Page 13 of Sinful in Scrubs

She shrugged. “I don’t know. Maybe. I did my residency at an inner-city hospital in Baltimore. That was hard. That was intense. Maybe I thought… maybe I thought kids’ trauma wouldn’t be as burdensome—little bodies, little bones that heal easily.”

“Just because the child is small doesn’t mean their damage isn’t large,” I said.

She wiped her cheeks again and leaned against my shoulder. My chest tightened, and warmth spread through my body at the contact. She was comfortable enough to relax against me, if even for a moment, to let her guard down.

“Well,” she said, “I should get back out there. What about you?”

“I’m almost done with my shift,” I said. “I should probably go make sure I get all my notes written down so I can do my reports in the morning.”

“They let you do your reports in the morning?” she asked, a slight lilt of laughter in her voice.

“They don’t let me,” I admitted. “But they don’t have a choice. I’ve got to get home.”

“Oh, you’ve got a family?” She sat up nervously and inched away from me.

“I’ve got kids. Just me and the kids.” I emphasized the ‘just me’. I didn’t want her to think that I was some creep. “No wife, just kids.”

The stab of guilt and grief over Blair caught me off guard, and I hoped I didn’t flinch too noticeably at mentioning her to Emma.

“I’ll see you tomorrow,” I said as she stood up and walked over to the sinks. She splashed water on her face and scrubbed her arms up past the elbows.

“I’ll see you tomorrow,” she said as she ran a towel over her face before dropping it into the laundry bin.

“I hope you have a quieter evening,” I said. “Not adventurous. I hope it is a little less high-energy.”

“Hey, don’t curse me like that,” Emma said with a light chuckle on her face.

“You’re right. You’re right,” I said, holding my hands up, uncertain what to say.

“Thank you,” she said. “I hope so too. No more exciting cases today.”

I stayed on the bench, my hands gripping hard on the edge.

This job wasn’t easy. Maybe that’s why I told myself it was. Clearly, I wasn’t the only one who had problems with children stabbing children.

Hopefully, tomorrow would be less intense.

7

EMMA

One of the things, one of the many, many things that I simply adored about stepping onto the block where my grandmother lived, was that it felt like coming home. She had been in the same tiny little fourth-floor walk-up my entire life, above a quaint neighborhood street full of small shops owned by her neighbors.

It was the kind of multicultural epicenter that happened organically, only in places like New York City.

As a kid, I was allowed to run almost freely with my neighborhood friends, as long as we didn’t leave the block. There was no, “We’re just around the corner.” There was no, “We’re in the back alley.” The street was somehow considered safe for us.

Maybe it was because everyone’s parents and grandparents worked in the little shops that opened onto the sidewalk, keeping an eye on us. Maybe it was just the magic of the seeming perfection of childhood memory, because I know when I was with my parents, that freedom never existed.

But with my grandmother, it did.

I knocked three times, as I typically did, just to let her know it was me before I opened the door and announced myself.

I called out, “Ni hao, I’m here,Zumu.” I only knew a smattering of Mandarin, and I was ashamed to admit that for the most part, the only words I remembered, other than “hello” and “grandmother”, I had mostly picked up from watching Kung Fu movies.

I was not bilingual by any stretch of the term, and I had a deep suspicion that my parents knew even fewer Chinese words than I did.

“Emma, you’ve come to see me,” my grandmother said as she came to greet me in the kitchen.

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