Incarnations of Burned Children

Incarnations of Burned Children simply made me shake. David Foster told the disturbing story of an accident gone horribly wrong. A father heard his baby screaming from inside the house, so he dropped everything and raced home. He came through the door to find his wife crying hysterically, and his baby scorched by a pot of boiling water. Through the choas, he reacted with a clear head, and tried to cool his baby down as best he could. Everything seemed alright but their child was still screaming. They forgot about the diaper; it was still burning. Because of this, the baby did not even make it to the hospital.
David Foster did a great job of putting the reader right into the scene. Once the father entered the house, I personally started to freak out. The picture was so vivd in my mind. The baby's pain was so real. With Foster's descriptive style, I could almost hear the baby's high pitched screams for help. "...a high pure shining sound that could stop his heart and his bitty lips and gums now tinged with the light blue of a low flame." The sight and sound of the infant was painfully clear. When I read that line, I thought of the exercise we did in class where we had to describe something in an uncharacteristic way. The way David Foster described the pain of the child was no doubt, unique. I could hear that "pure shining" sound, and I could see the blue tint of the baby's lips and gums.
My emotions in the story were like a roller coaster. I felt everything that the dad was feeling. The first time he heard screaming, i panicked. When he got into the house and assessed the situation, I felt scared. After the baby was out of the water, I started to get angry. How could something like this accidently happen? Was the wife not paying attention to the boiling pot? What about her child? Last, when the parents discovered the diaper, I felt their hopelessness. After everything the parents did to save their child, it still screamed in pain. "If you've never wept and want to, have a child." The connection David Foster was able to create between the parents and baby was very strong and very real. When the baby didn't make it, I definitely sympathized with the parents.