The Angry Daughter
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We didn’t have a shower in the house until I was in middle school. Before that, my mother took me to the neighborhood bathhouse once a week.
There were a dozen showerheads in a big, bare room with no dividers. No privacy. The water was unpredictable. Some days, it was scalding hot; others, lukewarm. You just had to hope for the burn in winter and the chill in summer.
In the bitter Beijing winter, my mother and I would race home, breathless and laughing, our damp hair frozen stiff before we reached the door.
Tiny icicles captured our adventure.
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“The daughter looks PISSED,” my medical assistant warned me.
I knew it couldn’t have been about me because this was my first time meeting Andre and his daughter. I braced myself, anyway.
“¡Hola! Soy la Dra. Zha. Gusto en conocerlo,” I smiled nervously, bracing for impact.
Andre, whose forearm was wrapped in a fresh bandage, smiled and leaned forward as if to greet me properly—until his daughter Lynn shot him a look. He shrank back.
Ah oh.
“Hi doctor,” Lynn said flatly. “Can you look at my dad’s wound?”
Turned out, Andre had come in yesterday alone to have a lipoma (a benign tumor) removed. The procedure went well, but the anesthesia wasn’t sufficient. He felt too much. He flinched through every stitch.
I unwrapped the bandage. The number of stitches was too few for the length of the wound.
“You see, I always come with my dad when he goes to the doctor because he doesn’t speak English,” Lynn’s voice wavered before snapping back into anger. “But I was busy, and he didn’t want to bother me. When he told me he hurt a lot during the procedure, I got so mad.”
I nodded. Something about this moment tugged at me, tempting me to pull the thread, to let it unravel. But the unspoken rule in medicine is to smooth things over on behalf of your colleagues to weave frayed edges back into place, no matter how loose the stitching.
“The wound doesn’t look great, but I think it will heal well…”
“Ok but,” Lynn sounded a little relieved before tightening her arms over her chest again. “I understand that complications happen. But I need to know why they let my dad be in pain.”
She wasn’t demanding an explanation. She was asking me to be a daughter first, before a doctor. I looked up at Andre, who offered a small, apologetic smile as if he were the one causing trouble.
I couldn’t help but see my own parents.
In 2021, I took my parents to their immigration physical. Anti-Asian hate was rising, sharpening my protective instincts. My oblivious parents, on the other hand, were just excited to practice their newly learned English phrases.
“Good afternoon! You look amazing!” My mother greeted the physician assistant.
“Oh. Thanks,” she responded, flat and disinterested.
A quiet alarm went off in my head.
I introduced myself. “Hi, my name is Zed, and I’m a physician. These are my parents. They are just learning English.”
Normally, I wouldn’t make my occupation known outside of work. But desperate times called for desperate strategies.
“Alma,” she said, shaking my hand. I gave her my firm handshake, a silent warning that didn’t land.
Alma hardly looked at my parents as she rushed through the paperwork. Her physical exam was brief, mechanical, and impersonal.
“All we need now is blood work for sexually transmitted diseases,” she said, circling a few items on the paperwork.
“Why?” My mom asked.
Without hesitation, Alma responded, “To make sure you guys don’t start spreading any other diseases in our country.”
My stomach dropped.
She continued, casual as ever, “You know, like what happened with COVID.”
My parents smiled, nodded, then turned to me for a translation.
My heart pounded.
Say something. Call her out. But what if she retaliated? What if she delayed their immigration paperwork? What if this was just one of those moments we had to swallow, like so many before?
I clenched my fists. “Mom, Dad, don’t worry. This is just part of the process. Everyone gets these tests.”
My father beamed. “Great! You are so nice!”
He saved his favorite English phrase for last. But it couldn’t have been further from the truth.
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“Well?” Lynn’s voice yanked me back to the present.
I looked at her, arms crossed, eyes burning with the same protective fury I had felt for my parents in 2021. Back then, I had swallowed my anger, letting it settle into silence. I never said anything to Alma or her workplace. But I still replay that moment, over and over, imagining the version of myself who did — a braver me, a better daughter.
No harm was done to my parents that day. But what if next time was different?
And if my mother were in Andre’s place—what would I do?
“I’d do exactly the same,” I whispered, unaware that I had voiced my own unspoken thoughts.
“What did you say?” Lynn asked, her guard still up.
I met her gaze. “My parents don’t speak English either,” I said. “And if I ever feared they weren’t treated fairly, I’d do exactly the same.”
Lynn’s shoulders loosened. The fire in her eyes was not extinguished, but tempered by something else—recognition. She waited for the “but.” It never came. Because this wasn’t the prelude to an excuse. It was a truth laid bare.
A silent pact between two daughters who refuse to let their parents be overlooked.
Slowly, she uncrossed her arms.
“Let me try to make it better,” I said, nodding toward Andre’s wound. “And if you’d like, I’ll talk to my colleague and the clinic manager. Trust me, I will.”
And I did.
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A few weeks ago, I took my parents to a hot tub store. “We are just looking!” I lied. I had been saving for one.
They carefully climbed in and out of every tub, their motions deliberate: older now, but in spirit, they were like two kids, wide-eyed with curiosity. I watched as they finally settled into one of the floor models, chatting quietly, their voices warm, unhurried.
I wondered: Was there a single moment when our roles flipped, a precise shift when I became the parent and they the kids? Or did it happen slowly, imperceptibly, worn smooth by the steady erosion of time? I hoped it was the latter so I could soak in every moment hereafter.
“I think we’ve decided on one,” I told the store manager.
A few days later, when my parents returned from their morning walk, a brand-new hot tub sat waiting on the porch.
All afternoon, they watched the temperature climb, degree by degree. When it finally hit 102, the night had fallen. We got in.
“When I was a kid, we bathed once a year,” my dad said, as the jets worked his back. “When we went to the doctor, my mother was so embarrassed. Only our knees weren’t covered in crud.”
“You boys were filthy!” my mother laughed. Then she turned to me. “Remember when I used to take you to the bathhouse?”
I nodded.
“I always pretended it was an adventure,” she said. “I never told you we were too poor to install our own shower at home.”
It’s true.
I never knew.
Disclaimer: All patient stories have been significantly altered in patient-identifying details to protect confidentiality. This newsletter is not medical advice and I do not represent my employer.
