Page 15 of Sinful in Scrubs

“You haven’t brought that nice boy around in a long time.”

“Nice boy?” I asked.

“Yes, Dr. Kevin,” she said.

By the time Kevin and I had broken up, I no longer thought of him as a nice boy. I couldn’t see past his manipulative ways.

“I stopped seeing him a long time ago,” I mentioned.

I scraped the chopped onions into a bowl and set them aside before I started working on the broccoli. I got up, rinsed it off, peeled off a few leaves, and began chopping the stem into small, concise squares. A lot of people didn’t use broccoli stems when they cooked, not realizing that the stem could be just as tender and flavorful as the florets.

“Maybe that’s why you’re so tired. You need to see young people and go out. All you do is work.”

“How do you know I don’t see young people and go out?” I asked with indignation in my voice.

She turned around and held her spatula out, pointing at me.

“Because you talk to me like that. That is the voice of somebody who is trying to hide something.”

She was right. “Not guilty of anything, Grandmother.”

“But you are guilty of working too much.” She grabbed the onions before turning back toward the stove.

“I don’t have time to date,” I said.

“I didn’t say that. You just meet the young man, and then you spend time with your young man.”

“That’s not exactly how it works.”

“Of course, that is how it works. This is why your parents should never have moved away. It’s your parents’ job.”

I didn’t miss the strain in her voice when she said, “Your mother would see that you are struggling to find a partner, and it would be her duty to contact a matchmaker for you.”

“Oh, my God, Grandmother. Stop it. This is not feudal China. I do not need a matchmaker.”

“If you cannot find someone for yourself, you should be able to trust your family to find someone who will take care of you.”

I set the knife down before I hurt myself. I may be a professional surgeon, but this was a kitchen knife, not a scalpel.

“I take care of myself, grandmother. I don’t need someone to take care of me.”

“We all need someone to take care of us,” she proclaimed, holding her spatula high in the air.

I wasn’t going to point out that my grandmother had been a fiercely strong, independent woman her entire life. I didn’t know what the story was, some big family secret that even my father wouldn’t tell me, but when my grandmother moved into this apartment with my father, his dad was already out of the picture.

I always thought to myself, ‘If Zumu can do it, I can too.’ But it wasn’t something I was going to say out loud because I didn’t want to upset her, and I was under the impression that this was some kind of secretive shame. Otherwise, why didn’t I know about it?

“A matchmaker, you say? What would your matchmaker say about me? About my job? I work with smart, important men—doctors.”

“Matchmaker could set you up with another doctor. And then there would be no jealousy, would there? She’d call it a match made in heaven.”

“Doctors don’t go to matchmakers, Grandmother,” I said. “And I mean that. I don’t want you to hire a matchmaker for me.” I thought dating apps were bad enough. How humiliating would it be for my own grandmother to hire a matchmaker?

“How else are we going to find someone to take care of you?”

“I don’t want someone to take care of me. I can take care of myself just fine.”

“Maybe you will meet somebody new at work, and then I won’t have to hire a matchmaker for you.”

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