Page 14

CHAPTER 14 EVIE

Nervousness over her upcoming interview with the Paul Hom committee prevented her from thinking too deeply about Jake’s reaction—or lack of reaction—after the results were announced. She was still hurt, and that was why she only messaged him a couple of times since then: inane good mornings and good nights. Jake responded like usual. Like their conversation at the café had never happened. She hadn’t even told him that her interview was today.

Should she call him now? She had an hour or so until her interview, and maybe they would talk, clear things up.

Her grip tightened on her phone. Evie shifted in her chair, flinching as its plastic leather squeaked. She sat on the second floor, near the windows, and the interview room a few doors down the hall. Outside was a picturesque courtyard filled with flowers and greenery, what would be a calming view in any other situation. Part of her was reluctant to reach out to Jake now because she wasn’t sure where the conversation would go. The interview already compromised her emotions; she didn’t want to add to that.

Evie turned to her Saturday Sins crew. Lis, Kale, and Tate had already texted their good-luck wishes almost the instant her text had landed. She saw nothing from Viet, but then again, he always lagged behind the others.

Then, surprising her, his message popped up: Downstairs in the lobby. Can I come up?

Within a few minutes of her reply, the first-year emerged from the stairs.

He started smiling, and then his expression changed. “Whoa” came out almost involuntarily, and she guessed what had caught him off guard. She rarely dressed up like this—a black jumpsuit, a white long-sleeve blouse underneath. For the umpteenth time she thought she overdressed. She chose full makeup instead of her typical concealer and blush.

“I look way too serious, don’t I?”

“No, it’s just—you look—”

“Nervous.”

“I got that sense from your earlier texts. But your nervousness isn’t showing.”

Once he sat down, across from her, Viet opened the front part of his backpack. Evie spotted a pencil—and was that a cow-shaped eraser on top of it? Then her friend handed over a bundle of foil, warm to the touch. “Courtesy of Kale, who said you probably didn’t eat anything.”

“Our friend is right.” She gratefully unwrapped the foil and saw a muffin. Kale raved about it one time but still proclaimed he could make a better version. She broke it apart and admired the steam rising from the middle, the perfectly soft-boiled egg. Viet shook a small baggie, and she realized it was supposed to be the salt. “Oh my god.” She tried the combo, and it was just what she needed.

“Better?”

“Mm-hmm.” She said another silent thanks to Kale. “Sorry that Kale had to send you all the way here.”

The dark circles under Viet’s eyes faded with each meeting, and Evie hoped that meant he was on the mend. Her friend was usually stoic, so she never wanted to see him break like that again. Maybe one day he’d find the words to express himself.

“I wanted to come.”

Evie quickly devoured the muffin. Her fingertips tingled from the heat of it. “I don’t really like in-person interviews. Puts me on a spotlight. Makes me want to barf. I’m always worried of word-vomiting answers or forgetting what the question is in the first place.”

“You can practice with me. Pretend I’m the person interviewing you,” Viet volunteered. He pushed aside the crumpled foil. “You probably came up with a list of questions, right?”

“You don’t have to. I’m sure you have a ton of things to do!” she rushed.

“Yeah, I’m dying to get back to my chemistry assignments.”

Giving in, Evie pulled out her questions she imagined the interviewer might ask. She only managed to come up with twenty. Viet cleared his throat at the sight of it, and now she realized she might have gone overboard with her preparations.

“Let’s skip over the things you shouldn’t be nervous about—like your major, your background… Why did you apply to this program?”

Evie exhaled and answered the way she’d practiced last night. Her passion had always been to help others—ever since she was a kid. She even remembered bandaging up her sister Linh’s pretend boo-boos, and sometimes her real boo-boos, though she knew this was a bit too silly to mention to her interviewers. Instead she cited her pediatricians who kindly explained everything to her parents, back when their English was still a bit rusty, and how they always made her feel safe. She hoped she could be just as helpful as those doctors.

Viet nodded, and they continued working through the questions. Soon enough her nerves abated, and she let go of her hands, which had been clasped together before.

“Final question—name ten reasons why you’d be the right fit.”

Easy. Evie opened her mouth—only to be stopped when she looked at Viet, who was holding back a smile.

“You wrote five reasons; it’s kind of funny you were prepared enough to list ten.”

“Never hurts to be prepared,” she said defensively, though after a few beats, she realized how ridiculous ten answers would have been.

He shuffled the pages, causing her statement of purpose to fall out. She’d printed it out last night when she realized the interviewers might refer to it and she might forget everything she’d ever written. He was reading it now. Evie shifted in her seat and resisted the urge to snatch it away from him.

Those were for her and the clinic’s eyes only; if he read her statement, it’d be like he was inside her head, and no one was ever inside her head (except for the voice that sounded like Lis sometimes). She never told her roommate this; she’d be insufferable. Nervous in the prolonged silence, Evie babbled on as he continued reading, telling him that the interview process was competitive, that other people had better grades than her, that her Vietnamese was not good enough, especially when it came to dialects, that—

“They’d be out of their mind if they don’t let you into the program,” Viet said, stopping her mid-rant. He slid the essay back into place, closed the notepad.

