Counting To Fifteen [Grey's Anatomy]

chapter thirty three - a valentine's day

Daisy didn't necessarily consider herself a pessimist, but she found the concept of Valentine's Day seriously idiotic.

Love was an extremely overused word. Daisy found it truly bizarre how people were willing to throw the term around as if it were a weightless thing.

Love is heavy, a feeling you only hold for the people who know the deepest and ugliest parts of who you are and still care about you.

Daisy only ever loved three people, and two-thirds of that list happened to be deceased. Calypso was the only person on the entire planet that Daisy loved with every ounce of her.

And yet flowers and chocolate seemed like the most excessive way to express that. Why couldn't the expression itself just be enough?

Daisy was in a bad mood. She didn't think it was fair that Mom and Dad weren't around to love her anymore. She didn't think it was fair that the only person capable of loving her was a first grader. Valentine's Day made Daisy all sorts of grumpy. Valentine's Day was stupid, with its sickeningly awful Hallmark cards and oversized teddy bears.

February 13th was no doubt a day of preparation all over as people prepared gifts for the following day to give to their loved ones. Perhaps the 13th was a night that people were scrambling to buy last minute candies and gifts.

On the night of the 13th, the Sloan household was filled to the brim with tiny Valentine cards. Calypso was having a party at school the following day, and she found great joy in taking the time to write out a valentine for each classmate of hers.

"Abby." Calypso announced loudly at the dinner table as she finished writing the girl's name on a valentine. She scanned through the sticker pads laid out in front of her. "Abby gets, um...Abby gets a princess sticker!"

Daisy looked down at the messy handwriting, Calypso pressing the sticker down on the valentine. It wasn't centered on the card at all, and it drove Daisy insane.

Calypso also seemed so proud of herself that Daisy didn't have the heart to tell her she had gotten her b's and d's mixed up again. Calypso's classmate Abby would be getting a valentine tomorrow addressed to Addy.

Calypso picked the black-ink pen up again, pressing hard as she wrote. Her hands were shaky. Writing always made her nervous, and Calypso knew she was bound to mess something up. Her shakiness made the ink smear as she glided her hand along, but she tried not to pay attention to the splotches.

Calypso didn't mind the splotches anyway, because at least she was writing her letters. She had filled out so many cards already! The girl felt smart, for the first time in a long time, and she hoped that feeling never ever went away.

"Will." Calypso spoke loudly, turning to her sticker pack. "Will gets an alligator sticker."

This had been a recurring process all night. Calypso fills out her little cards and proceeds to announce every single name.

Aly gets a sticker and Calvin gets a sticker and Lilly gets a sticker and dear God Daisy wanted to claw her own eardrums out so as to not have to hear the never-ending cycle anymore.

Daisy was trying to get her own homework done, but that was immensely difficult with the six-year-old being as loud as ever. Not to mention she had all of her glitter pens and cards and sticker packs sprawled all over on what was supposed to be a shared table space.

Calypso picked up her pen, ready to write another valentine out when she frowned. She couldn't read the next name on her list. "What's this one?"

Calypso turned to her big sister for help, and Daisy looked down at the list of names Calypso's teacher had printed off for Valentine's Day cards.