Bad Daughter by Haley Warren

Author:Haley Warren [Warren, Haley]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2022-08-08T05:00:00+00:00

My eyes were closed while I pushed them against the eyepiece of the microscope. I let myself rest there for a moment, vaguely aware that someone’s biopsy was on a slide just below me. I felt my chin dip, and my head nodded forward. Jerking back, I pulled my eyes away and exhaled, rubbing my face before grabbing the practically empty coffee cup beside me to sip from whatever was left. Each time I bent my head, my eyes seemed to close—but each time they did, something was there waiting for me. I was a small child rubbing useless circles on my father’s back while his body convulsed in withdrawal. I was hiding in a corner while he screamed and stumbled around our home. I was looking around for him in the crowds of my important events but he wasn’t there. I was throwing my phone in a rage each time he called me drunk when I was in school. I was in the backseat of his car while he drove us around aimlessly, drinking, assuring me that would be the time he would kill himself.

My stomach rolled and my skin began to prickle. I closed my eyes again, taking a steadying breath against the nausea swirling through my stomach and the tightness creeping across my chest. I opened them and looked down at my hands, folded in my lap where there were scratch marks across the back of them, and through the V-neck of my scrub top I could see red splotches forming across my skin. I began to shake my hands out, like I was shaking something off my fingertips. My eyelids fluttered again in exhaustion, and the moment they closed, my hand swung too close to my desk. I felt my fingers catch against the stack of papers there and I lurched forward again, hoping to grab the cascade of paper, forms and images before they tumbled to the ground. For some inexplicable reason, the sight of my work splayed across the floor, and the scans of someone’s body strewn in between caused the back of my eyes to burn.

I leaned forward, beginning to hastily grab everything and shove it back into the appropriate folders while blinking repeatedly.

“Carly? Do you need some help?” Keirstyn’s voice echoed from behind me, startling me when she bent down and began to hand me some of the papers.

“Thank you,” I whispered, continuing to look down as the edges of the pages grew watery in my gaze.

“I was coming to see if you wanted to grab another coffee, you mentioned you were exhausted this morning.” Keirstyn pushed up, extending a hand to me to bring me back from my crouching position.

I nodded, grabbing her hand while I clutched the haphazardly-filled folder in my other hand. “Sure, I think I need one. Just give me a moment, I need to straighten these out and finish up. But I was almost done.”

She nodded before turning and going to speak to one of our colleagues who was a few benches down from me.

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