What are the words?

So, while at work the night before last, we got called for a shooting. Not unexpected, especially the area mentioned, it's right on the border between our two gang factions. The short story is that a family's watching TV in the living room when they hear the first shots of a drive-by. The daughter runs for a closet, but a bullet comes through the window and pierces her left breast. What is a potentially lethal injury manages not to puncture lung and miss her heart, etc. However, bullets are notoriously erratic and this one decides to make it's route lower. It's path of destruction opts for the girl's spine, transsecting the spinal cord (T11) and paralyzing her from the waist down. So she'll have survived what should've been a fatal shot, but will be confined to a wheelchair for the rest of her life. She's 12.

While we're doing our thing and working to get her and us out of there, her father jumps in the back of the truck. He is frantic to know how she is before they remove him so we can work. And for the first time in a very long time, I found myself without the words to say to him.

Understand that I have the words for just about everything when it comes to my job. I can gently explain to you that your family member is beyond my help and has passed on. I can bluntly tell you that your family member is dying but that I'm doing everything I can. I can reassure you with confidence that your family member will recover, or that it will be alright -- it's not as bad as it looks. So when he looked to me for that, I turned and faced him out of years of practice ... and failed utterly. I didn't have the words.

How do I tell you that because of this random, violent act your daughter is now a paraplegic. That on the verge of her maturity she will never walk down an aisle under her own power. That her life (and yours) just became infinitely more complicated. Financial strain, emotional stress, everyday things will now be daunting challenges to surmount and overcome. What if she hadn't had stood up, what if she'd hit the floor instead, turned right instead of left -- where would the bullet have gone then? What if you'd moved to a safer area when you thought about it last year? Yes your daughter will live, but she will never walk again.

Some things you just cannot mend with words.