Loving Levi

The baby was burned. Badly burned.

As the rain fell on an otherwise serene Chinese cornfield, 40 or so villagers stood around the tiny newborn and listened.

The baby was crying.

No one dared pick him up. Touching him might make them responsible.

Besides, the baby was dying.

Severe burns had marred his face. His head. His stomach. His back. His left arm was charred black and trembling. At the end of his right wrist rested a tiny, blackened fist. His legs, particularly his left foot, were red and glowing.

The baby wasn't going to make it anyway, and the villagers knew it.

Even the ones who left the baby there earlier that evening, probably his parents, knew he would be dead soon. They had carefully wrapped the little one in a yellow Chinese burial blanket, now stained with his blood.

They left 10 yuan -- about $1.25 in U.S. currency -- lying next to the baby. He would need it, according to their religion, for safe passage into the next life.

For several long minutes the villagers listened to the baby cry.

No one spoke.

Finally, one of the villagers, the father of a little boy himself, could stand it no more.

He picked up the baby.

Amazingly, the baby stopped crying.

n

The waiting room at Midwest Physicians and Surgeons in Cape Girardeau is quiet on this Friday morning. A nurse in green scrubs walks slowly down the single hallway that leads back to the surgical and exam rooms. At the other end of the hall, a woman talks on a telephone and scribbles something on a pad.

An old man reads the sports pages while two women watch the flickering images of a morning news program on a TV anchored high on the wall. They chat about Katie Couric's switch to CBS and the ungodly amount of money she's going to make.

Then a 4-year-old Chinese boy comes through the door.

The boy is all smiles on the hip of Harvey Tobin, an older man the little boy now calls Grandpa. The boy's arm is wrapped gently around his new Grandpa's neck and a Ziplock full of Matchbox cars is tucked gently into his left armpit for safekeeping.

If the boy knows a surgery is coming, he doesn't act like it.

Harvey's wife Dorcus -- Grandma now -- and the boy's adopted mom, Lisa Bentley, are chatting as they follow Levi and Harvey through the door.

All eyes go to the boy.

Aside from the patients, everyone else in the office has known the boy was coming for weeks. They can't wait to get a look. They have heard so much about him and his remarkable story.

After a cursory glance, he appears like any other 4-year-old.

He has traditional Chinese features, brown eyes, black hair. He is small compared to an American child his age. He is wearing a red and black striped shirt, gray cargo pants and rugged brown cowboy boots.

But, upon closer inspection, the people in the office notice other things.

The left sleeve of his shirt dangles, empty.

Strips of rigid scar tissue streaks down the length of his other arm, culminating in a small hand and three stubby half-fingers and an awkward thumb. There is also scar tissue on his face, extending from his cheeks around his mouth. When he smiles -- which he does often -- the tight scar tissue under his chin contorts his lips and mouth.

Harvey stands the boy on one of the office's waiting room chairs. The ladies of the office swarm around him and offer warm hugs and hellos.

"He's a cutie," says one nurse.

"He's a sweetie," says another.

The boy is friendly back.

"Grandpa and Grandma got me a present," the boy tells them, holding up the Ziplock bag.

"Tell them your name," his mother urges. "Say hello."

The boy smiles.

"Hello. My name's Levi Bentley."

n

John and Lisa Bentley arrived in China with their four children in December 2001, leaving behind the good life. Just five years after law school, John had given up his job with the largest firm in Vancouver, Wash., where his family lived in a large house with a shiny new sports car in the garage.

It had taken some convincing to get his wife to agree to uproot their family -- their oldest was 8 and their youngest was 6 months -- and become missionaries in a far-off place called Langfang in China's Hebei province.

John had long felt God calling him to China, and a previous attempt to go there hadn't panned out. He specifically wanted to work with orphans. He'd read that China had 5 million orphans, and he wanted to help them, especially special-needs kids, in some way.

Any way.

But Lisa wasn't sure it was the best thing to do at the time. John put it off to get his family and career started. Lisa, meanwhile, eventually warmed to the idea. She had become restless in her faith. She felt that maybe she wasn't fulfilling her purpose as a Christian.

If this is all there is to my Christianity, she told herself, it's awfully dull.

So when an opportunity presented itself, they took it. John was offered an unpaid position with the Philip Hayden Foundation, the famous not-for-profit charitable organization established to help China's orphaned and special-needs children.

