Page 13 of Crash: Love in Scrubs
There it was. That word again. I almost smiled, but I didn’t. I looked at her for a long moment until she turned her head away. That’s what I thought.
“And why didn’t we eat breakfast?”
“I told that snitching-ass nurse I don’t eat breakfast food for breakfast. I said if they brought me an Italian sub and loaded potato from McAlister’s, I’d eat. Simple. Funky breath heffa.”
I had to choke back a laugh because that was the craziest shit I’d ever heard but nodded for her to keep explaining. Her eyebrows were scrunched up, and I could tell she was about to try some reverse psychology on me. I was gonna let her. Happy wife. Happy life.
“And that pain medication is too strong. I don’t like it. I’m pretty sure my mom left me because she was a crackhead, so I need to be careful with that stuff.”
Damn. That explained a lot.
I sat down and rolled my chair closer to her, positioning myself so I could see both mother and son. Close enough that she couldn’t ignore me, far enough that I wasn’t crowding her. Yet.
“I’ve done a lot of stuff in my life but being a crackhead ain’t one of them and I’m not tryna start.”
“Woman, you crazy as hell. Shit, my bad. I shouldn’t be cussing, but damn.” Sametra made me drop my guard and do things I wouldn’t normally do, but I hadn’t had a laugh like that in a while.
“That was a lot, my bad. Uhm, I know I’m supposed to be in bed blah, blah, blah, but I wanted to know if you were being honest with me or just saying stuff to calm me down yesterday.”
“So, you’re telling me you’ve been sitting here all night, in pain, hungry, and stubborn as hell because you wanted to make sure I wasn’t lying to you yesterday?”
“Pretty much.” She shrugged like it was no big deal.
“Sametra.” I leaned forward, my elbows on my knees, studying her face. “I don’t lie to my patients or their families. When I tell you something about your son’s condition, that’s a fact. You won’t receive any feel good bullshit from me. We can’tmake progress without honesty. Secondly, I need you to check my record. I’m no slouch out here. I got him.”
She studied my face, and I saw something shift in her expression. Good. I was getting through.
“My job is to help your son heal. But I can’t do that effectively if his mama runs herself into the ground trying to be superwoman.” I kept my voice gentle but firm. “We talked about this.”
“I know, and I’ll do better, but I needed to be here. I already missed eighteen hours.”
“Okay, I’ll let you have this one. But from here on out, you gotta promise to eat, take your medicine, and not let him see you thinking the worst. It’s gonna be a problem between me and you if you don’t. You gotta trust me. And then he will follow.”
She tried to look away, but I caught her chin, turning her face back to me. She swallowed hard, and I felt that same electricity from yesterday.
“Will you trust me?”
“Okay, I…”
“Don’t make me be forceful with you.” My voice dropped lower than I meant it to as I cut her off. She swallowed again, and I felt that shit everywhere, like lava coursing through me. I grinned. She was lowering her walls each time she saw me.
Before she could respond, Samaj stirred, eyes fluttering open. I pulled my hand back but kept my eyes on her. She was already driving me crazy. And we hadn’t even started real work yet.
“Ma? You stayed all night?”
“Just wanted to make sure you were okay, baby.”
Samaj’s gaze moved to me, then back to his mother. I shrugged he knew his mama.
“We’re gonna start slow today. See how your body responds. Your mama’s gonna be here to support you, but she’s also gonna take care of herself. Ain’t that right, LT?”
The way I said it wasn’t a request. And the look Sametra gave me said she understood exactly what I was really saying. My plan to let her run the show for a while flew out the window when I realized she’d gone back on our agreement about letting the guilt go.
“Right,” she said quietly.
And despite everything, I found myself looking forward to every damn session. Every small victory. Every chance to watch Sametra attempt to boss me around and fail. Every opportunity to remind her that I wasn’t going anywhere, whether she liked it or not.
The thing about Sametra was that she thought she had everything figured out. Thought she could control this whole situation like she controlled everything else in her life. What she didn’t know yet was that I’d been dealing with strong-willed women my whole life. My mama raised me, trained me, and prepared me for exactly this type of challenge.
