Done Being Her Caretaker

1 When my brilliant, broken girlfriend wet herself in the back of the classroom and looked up at me with those vacant, helpless eyes, I looked away. In my past life, Daphne Ward had an emotional attachment disorder so severe that she could barely manage basic human survival. She was a savant who couldn’t tie her own sneakers or remember to eat unless someone put a fork in her hand. For twenty years, I laid down my entire existence like a carpet beneath her feet. I gave up my own degrees, my own career, and every shred of my pride to care for her. When she stood on the stage in Stockholm, the youngest woman in history to accept the Nobel Prize in Physics, I stood in the wings, my back aching, weeping tears of pure validation. I believed every sleepless night and every ruined year had meant something. It wasn't until after she died that the world found the one thousand and one love letters she had tucked away in her safety deposit boxes. A global sensation. An untouchable, autistic genius who secretly harbored a desperate, consuming passion—not for me, but for a boy named Austin Brooks. Almost overnight, the narrative shifted. I wasn't the steadfast man behind the genius; I was just the hired help who had overstayed his welcome. Austin brought a television crew to our house before Daphne’s body was even cold. "Daphne left this brownstone and every cent of her estate to me," Austin had told the cameras, giving a mournful, practiced sigh before turning to me on our front porch. "I need to move in immediately. I want to live among her things, where her spirit still lingers. I hope you can understand." Just like that, after twenty years of laundering her sheets and scrubbing her floors, I was locked out on the street. I had spent my youth revolving entirely around Daphne. I had no children, no savings of my own, and no friends left to call. Three years later, after slipping on an icy patch of pavement during a brutal February blizzard, I died alone on a county hospital gurney, my chest hollow with bitter regret. When I opened my eyes, the air was warm and smelled of floor wax and cafeteria pizza. I was seventeen again, sitting in the back row of our advanced placement classroom at St. Jude’s Prep. And there was Daphne, curled into a defensive knot in the far corner, a dark, spreading stain darkening the denim of her jeans. Before my brain could even process the second chance I’d been handed, teenage Austin Brooks was already scrambling out of his seat. He lunged across the aisle, falling to his knees before her desk, cutting in front of me to ask if she wanted to be friends. I leaned back against my chair and smiled. Austin had come back, too. Be my guest, I thought. This time, you can clean up the mess. Austin made the homeroom teacher switch their seats so he could be Daphne’s desk partner. Within forty-eight hours, the rest of the class had turned on him just like they once had on me. During fifth period, the girl sitting behind Austin deliberately tipped a bottle of India ink over his chair, soaking the seat of his khakis in black sludge. In my first life, when that exact thing happened to me, Daphne hadn't even blinked; she had merely glared at me with cold fury, snapping that my squirming was making too much noise and disrupting her calculations. The class had laughed, calling me an eager lapdog getting what he deserved. From that day on, the bullying only grew worse. I had naively believed Daphne and I were in the trenches together, but she treated me like empty space. She would spread her textbooks, protractors, and graph paper across my side of the desk, forcing me to hunch over a three-inch sliver of wood just to take notes. Because my desk was wedged against the radiator and the kids behind me refused to let me slide past, I used to beg Daphne to stand up and let me out into the aisle. She never moved. Terrified of having an accident like hers, I spent three years of high school refusing to drink a single drop of water before the final bell rang. Now, I watched from three rows over as the same ink ruined Austin’s pants. Except this time, Daphne erupted. With a guttural shriek, she slammed her hands upward, sending the girl’s desk crashing onto the linoleum. Before anyone could intervene, Daphne seized the remaining bottle of ink and threw it directly into the girl's face. The two of them collapsed into a screaming, thrashing pile of limbs and flying paper. I watched with icy detachment. The things it had taken me three agonizing years of patience to earn from her, Austin had unlocked in a single afternoon. When the substitute teacher finally hauled them apart, Austin offered Daphne an individually wrapped strawberry hard candy, smoothing her matted hair with the patronizing gentleness one might offer a frightened rescue dog. "Thank you for standing up for me," he whispered loud