Lisa, still not entirely sold, only agreed to a three-month trial.

"If it doesn't work out, we're going back to Washington," she told him.

John was excited.

His children were not.

"This place looks like a garbage dump," their daughter said as they got off the plane in this strange, new land.

Things got off to a rough start. Their first house was less than inspiring. There was no heat. John flooded the place with a shower mishap. And the children were scared to death of rats that jumped 2 to 3 feet high.

But John and Lisa began work at Langfang Children's Village taking care of special needs orphans and worked to help find parents to adopt them. The orphans suffered from all kinds of maladies, like heart defects, missing limbs and other deformities.

Many of the orphans there were abandoned at the gates of the village. One still had his umbilical cord attached.

Lisa found the work spiritually rewarding, but she never felt she developed a true passion for the Chinese people.

She prayed for what she called a Chinese heart. She wanted to love what she was doing and cultivate a real love for these children who needed her so much.

That winter, a little baby she had grown to love, Timothy, died.

After two months, Lisa had all but decided that they were going home.

That's when a badly burned baby was brought to the orphanage one rainy night in March.

n

Levi and his mom made the two-hour drive to Cape Girardeau in their rented PT Cruiser from the St. Louis on Thursday. The drive came right on the heels of a three-hour airplane flight from where they live in Arlington, Texas.

When he got out of the PT cruiser, he greeted Dorcus Tobin with a hug. He liked Dorcus and Harvey Tobin immediately. It wasn't long before he called them Grandpa and Grandma.

At 4 years old, Levi was probably only vaguely aware that the Cape Girardeau couple were also giving him and his mom a place to stay, food to eat and an easy, instant friendship.

He just knew he loved them.

And on Friday, the couple's son -- a plastic surgeon and a born-again Christian -- would give the Chinese boy something invaluable.

It was true that no one could replace little Levi's missing left arm, amputated at the elbow when he was an infant. No one could give him back the toes on his left foot. And no one could probably ever remove all the scar tissue that now riddled little Levi's body.

But Harvey and Dorcus' son could help little Levi in a way that would undoubtedly be meaningful for the rest of his life.

Dr. Gregory Tobin had offered to fix his smile.

For free.

The rest of Levi's 15 surgeries -- amputations, skin grafts, hand reconstruction -- were about making Levi healthy. Today's surgery was about making Levi beam.

n

The Chinese villager who picked up the burned baby as he lay in that field -- about an hour from Beijing -- dropped him off at Langfang Children's Village, the orphanage where the Bentleys had recently started working.

When they looked at the baby, the orphanage administrators knew the baby didn't have much of a chance.

They took the baby to a rural hospital, where the doctors were shocked at how badly burned he was. Doctors said more than 70 percent of his body suffered from severe burns. The doctors told the orphanage staff that the baby had a 20 percent chance of survival.

Tim Baker, director of the Langfang Children's Home, agreed that the baby didn't have much of a chance unless God intervened.

"With God, he has a greater than 20 percent chance," Baker told the doctors.

Baker told the doctors that he wanted the boy to have the best care possible, regardless of cost. The baby was placed in an incubator. He was given a pacifier, which he knew how to use, evidence he had been nursed.

Lisa went to the hospital to see this baby for herself. After she saw him and the severity of his burns, she agreed that he looked too weak to make it. Her innermost thoughts whispered to her: It's hopeless.

In spite of his slim chances -- or maybe because of them -- Lisa fell in love with the baby immediately.

"He doesn't have a mom," she thought. "So I'm going to be his mom."

She stayed with the baby that whole first night. She prayed desperately: Let him live, Lord, please, save him.

She read the Bible aloud to the baby. She came across a verse that she will never forget in Matthew 13:44 that mentioned "a hidden treasure in the field."

That was this baby.

She named him Levi. The name means to bind together.

Lisa Bentley had found her Chinese heart.

n

"It's a big day for us, Levi," his mom says, ruffling his pointy dark hair as they make their way to the reception's office. "You've come a long way, little man."

Dr. Gregory Tobin emerges from a side room, in blue scrubs and a white surgical hat.

"How are you?" he says, kneeling down to look Levi in the eye.

"Fine," Levi says quietly.

