Rich Frishman Photography
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Flown from a distant location, Jim Matilla is rushed to the ER from the Harborview helipad. Within an hour after his arrival, nurses clean Jim Matilla's wounds and cut away burned tissue to prevent infection. Four-year old Heather Eaton's neck, chest and shoulders were burned when she was playing with matches.<br/>During one of her twice-daily cleanings, she struggles as nurses tend to her burns. Bridging the generation gap in the burn unit, Gerald Oderkirk, 63, takes 8-month old<br/>Kenny Hutto for a ride. The two were next-door neighbors in the ICU. Moving badly burned J.C. Gift from a chair back to bed requires careful planning and teamwork.  J.C. Gift, unable to talk because of a respirator tube in his throat,<br/>scrawls a message to his parents: "My chest hurts." His mother gently strokes his foot, the only part of his body she could touch. RN Jean Otto gives J. C. Gift medication through his feeding tube. A tangle of lifelines help keep J.C. Gift alive. Surgeons graft skin over the grievous burns of J.C. Gift. During surgery, Gift lost 6 pints of blood, some of which accumulated on the operating room floor. Surgeons cover J.C. Gift's torso, terribly burned in a Halloween party prank, with skin from a cadaver. In the pre-dawn hours, nurse Shirley Moore keeps vigil over a patient. Late at night, hospital assistant Peter Uecker comforts Shirley.<br/>"Love comes in and you give it out," reflects Moore. "But pretty soon there's nothing more to give. There's not enough love left, and you're bouncing checks." The bunk room, where on-call staffers try to catch some precious sleep between crises. The on-call doctor calls for support when J.C.'s condition worsens in the middle of the night. 4-year old Heather Eaton was burned while playing with matches. She spent months recovering in the burn unit. RT: Heather celebrates her fifth birthday in the Harborview Burn Center. J.C. Gift: 10 days after being burned (left) and after 21 days and several graftings. After discovering a mirror in his bedside table (the ICU has no wall mirrors), Gerald Oderkirk gets<br/>his first look at himself since being burned in a propane explosion two weeks earlier.