn saw the situation very differently.

Crystal had third-degree burns over nearly half her body, primarily on her back and arms. Dr. I. William Goldfarb, medical director of the hospital's burn center, described the burns as "life-threatening."

All those wounds needed skin grafting, in which the damaged tissue is excised and the surface covered with layers of healthy skin carefully shaved off from elsewhere on the body. Those donor sites are then the equivalent of second-degree burns, the doctor said.

J.J. had burns from his right knee to his hip, on his arms and his elbows, and in spots on his scalp. All told, they covered about a fifth of his body, and about 10 percent of them, including those on his right shoulder, his hands and his left foot, needed skin grafts.

"Burn survival is based on two things: the age of the patient and the percent burn," Dr. Goldfarb said. The older you are and the more you're burned, the greater the chance of dying.

And there was Crystal's pregnancy to consider. The baby seemed to be doing fine, but the mom would need several surgeries and medications.

With the clock ticking, a team of experts that included burn experts Drs. Goldfarb and Ariel Aballay, high-risk obstetrics specialists Drs. Mark Caine and Roseann Covatto, and director of pediatrics Dr. Alan Lantzy talked over how to handle the complexities.

This was a situation they might not see again for a decade. Countries such as China and India, where kerosene stoves are common kitchen tools, have more experience with treating extensive burns in pregnant patients, Dr. Goldfarb said. The medical team closely examined the case reports.

The neonatologists said Crystal needed doses of steroids to speed lung development in the baby. The drugs aren't typically used in burn patients because they can suppress the immune system when it's needed to fend off infection of the raw wounds.

Burn surgeons then would do the skin grafts on Crystal's arms, before the Cesarean section was performed. After the baby was delivered, they could work on Crystal's back.

Because of concerns that surgery or stress would trigger labor, "we had to be equipped to deliver this child in three places: the burn unit, the operating room and in the obstetrical unit," Dr. Goldfarb said.

Crystal did not have burns on her abdomen, prompting the doctor to say, "Thank God. It could have changed the plan. It would have certainly complicated things."

On March 2, six days after the fire, Crystal had the skin graft procedures on her arms. Soon after, she had contraction and the baby's heart rate began to slow. The doctors advised John that the delivery couldn't wait any longer.

Later that day, Lee Hauser entered the world, more than 10 weeks before his May 15 due date. He weighed 2 pounds, 13 ounces.

Doctors stopped Crystal from welcoming her new son right away because her burn wounds were "loaded with bacteria," Dr. Goldfarb said.

The restriction upset Crystal.

On the second day of Lee's life, hospital staff meticulously covered all her wounds with bandages and took her to the neonatal intensive care unit. Crystal got to see, but not touch, her baby for five minutes.

The hospital's photography department stepped in. Every day, staffers took pictures of Lee to show to Crystal. Within a week, a video feed was set up so she could watch him in his bassinet from her hospital bed.

But for the young mother it wasn't nearly enough. She wanted to hold and feed Lee, breathe in his new baby smell, and whisper to him, "I'm glad you're safe." She wanted to tell him, "I love you."

Back to Pappy's house
On March 11, the day before the birthday of his grandfather Big John, or "Pappy," J.J. was discharged. He'd had two operations and was tentative at first about putting his tender feet on the ground. The best therapy for him had turned out to be riding a tricycle in the hallways of the hospital, and he soon was strong enough to run, climb and rough-house like any other 3-year-old.

He went home to his grandparents' house, which is where his parents and baby brother would go, too, when everyone got out of the hospital. J.J. lived there as a baby for several months while his parents cared for and said goodbye to his half-sister, Savannaha, who was born with spinal muscular atrophy. She was 2 years, 2 months, 12 days and 2 hours old, Crystal said, when she died May 30, 2004.

Big John took on the necessary but grim task of bathing the little boy and changing his dressings. "Pray Jesus for me," J.J. asked as he stepped into the tub. Soon, he'd be screaming.

His grandfather shook through the ordeal. The burns that weren't grafted seem to hurt the most. At first it took 90 minutes to bathe the boy. Soon, Big John had it down to 45.

Praying seemed to calm the boy and, with time and healing, bathing no longer was torture.

Bedtime was yet another challenge. Big John never let his own children crawl in with him and his wife. But J.J. didn't want to sleep in the room his grandparents made up for him because he'd imagine the bed was on fire. He'd briefly fall asleep on the couch watching cartoons on the television, but he'd soon wake, yelling for his Pappy.

So Big John broke his own rule. J.J. slept with his grandparents, clutching his Pappy's arm close against his chest and reaching over to touch Grandma.

When J.J. was in the hospital, the boy told his grandfather that a Superman angel, with great big muscles and big wings, and Mommy pulled him out of the fire. The older man has a theory that his wife's father, a pastor who died two weeks before the fire, asked that the angel to be sent to help.

Not that Big John doesn't pay credit to his son's strength and support, nor does he hold back his praise for his daughter-in-law. When people asked him how to help, he told them that his grandsons would be all right.

"Please pray for Crystal," Big John would say. "She's such a hero."

Mom struggles to heal
By mid-March, with her older son already discharged, Crystal no longer was having nightmares about the trailer fire.

That's because she was prescribed sleeping pills so she could rest. Heavy-duty painkillers couldn't completely block the excruciating pain of daily baths and dressing changes. Skin from her thighs was transferred to her burned arms and back, so her entire body was sore.