enough for the room to hear. "You're amazing, Daphne. If they don't see that, it's their loss." Maybe it was a trick of the fluorescent lights, but for a fraction of a second, Daphne’s hollow gaze drifted across the chaos and landed squarely on me. Then, just as quickly, it flicked away. Austin was an idiot. He thought sitting next to Daphne was just about surviving petty high school drama. He had no idea what living in her orbit actually entailed. By noon, the afternoon sun beat through the unshaded windows, and the classroom grew stifling. It didn't take long for the scent to rise—the sour, sharp reek of dried urine and neglected skin. Austin gagged twice behind his hand. Over the course of twenty minutes, he subtly inched his chair toward the aisle three separate times. By the time half his desk was blocking the walkway, he couldn't take it anymore. He forced a strained, sickly sweet smile and leaned toward her. "Hey, Daphne? Do you want to go to the girls' room and get cleaned up?" Daphne didn't just have a severe emotional deficit; she had a congenital defect in her left leg that left her with a severe, uneven limp. It embarrassed her terribly. She was always the very first student to arrive in the morning and the very last to leave in the afternoon, refusing to stand up while anyone was watching. In my past life, to shield whatever fragile ego she possessed, I had told the whole school that my father ran a commercial fish market and that the stench came from my clothes. Whenever the smell of her accidents made my stomach heave, I swallowed the bile down until my throat burned, never letting out so much as a cough. Austin, however, couldn't mask his disgust. His loud, dry heaves drew snickers from the entire room. Oblivious to the damage he was doing, Austin kept pushing. He thought that because she fancied him, she would obey him like a pet. But Daphne only shook her head, over and over, retreating into that silent, rhythmic tic. Austin’s patience cracked. "Daphne, come on. Good girls care about personal hygiene. I’m only trying to help you!" Daphne’s mouth pulled into a flat, rigid line. A chill crawled down my spine. I knew that expression. The last time her lips had set into that exact sneer, she had sunk her teeth deep into the meat of my forearm, tearing through flesh until blood soaked my sleeve. That wound had festered and drained for an entire month before it finally scarred over. Austin kept droning on, oblivious to the danger. To my shock, Daphne didn't bite him. Instead, she reached into her pencil case, pulled out an X-Acto blade, and dragged it savagely across her own arm. Blood welled along the pale skin, dripping steadily onto her notebook. My fingers moved involuntarily to my forearm. The skin there was smooth now. Completely unblemished. A strange, bitter realization settled in my chest: she could control herself. She had always been capable of restraint. She just hadn't cared enough about me to bother. I pulled my hand away from my arm, turned my back on the spreading crimson, and struck up an easy conversation with the girl sitting across from me. Never again. 2 When track and field season rolled around, the gym coach announced the mandatory cross-country partner run through the wooded trails behind the school. "Partners must finish together," Coach Miller barked, clipboard in hand. "If your teammate sprains an ankle or can't make the hills, you carry them. You don't leave anyone behind." Daphne’s head snapped up. Her dark, unblinking eyes bore straight into mine. Coach Miller noticed. "Ward, you want Bradley as your partner?" She nodded without a second of hesitation. The trail run was notorious. With Daphne’s crippled leg, pairing up with her meant carrying her on your back across three miles of rough, uphill terrain. In our past life, I had hoisted her up every single year, my lungs burning, my knees grinding until I collapsed at the finish line while everyone else took turns trading off. But this time, I hadn't spent the semester hovering around her like a shadow. She had no reason to expect anything from me. My heart hammered against my ribs as I looked at her. The absolute certainty in her gaze made the hair on my arms stand up. It hit me like a bucket of ice water: Daphne had retained her memories, too. "Sorry, Coach," I said clearly, raising my hand. "I’m already paired up." I stepped beside Hannah Morgan. She was the quiet, sharp-witted girl who sat in front of me—the academic runner-up in our class and the only person who hadn't treated me like a leper in my previous life. Daphne froze. A flicker of genuine shock crossed her features, quickly morphing into something cold and territorial as she stared at Hannah. Coach Miller sighed and tried to assign another boy to Daphne, but she simply planted her feet and stared at the dirt, retreating into that sullen, abandoned-animal