‘Is he alright?’ Sarah yelled. Cassie went inside, presumably to the phone.

‘He’s been burned!’

Ernie started coughing and leaned to the side and spewed something brown—it dangled from his mouth, all teeth. Sidney knew to keep a steady stream of water over a burn and so he held the spray. His father had stopped screaming now and was groaning.

‘What should we do?’ Brendan asked, his voice quiet. ‘Should we try to move him?’

‘I don’t know.’

Cassie came running from the verandah, shouting,

‘Wilkie said to keep the hose trained on him and that he’s on his way.’

His mother, who had been standing motionless with her arms folded around her middle, seemed to take this as a cue to also approach. Sarah went back inside, no doubt to their daughter. The fire was still roaring beside them, a constant heat against his side. The sound of things popping within. Was the car still in there?

His mother and sister were crying, looking down at this once powerful man, who in his agony had become a mewling infant.

‘How did this happen?’ Cassie asked, sniffing.

Brendan kneeled beside their father. He looked as though he wanted to reach out and comfort the old man but feared ripping his oozing skin. ‘I don’t know.’

Their mother’s silent tears coated her cheeks and the firelight danced upon them and made her seem a clown. She didn’t say a word, only stood and watched her husband helplessly, like all of them. Sidney kept the hose trained and thought of his daughter.

Wilkie arrived after what felt an age and knelt beside the now-shivering Ernie. He had chucked a few more times and the ground around his head was sodden with bile. The fire had not spread further. Sidney could hear the wailing of sirens in the distance.

‘You can lay off the hose now,’ Wilkie said.

Sidney threw it down and it snaked in the grass. ‘Will he be alright?’

‘We need to get him to the hospital,’ Wilkie said, standing up. ‘I need to call an ambulance.’

His father was loaded into the back of the ambulance, a green plastic sheet draped over him. The sun by now had well and truly risen, giving light to all the horrors of his form. Before he’d been covered, Sidney had seen his burnt flesh. Exposed bone, blackened pieces of skin like overcooked roast. Dangling, dripping. Seeping blood congealed against the plastic sheet, great blotches of red, a butcher’s apron. They’d shot him full of painkillers but he was still moaning, his eyes closed. Even the oxygen mask seemed to pain him. Brendan walked beside him as they wheeled him away, reaching out his hand in an effort to hold his father’s. But he didn’t touch him.

When the two paramedics hoisted him into the ambulance, Cassie and his mother climbed in after him. Their father did not look at them as the door was shut.