Smiling, Michael Benjamin hollered a resounding, if a little breathless, “almost there!” as Maywood’s Loyola University Medical Center crept into view. Less than a block to go.
His running partners heeded the encouragement.
To Benjamin’s left and right, his 4-year-old sons jogged in tow, each tugging a fistful of his black nylon long sleeve. And at Benjamin’s shoulders, the twins’ 1-year-old brother bobbed along at piggyback, keeping pace in his dad’s scarred and steady hands.
“Almost there,” Benjamin repeated.
The 32-year-old had made the trek before. The first time was four years ago. Only then, his sons didn’t tug. He didn’t shout.
No, that time, the sirens blared.
On Sept. 8, 2021, Benjamin was gravely burned in a fire at his Evanston home, an accident that put him in a coma for months and had his family saying goodbye. Fighting for a full recovery every day since, Benjamin commemorated his progress last week — the fourth anniversary of the fire — by retracing the route the ambulance took to get him to the hospital. Last week, though, he ran the route.
All 19.8 miles.
“I’m lucky I’m alive,” Benjamin told the Tribune recently. “(And), I think it’s not specifically today. It’s always. … I’ll just look and think to myself, I’m really glad I’m here.”
Benjamin, born and raised in Rogers Park, moved to an apartment in Evanston with his wife, Rivka, in 2018. They met through mutual friends and within 10 months they were married.
Four years ago, the couple was on their patio planning to enjoy a night sitting around their tabletop firepit. Their twin sons, 5-months-old at the time, were inside sleeping. They’d only had the fire pit a few weeks, which they got because it reminded them of when they traveled the country in a van together and spent most of their nights huddled around a campfire. Unlike a campfire, though, their tabletop firepit was designed to hold fires by burning liquid alcohol.
After lighting the pit and sitting awhile, Rivka popped indoors, while Benjamin went to refill the pit because the fire had gone out.
Next thing Benjamin knew, there was an explosion.
“It shattered all the windows,” he said.
And Benjamin — was on fire.
“I remember … just starting to scream for help,” he said.
The Evanston Fire Department was dispatched to the couple’s apartment just after 10 p.m., according to deputy fire chief, William Muno. In all, 24 fire personnel responded. When the first responding fire company arrived, the blaze had been put out by a neighbor with an extinguisher, Muno said. Benjamin, though, had burns to his body.
Benjamin doesn’t remember getting into the ambulance, he said. But he does recall the pain setting in and begging the paramedics to put him to sleep.
He didn’t wake up again for more than two months.
The fire was born out of a hazard called “flame jetting,” according to Benjamin. Flame jetting can occur when refilling alcohol fire pits if any flame is present, including alcohol flames, which can be invisible, according to the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission. A small flame can ignite alcohol as it is poured, causing an explosion that propels flames and burning liquid, per the CPSC.
In mid-December, the CPSC issued a product safety warning urging consumers not to buy and sellers not to sell firepits meant to burn pooled alcohol or other liquid fuel because of the danger they posed.
Benjamin was ultimately brought into the burn intensive care unit at Loyola University Medical Center. Those first few hours felt like a nightmare, Rivka said. Still, at first, she was cautiously optimistic.
“I was so terrified but I was like, ‘OK. It’s going to be OK,’” she said. “There are things that they can do, right? I’ve never had a situation where they couldn’t fix it. … So, you know, when they were putting Michael to sleep, I’m like all right, see you tomorrow.”
Three days later, Rivka got a call from the hospital, telling her to come in. When she arrived, a doctor sat her down and said, “‘Your husband’s gonna die in a couple hours, call everyone.’”
The extent of Benjamin’s injuries were “very much life-threatening,” said Dr. John Kubasiak, a surgeon scientist at Loyola who was a part of Benjamin’s medical team. More than half of Benjamin’s body was covered in burns. Shortly into his stay at the burn ICU, Benjamin went on to need an aggressive form of life support known as ECMO, or extracorporeal membrane oxygenation, which is used when a ventilator isn’t enough, pumping blood out of the body, oxygenating it and returning it.
In those early days, Benjamin’s medical team was doing what they could to keep him alive, day after day, not sure whether he’d still be there the next day, Kubasiak said. And in time, by leveraging advanced therapies and relying on daily care by nurses and therapists to keep away infection, Benjamin got better, Kubasiak said.
Jen Mayfield, then a night nurse in the burn ICU who took care of Benjamin through the duration of his stay, also credited Benjamin’s recovery to his family.
“Almost all of the time, I think we see better outcomes with a lot of our patients who have strong family support,” she said. “And they did, and their family was really kind. … I think that even when you’re (sedated), you can hear that (and) you know that you have people that care about you.”
“I would just sit there,” Rivka said, “and beg him, ‘Please stay alive. I really, really need you.’”
When Benjamin started to wake up, it was “beautiful and so, so heartbreaking,” she said.
After a nearly four-month stay in the ICU, Benjamin went on to a month of inpatient rehabilitation. Once he was finally able to go home, he started going to outpatient rehab full time.
It was long and arduous and it was painful but for Benjamin, all he was focused on was getting better and getting back to himself, he said.
“I remember he looked so weak one day, and he was like, ‘Yeah, let’s just do it,’ as if he had all the energy in the world,” Rivka said. “I think that’s when (I knew) he was gonna do whatever it takes.”
Since the accident, Benjamin and Rivka, who now live in Wilmette, have learned to get the most out of life. Just over a year after the fire, Benjamin took over NC Chocolatier, a longtime Chicago-area chocolate factory. And last June, Benjamin and Rivka welcomed a new member to their family: their son, Leor. His name means “light” in Hebrew.
“You know, this bundle of light after light after all this darkness,” Benjamin said.
The idea to run the ambulance route came to Benjamin last year. He’d been into running for years — had even run a few marathons before the accident — and wanted to do something meaningful for the anniversary.
“I thought, ‘I could run that,’” he said. “And this time, I could do it on my own terms.”
This year marked his second time running the route.
Benjamin left for the run last week in the morning and arrived at Loyola just before 3 p.m. Rivka was waiting with a sign. After the last stretch, Benjamin, Rivka, their twin boys — Zander and Elan — and Leor piled into a strip of grass outside the hospital entrance.
‘We helped you right?” Zander asked Benjamin.
“You guys were so fast, I couldn’t even keep up!” Benjamin replied.
After a half hour, Kubasiak joined the family outside. He and Benjamin embraced.
“Do you know what Dr. K did?” Benjamin said to his sons. “Dr. K saved daddy’s life.”
As a group, they all went inside to revisit the burn ICU. Benjamin, with Zander, Elan and Leor still in tow, visited his old room.
“It feels good,” Benjamin said afterward, as his family went on a hunt for hospital snacks. “Just (knowing) how far it’s been, right? I think it would be a different story if I wasn’t able to be where I am and if it had defined me.
“But being able to walk and be there … it almost feels like I’m coming back to something I conquered.”
Now, the family looks forward to a new milestone. Rivka is expecting twins.
Her due date is in December.
The Associated Press contributed.
