Emily Avin was supposed to come home that day in September.
Her parents had arranged it: Avin would move back into their country home in the small Florence County town of Pamplico, where she grew up playing softball and cheering for her high school football team as the mascot. It would be a break, for a month or so, from her job as a paramedic, a career the young woman loved but now found emotionally draining.
She worked one last 24-hour shift in Aiken. Afterward, instead of driving across the state, Avin called her mother upset. Sue Ann Avin detected hopelessness in her daughter’s voice.
“Emily, you’re not thinking about doing anything to hurt yourself, are you?”
Her daughter, a tough woman who wore her blond hair cropped short, tearfully promised she was OK. The two ended the call the way they always did.