I have spent twelve years as an ER nurse, training my body to function on caffeine and adrenaline, training my face to remain stoic while witnessing the worst moments of people’s lives. I know how to triage a gunshot wound. I know how to hold the hand of a dying stranger. But nothing in my medical training prepared me for the triage I had to perform on my own heart when my family decided my daughter was disposable.
My name is Lauren Mitchell. I am thirty-five, a single mother, and the fiercely protective guardian of Harper, my sixteen-year-old daughter. For years, I played the role of the dutiful daughter to Richard and Eleanor, the peacekeeper to my golden-child sister Amanda, and the apologist for a family dynamic that treated my child like a second-class citizen.
But last Christmas, the peacekeeper died. And a warrior took her place.
It started, as tragedies often do, with a scheduling conflict. A nationwide nursing shortage had hit Memorial Hospital like a tidal wave. By early December, the roster was decimated. I was scheduled for a double shift on Christmas Day—7:00 AM to midnight. It was the nature of the beast, the oath I took.
“I tried to swap it, Harper,” I told her one evening, the scent of pine and cinnamon filling our small apartment as we hung ornaments on our artificial tree. “I feel terrible leaving you alone.”
Harper, with her auburn hair tucked behind her ears and a maturity far beyond her years, just smiled. “Mom, stop. I’m sixteen, not six. Besides, Grandma called. She said I should still come for dinner. I can drive myself now, remember?”
