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People ask why she became a doctor, and Samira always has the line ready.
Her father died in the ER when she was thirteen.
It’s a good line. Clean. Sharp. The kind of story that makes sense. The kind they expect from a brown girl in an emergency department with a clipboard and something to prove.
They never ask how he died. Or what kind of father he was. Or what kind of daughter she had been.
Good. Because she doesn’t have answers. Just echoes. And a fury she’s turned into function.
The patient came in at 8:05 a.m.
Male. Fifty-eight. Sudden collapse in a grocery store parking lot. No return of spontaneous circulation during transport.
Samira didn’t need the chart.
She already knew the shape of it.
It was her father’s story. Different man. Same age. Same sidewalk. Same too-late CPR. Same wife crying at the door.
She snapped her gloves on too tight. Her hands were already sweating.
Trauma 2 smelled like antiseptic and old blood. She bagged. Someone else compressed. The monitor stayed flat.
Flatline. Flatline. Nothing.
Time of death: 8:12.
Seven minutes.
They tried for seven.
They gave him twelve.
She counted every second.
Her father had been fifty-eight too. Healthy enough. Worked long shifts at the post office. Wore orthopedic shoes before it was trendy. Saved coupons like religion. Called her beta even when she rolled her eyes.
She loved him.
And she hated him.
Because he never let her out past nine. Because he watched her like the world was hunting her. Because she thought everything he did was control, not care. Because everything felt like a rule, a lock, a cage. Because everything was a lecture. A warning. A no.
Because immigrant parenting doesn’t come with a softness setting. Because brown fathers are allowed to be everything except scared.
And he was scared. Of her growing up. Of her slipping through his fingers. Of her not being Indian enough, not good enough, not safe enough. Not worth the years he’d worked and starved and bent himself around.
She didn’t understand that at thirteen. She just saw a wall.
So she pushed. Hard.
The night before he died, he made her pasta. She dumped it out when he wasn’t looking.
He asked what was wrong.
She told him, “You. You’re what’s wrong.”
He sighed. Told her, “One day, you’ll understand I’m just trying to protect you.”
She told him she’d rather die than turn out like him.
She said that.
She said that.
And then he left to buy mangoes. And never came back.
East Orange General didn’t let kids in the trauma bay. She watched them through glass.
She saw them shock him. Start compressions. Stop. Start again. Slower. She watched a nurse check her fucking watch.
Twelve minutes.
That’s all he got.
And she felt it. The moment they gave up. When the room shifted. When the doctor stepped back. When no one looked her mother in the eye.
They didn’t try. Not like they do now. Not like they would’ve if he’d been white. If his English had been smooth. If his name hadn’t been mispronounced twice at intake. If his shirt had been ironed. If the insurance card didn’t make them pause.
They saw his skin. His accent. His wife’s sari. And decided twelve was enough.
He wasn’t perfect.
He was loud. Short-tempered. Dismissive when she talked back. He told her makeup was for “grown women.” He once threw away a tank top she bought with her own money. He treated her like a daughter and a liability.
He told her no a lot. In the way only someone terrified of the world could.
But he made her tea when she had cramps. Picked her up from orchestra rehearsal even when he worked late. Slid snacks under her door when she refused to speak to him. Wrote sticky notes that said “Eat this, future doctor.”
She didn’t remember those things until after. And even then, they weren’t enough to drown out the guilt.
At the time, all she felt was anger. Shame. The weight of being the firstborn of immigrants, the only child, the one everything was staked on.
She was their investment. Their blueprint. Their lifeboat.
So she fought him.
And then he died.
She ran.
From East Orange to Pittsburgh. Took the first acceptance she got. Said she needed “a change of pace.” Meant “I can’t look at this house without throwing up.”
Undergrad. Med school. Residency. All of it. Back-to-back. No breaks. No gap years. No hesitation.
She didn’t visit home. Didn’t answer calls unless it was about documents. Sent her mom birthday gifts from Amazon. Never said “I miss you.” Never asked about the baby. The half-sister born six years after her father died. The girl with the new dad and the stable house and the quiet life.
She told herself it was distance. But it was shame. And rage. And something too ugly to name.
Her mom remarried. Found someone calm. “He’s good to me,” she said once, over a call Samira let go to voicemail. Rebuilt a life that didn’t include the version of Samira who still screamed inside.
Samira never said she was angry. But she was.
At her mom. At the system. At herself. At the fucking universe for giving her twelve minutes and no second chance.
She’s twenty-nine now. A senior resident. Trusted. Efficient.
She used to spend half her shift at the bedside. Listening. Asking. Double-checking vitals. Triple-ordering tests. She didn’t trust herself yet. Didn’t trust the system.
She still cared too much. Still sat on bedsides. Still asked patients where it hurt in their own words. Still ordered the extra test when something didn’t feel right. Still stayed late if the vibes were off.
But she didn’t linger the way she used to.
She had learned to move. To trust her gut. To ration her empathy like it came with a price tag.
Because it did.
Empathy will eat you alive if you let it.
Her research focused on racial disparities in emergency medicine.
Triage bias. Language gaps. Delays. Disbelieved pain. Families talked over. Parents ignored. Black teens labeled “noncompliant.” Aunties given half a discharge summary and no translator. Black patients in sickle cell crises who are told to wait or labeled “drug seeking” and “aggressive.” The quiet brown kids given silence in return.
She told people it was academic.
But really, she’s still trying to prove something. To someone. To herself.
Would they have tried harder if he wasn’t Indian?
Would they have tried longer?
People tell her she’s composed.
Focused.
They don’t know she lives in a one-bedroom apartment with no art on the walls, no food in the fridge, and a couch she never sits on. They don’t know she’s never been in love. Never been on a real date. Never let anyone close enough to realize she doesn’t know how to take care of herself unless someone’s coding.
They don’t know she rewrites that night every time she’s in a trauma bay. They didn’t know she replayed every second of those twelve minutes like a punishment loop she couldn't break. That sometimes she holds pressure on a wound and sees her father’s chest instead.
They don’t know that even now, she’s not kind.
Not to herself. Not ever.
What if I hadn’t yelled? What if I hugged him? What if I hadn’t thrown the pasta out?
What if I had gone into the room and told him I was sorry before the monitor flatlined?
What if he’s still mad?
What if he isn’t and she never gets to tell him she was?
There’s a contact in her phone.
Dad (Old)
Still saved. Still untouched. The number’s probably gone. Or belongs to someone who’d answer like, wrong number, bro.
But sometimes she taps it anyway. Just once. Just to remember she used to be someone’s kid.
She doesn’t delete it.
Of course she doesn’t.
She lets the screen go dark, sets the phone down, and sits there for a long time, still in scrubs, hair stuck to her neck, the stink of trauma bay dried into her skin.
No crying. No epiphany. Just this: a low-grade ache she’s learned to live around.
She tells herself the story still works.
That it’s fine.
That it’s enough to say
my father died in the ER when I was thirteen,
and let people believe that’s the beginning.
That it doesn’t matter that she’s still stuck in the middle.
That no one ever has to know how badly she wants to go back and be softer. Or how afraid she is that it wouldn’t have mattered.