Counting To Fifteen [Grey's Anatomy]

chapter sixteen - thanksgiving dinners

Daisy wasn't just triple crazy, now she classified herself as quadruple crazy.

PTSD had been added to her list by Dr. Sen, something that she wasn't thrilled about.

She wasn't sure what had happened, or how it had. Everything all came onto her so quickly.

Dr. Sen had that glass cupholder he used to keep pens in. Daisy wasn't paying attention, so she wasn't quite sure what he had done. She couldn't remember if he had reached for a paper underneath and caused the glass to slip, or if he had accidentally nudged it with his elbow.

But the glass shattered into shards onto his hardwood floor, the sound searing into Daisy's brain like a hot iron.

Her brain magically transported her out of Dr. Sen's cleanly office and into the pig sty that was the living room of the Walter residence.

It felt more like an out of body experience than anything else. It was like her eyes were stuck, viewing the memory through a magnifying glass.

But Mr. Walter's cold eyes were definitely on her. He looked ready to strike, and she could hear him stringing out more curse words than she could count.

His beer bottle shattered loudly. Daisy usually flinched at that, but she didn't move at all this time. She was stuck where she was, face-to-face with an angry Mr. Walter.

Calypso could be heard crying in the background somewhere in her room, Mr. Walter yelling for her to shut the hell up.

Daisy had never in her life felt so helpless. She wanted to run and comfort Calypso. She wanted to reach her hands up to protect her face from Mr. Walter's hitting. She wanted to do something, anything.

But she was frozen. Daisy felt like she was in a nightmare, her heart racing rapidly at the thought that Mr. Walter was here to hurt her again.

And just as soon as the memory had come up to suffocate her, it was gone in an instant.

Dr. Sen stared at Daisy in a way that let her know she had clearly reacted in an abrupt way unbeknownst to herself.

"Are...you alright?" Dr. Sen asked cautiously in a quiet tone.

Daisy nodded. "Mhm."

A terrible lie, and Dr. Sen knew it too. Daisy was sweating, she could feel the clamminess on her skin, and she wasn't sure how she had gotten so nervous.

Dr. Sen frowned as he looked to his computer before facing Daisy. "I think...maybe we should end our session early today."

And when Mark asked her why her psychiatry session had ended only twenty minutes in, she simply lied and said she had no clue. That was much easier than explaining that Dr. Sen breaking his pen holder sent her into some sort of state of shock.

Presently though, she was safe, and she wasn't in the midst of some emotional breakdown. It was Thanksgiving Day, and Daisy was doing her English homework at the kitchen table.

Daisy always hated teachers that assigned projects over holiday breaks. She swore her English teacher still hated her for what she had written in regards to the whole "What are you thankful for?" prompt.

Daisy was reading a book. The Giver, it was called, and she was to write chapter summaries. It was a weirdly philosophical dystopian novel. The plot was already difficult for her to comprehend, Mark talking to himself in the kitchen like a crazy man made it ten times harder for her to understand the book at all.

"Baste." Mark spoke slowly, narrowing his eyes at his laptop screen that he was currently using to help walk him through preparing a turkey. "Baste. I don't know how to baste."