Digital Extra: Gina Gauvin

Heather Gauvin spent the night looking for her mother. But when she finally peered into the hospital bed, all she could do was scream.

Gina Gauvin went quickly into surgery. More than 60 percent of her body had been burned in The Station nightclub fire, and all the dead skin had to come off within a week. Otherwise it would be food for bacteria -- and infection is a prime killer of burn patients.

The question weighed heavily: How would Gina Gauvin cope? She would awaken soon to find that she had scars all over her body, and that her hair, her ear and her dominant hand were gone.

All eyes were on Heather Gauvin, and she knew it.
Three days before her mother was to be discharged from the Rehabilitation Hospital of Rhode Island, Heather, her aunts -- Denise Agin and Renee Walton -- and a nurse friend of Walton's gathered at the hospital to prepare.