I heard it for the first time when I was a new medic working in the city. Pediatric code. A child with disabilities who’d been sick all day. His mother had put him to bed and was planning to sleep beside him — she usually did — but that night she stayed up to do a few things first. She’d spent all day caring for him. She had things she needed to finish first. When she went to bed, she found him rolled onto his stomach. Not breathing. By the time we arrived, another unit was already working him. My partner went with them to the hospital. I was tasked with bringing the mother. The emergency department had a long hallway that ran from the ambulance bay to the code room. We entered at one end. A nurse came out of the code room at the other end. Not a word was spoken. Not by me. Not by the nurse. The mother knew. She collapsed to the ground. And then she made the sound. Guttural. Deep. A moan that was loud and long and bone-piercing. It didn’t just fill the hallway. It moved through everyone who heard it.…