"Tell Dr. Tobin what you want to be when you grow up," Lisa says, trying to break the ice.

"When I grow up, I want to be a daddy," Levi says.

Awwww, from the women.

"Can you open your mouth for me?" Tobin, still kneeling, asks Levi.

Levi opens wide.

"You're a big boy," Tobin says.

Tobin takes Levi's face in his hands and studies it. Tobin tenderly rubs the scar tissue on Levi's face. He lifts up Levi's shirt and looks at the rigid scars that protrude from his stomach and across his naval area.

Tobin takes Levi's right hand -- the reconstructed one with half-fingers -- and caresses it.

"They did a very nice job at the Texas hospital," Tobin says, referring to the surgery in May that rebuilt Levi's right hand.

Tobin notices that the scars extended from each of Levi's cheekbones to his mouth. The surgery would remove some of the superfluous scar tissue, which would relax the muscles. With more flexibility in the skin -- it wouldn't be so tight -- Levi's smile will look more natural, Tobin explains.

They will also be able to remove scar tissue that causes a circular indentation around Levi's mouth. Especially when Levi smiles.

Levi interrupts the doctor.

"Doctor," he said. "I'm a big boy. I won't cry."

"You are a big boy, Levi," Tobin says and then turned his attention back to Lisa.

The surgery will take about an hour and a half. However, the surgery will not deal with the larger issue of the rough scar tissue across his cheeks -- just the circular ridge that runs across his jaw and around his lips.

Tobin tells Lisa that Levi can have surgery on the rest of his face when he gets older. He's still growing and so is the skin on his face. If the scar tissue is removed and the skin smoothed now, it would only stretch the skin muscles and perhaps cause his eyes to droop as his face grows.

"You all ready for surgery?" Tobin says finally. Levi shakes his head no, but he smiles.

"OK," Tobin says, looking up at his staff. "You ready, kiddo."

"You called me kiddo," Levi said. "My name is Levi."

n

The badly burned baby had to have his arm amputated. At first, doctors removed the arm only to the wrist, but they eventually decided the damage to the arm was too extensive. They later removed the arm to the elbow.

The surgeons also amputated the toes on his left foot.

Levi was taken to the hospital in much larger Beijing. Lisa and the others at the orphanage thought Levi needed to be taken to a hospital in America. The Chinese government at first protested.

Levi's body was still in shock. Despite the surgeries, his chances had not improved. The largest newspaper in China -- which had a circulation the same as the total U.S. population -- published a story about Levi.

Dr. John Schultz, a surgeon with the Shriner's Burns Hospital for Children in Boston, noticed the story.

"If I have to," he wrote Lisa in an e-mail, "I will come to China to save this baby's life."

The Chinese government relented, after what Lisa felt was a bureaucratic nightmare. Soon, Lisa, her 8-year-old daughter and Levi were on a plane for the States with donated tickets and $50. A Chinese lady on the plane who'd heard of Levi handed Lisa $100. On a flight from Chicago to Boston, a stewardess approached Lisa.

"I don't make much money, but here's $20," she said.

Lisa knew it was all a God thing.

Levi was admitted to the hospital in Boston, where he stayed for several months. Eventually, Lisa began believing that little Levi was going to be OK after all.

n

"Hey, Dad. I went to BO-ger King."

Levi is talking to his father in Arlington, Texas, on Lisa's cell phone. Dr. Tobin is about ready for the procedure.

Levi listens silently for a moment.

"I miss you, too, Dad."

Levi looks sad for a second. Then he brightens.

"Can I talk to Weed?" he says, referring to his 5-year-old brother, Reid, one of John and Lisa's biological children.

"Hey, Weed. I went to BO-ger King."

"Tell Reid he needs to pray," Lisa says. "Tell him you're about to go into surgery."

"Pway for me, Weed," Levi says. "I have to do my face over here. ... My face surgery."

Levi clicks the cell phone shut and walks it over to his mother.

She smiles at her little boy.

"You are so cool," she says.

n

Lisa took Levi back to the land of his birth. There, he met his new brothers and sister. His new father. The Bentleys immediately accepted him.

Levi was slow to advance. But he learned to walk. He learned to talk. He also learned that others can be cruel. Some children told him he looked f-u-n-n-y. One adult saw him and said he looks like a m-o-n-s-t-e-r. When Lisa tells others the story, she spells the words out so that Levi doesn't have to hear the words again.

