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'REMEMBER WHEN MY HOUSE WENT BOOM': Faye Boroughs and her three-year-old son struggle to pick up the pieces (PHOTOS)
Most of the time, her worst memories float to the surface involuntarily.
It happens when she looks in the mirror or down at her hands and sees the scars. When she visits the doctors that will be part of her life for at least a year. When she wakes up and realizes that she’s not in her bed with her fiancé, Mike Blanchard. When she looks at their little boy, Will.
But sometimes Faye Boroughs seeks out the memories from that November morning, when gas exploded at her rented Calhoun Avenue home with such force that it blew the garage door across the driveway. She tries to remember, because amid visions of flames and suffering are the last memories she has of Mike.
“He was a very, very kind person,” said Faye, who couldn’t talk about her fiancé without breaking down. “He would cry at sad movies, and he always wanted me to send money to those kids on TV. Will is just like him.”
‘In the middle of a big blue flame’
The morning of Nov. 19 began just like any other Thursday for the family.
Faye woke up, got dressed and started getting the couple’s 2-year-old son ready for daycare. Like every other weekday morning, she and Mike were preparing to drop off Will and go to work at The Pool Doctor, the Destin-based business the couple ran together. But on this morning, the couple would not make it into work.
Mike smelled gas.
Faye said he was still in his pajamas when the two of them went to investigate the source of the smell. The trail led to the laundry room, and within moments of arriving there, the gas ignited.
“We were just standing in the middle of a big blue flame,” Faye said. “It was just so quick. It knocked Mike down, but he got right back up and asked if I was OK. I think he knew how bad he was, but at the time, he was only concerned with how bad I was. He was a big man. He didn’t cry like me.”
Faye said the blast was so intense that it blew her shirt and all of Mike’s clothes off. Immediately, Will came running in from the other end of the house. The explosion hadn’t reached him, and he was unharmed.
Upon reaching them, Will screamed, staring at his parents with wide eyes. Faye said that look was the first clue as to how badly she had been burned.
“In my mind, it was like, ‘Oh my God, get Will out of the house,’ ” Faye said. “I was afraid it was going to blow up again.”
Faye said she grabbed a blanket on the way out to cover herself and called 911. When she reached the front yard, a neighbor who had heard the explosion was walking up to the house. It was someone she knew, and she asked him to take Will to his house.
“I didn’t want him to see us like that,” Faye said. “He’ll still say, ‘Remember when the scary man came and got me?’ ”
While Faye tried to manage the nightmarish situation, Mike went to the back yard to jump in the pool. She said he felt like he was still on fire, and he didn’t know what else to do. She was in pain, too.
“After it happened, I could actually hear my ears sizzling,” said Faye, whose burns covered 40 percent of her body. “But I was freezing. It had burned me so bad that I was freezing.”
Mike was quiet as the couple waited for emergency responders. Burns covered 99 percent of his body. Only the bottoms of his feet escaped injury.
Faye said firefighters and paramedics arrived within minutes. Mike and Faye were loaded into separate ambulances and taken to the hospital. She was unconscious before they even made it off her street.
“That was the last time I saw him,” Faye said in tears.
Click here to see photos from the scene.
Waking up
Three weeks passed while Faye remained unconscious in a hospital bed, struggling to survive.
The coma robbed her of the chance to be with Mike when he turned 50 on Dec. 4, and it stopped her from seeing him take his last breath on Dec. 10.
When she finally woke up, she was disoriented and didn’t know where she was, but she did remember the accident. Still, no matter how many times she was told, she couldn’t believe that it had taken the love of her life.
“At first I thought Mike was in the room with me,” Faye said. “I would ask the nurse to send him in because I could hear him talking. I told my sister I didn’t know why he didn’t come and see me because I thought he was out of the hospital.”
Faye said it was days before her senses returned. She vividly remembers moving into another room after her condition began to improve and realizing that Mike was gone.
She still sometimes wonders why she survived rather than him. She said they were so close to each other during the explosion that they were touching, yet she was spared.
Faye said she thinks her burns weren’t as extensive because the fire didn’t burn through her jeans and bra, saving her lower half from the flames. Mike’s thin pajamas melted away instantly. But on another day, it could have been Mike that was already dressed and Faye in her pajamas.
“I really believe that God has a purpose for me, and I have to keep going,” Faye said.
Then and now
It’s been more than two months since the explosion, but Faye is still a long way from getting back to any kind of normalcy. And she’ll never get back to the life she once had.
Before the accident, the couple, who were together for five years, spent most nights watching movies. Faye said they were at Blockbuster at least three times a week. And when they could get away during the day, they loved to play golf.
“Mike’s been playing all his life,” said Faye, who still often talks about her fiancé in the present tense. “It was his passion.”
But now, Faye’s days are spent with doctors. In addition to her burn doctor, she has to see an occupational therapist three times a week because the skin grafts on her hands caused them to tighten up. She can’t use them.
She sees an ear, nose and throat doctor because the intubation tube that breathed life into her while she was in the coma caused damage to her vocal cords. She speaks in whispers.
She goes to an eye doctor because the explosion damaged her vision. She can see what’s right in front of her, but everything at a distance is blurry.
All of her medical problems make her completely dependent on her sister, Susan Wooldridge, who is caring for her at her home in Alabama. Susan also helps with everyday expenses, like the family’s health insurance and Will’s daycare, as Faye is buried in medical bills. Her insurance covered 80 percent of her hospital stay, but with bills in the hundreds of thousands of dollars and another doctor appointment every day, Faye has accumulated significant debt.
“It’s overwhelming,” Faye said. “When you see stuff like helicopter rides costing $17,000 from Destin to Pensacola, it’s unreal. The hospital in Mobile was $190,000. It worries me because I don’t know what I’m going to do yet. I can’t work.”
Mike’s oldest son is taking care of the family business while Faye recovers. Right now, all she can do is work on getting better and take care of Will, who turned 3 on New Year’s Eve.
“He thinks about it every day,” Faye said of Will. “It’s still every day that he’ll say, ‘remember when my house went boom?’ And he still says his daddy is in the hospital.”
Faye tells him his daddy is in heaven, but he isn’t old enough to understand. He wakes up from nightmares most nights.
Faye is suffering emotionally, too. On top of mounds of bills, doctor’s appointments and being unable to work, she’s dealing with the loss of her fiancé. She didn’t even get to say goodbye or go to his funeral, which she said is one of the hardest things. She sees a therapist to help deal with her post-traumatic stress, but she said she knows that she’ll never be the same.
“I can’t say that it helps because they’re not fixing anything,” Faye said. “But I have to keep going.”
How to help
To make a donation to Faye and Will, visit Suntrust Bank at 34901 Emerald Coast Pkwy. in Destin or 748 Beal Pkwy. in Fort Walton Beach and ask to make a contribution to the trust account set up in their names. The Destin Fire Rescue Foundation will be one of the first to add to the account on Feb. 13, presenting Faye with a $2,500 check.
A COLLECTION OF COVERAGE
To read more about Mike Blanchard, click here.
To read Mike's obituary, click here.
