Sig Christenson
Express-News Military Writer

The walk past the Center for the Intrepid and its daylong construction din is a new ritual for Mel Gibbons that captures all the angst of his being.

Eager to reach Brooke Army Medical Center's intensive care burn unit, where his son improbably clings to life, he exhorts laborers and craftsmen at the half-finished rehabilitation center for wounded troops to work faster.

"Don't carry that thing!" he cries. "Get a forklift!"

Gibbons is in a hurry to see the center open so his son can begin rehabilitation. His optimism is tinged with desperation, for he knows the odds of recovery are slim.

Badly burned over 90 percent of his body when a roadside bomb detonated under his armored personnel carrier, Army Pfc. Devon Gibbons, 19, of Port Orchard, Wash., has lost both legs and his right arm. His bowels lie exposed. His skin, sliced open by surgeons, cannot be sewed shut until two open intestinal wounds heal.

Devon's the "miracle boy" on the burn ward. Doctors never have encountered a soldier with such burns, coupled with multiple amputations, and won't give a prognosis.

They've grafted Post-it note-size patches of skin over half his body in nine weeks but can't move fast enough; the longer his organs lie exposed, the greater the risk of failure. Devon's also building up resistance to the antibiotics that have kept him alive this long.

This Father's Day is unlike any other for the elder Gibbons, his wife, Bonnie, and their six sons. That also can be said for the families of 18,490 U.S. troops wounded in Iraq. Though insurgent violence may have taken parts of their sons' bodies that can never be regained, the families have been handed something in return — a renewed appreciation of life.

"They don't even call him critical," said Mel Gibbons, still buoyant after last week's big victory — the removal of a ventilator tube, his son's first words and a dramatic improvement in his health. "They don't have a category for it. They just call it Devoncare."

This is the routine in their new lives. A few days ago, Ryan Gibbons, 31, of Linden, Utah, watched as his brother lost a liter of blood. Devon's temperature often hovers at 101 and 102, his pulse rate at 125. It's like he's running a marathon with no end, and there are moments when he falters.

When that happens, as it has twice in the past nine weeks since his arrival at BAMC, Mel Gibbons' cell phone will ring. He jumps out of bed at Fort Sam Houston's Fisher House and dashes to his car, shaving precious moments off the five-minute walk from there to BAMC.

It happened once in the wee hours when Devon awoke with flashbacks of the April 11 attack. Unlike the more fortunate victims of this war, he remembers the fire after a remote-controlled improvised explosive device went off.

"The whole Bradley lifted up and smoke came through the floor," Pfc. Dean Bright told the News-Review of Roseburg, Ore., in an online interview.

The heavily armored Bradley vehicle, hit by a 600-pound bomb in Iraq's volatile Sunni Triangle, was engulfed in flames. Bright ran through a hail of enemy gunfire, kicked open a door and saw Devon hanging upside down, his clothes burned off. Three men were dead. Another suffered third-degree burns to his legs.

UH-60 Black Hawk medical evacuation choppers arrived after reinforcements overwhelmed the insurgents. They whisked Devon to hospitals in Baghdad and Balad before a flight to Germany, where doctors removed his legs at the knees and amputated his right arm below the elbow. There was one other little miracle beyond simply being alive: Though his bottom two vertebrae were fractured, there was no spinal damage.

At BAMC, Devon has been hooked to as many as 14 plastic tubes. He's heavily medicated, but regained consciousness last week. Two nurses hover over him during their 12-hour shifts. The Gibbons praise them as lifesavers that have become like family, even a team.

If often grim, this scene has its good moments: Two weeks into Devon's stay, during Fiesta, his bowels moved, sparking a celebration that is now called "Poop Fiesta."

"I've never cried before over someone having a bowel movement," Mel said.

It's an emotional roller coaster. Today is good, but tomorrow Devon can catch an infection. Once, any of the nine or 10 antibiotics on hand would work, but now it's only four. A temperature of 102 is great, but at 104 or 105 it threatens to impede the growth of his skin grafts. Worse yet is the fever that can't be broken, triggering infections in his organs.

That would be fatal.

Mel, 57, a one-time Army helicopter mechanic who spent two years in Vietnam, walks to the burn ward at 5 a.m. and stays until 7, when nurses begin the delicate and painful process of cleaning Devon's wounds. He returns after that's done, trading off with Bonnie and their kids until 10:30 at night.

"I'm not away from him very much because I can see that when we're there he rests easier, and he just has that look in his eye, you know that he's more peaceful," Mel said.

"His body needs to focus on his body healing, and you know how if you're not worried about other things your body can be more effective doing that. And so that's just how we can help, is just by him feeling more comfortable because sometimes he's a scared guy with what's going on. But if we're by his side there, that takes that fear away from him, and it lets his body work that anxiousness away so he can concentrate."

They greet each day Devon is alive as another miracle. But the anxiousness of their son is like a virus, pushing the initial euphoria far from mind. Mel gets fidgety if he and Bonnie go to dinner and are away from the burn unit for more than a couple hours. They want to be there for him, but also harbor the fear of not being there if he should suddenly die.

It's been like that since Devon's third week at BAMC. After holding his own following his arrival from Germany, he began to lose ground. Fearing Devon was giving up, his father leaned toward him and began to urge him to press on, as he does with Intrepid's construction crew.

"I said, 'Devon, if you don't make it, they win,'" Mel recalled. "'If you make it, then the insurgents lose.'"

Devon managed to nod his head. His father wept, careful to keep the tears from falling on his son's bandages — a potential source of infection.

This is the new guerrilla war, fought in the quiet, chilled, sterile surroundings of BAMC's intensive care burn unit, far from broiling Iraq and its endless cycle of violent death.

Having never forgotten Vietnam and the code of soldiers at war, Mel might as well be a battle buddy this Father's Day, not a dad, telling his son to keep fighting, that help is coming soon.

But he is a dad, scared to death for his boy, praying he'll cheat death and trying to put on his game face as he walks from Fisher House to the burn unit, passing the Intrepid Center and clinging to his dream.

"When I go in, I said, 'Devon, you're winning.' He gives me a headshake and a smile."