For the first time since Lawrence Reed poured petrol over her head and turned her into a living torch on the CTA Blue Line, Bethany MaGee has spoken. Not through her family. Not through lawyers. But in her own voice, raw, raspy, and laced with morphine, from Room 412 of Stroger Hospital’s burn ICU.

“I still smell it,” she whispers through cracked lips, her once-sparkling hazel eyes now swollen slits in a face wrapped like a mummy. “Every time I close my eyes, I’m back on that train. The gasoline dripping down my neck… cold at first, then the heat. The heat was everywhere. I thought, ‘This is how I die. On a Monday. Wearing my favorite blazer.’”

The 26-year-old Indiana native, whose survival doctors call “nothing short of a miracle,” agreed to a bedside interview on condition that no cameras enter the room. What she revealed, between painful sips of water and the constant hiss of her ventilator, has left even hardened nurses in tears.

“He didn’t just want to hurt me,” she says, voice dropping to a haunted whisper. “He wanted to watch. When the flames went up, he didn’t run. He leaned back against the pole like he was at the movies. Smiling. I remember thinking, ‘He’s enjoying this.’”

That smile is now immortalized in court sketches from Reed’s federal arraignment yesterday. The 50-year-old career criminal, shackled in an orange jumpsuit, grinned at photographers as if posing for a yearbook photo while the prosecutor read the charges: attempted murder in aid of terrorism, use of a destructive device on a mass transit vehicle, aggravated battery with a deadly weapon. If convicted, he’ll die in a supermax cell.

But Bethany isn’t waiting for justice to heal her.

She’s already planning her comeback.

“People keep saying I’m a victim,” she rasps, a flicker of the old fire in her eyes. “I’m not. I’m the girl who’s going to walk out of here, get on that same damn Blue Line, and stare down every coward who looks away. Because if I let him win, if I hide, then he burns me twice.”

Her doctors aren’t so sure. Sixty percent of her body is third-degree burns. Her left ear is gone. Both hands are fused into claw-like mitts of scar tissue and donor skin. She’ll need at least 18 more surgeries, years of painful physiotherapy, and a lifetime of nerve pain that even fentanyl barely touches.

And yet, every morning at 6 a.m., when the nurses change her dressings, Bethany makes them play one song on the portable speaker: “Fight Song” by Rachel Platten. On full blast.

“She screams through the pain,” head burn nurse Marisol Ortiz says, wiping away tears. “But she refuses to cry until the chorus. Then she sings. Off-key, voice like gravel, but she sings. That’s Bethany.”

Meanwhile, Reed’s defense is already playing the mental health card. His public defender, citing a decades-old schizophrenia diagnosis and a childhood spent in foster care, is pushing for a competency evaluation. Sources inside the MCC say Reed has been caught bragging to other inmates: “I made the news, baby. Front page. They’ll never forget my name now.”

He’s right about one thing: Chicago will never forget.

The city has erupted in ways not seen since the Laquan McDonald video. Blue Line ridership has plummeted 40% overnight. Women are openly carrying mace on the platforms. A coalition of sorority sisters from DePaul and UIC has started “Bethany’s Riders,” volunteer groups who board trains in packs wearing bright yellow shirts that read “WE WATCH. WE PROTECT.” Their GoFundMe for Bethany’s medical bills and future prosthetics hit $1.2 million this morning.

Even Caterpillar, her employer, has stepped up in a massive way. CEO Jim Umpleby personally called her parents to say her job is waiting, her health insurance is fully covered for life, and the company is donating $500,000 to establish the “Bethany MaGee Courage Fund” for burn survivors who can’t afford reconstructive surgery.

But the most powerful moment came yesterday afternoon, when a group of Chicago firefighters (many of whom treated her at the scene) wheeled a surprise into her room: a tiny golden retriever puppy wearing a miniature CFD jacket. They named him Blaze.

Bethany sobbed when they placed him on her chest. Through the bandages, she managed to stroke his head with what’s left of her fingers.

“I lost everything that night,” she says, kissing the top of the puppy’s head. “My hair. My skin. My sense of safety. But not my fight. They poured gasoline on me and lit a match… but all they really did was show the world what I’m made of.”

Lawrence Reed may have wanted to watch her burn.

Instead, he created a phoenix.