Couldn’t.
He moves quickly toward the ambulance, his grip tightening slightly as her panic escalates.
“They’re coming,” he says instead, the only thing he could offer. “You just stay with me, okay?”
But Randi is already shaking her head, her cries rising higher, more frantic.
“No—no, I need them! I need my mom!”
The ambulance doors are open.
He steps forward—
And then stops.
Just for a second.
Long enough for her to see.
A form is lying on the gurney inside, covered with a sheet that didn’t quite hide everything. The edges are darkened and stained.
Still.
Too still.
As the firefighter shifts his hold, the sheet moves.
An arm slips free.
Burned.
Unrecognizable—
Except for the ring.
Gold.
Familiar.
Her mother’s.
Randi’s breath catches in her throat.
“No…”
Her voice breaks into something unrecognizable.
An EMT’s voice cut through the moment, clinical, detached as he spoke into a radio.
“Caucasian female, mid-thirties… airway is unmanageable… full-thickness burns to face and throat… no pulse… no spontaneous movement…”
The words blur together, but Randi doesn’t need to understand all of them.
She understands enough.
“No!” she screams, the sound tearing through the night. “No, no, no—Mom!”
Her body convulses with the force of it, her small hands reach out toward the ambulance, toward something already gone.
