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Serena Southerlyn was very, very tired. The writing on her legal pad separated and ghosted around on the page. She reached a hand out for her coffee cup, missed, and knocked it over. Cold brown sludge added another layer of sediment to the cliff forming on her desk. All the detritus of office life suddenly seemed overwhelming. A sharp fissure of pain opened its way through her brain when she thought about dealing with it all.

She brought her elbow down to cradle her forehead, misjudged again, and took a thin layer of skin the size of a postage stamp off her elbow on some sharp corner of her desk.

She swore softly, but with great vehemence, under her breath. When that seemed inadequate, she groaned loudly, setting the sound grow loader and travel up her throat until it emerged a growl of frustration and rage. She felt cold coffee dribble on to her lap. She reached very carefully to right the cup.

She looked at the notes she was preparing, wondered if they were salvageable. She wondered if they were even written in English.

She closed her eyes, opened them seconds later when she realized that she was in danger of going to sleep then and there.

Focusing on the regular beating of the office clock, she tried to at least put enough order to her thoughts to get home alive. If she could reconcile the ticking of the clock with the pattern of her heartbeat, and the whisper of the early morning traffic with the swooshing of her breath in and out her body, she could pull herself together enough to go home. She couldn’t bear the thought of falling asleep here, having everyone come in and see her. The dark skin under her eyes had taken on a flaccid, tacky texture. Her hair clung limp and knotted around her head. Every inch of her was in some way uncomfortable, but her body would not even accord her the luxury of uniform sensation. Her teeth were fuzzy and slimy, and tasted as though they had never been brushed. Her head pulsed. Various patches of her skin itched, stung and crawled. She felt coated with sweat and grime.

When she rubbed her hands over her face she was disgusted by the texture.

“I’m going home,” she announced weakly. She began to gather important papers into briefcase at random.

“Good idea,” replied Jack McCoy. He was leaning against her door frame.

Serena wondered dejectedly how long he had been there. Before she turned to look at him, she arranged a mask of impassivity over her face. She layered blankness over her frustration and her exhaustion as she reached under her desk to reapply her shoes. When she turned to him, she spoke in a monotone.

“Thank you. I’ll see you tomorrow.”

With her head down, and with great deliberation, she managed to get up and past her boss with a minimum of stumbling and swerving.

As she walked past, Jack thought about stopping her, about offering to drive her home, about patting her on the back. Then he looked at her face and did nothing.
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When Serena woke up on her couch the next morning, she was stiff and cold. She did, however, feel marginally better than she had when she had fallen unto the couch, asleep before she hit the cushions. Her radio alarm was blaring in her bedroom, and she wanted to strangle the DJ. She peeled her face off a throw pillow and knew that the pattern was stamped there.

She’d had a dream last night that after she’d fallen asleep on the couch, very big, strong hands had gathered her up. They’d taken off her shoes and jacket, and helped her wiggle out of her pantyhose. The hands had gently slipped her into bed between clean, sweet smelling sheets. They’d held a glass of milk to her lips and supported her neck while she sipped. In her dream, lips had been pressed for a moment against her forehead before she’d given in all the way to sleep.

And then she’d woken up, and felt lost, though she couldn’t think why.
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In the bathroom, she stripped, and threw all her clothes in the hamper without checking the pockets. She turned the water on, and stepped into the shower. She turned slowly until she was soaked all over, then stood for a long time with the water pounding on the back of her neck.
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When Serena had been a very little girl, she had loved her father more than anything in the world. That was saying a lot, because then, Serena had loved the whole world passionately.

When she was eight years old, her father had taken her for bicycle ride through the park. She had been asking him to take her for weeks, and suddenly, miraculously, he gave in. She rode along on her beside him, with her hair flapping along behind her like the rainbow streamers she’d attached to her handle bars. She had to shout to make herself heard

“Look, Dad! Geese! It’s very early in the year to the geese to be migrating. Do you know why one side of the V is longer than the other, Dad? No? Then I guess I’ll have to tell you; it’s because there are more geese in it. Do you get it? The question suggests a complex or scientific answer, and instead a I tell you a really simple, self-evident thing that doesn’t really answer the question at all. So it’s funny.

“Oh, look at that tree, that’s a japanese maple, aren’t the leaves magnificent? When I grow up I want to be an artist and paint trees like this.

“Can we stop to feed the ducks, Dad? Dad? Can you hear me, are you okay...” She reached out to pull on her Dad’s sleeve.

He reached back to brush her aside, and his movement knocked her off her bike. She stomach tied itself into a ball as she flew through the air, and exploded when she landed, skittering across the pavement, tearing her skin raw where it was exposed.
When she came to a stop she started to bawl, and looked up through tear bleary eyes for her Dad.

He’d stopped his bike and turned around. For a moment he looked upset and frightened. He shouted at her:

“Why couldn’t you just shut-up and concentrate? If you hadn’t distracted me, you wouldn’t have fallen. If you get worked about everything, Serena, you’re never going to see what’s coming.”

He reached down and slapped her across the mouth.

“You would have seen that coming if you hadn’t been making a scene. You have about two minutes to pull yourself together before I leave to hear to embarrass yourself by yourself.” He said this with growing confidence, growing calmer and more resolute.

After a last sniff, Serena stopped crying. She put her head down, and when she looked up, her face was blank. Ignoring the raw skin on her hands, she gripped the handlebar of her bicycle an got on.