When she was only three months old, Amanda had rolled off a sofa and fallen into a hot-steam humidifier sitting on the floor. The device tipped, and scalding steam and water burned her delicate skin. By the time she arrived at Albany Medical Center, she had third-degree burns.
There, in the middle of bright lights and unfamiliar hands, that young nurse had been assigned to care for her. While surgeons worked and doctors discussed treatment, the nurse did the one thing that cameras happened to catch: she simply held Amanda, steady and gentle, as if to tell this hurting baby that she was safe.
As a child, the scars from her burns covered parts of her head and body, drawing stares everywhere she went. At school, some kids whispered. Others weren’t so subtle.
She was mocked, pointed at, called names. The cruelty came in many forms—questions asked with fake curiosity, giggles behind her back, outright taunts that left her wanting to disappear.
“Growing up as a child, disfigured by the burns, I was bullied and picked on, tormented,” she later recalled.
On the worst days, when the words felt heavier than the scars themselves, Amanda would go back to that photograph.
