Page 54 of Sinful in Scrubs

“How can you stand there and tell me you want to be a family when you’re trying to erase my mother’s memory?”

Lily’s words caught me off guard. I knew she aimed them with intent to hurt, but honestly, they only confused me.

“What are you talking about?” I finally asked after a long, drawn-out moment of awkward silence as I tried to figure out what the hell my daughter was talking about.

“You keep bringing that woman over here and forcing her on us.”

“Nobody is forcing anybody on you, and nobody is trying to erase the memory of your mother,” I said as slowly and calmly as I could. I felt like screaming. How could she think that I wanted her to forget her mother? I didn’t want that. Ever.

I could continue to hold Blair in my heart and still develop feelings for Emma. It was complex and difficult at times, but it was possible. I didn’t need some teenager, my child or not, to tell me whom and how I could love.

“Having friends over is not trying to erase your mother’s memory.”

“That’s what you say,” she snapped.

“That’s what I mean,” I countered. “Look, Lily, this is hard on all of us, and I don’t know what to do with you. I think we need to go back to family therapy.”

Her eyes went wide. The tension in her shoulders temporarily dropped away before returning even more intensely. Her lip began to quiver. “I don’t want to talk about my feelings,” she whispered.

“I get that,” I said, “but I think you need to. I think we all do.”

“Fine. Can I at least go to therapy on my own? Or maybe just… I don’t know… you and me?”

“I think your brother needs it too.”

“I don’t want to talk about my feelings around Jason. He’s so weird about it.”

“Your brother lost his mother too,” I pointed out.

“Dad,” she whined. “If he goes, I’m not going.”

“Okay, fine. We’ll figure out how to do therapy for you, and I’ll probably still send him, but you can go on your own.”

Putting Lily back into therapy meant I needed to find her a therapist. And while I was at it, I was definitely going to have to find one for Jason. And I might as well round it all out and find one for myself as well. After all, family therapy meant the whole family.

While I knew she most likely would not participate, I still felt that this was something she was going to need. I could set broken bones. I could stitch closed open wounds. If somebody was bleeding, I could get it to stop, and I could patch them up. But I didn’t know how to make my daughter stop hurting. It was not a good feeling.

I was supposed to be some kind of medical professional, and yet I had no idea how to help my own kid. Work wasn’t much better—the stress and tension from home certainly didn’t help at work, not when the one person I felt could help me get through this was also someone I felt an immediate need to be avoiding.

How did I tell Emma that she was right? It certainly felt as if the administration might have it out for her. And because of bullshit internal office politics, I was now caught in their game. This wasn’t a game I was going to win. I either played by their rules and lost out on a potentially brilliant relationship, or I risked my career and hers.

“Dr. Chen,” I may have said a little too enthusiastically the next time I encountered her in the hall.

“Hi, Marcus.”

She seemed a little distant, which I didn’t blame her for.

“I was hoping to run into you.”

“Were you now?”

I could tell she didn’t believe me. “Actually, yes, I was,” I said.

“Oh, because it seems more like you’ve been avoiding me?” She lifted her hands and kind of pressed them at the air. It felt almost as if she were attempting to push me away.

“Look, I’m sorry—” The alert on my smartwatch sounded at the same time the alert on her phone went off.

“We have incoming.”

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