In the photograph that made Kim Phuc a living symbol of the Vietnam War, her burns aren't visible -- only her agony as she runs wailing toward the camera, her arms flung away from her body, naked because she has ripped off her burning clothes.
More than 40 years later she can hide the scars beneath long sleeves, but a single tear down her otherwise radiant face betrays the pain she has endured since that errant napalm strike in 1972.
Now she has a new chance to heal -- a prospect she once thought possible only in a life after death. "So many years I thought that I have no more scars, no more pain when I'm in heaven. But now -- heaven on earth for me!" Ms Kim says upon her arrival in Miami to see a dermatologist specialising in laser treatments for burn patients.
Late last month, Ms Kim, 52, began a series of laser treatments her doctor, Jill Waibel of the Miami Dermatology and Laser Institute, says will smooth and soften the pale, thick scar tissue that ripples from her left hand up her arm, up her neck to her hairline and down almost all of her back.
Even more important to Ms Kim, Dr Waibel says the treatments will also relieve the deep aches and pains that plague her to this day.
With Ms Kim are her husband, Bui Huy Toan, and another man who has been part of her life since she was 9 years old: Los Angeles-based AP photojournalist Nick Ut.
Kim Phuc shows the burn scars on her back and arms after laser treatments in Miami on Monday. Ms KIm was burned on the back and left arm by a napalm bomb in Vietnam more than 40 years ago. photos by AP
"He's the beginning and the end," Ms Kim says of the man she calls "Uncle Ut". "He took my picture and now he'll be here with me with this new journey, new chapter.''
It was Mr Ut, now 65, who captured Ms Kim's agony on June 8, 1972, after the South Vietnamese military accidentally dropped napalm on civilians in her village, Trang Bang, outside Saigon.
Mr Ut remembers the girl screaming in Vietnamese, "Too hot! Too hot!" He put her in the AP van where she crouched on the floor, her burnt skin raw and peeling off her body as she sobbed, "I think I'm dying, too hot, too hot, I'm dying.''
He took her to a hospital. Only then did he return to the Saigon bureau to file his photographs, including the one of Ms Kim on fire that would win the Pulitzer Prize. Ms Kim suffered serious burns over a third of her body; at that time, most people who sustained such injuries over 10% of their bodies died, Dr Waibel says.
Napalm sticks like a jelly, so there was no way for victims like Ms Kim to outrun the heat, as they could in a regular fire. "The fire was stuck on her for a very long time,'' Dr Waibel says, and destroyed her skin down through the layer of collagen, leaving her with scars almost four times as thick as normal skin.
While she spent years doing painful exercises to preserve her range of motion, her left arm still doesn't extend as far as her right arm, and her desire to learn how to play the piano is thwarted by stiffness in her left hand. Tasks as simple as carrying her purse on her left side are too difficult.
"As a child, I loved to climb on the tree, like a monkey," picking the best guavas, tossing them down to her friends, Ms Kim says. "After I got burned, I never climbed on the tree anymore and I never played the game like before with my friends. It's really difficult. I was really, really disabled.''
Triggered by scarred nerve endings that misfire at random, her pain is especially acute when the seasons change in Canada, where Ms Kim defected with her husband in the early 1990s. The couple live outside Toronto with two sons, ages 21 and 18. Ms Kim says her Christian faith brought her physical and emotional peace "in the midst of hatred, bitterness, pain, loss, hopelessness", when the pain seemed insurmountable. "No operation, no medication, no doctor can help to heal my heart. The only one is a miracle, [that] God love[s] me,'' she says. "I just wish one day I am free from pain.''
Mr Ut thinks of Ms Kim as a daughter, and he worried when, during their regular phone calls, she described her pain. When he travels now in Vietnam, he sees how the war lingers in hospitals there, in children born with defects attributed to Agent Orange and in others caught in napalm strikes. If their pain continues, he wonders, how much hope is there for Ms Kim?
Mr Ut says he's worried about the treatments. "Forty-three years later, how is laser doing this? I hope the doctor can help her.... Now she's over 50! That's a long time.''
Dr Waibel has a decade of experience using lasers to treat burn scars, including napalm scars. Each treatment typically costs $1,500 to $2,000 (53,200-71,000 baht) but Dr Waibel offered her services free of charge when Ms Kim contacted her for a consultation.
Dr Waibel's father-in-law had heard Ms Kim speak at a church several years ago, and he approached her after hearing her describe her pain.
At the first treatment in Dr Waibel's office, a scented candle lends a comforting air to the procedure room, and Ms Kim's husband holds her hand in prayer. Ms Kim tells Dr Waibel her pain is "10 out of 10" -- the worst of the worst.
The type of lasers used on Ms Kim's scars were originally developed to smooth out eye wrinkles. The lasers heat skin to the boiling point to vapourise scar tissue. Once sedatives are administered and numbing cream spread thickly over Ms Kim's skin, Dr Waibel dons safety glasses and aims the laser. Again and again, a red square appears on her skin, the laser fires with a beep and a nurse aims a vacuum-like hose at the area to catch the vapour.
The procedure creates microscopic holes in the skin, which allows topical, collagen-building medicines to be absorbed deep through the layers of tissue.
Dr Waibel expects Ms Kim to need up to seven treatments over the next eight or nine months.
Wrapped in blankets, drowsy from painkillers, her scarred skin a little red from the procedure, Ms Kim made a little fist pump. Compared to the other surgeries and skin grafts when she was younger, the lasers were easier to take.
"This was so light, just so easy,'' she says. A couple weeks later, home in Canada, Ms Kim says her scars have reddened and feel tight and itchy as they heal, but she's eager to continue the treatments. "Maybe it takes a year," she says. "But I am really excited -- and thankful.''