Lisa told Levi that he does have a funny face -- when he sticks out his tongue and pulls on his ear.

After two more years and several surgeries, the Bentleys needed a break. They decided to temporarily move back to the U.S. It broke their hearts to leave, but they needed time to focus on their children.

To focus on themselves.

In the meantime, they took another Chinese orphan into their home. An 8-year-old girl, Orly, is now part of the family.

All seven of them returned to the U.S., settling on Arlington, Texas, because a local church there offered them a house to live in for a while. That turned into eight months.

It was at that Texas church that the Bentleys met a nurse named Camilla Carter. Carter saw Levi and noticed his face could be made better with the help of a plastic surgeon.

She mentioned to Lisa that, by the way, her brother was a plastic surgeon.

His name was Greg Tobin.

n

Levi is asleep. He is lying on an operating table. His eyes are taped shut. He has tubes in his mouth. A blue cloth is placed over his entire body and a square is cut, revealing only his face.

Dr. Tobin and his assistant, Lanna, are standing over Levi. They are wearing surgical masks, and a tray of scalpels and other surgical tools is situated within arm's reach. An anesthesiologist, Dr. Joseph Essmyer, sits on a stool near Levi's head. Dr. Essmyer wears a surgical cap that says "I heart the USA," that also has pictures of eagles on it.

Dr. Tobin takes a skin marker and makes dots where he's going to cut. He makes marks along both corners of his mouth. A machine beeps, reminding everyone that Levi is still alive.

Dr. Tobin uses a scalpel to make slow, precise incisions. He cuts away extra scar tissue as his assistant suctions away the bleeding.

"This looks like normal skin here," Dr. Tobin says to Lanna. "Let's keep this. Skin like this is at a premium."

Apparently, not all the skin is worth keeping. Under bright lights, Tobin studies Levi's mouth. He makes incisions. He pulls away thin strips of thick scar tissue. Tobin -- who knows that only God operates without scars -- wants to keep the relatively normal skin and take out skin that is primarily scar tissue.

"We're nearly there," Tobin announces after about a half an hour. "Let's finish this side and go do the other one."

n

Camilla Carter knew her brother would perform the surgery for free. Greg Tobin had been on two mission trips to Brazil and the Philippines and was a Christian of deep faith. The Bentleys also have little money.

She told Lisa her brother will do it. She hadn't even asked him yet.

When Cammie told Greg about Levi, he didn't even have to think about it.

Dr. Tobin felt he'd been blessed. He has a successful practice, a wonderful wife and three great kids. There's no way to repay God for a life like that. But Dr. Tobin figured he could help God's children when he has the chance.

Four months ago, Levi had his hand reconstructed. The Bentleys gave his hand time to heal. Dr. Tobin made an appointment. Lisa and Levi would fly to St. Louis in April. Tobin would meet Levi on a Friday and perform the surgery that same day.

What a blessing, Lisa thought. God is good.

n

The surgery was over and Levi cries, sitting in a hospital bed in a recovery room.

He only wants his mother.

"Aww, baby," she coos. "Do you want some apple juice?"

He nods his head yes. He's still sluggish from the anesthetic.

Lisa studied Levi's mouth for a moment. She could tell a difference already. There were rows of stitches around his mouth, but the circular tissue that caused the smile deformity was gone.

His smile is better, she thinks.

Lisa thinks about the future. Some suggested to her that Levi might be the next Billy Graham. A nurse at the hospital in Boston said she knew Levi would be famous one day.

Lisa doesn't know about all that. What she does know is she can't wait to see what Levi was going to do with his life. God wouldn't have gone to such extremes to save this boy if he didn't have a plan for him.

She also knows that the Bentleys are going back to China in May. There are still orphans in China who need them. Besides, the Bentley clan practically thinks of China as home now.

For now, though, she is happy to know her little boy is going to be better. He might never be normal -- at least by other people's standards. But he is her son. God's son.

And he is alive.

As Levi cries, Harvey Tobin brings in another toy for Levi, this time a John Deere tractor.

"Here you go, Levi," he says. "This is for you. John Deere's the best."

Amazingly, Levi stops crying.

smoyers@semissourian.com

335-6611, extension 137

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