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The sterile, clinical scent of the hospital had become a suffocating weight, a sensory trigger that reminded me of my greatest failure every time I drew breath. My three-year-old son, Lucas, was unrecognizable. Where there had once been soft cheeks and a quick, dimpled smile, there was now a landscape of thick bandages, weeping skin, and the structural wreckage of third-degree burns. Every time I stepped into his room, I felt my spirit fracture. The guilt was not a quiet hum; it was a deafening roar that told me I was no longer fit to be his mother.
The nightmare had begun on a Tuesday at 3:00 AM, the kind of hour where the world is supposed to be silent and safe. An electrical fault in the apartment below ours had turned our building into a tinderbox. By the time the alarms shrieked, the hallway was a tunnel of orange fury and black soot. My husband, Marcus, acted with the instinctive precision of a protector, grabbing our five-year-old daughter, Emma, and charging through the smoke. I grabbed Lucas, pulling his small, warm body against mine. But as we reached the threshold, the world collapsed. A support beam, wreathed in flames, thundered down from the ceiling. In that split second of primal, blinding terror, I did the unthinkable. To shield my own face from the searing heat, I let go. I dropped my son directly into the fire.
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