routine that had duped me for two decades. Faced with her stubborn refusal to speak, the coach lost his temper and threw his hands up. "Bradley, you're the strongest runner here. Just take her so we can get this over with." Before I could protest, Daphne scrambled onto my back. Her thin arms wrapped around my neck, and her gravelly voice, unused to speech, rasped into my ear—the very first words she had spoken to me since we woke up in this life: "Why didn't you choose me?" I adjusted my grip on her thighs, keeping my voice low and venomous. "Why didn't you choose Austin?" You left him a thousand love letters and a multi-million-dollar estate, I wanted to scream. Why aren't you on his back? Her fingers twisted violently into the collar of my track shirt. "He’s too slow... he’d drag us down." A sharp, familiar ache bloomed behind my sternum. Even in her warped, transactional mind, I was just the workhorse. The reliable beast of burden. "Nate," she muttered, her breath hot against my neck. "Let's just be like we were before." I stopped dead in the middle of the path and let my arms drop. She slid off my back, stumbling hard onto the gravel. "Like before?" I hissed, towering over her. "Spending the next twenty years wiping your ass, washing your clothes, and revolving my whole goddamned life around your moods?" She knit her brows, her face a mask of childlike bewilderment. "Why not?" Every nerve in my body felt raw, like salt had been rubbed into an open cut. "Because I won't do it, Daphne. Back then, I was stupid enough to think you actually cared about me. I didn't know your heart belonged to Austin Brooks. Stay away from me. Once graduation comes, I’m going to a college a thousand miles from wherever you end up. We are done." I turned and broke into a dead sprint, desperate to put distance between us. But the coach’s rules rang in my ears, and after fifty yards, guilt got the better of me. I doubled back, hauled her up by her arm, and dragged her across the finish line just so I wouldn't have to repeat the unit. The second we crossed the chalk, Daphne bent double and violently vomited all over my shoes and track pants. The entire class erupted into hysterical laughter. Disgusted, I shoved her off me. She hit the grass hard, stunned and filthy, looking up at me with those wide, uncomprehending eyes. Austin came sprinting across the field, breathing heavily. "Daphne! Are you okay?" He reached out to pull her up, but Daphne frantically fumbled in her pocket, whipped out a cotton handkerchief, and began dabbing obsessively at Austin’s clean fingers. "Don't touch," she whimpered, her voice trembling with manic intensity. "I'm dirty..." Austin gave her a soft, heroic smile. "You could never be dirty, Daphne." Then he spun around, puffing out his chest to scold me. "You ran too fast and jostled her! How could you just drop her on the ground like a sack of dirt? Don't you know how fragile she is?" I stood there, covered in her vomit, feeling the cold wind stick the wet cloth to my shins. "I need to get to the locker room." "No!" Austin blocked my path, playing the righteous protector. "You owe her an apology right now." I looked past him, locking eyes with Daphne. "If I apologize, will you leave me alone for the rest of my life?" Daphne’s gaze wavered. She flinched, looked down at her muddy sneakers, and then, dragging her bad leg behind her, scrambled toward the fieldhouse as fast as she could. I let out a harsh, dry laugh. "Looks like she doesn't want your apology, Austin." 3 Even though the trail run had been a disaster, Hannah and I quickly fell into an easy, comfortable rhythm. She was my first real friend in either lifetime who wasn't Daphne—a completely normal, warm-hearted person who liked dark roast coffee, complained about calculus homework, and actually listened when I spoke. We spent our afternoons in the quiet stacks of the local public library, sharing notes and working through complex physics problems. For a few weeks, the world felt sane. I began to harbor the dangerous hope that I had truly slipped out from under Daphne’s shadow. Then the library door creaked open. Daphne came limping down the quiet aisle between the science journals, her eyes dark, sunken, and hollow. The silence of the reading room magnified the uneven drag of her left shoe against the carpet. Without a word, she reached into a brown paper grocery bag, pulled out a pair of damp, soiled sweatpants, and dropped them directly onto the notebook I was writing in. "Wash them," she said. The surrounding tables went dead silent. Heads snapped up from textbooks. Whispers spread like a brushfire—shock, disgust, cruel amusement. My hands began to shake with a violent, humiliating tremor. I clamped my jaw shut, swept the stained fabric off my desk onto the floor, and forced my eyes back down to my equations. Before I could finish the line, the damp