All of this must have been running through the mind of her father, Mohammed al-Beltagi, the secretary general of the country's ousted Muslim Brotherhood party, as he learned the news of his daughter's death on Wednesday.
Standing in the makeshift field hospital, his protest camp of Rabaa al-Adawiya burning around him, he had stared down, frozen, his eyes brimming with tears, at the lifeless body of his daughter, one eyewitness recalled.
Asma el-Beltagi was one of at least 525 people who were killed on Wednesday when Egyptian security forces stormed two Muslim Brotherhood protest camps that, for the past six weeks, had been calling for a reversal of the military coup that ousted Mohammed Morsi and Mr Beltagi, among others, from power.
Her death certificate, seen by The Telegraph, said that Asma had been shot in the chest, that her skull was crushed and her left leg broken.
Speaking for the first time, her brother Anas el-Beltagi, described how she had been on her to way to help at a field hospital when she was caught up in the violence.