My father barred me from entering my own medical school graduation ceremony because my stepmother wanted her daughter to use my ticket. “You’re just a nurse’s assistant anyway, let your sister have her moment,” my father sneered, pushing me toward the exit.

tote bag bumping against my hip. All I wanted was the dark sanctuary of my cramped basement bedroom. I had been awake for twenty-two hours. Between rotating patient beds in the pediatric oncology ward and secretly agonizing over the final statistical models for my doctoral thesis in the bio-lab, my mind was fraying at the edges.

As I tried to quietly continue reading …