cloth flew through the air again, smacking wetly against my cheek before sliding into my lap. Austin strolled up behind her, tucking his hands into the pockets of his varsity jacket. "Hey, Nate, sorry about this," Austin said, his voice carrying clearly across the quiet floor. "Daphne said you've always done her laundry. I told her I’d handle it, but she grabbed my arm and insisted that menial chores are beneath me." The murmurs around us grew loud enough to sting: "Jesus, has Bradley been washing her underwear this whole time?" "Isn't she dating Brooks? Why is Bradley acting like her personal maid?" "He's probably trying to latch onto her since she's a certified genius. Hoping she'll share her trust fund if he plays butler." The walls seemed to close in on me. The suffocating terror of my previous life—the whispers from the reporters, the shame of being tossed into the snow like garbage—came flooding back, choking the air from my lungs. Hannah reached across the table, her warm, steady fingers closing around my shaking wrist. "Nate. Let's pack up. We can study at my place." "Yeah," I choked out, throwing my notebooks into my bag. As I stood up, Daphne lunged forward and grabbed the cuff of my jacket. Her gaze locked onto Hannah’s hand, which was still holding mine, her face twisting into something ugly and possessive. "Why won't you wash them?" she demanded, her voice rising to a shrill pitch that echoed off the high ceiling. "Are you refusing because you're going to wash hers instead?" A few college students at the corner desks let out muffled snickers. I ripped my sleeve from her grip, pushed past them, and bolted out the heavy glass doors into the chilly afternoon air. Hannah found me sitting on the concrete bench near the fountain, my head buried in my hands, fighting back the urge to throw up. In Daphne’s twisted reality, I wasn't a human being. I was an appliance. A designated caretaker pre-programmed to serve her, and she couldn't comprehend why her vacuum cleaner had suddenly decided to walk away. "She's sick, Nate," Hannah said softly, sitting beside me and rubbing small circles into my back. "She isn't wired right. Don't let her drag you down into that pit." I took a ragged breath and wiped my face. I had to get away. Daphne had already received early admission and a full scholarship to MIT. I had an interview scheduled the following week for an early-entry honors physics fellowship at Columbia. If I got in, I would be in a completely different city, surrounded by a completely different world. On the day of the Columbia interview, I smoothed the lapels of my borrowed blazer, squared my shoulders, and pushed open the oak doors of the administration conference room. Sitting at the far end of the long mahogany table, flanked by three senior admissions faculty members, was Daphne Ward. She wore a crisp gray blazer, her hair combed neatly for once, sitting in the designated seat for the visiting student prodigy advisor. She looked at me with flat, dead eyes. I powered through the interview anyway. I derived the equations on the chalkboard, answered the panel’s theoretical questions with clarity, and poured everything I had into that room. When I finished, the department chair smiled and turned to Daphne. "Daphne, you've reviewed his portfolio. Your thoughts?" Daphne didn't even look at my transcripts. "Nate Bradley has zero intuitive talent," she said, her voice completely devoid of emotion. "He is an imitator. He is fundamentally unfit for this program." By the next morning, her verdict had circulated through every prep school circle in the state. Kids who used to ask me for physics notes began laughing as I walked down the hall. “Bradley isn't college material, but hey, he’s got a real future in dry cleaning.” Someone even wrote “Laundry Boy” in red Sharpie across my locker. I couldn't breathe in that town anymore. Every corner felt like a trap she had set. Hannah came over to my house that evening, watching as I sat in the dark of my bedroom. "Nate," she said quietly, leaning against the doorframe. "Why don't we just leave the country?" 4 Her words hit me like a splash of cold water. Within two weeks, we pulled our records from St. Jude’s, enrolled in an accelerated online diploma program, and began compiling applications for European universities. I spent those weeks holed up inside, deliberately avoiding any place Daphne or Austin might frequent. And it worked; she didn't show up again. A month after that, Hannah and I were boarding an overnight flight to Switzerland. We settled into a small, third-floor flat in Zurich. The Alps rose sharp and clean against the horizon, and the air was cold enough to scour the rot of my past life from my lungs. After four weeks of intensive language study and orientation, I stumbled upon a flyer in the physics department lobby: an elite, grant-funded competition