Evil is a powerful word. You use it once, and it tastes bad: metallic, false. But what other word can you use for a person who makes you feel so powerless?
Lots of people in the world have made you feel powerless. Run-of-the-mill bullies; both of your parents, and most adults, when you were a child; unflinching bureaucrats at the DMV, the post office. A doctor who didn’t believe you were sick, approximately two minutes before you projectile vomited against the wall. A cadre of nurses who pried your arms away from your body to take your blood when they thought you had cancer. (You didn’t have cancer, but they never did figure out why you spent so much of your childhood cramping with agony.)
But did any of them seem to enjoy it? Did any of them make you feel complicit in your own suffering? You’ve outgrown parents and bullies. You’ve railed against the everyday tyrants to friends; you chastised the doctor while dropping a long line of sour saliva down to the floor; you fought those nurses as hard as if they were trying to murder you.
Sick seems more appropriate, but it too tastes bad. It feels too close to disordered, which is a word your oldest and dearest friend, who had become very religious after childhood, used when you came out to her. It was over email but you flinched anyway, and before the end of the next paragraph—which explained that she was sort of relieved you hadn’t said you had a crush on her—you were already crying.