Warning: This post is hard. Probably the hardest yet. It is about my niece’s accident from when she was two years old. As I’m writing the warning, I’m almost in tears. There are two events in my life, this one and one with my youngest nephew that I cannot mention without crying.

It was the summer of 2003. I had finished college and was working renovating my condo. E and her Mom (my sister) had been helping as I was awaiting my first back surgery. August was upon us and it seemed summer was racing by! I believe it was the August Long weekend here as my Mom and step-dad were headed to British Columbia for my Aunt’s wedding anniversary party.

My memory is telling me it was Friday afternoon, I was at home, doing what, I do not remember when my phone rang. Answering it, it was my sister.

“There has been an accident. E is being taken my ambulance to the hospital. I need you to call Mom.” There may have been more, I do not really remember. I just knew I had to get in contact with my mother and get to the hospital to meet them as quickly as possible. I’ll never forget the call with my Mom. We had entered the age of cell phones, and while many of us did not have them, my step dad did have one, as did I.

“Mom? You have to turn around and come back.” I said when she answered the phone.

“Oh, yes, the forest fire. They’re letting cars through in single file line ups.” She said to me, “don’t worry. We will be alright.”

“No Mom, there has been an accident. E’s been hurt. They’re taking her by ambulance to the city. We need to meet them there.”

At this point, my Mom was four hours from the city, I was almost out the door but I wanted to let my sister know when we could expect our Mom. “We are turning around. I’ll be there as soon as I can.” she assured me, “Give them my love.”

I got off the phone with my Mom, grabbed my purse, my keys, and left for the hospital. A million thoughts swirling in my head. First and foremost, my niece. My sweet little E. A firecracker of a girl, a force, an indescribably sweet girl with a spitfire personality who knew her sense of self at two like no one else I’ve ever known. Polite, kind, and a heart of gold but with a forked tongue (yes, even at two), she’d make you laugh until the tears rolled.

I only had half a sense of what had happened. Her grandparents lived in an old schoolhouse and it had a quirky water system. You ran all hot water for baths and tempered it back with cold (as you could not run both at once). E had been playing, and she fell in the tub of scalding hot water. I didn’t know more than that but it was bad enough they were transferring her to the burn unit at the major hospital.

I got to the hospital quickly and soon found my sister. My memory is hazy, but I remember being in the first room with them as they tried to remove the dressings the small hospital where my sister lived off, but of course, they had adhered to her. I remember her screams.

No person should ever hear the screams of child in that situation. My skin is crawling remembering that moment. From my feet to my ears, her eyes, begging us to make it stop. I thought my sister was going to lay the nurses out. I can only imagine the pain my sister was in. I felt a piece of me dying inside, and I was only her aunty.

They stopped. They were only trying to assess how seriously she was burned (yes, scalds are burns) but that was not the way. It was bad, very bad. Her back and legs had bore the brunt of the damage but her arms and torso had also received damage and she had a couple small burns on her face. It did not take long for them to realize they could not deal with the damage in the emergency and she was transferred up to the burn unit. They assessed her and wanted to send us out to wait while they dressed her wounds. We refused, not wanting to leave her for a minute. She wanted to cling to my sister.

The nurse explained it was best if we waited outside the exam room. A nurse came to speak to us. It was best, we were told, if we waited outside. While it was natural to want to wait and be with E, the pain and trauma, may forever be associated with us. Their hope was that by removing us from the situation, she would not associate any of that or build memories of this event and link it to us.

Reluctantly, we agreed. They took my crying niece from my sister’s arms and we held my sister up as we left the room. We walked across the causeway and sat on the benches outside of the burn unit. Though we had several hundred feet between us, we could still hear her. Though it has been twenty-one years, it is a sound I will not ever forget. The screams coming from her room was crushing.

We learned she had first, second, and third degree burns to seventy to percent of her body. They expected she would spend months in the hospital. More terms were tossed arounds but it all became noise, I don’t know how my sister kept her head.

They got her dressings changed and her settled, it was nearly 6am. We got my sister settled and my Mom and I went back my condo to get a few hours of sleep. It all seemed like a nightmare. The next week was a blur. I spent as much time as I could with my sister at the hospital. My niece was a star, she was brave, strong, and resilient. There were tears at different times, and I know she had to be really scared, but she was amazing.

What we got was nothing short of miraculous. What was to take months, took weeks. While time has ebbed away some of the memory for me, I do remember her care team using words like ‘miraculous’ at the state of her recovery because she was able to go home within a couple weeks and never did require a skin graft. The quick actions of her grandmother when she was first injured likely did a lot to prevent the burns from growing too deep, and the immediate care aided her too.

One thing we all did after was to turn the temperature of our hot water heaters down. We were unaware of how quickly burns can happen. I also always share my niece’s story and share that families should set their water heaters lower because it is so easy for anyone to get hurt by hot water.

Today, my niece is a bold, courageous, no holds barred (almost) 24 year old woman. She takes no bull from anyone, has a great boyfriend, a job she loves, and only has the smallest scar in the small of her back. I don’t believe she remembers anything from that day, but I know that this memory has taken me a full week to write because it is one of the most painful memories I carry.