And then I sat there in her kitchen and I understood something that I don’t think anyone in my family has understood, including me until that afternoon.

Everybody in this story did the correct thing.

My father took a photograph of me to make people come. That was correct. He was right — they came.

My aunt released the photograph to prove what she’d been living with. That was correct. It worked.

The news ran it because it was the story. Correct. The foundation licensed it because it was a good image for their campaign. Correct, and legal, and cheap — two hundred and forty dollars.

Every single person made a defensible decision about my face and not one of them asked me, because I was unconscious, and by the time I wasn’t, it was done and there was nothing to ask about.