Of course, harvesting skin for grafts mucked up my unburned areas, and then we plucked off my big toe for my hand, so now there’s really no part of me the fire didn’t claim. (By the way, harvesting is not my word, it’s a doctor’s word that makes me feel like I was abducted and probed by aliens. Like I need to feel any more extraterrestrial.)

Sometimes I fantasize about Dr. Sharp actually fixing me one day. I’ve even collected pictures and articles about surgeries like eyebrow implants and ear prosthetics and water balloons beneath the scalp to stretch the non-bald skin.

Of course, my drooping eyes are first on my to-do list of fantasy surgeries that will never actually happen. Insurance companies aren’t too fond of coughing up cash for co$metic $urgery. Plus, after my toe-to-hand transfer, we decided to take a surgery hiatus. Give my body and Glenn’s bank account a breather.

Honestly, I’ve enjoyed the respite from the never-ending cycle of surgeries and skin grafts and waking up mummified every few weeks, always believing when we peeled off the thin white gauze, I’d be me again.

Hope is exhausting.

Dr. Layne stands in the middle of the circle, appropriately dressed in the psychologist uniform of a pencil skirt and a capped-sleeve blouse I wouldn’t dream of wearing with the way it showcases her scars. She’s halfway through a formal welcome when the double doors swing open and a girl in a wheelchair maneuvers through.

“Pardon the interruption!” Her voice echoes through the vast room.

Her brown hair swishes from a high ponytail, revealing some serious burnage on her neck. The deep-purple discoloration reaches toward her face, stopping just shy of her chin. A hot-pink-striped sleeve covers her right arm, and it takes me a beat to realize it’s her compression garments.

The stripes continue down her right leg. A cast—also hot pink and signature-free—encases her left. She’s like the love child of a zebra and a psychedelic clown.

She wheels herself into the circle.

“Wait a second.” She looks around at each of us. “I’m beginning to think this isn’t the cross-country tryouts.”

I try to turn my chuckle into a cough when I notice no one else finds this funny. The girl smiles at me, though, while Dr. Layne smiles patiently at her.

“We were just about to do introductions. Piper, why don’t you start us off.”

The girl straightens up in her wheelchair.

“I’m Piper. Car accident six weeks ago, on New Year’s Eve. Mostly deep second-degree on my right side. All sorts of bones in my leg shattered.” She taps the pink cast. “Have a touch of spinal injury, so the wheelchair is temporary, knock on wood. Scars are here to stay.