Counting To Fifteen [Grey's Anatomy]

chapter forty five - a bad listener

Daisy felt her eyes shift out the window as Dr. Perkins tried to pry into her life.

Psychiatrists were all the same in that aspect, trying to peck away at the little pieces—the important details.

Daisy was sure Dr. Sen had asked questions in the beginning as the two were getting to know each other, she knew she should be patient with her new psychiatrist.

But Dr. Perkins just asked so many questions as he scanned over Daisy's file, and he didn't stop.

"Arizona." Dr. Perkins looked up. "You're from Arizona."

Dr. Perkins' words were somewhere between a question and a statement, and Daisy wasn't sure how to respond to him.

Arizona had just been Arizona. There wasn't a particular way to describe it, it was sort of just the middle ground.

Daisy preferred Washington. She liked the darker days, the gloomy and chilly afternoons. Arizona felt hot more often than not, and Daisy hadn't liked the warmth.

Daisy doesn't like warmth, Daisy thought, her mind trickling back to the blood on her hands.

For perhaps the tenth time in the last ten minutes, Daisy ignored the man's speaking. She kept her eyes cast out the window, watching the tiny cars pass by on the main road.

Daisy seemed zoned out, not particularly attentive to anything Dr. Perkins was saying. The psychiatrist snapped Daisy's file shut, placing the manila folder down on the desk in front of him.

"What did her blood feel like?"

Daisy looked over at the man in front of her, the features of her face scrunching up a bit. She felt a bit confused, not sure why the man would say something so blunt about such a touchy subject.

"What?"

"You haven't told anyone what it felt like, right? Because if you say that stuff out loud, it makes it seem more real, which isn't what you want. You want to ignore it, but you can't because then it'll just build up inside and never go away. I want to know, how did her blood feel?"

Daisy's mouth felt dry, the girl thickly swallowing. Her mind went to Calypso, the tiny girl that had been gone for almost two weeks now. It was still hard to wrap her head around the fact that Calypso was dead. It was hard to wrap her head around the fact that her death was permanent. She wasn't just at school, or just at her friend's house. Calypso wouldn't ever be coming home.

Dark liquid had seeped from the girl's skull, trickling down the pavement. Daisy remembered running over to Calypso and trying to stop the bleeding. She remembered the feeling of the blood flowing against her hand, a heavy bang bang bang as it wanted to spill out.

"Warm." Daisy spoke quietly, wetting her lips as her words came out. The girl let out a shaky exhale as more memories came back. "And...and heavy. I didn't know liquid could be heavy, but it weighed me down. It still does, I still feel it."

"You still feel her blood on your skin?" Dr. Perkins questioned, leaning forward slightly in his chair as he shifted his weight.

"It's something that doesn't go away. I mean...I scrub so hard in the shower that I leave these red marks all over my body. And at night, I...it crawls all over me, and I wake up in sweat and it freaks me out because I feel wet again like how I did with the blood, and I just...it all just makes me feel so..."

Daisy couldn't finish her thoughts, shutting her eyes tightly. Her thoughts pounded against her brain, pounded against the inside of her eyelids. Daisy felt her sister's blood always, and there was no way to get rid of it.