The NUMC Burn Center is the only one of its kind in Nassau County; Stony Brook University Medical Center has one in Suffolk, while the William Randolph Hearst Burn Center serves the five boroughs from Manhattan. And it has been since plastic surgeon Leonard Rubin set aside a single room with four beds at Meadowbrook Hospital in 1948. When the 19-story Dynamic Care Building opened in 1974, the Burn Center moved to its fifth floor.
    
Now, Pakes estimated, the unit’s nine rooms take in about 200 patients a year. The unit’s 17 full-time staff members also treat a range of nearly 1,000 outpatients annually, she said. She has seen patients as young as 10 days to as old as 101 years.
    
The equipment is as synergetic as the staff. Four of the 10 gleaming beds on wheels that occupy the rooms can be converted for intensive care: These beds are equipped to rotate a patient onto his side, and pummel him like a massage chair, with pulse therapy to prevent bed sores and pneumonia. The mattresses are lined with skin-soothing Gore-Tex.
   
“Even though your patient might not make it, you’re here to help the patients and their families get through a trying time,” Pakes said.
    
Patients are accordingly transferred to the hydrotherapy room, where in a pristine metallic tank their wounds are cleaned, and they perform range of motion exercises. Atop a shelf, an aging mini boom box serves requests.
    
“Especially the patients who are critically ill, we want to reassure them,” Pakes explained about the music. “We’re constantly talking to them, letting them know what day it is, what time it is, what we’re doing to them.”
    
Napoli, the former fire chief, appreciates the commitment. His son was among 10 firefighters admitted to the Burn Center in the summer of 2003 after an explosion at an Oceanside industrial laundry complex.
    
“When you saw them when they came in, just picture black on their face,” Napoli said. “Later on they looked like the mummy. Now, they don’t look like they were ever burned.”