Twist of fate
Twins survive fire
They were inseparable from the moment they were born, but, even as toddlers, identical twins Michelle Lauren Anderson and Katherine Anderson-Hill had their own personalities. “Michelle was spunky and stubborn,” says their mum, Linda. “Katherine was quieter; Michelle would run and Katherine would follow. They were different, but loved doing everything together.”
That inimitable bond between them changed forever on May 19, 1996.
The twins, just 2 at the time, were visiting their father and his wife (their parents divorced in 1994) for the weekend when a fire broke out in their bedroom around midnight. Katherine was able to escape without major injury, but Michelle’s bed was ablaze. “I remember seeing the flames coming up on me,” says Michelle, whose father managed to pull her out – but not before more than 90 per cent of her body had been badly burned. (An investigation suggested the cause of the fire was a wayward cigarette, but it was never officially confirmed. The twins have had no contact with their father or his wife since.)
“She’d been wearing a wet diaper, so that part of her wasn’t burned, and she had a pacifier in her mouth, so her lips were saved. Her eyes were open, so her eyelids weren’t burned off. I believe she was
standing in the corner, trapped,” says Linda, 51, who married Edward Anderson in 2000.
“Every day after that was a battle. We knew it was going to be challenging forever – for all of us.”
In the 24 years since that fateful night, Michelle and Katherine, 26, have forged an even stronger connection – one that has grown through a lifetime of physical and emotional challenges. While Michelle has fought mightily to overcome the pain and ordeal caused by her injuries (she’s had more than 80 surgeries so far), Katherine has had to come to terms with her own remorse and frustration.
“There were times when I felt a lot of guilt seeing my sister in pain and knowing there was nothing I could do,” she says. “But we’re as close as sisters can be.” Adds Michelle: “Katherine was my constant support system. But having someone who looks exactly like you – but doesn’t have scars – is always a reminder of what my life would have been. She’s the life and the face I could have had.”
In the weeks following the fire, Michelle’s prognosis was dire. “They told me that if she survived, she would have no hands and feet, maybe no arms and legs, and if she got off the ventilator, she’d be on oxygen and possibly be blind,” says Linda, a registered nurse who works in a care unit. Two weeks in, Michelle developed sepsis, and doctors urgently began a series of temporary dressings and skin grafts, mostly from donated tissue, to cover her burns and avoid further infection.
“They did her face first,” says Linda. “Then every two weeks, they’d take skin from her back, head or her butt and replace another part of her.”
Michelle underwent 25 surgeries before she finally went home on November 1, 1996. “That’s when the recovery really began,” says Linda. “Katherine was too young to understand, but Michelle had lost everything.”
Initially Michelle, who also suffered serious damage to her lungs and oesophagus from smoke inhalation, remained on a feeding tube; dressing her wounds could take hours. She had to learn how to walk and talk again and she suffered from vivid nightmares about the fire for more than a year.
“Every night around midnight, about the same time as the fire, it would start all over again. I would rock her, saying, ‘You’re safe, you’re safe,’ ” says Linda, who took two years off to care for her daughter. Her skin grafts and reconstructions continued weekly – often leading to infections and other complications. “Michelle had surgeries throughout our childhood,” says Katherine,
a nurse in a cardiac ICU. “Every surgery was like a look back and another time we had to relive this horrible thing … And I’d think, ‘It could have been me. Why wasn’t it me?’ It just didn’t seem fair.”
In 1997 the sisters started school parttime, and in some ways, both struggled to fit in. “Michelle was excluded from more things than I think she realised – and Katherine too, because they knew who her sister was,” says Linda, who would visit their class at the beginning of each school year to explain to the kids what had happened.
“There were always the questions and stares,” says Michelle, who remembers being called a monster in preschool. “That was my first realisation that ‘Wait, I’m not just a normal kid’.” Adds Katherine: “I would tell them about her scars and her limitations and defend her.”
But, by the time the twins turned 14, tensions between them had begun to surface. Katherine had become a competitive synchronised swimmer and cello player, and she found herself struggling to balance being there for Michelle and carving out her own future. “It was sometimes hard to be continually supportive,” she says, “and also be a kid and have my own life.”
Meanwhile, Michelle’s constant surgeries were taking a new toll. Due to the painful recovery process, she was finding it harder to maintain her grades. She was also having difficulty matching her sister’s pace. “We were really competitive already,” says Michelle. “I wanted to do everything, but my body wouldn’t keep up.” Adds Linda: “Finding something Michelle could be good at was important, because everything she wanted to do, her twin could do better.”
That summer Michelle went away to a camp for burn survivors in Colorado, where she discovered her passion for horseback riding. “I just was drawn to horses,” says Michelle, who became an equestrian competitor and now gives therapeutic riding lessons near her home in St Paul. “Finding our own identities is what saved our friendship,” she adds. “If we’d done the same activities, it would have destroyed me. I would never have felt good enough, because I’d have always been comparing myself to her.”
Since then the sisters’ differences have brought them even closer. “We talk every other day on the phone,” says Katherine, who married Matt Hill, 25, a research technologist, in 2017. “I don’t know what I would do without her. She’s much more than just my twin.”
Michelle still copes with myriad physical issues– more than 70 per cent of her body is unable to sweat, and she has pain and extreme sensitivity in her hands and feet – but she’s focused on finishing her second master’s degree, in business leadership, in June.
“There’s no way to articulate everything I’ve been through,” says Michelle, who has also been writing a self-help book about her challenging journey. “But it’s been a blessing to have Katherine. Even though she wasn’t burned, she understands because she’s always been there.” •