“Mia? Are you ready?”

Mia looked at her broken face in the mirror and let the hair of her chocolate brown wig flop, before tying it into a messy bun. She wasn’t ready and never really would be, but she would have to go and let the doctor check the healing rate of her scar tissue.

“Coming, mum,” she shouted, with one last frown at the mirror.

There was a time when she wouldn’t have left the house without doing her hair and makeup or making sure she wore a cute little outfit but that time was gone, along with every bit of hope for a family, decent career and love. After all, nobody wanted a woman with sixty percent of her face covered in scars.

“You should be grateful, Mia,” the doctor had told her. “You have a chance at life. So many other people don’t get that chance, especially after an accident such as you’ve had. You have been blessed, my dear. Grab it and take it with both hands.”

Sitting in the car, she stared mindlessly out of the window. Trees, houses and people blurred past without her even noticing much at all. She had stopped paying attention to things after finding that people paid way too much attention to her. If she didn’t look, she could pretend she didn’t notice the stares or the whispers of wonder as they tried to guess what had happened to make her look the way she did.

It wasn’t a fascinating story, despite what people might think when they looked at the scars that had tightened up her skin and mangled her features. It had been a simple mistake, a one-second decision that had cost her everything. She had been celebrating her twenty-fifth birthday and had gotten extremely drunk. Instead of doing the right thing and getting a taxi home, her friend, Peter, had offered to drive her sports car. He had drunk considerably less than she had and they thought they would be okay, but they couldn’t have been more wrong.

A cat had run out into the road and Peter had swerved to avoid it. The car had been travelling at a high speed and he lost control, sending the car careening into a wall. Mia had been knocked unconscious and by the time the ambulance and fire crew arrived, Peter had died. The rescue services worked quickly but when Mia was almost free, the car suddenly became a blazing inferno.

Mia escaped with her life but was left with her face, scalp, arms and chest, extremely disfigured due to burns.

“I’m sure it will be good news this time, honey.”

“Yeah, like last time with the ‘You can always keep wearing wigs’ thing? I know I should be grateful but seriously, mum. Look at me. I’m hideous. I don’t want to keep going through these skin grafts. It’s pointless.”

“Oh, Mia. Beauty comes from within. It’s what's inside, not what's outside. You look at a sweet wrapper and think it will be wonderful but in reality, it’s one of those horrid orange creams that nobody likes.”

“Mum, your thought process is weird. You can’t compare my mangled body to an orange creme. Some people actually like those, you know, unlike me. One look and they've made their minds up about me.”

“Someone will like you, Mia. Just have faith,” Doctor Greenwood said, as he closed the door to his office. “Now, come on. Let's get those dressings off your arm and see how it looks.”.

Plastic. She didn't even need to see it to know that that's what her skin would look like.

"See? Healing well, my dear. Healing well," he said, examining the mess that had been hidden by bandages.

Mia sighed as she looked at her arm, which had gone from twisted and shrivelled looking skin to overstretched plastic that had a kind of sheen to it.

“I don’t know if this is better or not. I don’t know what to think anymore,” she said.

“Have you been taking your medication?” The doctor asked.

He was nice, in an elderly uncle kind of way. He was always trying to act younger than he was but he was bubbly and pleasant and had been taking care of Mia since her accident.

“Yeah, but it doesn’t seem to help. I still do the counselling, too.”

“I’ll put in a suggestion for a medication review. How’s the support group?”

“She doesn’t go. Refuses every time I offer to take her, doctor.”

“Mia! We discussed this. It will do you some good. Why won’t you go?” He asked.

Mia shrugged. She had always been outgoing, social and full of life but the accident had taken it all away from her. She would rather stray locked in her room, away from the world, where nobody and nothing could hurt her. “I just don’t want to. That’s all,” she said.

“Mia, honey, you’ve been through a lot and you need to offload,” he said ,looking at her over the rim of his round glasses. “Sandra says you’ve cut everyone out of your life and you stay hidden away in your room. That’s not healthy. You need fresh air. You need to make friends. It will help. I promise.”

“My mum says a lot of things. You just need to learn not to listen,” she laughed, “Besides, I have the counsellor to offload to.”

Doctor Greenwood shook his head and gave a tut-tut as he scribbled something on a notepad then pressed the intercom and called for his secretary.

“Send this over to Wendy. Tell her it’s urgent.”

“Is something wrong, Doctor Greenwood?”

“Oh, no, nothing at all, Sandra. I just want Wendy to reassess Mia, that’s all. It’s nothing to worry about, my dear. Now, are we going to go ahead with more operations in the future, Mia?”

Mia stared out of the window pretending not to hear him. She could see a flock of birds dancing in the sky and as she watched the majestic performance, she felt the sudden urge to do something spectacular.

“No, I don’t think so,” Mia said. “Not for a while, anyway. I’m going to be busy, you see, for the foreseeable. I’m going to fly like a bird.”

“What on earth do you mean?” Sandra said.

“I’m moving out, mum.”