Miracle or Mirage

One night, a brother and sister are driving home together after a night at a local bar. The sister is the designated driver; the brother is drunk but functional. As they wind around a bend in the road, they are blinded by the headlights of an oncoming vehicle. The sister panics and swerves to the right. The car careens across a ditch and crashes into a tree. The brother barely manages to crawl out of the wreckage through the smashed windshield, but the sister’s legs are pinned and she cannot free herself. As the brother claws his way to safety, the vehicle catches fire. The sister is acutely conscious of her surroundings; her senses are all engaged. The heat intensifies as the flames snake towards her, and within five long seconds, the wreckage is engulfed. She cries out for help, but no one, not even her brother who’s passed out, delivers her from the fire. She screams, “Please, God, help me!” She burns. Nothing is left but charred ruins.
When the brother next comes to, he is lying in a hospital bed with only a few scratches. The doctor tells him that it is a miracle he survived. The brother asks about his sister. The doctor tells him the truth. He writhes in agony. He asks God, “Why her?” He thinks he hears an answer: a soul-scorching silence. He curses himself for leaving her alone to die so gruesomely. Embittered, he decides he deserves an eternity of hellfire for the “miracle” of his survival. “Surviving being trapped in a burning car would have been a real miracle,” he tells others.
Unable to cope, his soul slowly shrivels like burning flesh. He dies a withered old man after a lifetime of rejecting assurances of his innocence. He is buried next to his sister. Neither of them suffers the ongoing woes of life any longer. Was painlessness the truer miracle?