He bounds into rooms like a colt, all legs and barely contained energy. He’s not the same shaky boy who stepped hesitantly into his Gwinnett third-grade class last fall, face encased in plastic, body wrapped tightly in a special suit.
These days, he’s playing baseball, putting a little speed on his throws. He commandeers his dad’s laptop for online games at every chance. Right now, he and his brother are fighting over ...
What are you two scrapping over, kid?
“Don’t know,” the 9-year-old said.
Alfred Real suppressed a smile.
That sassy little non-answer may provide as good a glimpse into the boy’s well-being as any.
Alfred suffered third-degree burns over 78 percent of his body last year while playing with gasoline outside his Stone Mountain home. Physicians said an adult likely wouldn’t have survived.
Alfred not only survived, but was back at Arcado Elementary School in Lilburn four months later. Back then, no one knew if the boy would make it through the school year, or how his classmates would react to his injuries.
The answer came Friday, when Alfred sat through his last class and Gwinnett Public Schools closed for the summer. Now, Alfred is ready to engage in that warm-weather rite, goofing off.
His parents, Zac and Angela Real, are ready to let him, too. He’s been tough, their middle child, but he needs a break.
“He’s so much stronger than I can be,” said his mother.
His father nodded. “He’s doing good,” Zac Real said.
Hard decision
Nearly a year ago, on June 7, Alfred’s parents, his older brother, Graham, and infant sibling, Jasper, were in the kitchen, preparing to cook brownies. Alfred was in the backyard, playing with a neighborhood boy. They had a lighter and gasoline.
They started a fire. In an October interview, Alfred recalled the next moment. “I was trying to put out the fire and the gas went sploosh!”
The fire engulfed Alfred in an instant. Instead of yelling for Alfred’s parents, his playmate ran home and alerted his mother, who called 911. A man walking his dog nearby used his cellphone to call for help, too. The boy ran back to Alfred, still burning, and pushed him in the creek.
At that moment, Zac and Angela Real stepped into the backyard to check on their son. They saw a burned little boy, stumbling from the creek.
An ambulance took Alfred to Grady Memorial Hospital in Atlanta. He stayed there nearly two weeks before heading to the Shriners Hospital for Children in Cincinnati. The facility, which specializes in burn injuries, was home for months.
Alfred didn’t have enough unharmed skin for large grafts, the traditional method of burn treatment. Instead, he underwent a series of “cultured skin” treatments. Physicians took small pieces of Alfred’s healthy skin, the size of a postage stamp, and grew them in a lab. In about a month, each piece grew to about 3 inches square. In all, he had more than a dozen operations before returning to Georgia.
Back at home, his parents faced a hard decision.
“I didn’t want him to go back to school,” said Angela Real. “I wanted to home school him.”
“He needed to go back,” his dad said.
‘Caring group’
He returned Oct. 14, arriving late to Arcado Elementary after undergoing a couple of hours of stretching to help his injured limbs remain limber. He wore a plastic mask, as well as an elasticized suit, to keep his injured skin in place. He wore gloves made of the same material that allowed only his fingertips to stick out.
He walked along shiny hallways, his mom keeping pace. When Alfred entered class, 19 faces looked up, and smiled.
Arcado Principal Penny Palmer-Young, also in class that day, knew the boy faced challenges — scholastic as well as physical. He’d missed nine weeks of school. For the rest of the academic year, teachers worked closely with Alfred on his reading and other studies, she said.
The students in his class, said Palmer-Young, took care of everything else.
“They are a very kind and caring group of students,” said Palmer-Young. “They quickly settled into a routine [after his return], and Alfred was just like everyone else.”
One classmate, Alfred recalled, snarled at any student who stared too long at the boy in the mask.
“Everybody’s been really nice to me,” Alfred said.
Alfred did well for the rest of the school year, but his parents decided he should repeat the third grade. He had just missed too many days.
A stranger calls
Shay Eskew heard about Alfred through a friend who knew the boy’s aunt. For Eskew, hearing Alfred’s story was like re-living a chapter from his own youth.
Twenty-nine years ago, when he was 8, Eskew was burned over 35 percent of his body. The Decatur boy was treated at the same hospital where physicians tended to Alfred.
He contacted the Reals, who invited him to their home.
“I felt like God put me in his life,” said Eskew, 37, who recently moved from Atlanta to Franklin, Tenn. “When I was his age, I didn’t have anyone like me to tell me that it will get better.”
Eskew, an ear burned away in the flame, his face still bearing scars, is an iron man triathlete. He made sure Alfred knew it.
“I wanted him to see that you can do anything you want.”
He had another lesson to share, too. “There are much worse things in the world to deal with than this,” said Eskew.
Alfred has much to deal with now, and in the future. Cultured skin, for several years after its application, is tender, so he cannot get too rowdy. Also, his replacement skin lacks sweat glands and blood vessels, which naturally growing skin produces. Sometimes, Alfred must avoid Georgia’s summer heat.
He no longer needs his gloves, but has to keep wearing his mask, as well as the skin-tight suit, for at least several more months.
As he grows, he’ll need to undergo operations that keep his joints functioning normally. He faces additional cosmetic procedures, too.
Despite those challenges, officials at the Shriners hospital are pleased with Alfred’s recovery. They credit his progress to Alfred’s youth and attitude, community support and a family that loves him.
“He has done just tremendously,” hospital spokeswoman Louise Hoelker said.
The rest of his family is healing too. They’re in therapy learning about the emotional impact serious injury has — not just on Alfred, but on everyone close to him.
“Your perspective on what’s important totally changes,” said Angela Real. “We’ve decided to have a better marriage.”
Zac Real, who recently got laid off as a sales representative for party-good items, is focused on his spouse and sons. “Right now,” he said, “all I’m good for is a part-time job.”
Alfred, meantime, is working on his fastball.
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