“But what if—”

“Then they shouldn’t even be running the program. Because they should know, once you walk in, that you deserve to work at this clinic.”

“Thank you,” she finally said. Her eyes went to Viet’s backpack, still open. She was right: he had a cow-shaped pencil eraser. “Was it a coincidence that I found you near the cows, or are you secretly obsessed with cows? I haven’t seen these erasers since I was kid! When the school would sell supplies—eraser heads, Ticonderoga pencils—”

“Ah, the smell of lead,” Viet commented dryly.

“Shut up. Some people had the Scholastic Fair; I had that the supply store.”

Viet leaned down and removed the eraser before handing it over. “Keep it.”

“No, I don’t need it!” Evie protested.

He pulled another one from his backpack. “I have another one. See? Mooooo ,” he mimicked loudly. Evie laughed. “Think of it as a good-luck charm.”

She made a fist around the eraser, squeezing it as if the small piece of rubber would give her some power.

“I’ll leave you alone now.” He made to go back downstairs, when Evie stopped him.

“Please stay. I don’t mind the company.”

So he stayed. Pulling out his books, Viet started on his chemistry assignments; he stayed quiet and left Evie to her thoughts. His pencil scribblings, the flutter of his notebook pages, the occasional hum of his phone vibrations, put her at ease. Her eyes wandered to the outside; the sun shone through even stronger than before. She was glad it was Viet who came. She loved the others, of course, but they were more liable to distract her through conversation.

When someone emerged from the hallway to call her name, Evie managed to smile and felt her nerves melt away. And even when she was only a few feet away from the interview room, she still clung to the eraser.

The eraser was not the only thing he’d given her.

As she folded and tucked her pages in her purse, she glanced down at her pages one last time—only to spot a new addition to the top right of the first page.

Good luck! You can MOOO it!

Below that, Viet had drawn a tiny cow figure.

An hour later, Evie had breezed through the questions, never stumbling, and she could read the interviewers enough to see they were satisfied, maybe even impressed. Several times they nodded at her answers.

“We were struck by your essay, by your equanimity, as you’ve shown just now,” they said at the end. “We have one final question: Name the moment you started your journey in medicine.”

Was that in her list of questions? It was not. She mentally went through to confirm.

“We don’t want you to deliberate this moment too much or consider what you think we want to hear. Just say what’s on your mind—perhaps something we haven’t yet heard in your answers today.”

A kind woman, reminding her of the bent-back elderly customers who’d shuffle into her parents’ restaurant during downtime, must have seen her panic: “Remember, in this room, we are your interviewers. But out there, we’re in the field of medicine. We all have our reasons, but there was perhaps one moment that made us never forget why we started.”

The image of Linh popped up in her mind.

“Boo-boos?”

Oh no. She had unknowingly said this word to a room full of medical professionals. And her answer had nothing to do with this particular clinic, which mostly served the elderly, and not children. Still, an interviewer chuckled, and Evie pressed on. It couldn’t get any worse from here.

“I’m the oldest daughter. It’s just me, my parents, and my little sister. When things at the restaurant got busy, and my parents had to work most of the day, we became latchkey kids. It was me taking care of her at home, even though I was only two years older, and yes, that might have been illegal, but in my family, I guess you should say it’s necessary to break some rules”— someone chuckled—“so I watched her most of the time. But my sister’s feisty and free-spirited.

“One time, she got her hands on a small stepstool and pushed it close to the kitchen counter. She wanted her sippy cup. There was a small knife, right at her elbow, the kind my mom used to cut fruit. I don’t remember how it got there—but there it was. My sister grabbed her cup, but on her way down, her elbow brushed up against the knife. It was just a small cut, almost like the size of a paper cut.

“I didn’t want anything bad to happen to her.” Evie had been only a kid, and that was the most scared she’d ever felt. “In hindsight, like I said, the cut wasn’t anything serious, but her cries made it all sound serious. Something in me wanted to hold her and make sure she was all right. To take all the pain away. I eventually ran down the hall to the bathroom and found the first aid kit.” Lies—her family wasn’t organized enough to keep a kit; their scattered Band-Aids were shoved deep in the back of the kitchen’s Everything drawer.

“So that was it. My moment, I guess. Neosporin. And a Band-Aid,” Evie finished lamely. “If I could take away someone’s pain, for just a moment, like I did with my sister, then I’ve accomplished something.”

Three beats passed before anyone spoke. “You didn’t wash your sister’s cut, or your hands, first?” someone asked.

“Well, I—” Evie stopped when she realized the person was smiling. Actually, all of them were smiling at her.

It made her feel… relieved—and comfortable enough to answer, “That’s a lot to ask of a seven-year-old.”