research group led by the continent's top visiting fellows. Acceptance came with a stipend that covered full tuition and living expenses. "You have to try out," Hannah urged me over bowls of muesli in our tiny kitchen. "You're better than you think you are, Nate. Prove it to yourself." I lived in the departmental library for three weeks straight. I skipped meals, woke up at five in the morning, and worked through tensor calculus until my vision blurred. I had to prove that Daphne was wrong—that I wasn't just an imitator. My hard work paid off. After the grueling written qualifying exam, a senior lab coordinator named Marcus caught me in the hallway, clapping a heavy, enthusiastic hand onto my shoulder. "Bradley! Pack your laptop, man. The group director wants to meet you personally. Come on, I'll take you up to the executive annex." My heart soared. For the first time in either life, I felt the thrill of pure, unassisted achievement. Marcus swung open the frosted glass door of the private conference room. "Here he is!" My smile turned to ash. Sitting behind the expansive slate desk, surrounded by stacks of peer-reviewed journals, was Daphne Ward. Marcus chuckled, giving my arm a friendly punch. "You dog! Why didn't you mention you went to high school with Dr. Ward? She flagged your name and personally pulled your file. To be frank, your exam score was right on the bubble, but her recommendation bypassed the board." The room tilted. My hands went numb, a high-pitched ringing filling my ears. "Long time no see, Nate," Daphne said quietly. Her voice was steady, but there was an unnatural, predatory focus in her eyes. "From today on, you are my dedicated research assistant." She reached down beside her chair, lifted a heavy canvas duffel bag, and dropped it onto the floor with a wet thud. "Wash them," she said. A wave of nausea hit me so violently I had to grab the back of a chair to keep from falling. My voice came out as a ragged whisper. "Why? Why do you have to keep humiliating me?" That maddening, childlike confusion flickered across her face again. "Nate... isn't it good for us to be together like before?" Before I could scream, the side door clicked open. Austin Brooks walked in, sporting a tailored wool coat and holding two takeaway cups of espresso. "Am I late?" he asked with an easy, proprietary grin. "Daphne, babe, that calibration issue on the particle detector—we should set up a breakout session to walk through it." Marcus checked his watch and nudged me toward the long table. "All right, settle down, people. Let's start the briefing." I moved numbly to pull out a chair, but Daphne’s sharp voice cut through the rustle of papers: "Not him. He isn't attending the briefing." Marcus frowned, confused. "What? Why?" "He stays out here," Daphne stated, perfectly calm. "He has to wash the clothes." Austin let out a smooth, performative laugh, leaning over to whisper conspiratorially to Marcus. "Don't mind her, Marcus. Nate’s basically her personal valet. Why else do you think she pulled strings to drag him across the Atlantic?" Marcus looked between me and the duffel bag, his expression shifting from confusion to mild distaste. I didn't say another word. I turned on my heel and bolted down the stairwell, taking the steps three at a time until I burst out into the biting Swiss wind. Hannah was waiting by the campus tram station, her woolen scarf pulled up to her nose. When she saw me, her face lit up with an encouraging smile. "How was it? Did you meet the director—" Her smile vanished as she caught sight of my chalk-white face. She grabbed my trembling hands. "Nate? What happened? Did someone say something to you?" A choked sob broke from my throat. "It's Daphne, Hannah. She's here. She's running the damn institute." "What?!" Hannah’s eyes flared with protective fury. "How is that even possible? She was supposed to be at MIT!" "I don't know," I shuddered. "I picked this school because it was obscure for American undergrads... I don't understand how she found me." "Nate Bradley." The cold, rasping voice came from behind us. We turned. Daphne had come down the steps, her uneven gait dragging her left boot across the cobblestones. She stood ten feet away, staring past Hannah as if she didn't exist, her eyes locked onto mine. "Come back inside," she ordered softly. "Come to my side." Hannah immediately stepped in front of me, cutting off Daphne’s line of sight. "He just resigned from your little research group. He doesn't take orders from you anymore." Daphne’s jaw tightened. She took an aggressive, lurching step forward, her voice dropping into a guttural growl: "Nate Bradley belongs to me." I reached around Hannah’s waist, pulled her close, and interlaced my fingers tightly with hers. "I don't belong to you, Daphne," I said, my voice finally steadying. "Hannah is my girlfriend. Don't you ever come near me again."