The shattered bones on her face will heal. The swelling in her brain will subside. The tube inserted in her trachea will be removed. She will be able to breathe on her own again. The bruises on her body will fade and be replaced by a youthful glow. The trauma, one distant day from now, will no longer be a physical pain.

If she survives.

If she survives, she will feel something else. A different kind of pain that eclipses the physical, an affliction so deep and traumatic, that she may never be the she she once was, if she ever was that she.

She, is a 13-year-old girl who was beaten within an inch of her life by her mother’s partner in their home in the northern Armenian city of Gyumri. After the vicious beating, her attacker left her in that state for eight hours before calling an ambulance. When her battered body was finally brought to the hospital, she had a broken nose and jaw, she had bruises all over her body, fractured ribs, abdominal swelling, a cerebral contusion, she was bleeding internally, unconscious, her body in complete and total shock.