A second walk

Shad Fields saw the smoke as he was driving south on Meridian Street in Redkey.
As he got closer, he realized it was coming from the home of his friend, Mitch Clay.
Looking around, he located Mitch standing across the street, watching the flames.
“As I walked up to him … the closer I got, he was burnt from head to toe,” said Fields, who tried to reassure his friend that he would be OK while also getting the attention of the emergency personnel who had arrived on scene.
Mitch was led to an ambulance, where he lay down on a gurney.
Paramedics immediately sedated him.
He didn’t wake up again for 17 days.
••••••••••
It was a mild summer day Aug. 22, with temperatures in the mid-50s at sunrise.
Mitch planned to mow the front lawn at his 226 S. Meridian St. home.
He checked the gas tank, which rarely needs refilling because the yard is relatively small, and realized it was low on gas. So about 9:30 a.m., he made the short trip to Pak-A-Sak, filled a gas can and returned.
With the mower running, he filled the tank. It overflowed.
The gasoline hit a spark plug, sending up a burst of flames. Mitch tried to kick the gas can out the door, hoping to save the items inside from further damage.
“And it was just that fast I was in the middle of an inferno,” he said.
“I remember initially being on fire, and I was trying to put myself out and get my shirt off,” Mitch continued. “And my shirt just melted in my hands.”
As his shirt disappeared, so did any worry for his own well-being. His attention turned to his sons, 7-year-old Gavin and 5-year-old Grant, who were in the house.
When he entered, the boys came running toward him.
“I just didn’t even see it,” said Gavin of the fire. “I just ran. The only thing I seen and I heard was dad yelling, ’Help.’ I seen the reflection of flames on the door, like when you light a lighter or something, and I got Grant and ran out.”
Mitch guided them outside, and then followed, making his way across the street, where Fields eventually found him.
“My life really didn’t matter then. It was just to get my boys out,” said Mitch. “They got out without any injuries. My adrenaline kicked in and that was just my instinct was to save them boys, to get my babies out.”
••••••••••
At the time of the fire, Mitch’s girlfriend and the boys’ mother, Trisha Hale, was at work at Sport Clips in Muncie. His mother, Sharon Clay, was at home in Dunkirk.
Sharon got a call from a friend in Redkey and hurried over, but by the time she got there her son was already in the ambulance. The first time she saw him was at Fort Wayne’s St. Joseph Hospital, where he had been flown by medical helicopter after being transported by ambulance to Jay County Hospital.
He had been placed in a coma because the pain would have been too much to bear.
“When we went into the emergency room” — Sharon paused, trying to fight back tears, then continued, voice wavering — “he was swelled up. And skin hanging everywhere. Big old blisters. His legs were black.”
At that point, the doctors didn’t know if they’d be able to save his life. He was in critical condition, having suffered second- and third-degree burns over 26 percent of his body.
Mitch had needed a tracheotomy at the scene of the fire to allow him to breath. His throat was swelling shut.
His face was swollen also, to about twice its normal size. A skin graft, taken from his thigh, covered the back of his lower left leg, where about an inch of his Achilles’ tendon had been exposed.
Those first two days were touch-and-go. At one point, there was concern that Mitch’s left leg might need to be amputated below the knee because swelling had cut off circulation. But he made it through.
Each day after that, doctors and nurses attended to him. They moved his arms and legs, giving the muscles a little activity. They cleaned his wounds and changed his bandages.
The healing began.
“When nobody was in there, I would get up and I would talk to him, just get in his ear and talk to him,” said Sharon. “Every day I could see a change in him. Every day.
“Every day I went, I could see (the swelling) slowly going back down to where he got to looking like Mitch again.”
Sharon became a regular at the hospital. On days that she wasn’t going to be there in the morning, she’d call to check on how her son had fared overnight.
Finally, on Sept. 11, she got a pleasant surprise from the nurse.
“She says, ‘Well, he did just fine overnight,’” Sharon said. “‘Do you want to talk to him?’”
She spoke to her son and then hurried to Fort Wayne. When she got to the door of Mitch’s hospital room, he first smiled at her, then winked.
“I said, ‘Well, I got my wish,” she said. ‘I saw that beautiful smile again.’”
With their father awake, Gavin and Grant came to visit too.
“I was just happy that he was OK and alive,” said Gavin.
••••••••••
Though he was out of the coma, Mitch’s recovery was far from over.
It was difficult mentally for the man who woke up from three weeks of darkness.
“It was really emotional,” he said, noting happiness about being alive and seeing his children — he also has a daughter, Dezi, a 2001 Jay County High School graduate — along with sadness about what had been lost in the fire. “I cried for like three days straight.”
His burns were not yet healed. And he had to work to regain the strength he had lost during three weeks of inactivity.
“I remember waking up and all I could do was little crunches,” said Mitch. “I couldn’t lift my arms. I couldn’t lift my legs.”
He started working out in bed, slowly getting stronger. It took 15 days for him just to be able to walk short distances and shower without assistance.
It seemed like a long time for a guy who works 12- to 14-hour days driving a dump truck and likes to spend free time riding his 2008 Harley Davidson Street Glide motorcycle. But the medical staff was amazed by the speed of his recovery.
“It was just my will power and my determination. ’Cause I knew I had to be at this level before they would release me,” Mitch said. “And that is one of the worst feelings in the world, is to have a clear mind and not be able to control nothing. It was awful.”
He left the hospital Sept. 27, just over a month after his arrival.
••••••••••
When Mitch made it back to the Spencer Street home he, Trisha and the boys now share — it’s one of his three properties, along with a two-apartment house and the fire-damaged home on Meridian Street — he had full range of motion in his limbs. But he was still weak. Making the two steps up into the living room nearly drained him.
He kept working, and his progress continued, day by day.  He went back to work during the first week of November.
Mitch’s legs are still red down to the ankle. He wears a compression sock on the left, which got the worst of the burns. His face is red and pitted in some areas.
But he suffered no long-term damage.
“My plastic surgeon said two years from know you won’t even be able to tell I got burned,” said Mitch. “For being totally on fire like that, I mean, I just, it’s been a blessing. I’ve been thankful through it all, because it could have very easily gone a different route.”
He credits his recovery to God, saying he couldn’t have fought back by himself, and to all of those who helped him from the time he escaped his burning garage to when he left the hospital. He feels there must be a reason he’s gotten “a second walk on the earth.”
That realization, knowing that he was so close to death, has given him a different view of life.
“It makes you cautious, and grateful for a lot of things you take for granted on a daily basis,” Mitch said. “I’m just thankful, thankful to be able to be here with my family and my kids.
“You don’t realize in the blink of an eye how fast your life can change.”