Fern saw Harry turn pale. She’d had time to get used to the look of her daughter—this was infinitely prefer­able to the hole in the face—but then Harry hadn’t seen much of that either. She hurried to reassure him.

“They took skin from her hip, Harry, to make this. Look at how perfectly the nostrils are formed. They had to make it big, because it won’t grow like the rest of her will. She’ll grow into it, and those scars will fade away to nothing, and Harry,” she pleaded, “some day she’ll look normal.”

Harry look at his wife’s twisted face. She wanted so much for him to accept this baby as his own, to love her as a father should, but in his shock at seeing what the quack had done to that baby face, he misconstrued her pleading with him, thinking she was trying to convince herself as much as him.

“She ain’t never gonna look normal, Fern. She ain’t never gonna be normal. She’s a horror!” He shouted this right into the baby’s face, and she blinked and began to wail. “Shut it up,” he said as he stalked out the door.

Fern’s life dissolved in front of her eyes. She unbuttoned her dress and brought the babe to her breast, rocking back and forth in the straight chair. She couldn’t think. Fragments of crazy thoughts kept shooting through her mind. Take the baby and leave. Go visit Addie. Go home to her parents. Send the baby away. Renounce God. Give up healing, give up her life, give up Harry. Kill herself.

The shock of Harry’s reaction burned in the back of her throat, but her eyes were dry. She looked down at the little face sucking at her breast, and she loved this child. She loved this little girl with everything in her body and soul, and she loved Harry too.

She raised her eyes to the ceiling and prayed.

Martha grew as a normal child, but by the time she was three years old, it was plain that her nose would never look normal. As she grew, the scars widened, her growing cheeks spreading them apart. The uneven stitching on the left side caused uneven tension, and the nose began to draw to one side, the nostril collapsing in upon itself. And it began to hurt.

After numerous consultations, Doc Pearson finally removed the metal brace from inside the nose, figuring he couldn’t do any more harm, and the brace might be the cause of the pain the little girl felt at night. When the metal form was gone, the pain stopped, but the nose began to harden into a twisted shape.