By early April, Crystal was on the mend, and she was as clear as her name about what she wanted: to go home.

She developed blood clots in her left leg and was put on a blood thinner. But she needed less pain medication, could get in and out of bed and to the toilet by herself, and, although it was difficult, she could manage stairs. One arm at a time, she had surgery to release tight, scarred skin that kept them from extending completely.

Burn patients, particularly women, sometimes have difficulty coming to terms with their changed appearance.

Early on, John wouldn't give Crystal a mirror, despite her pleas. Her eyes and face were swollen and he didn't want to upset her. After another relative let her have a look a herself, she told him: "You're not going to love me no more."

"I didn't marry you for your looks, I married you for your money," John teased, making her laugh.

Along with her children, Crystal counts her husband among her blessings. She considers herself lucky because John stuck by her, and thinks a lot of people wouldn't have done that. She would have liked for her, J.J. and Lee to go home together, but feared "bombarding" him with a recovering toddler, a new baby and, as she put it, "a broken wife."

With each day that went by, Crystal got better. The doctors didn't expect her, or her sons, to heal so quickly.

Crystal got to hold Lee for the first time on March 30. The experience was amazing but scary, too, because he was so tiny and seemed so fragile. On April 6, her 22nd birthday, she got the "best present ever" when she was able to not only hold but also feed Lee.

Around that same time, John had to return to his job, which provided health insurance coverage for most but not all of his wife's and children's care. On April 17, Crystal left the hospital, too, sad that Lee wasn't quite ready to go, but happy and relieved to go home.

The youngest Hauser made the trip to his grandparents' on May 2, in a hospital-provided brand new car seat made especially for preemies.

Home again
Crystal is most unhappy with her newly short hair. It had been long enough to touch the middle of her back, but the fire melted it into a ball, so it had to be cut off. The burns on her face bother her, too, but the injuries on her arms and back don't, she said.

Her goals remain the same. She is going to finish her high school equivalency program, attend community college, and find work in a doctor's office. She was on the verge of completing the first step of that plan when `the fire destroyed her last paper, already in an envelope to be sent to the school for grading.

In the worst of her pain and recovery, Crystal had no desire to go back to see what was left of the family home. But as she healed and grew stronger, she changed her mind. She couldn't explain why, but she began to want to see how bad it really was.

She visited the charred husk of her house on the same day she was discharged from the hospital, after she got her hair done at a salon in the local Wal-Mart. She stood on still-shaky legs near the truck while John stepped into what had been their living room, checking as he always did for anything worth saving.

When she got cold, her husband scooped her up and put her back in the truck's passenger seat, and then resumed his quest.

"It's just a house," Crystal said as she watched him, worried that he would fall through weakened floorboards. "Just a house, nothing important in there."

The metal skeleton of their nearly new four-wheeler. The charred, flipped-over end table. The blackened dishwasher. "The only reason I moved up here was for the dishwasher," she joked. In truth, she loved the pretty setting and the "sweetest people in the world" who would "bend over backwards for you."

She can't quite imagine being at home there again. "Definitely not in another trailer," she said. But then she adds, "Maybe I'd live up here. I don't know. It'll come over time, I guess."

Almost three weeks later, the family is living together at Big John's place. John works 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. shifts and intends to begin firefighter training the next time the classes are offered, and perhaps in six to 12 months if Crystal is up to taking care of the children, they will leave for a house of their own.

"I just want everything back to normal," she said.

For now, Crystal goes to outpatient physiotherapy as often as possible because her arms are still too tight to extend completely. But she can touch her nose and her hair, and feed herself and the baby. Every morning, her best friend helps take care of the healing wound on her back.

If she can't raise her hands above her head by June 1, Crystal might have to go back to the operating room. "That's what I'm worried about," she said. "I don't want to go through another surgery."

J.J. will need more operations as he gets bigger because the grafts won't grow with him. For all but a half-hour a day, he must wear under his clothes a tailor-made pressure garment intended to limit scarring.

One outfit is pinky beige, decorated with Larry the Cucumber from "Veggie Tales." Another is dark blue -- his choice -- and his mother thinks he looks like a Smurf in it. Still, as Crystal put it, "Whatever color he wants it, as long as he'll wear it." She will be getting suits, too.

J.J. gets scared when he hears a fire alarm or smells smoke, even from a chimney. He used to tell people his house was on fire before he saw what was left of the trailer. Now he says it burned down. Sometimes he talks to the Superman angel in his sleep, his grandfather said.

J.J. was initially reluctant to get close to his mom, much to her dismay. "He'd tell her he loved her, but he was on the other side of the room," John said. "He wouldn't kiss her or anything. It's like I told her, he was scared to death he was going to hurt her."

When John goes back to the trailer, he always takes a good look around. He searched without success for Crystal's schoolwork, but he did unearth her undamaged driver's license. He found a few prized gold wrenches that were awarded to his grandfather.

And to Crystal's joy, he recovered irreplaceable pictures of daughter Savannaha and plaster casts of her hands and feet.

Last week, John gave her a laptop computer for Mother's Day, and planned to take her to lunch today.

But for Crystal, the most precious gift might be sitting beside John and watching J.J. gently kiss Lee, who is cradled in their father's arms, before he scrambles back onto her lap and tells her, "I love you, Mommy."

"If I had to, I'd do it all over again," Crystal said. "In a heartbeat."