Something inside me broke. It wasn’t my spirit—that had been forged in the high-pressure fires of the ER. It was my heart. It simply ceased to function as a vessel for love and turned into a stone of resignation.

“Okay,” I whispered, tears leaking from my eyes. Not for myself, but for the memory of the family I had lost long before today. “Okay. I’ll sign.”

Travis whooped, a sound of victorious delirium. “That’s it! That’s a good girl!”

I pressed the tip of the pen to the paper. My hand shook uncontrollably. The ink bled into a small, dark blot. I started to form the letter ‘M’.

Ding-dong.

The sound was so cheerful, so mundane, so utterly out of place in our gasoline-soaked hell, that time seemed to freeze. The pen slipped from my fingers and rolled across the table. Travis went rigid, his head snapping toward the front door, the lighter still burning in his hand.