Counting To Fifteen [Grey's Anatomy]

chapter fourteen - psychiatry & navigations

Daisy hated psychiatry.

It's not that there was anything particularly wrong with the session itself. Dr. Sen was very nice and patient, and his leather couch was incredibly comfy.

But it felt so uncomfortable to Daisy. The whole...talking part. All of it really.

Calypso was always the talkative sister. Daisy wondered if Calypso would be able to be so open and vulnerable if she had to go to psychiatry.

Then again, Calypso didn't have to go to psychiatry, and she probably would never have to. As opposed to her sister, she wasn't crazy.

Calypso didn't have to watch their mother wither away like a dead flower. Calypso didn't remember being told by a police officer that their father had been killed in an accident. Calypso didn't have to be on the receiving end of Mr. Walter's fist.

It was all Daisy, and Daisy had never in her life been so jealous of a six-year-old.

Daisy remembered being six. She had a weird obsession with sidewalk chalk, and her hair was much lighter like Calypso's. It had grown darker over the years, resembling the color of her father's hair as opposed to her mother's.

Those were the days of life as an only child. Being an only child was the worst, and Daisy always begged her parents for a sibling. A little brother was alright, but a little sister was the dream. Daisy wanted a little sister so bad.

And she got one. Six was a good age for Daisy. It was the year Mom found out she was pregnant, and it was the last year Mom was as healthy as ever. The last good year of Daisy's life.

If life had a rewind button, Daisy would be the first to use it. She would live in the past, if she could. She wouldn't have to worry about the present. The present that was plagued with quizzes, and psychiatry, and diagnoses.

Dr. Sen had made a diagnosis. Daisy did have OCD. And social anxiety. And clinical depression. The list just kept getting longer and longer, and Daisy hated the fact that she felt triple crazy.

"Let's not use that word." Dr. Sen had frowned at Daisy's use of the word crazy. "Mental illness doesn't make you crazy, it just means you need a little extra help to feel like yourself again."

But Daisy felt pretty crazy. And she hadn't felt like herself in years, talking it out wasn't going to magically fix her.

"Do you ever...intensely miss your mother?" Dr. Sen asked, looking surprised when Daisy shook her head. "Your father?"

"Not really."

That was a major lie. Daisy thought about her parents every second of every day, and she would do anything to spend one more moment with them again.

But if she talked about it, she would definitely cry, and how embarrassing would it be to cry in front of a total stranger?

Besides, it had been years. Daisy was used to the absence of her mom and dad. It wasn't anything out of the ordinary, and it certainly wasn't anything she should be crying about now.

"It's...alright to express emotion." Dr. Sen spoke slowly. "That's a good thing. When people don't express emotion, that's when they tend to lean into their sociopathic tendencies."

Sociopathic.

Daisy knew what a sociopath was. A person who didn't feel any emotion whatsoever, as opposed to a psychopath who is just crazy and feels the most intensely, out-of-tune emotions.

Psychopaths are born, it's wired into their brains. But sociopaths are made.

The idea of being a sociopath scared Daisy a bit. That must be awful not being able to feel any sort of emotion.