An apple a day keeps the doctor away, someone said.

Rhia decided it really would this time. She’d had enough of doctors and nurses. She had seen them for a major part of her thirteen years, but it was She won't let others tell her to leave the big decisions to the elders, not anymore.

But hadn’t the wicked queen used the apple to put Snow White to sleep? She'd use it to drive the doctor away.

It was exhausting to have her home turned into a nursing home, with doctors and nurses buzzing in and out of the apartment. It wasn’t even the clinical smell of sanitizers and disinfectants, but the unpleasant smell of sickness and foul-smelling medicines.

Rhia waited patiently to put her plan into action. She waited for the hustle bustle to cease, for the house to fall silent. Finally, it was that time of the day when everyone was taking their afternoon siesta. The lull right after lunch and before evening tea – the perfect time to put her plan into action without the knowledge of her righteous parents.

She mashed the apple as silently as she could without using a blender, mixed the white powder in, and disposed off the incriminating bottle.

‘Dadu, some apple?’ She stirred the old man awake. 

‘Hmm…?’ He flickered his eyes open.

‘Apple. See, I’ve softened it for you.’

She spooned the syrupy apple mash into his mouth, patiently feeding him till he finished. Then wiping the drool off his face, she helped him lay back down. Within seconds, he was asleep.

Rhia slipped out of the room to the music of her invalid grandfather’s snoring with a half-smile on her face.

Today, the doctor would be pleased. She had managed to finally administer that foul-tasting medicine which he had been vehemently refusing since many days.

Today, she had truly become the big girl everyone said she was.