While my daughter smoked silently in the corner, her husband grabbed my hair, holding a lighter over the gas-soaked rug. “Sign the deed, old hag!” he spat. I closed my eyes, accepting my fate. Suddenly, the doorbell rang. He opened it with a curse on his lips, only to fall to his knees in terror.
The smell of gasoline is not something you ever truly get used to, even after forty years as an ER nurse. It is sharp, chemical, and invasive; it clings to the mucous membranes of your throat and settles in your lungs like a toxic fog. But in the sterile halls of St. Jude’s Hospital, that…
