Published: Nov 10, 2020
It had to be Done
She was crying in the car when I returned to her. I will never forget the look on her face: like I had let her down. But she was broken, and I had no way of knowing what else to do. I had just been in to see her doctor at the time, Stevenson. When I entered the room, her first look was surprise, and it was gone quickly, replaced with terror. She knew in that very moment they were sending her for laser shavings, and I was not going to stop them. That's when I realized she was not afraid, she was furious.
The tears ran down her face in the same line, dragging makeup along her cheeks, like a river carving a course through the Earth. I felt pity and fear, and a whole mess of other emotions rolling through my body. She was broken; I had been raising a broken girl. I knew it for some time with her talk of morbid things and always seeing the dark side of life. But for a long time I had hoped it was some phase she would grow out of.