Arynthe's Story

Dzirta syndrome type 3

17 br.

Gaspingly I sat down in the big white chair. The long walk to the hospital had taken its toll once again. My left leg felt like it was being cut by a thousand knives, and some blue flakes of anteron fell off my knee. 

My mother gently touched my hair. I could see she was nervous. I was nervous too, as I had been all morning, but at the moment I was way too tired to feel that. 

The door opened and doctor Sioro walked in. He was the one I had seen last week. He sat down on the other side of the desk and looked at my mother and then at me. His eye colour darkened as his gaze rested on my face, that was half filled with blue flakes that grew out of my skin. I could never get used to that reaction, even though I knew I looked horrible. Wasn't it the law that everyone was equal, no matter what they looked like? Why get so disgusted by a body like mine?

"It has been confirmed," doctor Sioro said, with a face like I was already dead. "Dzirta syndrome." 
My mother burst into tears.
I rubbed some anteron flakes off my left shoulder. 
Doctor Sioro sighed, as if he was glad he said what was wrong with me, and then continued: "To be exact, dzirta syndrome type 3. Which means..."
He paused for a moment, allowing my mother to take a deep breath and calm down a bit. 
"Which means," he repeated, "that it will get better once she grows up. Eventually her anteron growth will stabilize, and the seizures will get less bad." 
My mother nodded. 
I tried to peel an itchy flake off my cheek. 
"You will have to be patient," doctor Sioro said. "It will take years before any improvement is visible. Also, she will have to deal with the left side of her body being more fragile and more difficult to move for the rest of her life. There's no known cure for dzirta syndrome. It's so rare that doing research is difficult."

I felt a sharp pain in my cheek. The flake had come off, tearing open my skin. I felt a droplet of blood gliding down my face, and quickly held my hand over it so that my mother wouldn't see it. She always got angry if I peeled anteron flakes off me. 

My mother didn't even notice it; she had gone back to crying over her poor five-year-old daughter, that would be handicapped forever. It seemed to me that she minded more than I did.