The hospital looked cold and unforgiving from the inside. The poor little girl was hooked up to a ventilator and for some reason, had her eyes open. She stared at me, trying to figure out who I really was. I don't think she knew I was her savior.

The doctor came and checked on her. He looked at us with tired, sunken eyes. I felt sorry for him. Those doctors never slept, even when they had to. I knew the poor man needed a break. "Who are you?" he asked professionally. "Are you the girl's parents?"

I shook my head. "No, we found her and pulled her from the wreck."

"Mmmhmm," he wrote down some notes on his clipboard. I hated the "mmmhmm" sound of the doctor. It was as if I were a lab rat or something!

I had gotten that same sound when I was diagnosed with Scleroderma. It was a hard thing to hear. I felt so far away. And I felt so angry…

I wanted to fly away far from there and disappear forever.

"Any particular reason why you saved her?" he asked.

I shrugged. "She needed my help, so I helped her. There doesn't always need to be a reason to be a good person and to help others!"

"I see…do you know her name?"

"No, she was unconscious when we found her and we didn't have a chance to check for her name…sorry I can't be of much help to you."

"What about her parents?"

"They died in the fire?"

"Fire?"

"The car was on fire when we found her."

We were told to wait in the lobby. After ten minutes or so, we were told to go home. Go home? I couldn't do that! That little girl needed my help!

She looked so helpless in that bed, with her sunken eyes, charred skin, and scared eyes. She was covered with dried blood. The poor thing, her scars were probably never going to heal.

Those burn marks were going to leave a permanent scar, and people were going to notice those very scars and judge her for them. Just like me with Scleroderma. People were going to see my hardened skin, the oozing sores, and my purple hands. When they did see those horrible things, they were going to judge me as a freak.

I wasn't ready for that; I wasn't ready to be judged as a freak. I was angry about the diagnosis and angry about the horrible things that were going to come after diagnosis.

I had an answer, but at what price? Judgment was harsh, always… I was going to be eaten alive.

And the girl was going to grow up thinking she was a freak. I was 20; I had lived my whole life as normally as possible. The girl wouldn't know what *normal* was. However, was there such a thing as *normal*?

No, there wasn't such a thing as normal…at least I didn't think there was. I always believed that everyone was who they were. There was no normal; people created normal within their own realities.

But that wouldn't stop the hurtful remarks. How was I going to deal with that? I wasn't that strong; I couldn't deal with all those "eww" or "What's Wrong with you?" and everything that came with a rare disease.

Scleroderma was so rare, and that was the hardest part of the disease. Anything that was rare was ridiculed, *unbelievable*, or *just a person being lazy*.

Those people didn't know that you couldn't fake inflammation, hardened skin, or oozing sores at the tips of your fingers. That just wasn't possible.

Autoimmune seemed to equal *out of this world*! I had never experienced anything so uncanny as Scleroderma. I still didn't understand it. And I could die, which scared the shit out of me.

That was okay, because Scleroderma caused some serious shit to happen.