The doctor came closest to my bed. I avoided his gaze and looked up to the ceiling tiles. There was a stain the color of milky coffee in the corner of one of the rectangles, a shade similar to Jim’s teeth. The doctor cleared his throat, indicating I should look at him, but I refused. Like all the other doctors I’d known, his competence was fake, his knowledge unimaginative, and, as a mermaid, I now had the wisdom to ignore what he would soon impose onto me, a power I had lacked as a girl.
