Page 29

CHAPTER 29 EVIE

When Evie was last at the clinic, she was in a still life. Now she was in a movie. As warned, the elderly patients were there upon opening hours, and they were swiftly paired with a patient advocate and a med student. A group of preceptors—professionals who would step in, if needed—were in the corner, chatting and pointing down at their clipboards.

Evie breathed in, unsure if she was ready for the chaos. But no one seemed to care—their priorities on the patients and not on the PA’s comfort level.

“Don’t worry. You’ll get the hang of it soon enough. Just familiarize yourself with the basics,” said Ryan Bui, the Vietnamese medical student she’d assist today. He wore a white coat while she had on the volunteers’ maroon T-shirt.

He reminded her that most patients were elderly and some were mistrustful of modern medicine. She nodded, knowing people like that back home. Eagle Balm was the solution for all types of injuries, it seemed.

Their first patient was an eighty-year-old man with a sun hat who came in for a shot. He did his annual exam at the clinic, finding it much more comfortable than other offices. He said hello to the preceptors, shook their hands, and winked at the students. He even called Evie a doctor, and though it was a joke, she appreciated his words.

Their next patient looked like the grandmother that Evie never got a chance to meet—there was a quiet dignity to her as she pressed her back against the chair. Not a spot of hair fell from her tight gray bun. But she gripped her purse and would startle at the chaos and movement around her.

In the exam room, Evie found out why after discussing her patient information. “Needles—don’t like!” Her eyes closed, her mouth in a thin line, her forehead tightened.

“I’m sorry,” Evie whispered after she crossed and tucked the tourniquet a few inches above the woman’s elbow, where her vein was most visible. Ryan would draw the blood. She tried to move the collection tube and needle out of sight, until the last minute, but it didn’t matter. The grandmother was already tearing up, no longer the dignified woman. Just afraid. She peered at Ryan who made sympathetic noises, but he was focused on the task and prepared the needle. When Evie interned at a pediatrics hospital, it took a few silly faces to distract the youngest patients. That wouldn’t work here.

So Evie held on to the patient’s free hand, squeezing it, reminding her she was there. Telling her that the needle was only for a moment and everything would be fine after this.

“N?u bà mu?n bóp tay con thì bóp ?i ?,” she whispered, eyes fixed on the grandmother. It was what her own mother had said the first time she got her ears pierced at five years old. Evie had listened, squeezing her mother’s hand as tight as possible, but her mother didn’t even wince. And now Evie was in her mother’s shoes. The woman’s hardest squeeze was nothing; she was too frail.

The wrinkles on her forehead ironed out, and she blinked away the tears. The woman was now fascinated, staring as the tube filled up with her blood, and she only loosely held on to Evie’s fingers now. Ryan shot Evie a smile.

A few minutes later, the woman’s daughter arrived, her hair piled on top in a messy bun. She was apologizing as she rushed in, then called for her mother, “Má!” Once spotting Evie, she switched to English, with just a bit of accent. “I’m so sorry! I was stuck in traffic and couldn’t get here in time. Was she okay? She’s always fussy about needles.”

“Yeah, she’s all done.” Evie pointed to the tubes that were being collected.

“And she didn’t cry?”

The grandmother tsked, putting on a facade. “Little things like this don’t make me cry,” she said, and shuffled away toward the entrance.

“She’s just pretending to be brave,” the daughter explained to Evie and Ryan. “She cries like a baby when she’s near needles. She usually wants to slap the doctor,” the daughter muttered now that her mother was out of earshot. Then, worried for a moment: “She didn’t this time, right?”

“This time?” Evie asked, eyebrows raised.

She only grinned—not really clarifying if she was joking, and Evie, relieved that she was, returned it. “Thank you so much,” she said.

“It’s nothing, I was just here,” Evie answered.

“Sometimes that’s all that matters. You’re great at this. It’s so nice to see that someone cares. Thank you again.” The woman squeezed her hand, then left to tend to her strong-willed mother, who was trying to sneak mints from the front counter into her purse.

Evie felt her warmth long after the younger woman was gone.

“Two down, a dozen more to go,” Ryan said with a sigh.

“I’m ready.”

At her apartment building, Evie eased into a parking space that faced the sunset. Her feet hurt from standing up all day; she was bone-tired, but it came with a thrill. For two quarters, this was what her Saturdays would look like. She and Ryan worked through a list of patients, and everything went smoothly after the grandmother. No tears. Nothing but happy patients leaving their examining room.

Evie cracked a smile when she came across pics from this past week’s Saturday Sins gathering. Instead of dinner, they each worked on their homework assignments. But time passed, it grew late, and delirium set in, so they decided to pretend to make awkward prom poses instead of focusing on their work. She nearly choked on her coffee at the sight of Tate and Lis facing each other, touching each other’s hips at a literal arm’s length. That wasn’t all: Kale was in between their connected arms, holding their wrists closest to the camera— their wrists . Their too-wide smiles added the finishing touches.

Other pictures paired up Kale and Tate, Lis and Evie, and then she took one with Viet. They’d sabotaged their own portrait with their incessant laughter. They eventually posed like normal people. Viet remained in his chair while Evie stood behind, arms over his shoulders and around his upper chest.

Her heart skipped when she noticed how his hand touched hers. Just the lightest touch, from the tips of his fingers. The two of them… they looked like they were a couple.

At this thought, she pocketed her phone. In the moment, she didn’t put any thought into what she was doing; she just did what was natural to her. That time at the Coffee House—was that really already three weeks ago?—was a fluke; no one had tried picking her up since then. Not that she was in any situation where that was expected. She was glad because she wouldn’t know what to say if someone hit on her. Even when Viet was pretending to be her boyfriend, her heart pounded because she was out of practice being so close to another person. Or maybe it was because Evie realized she had felt this way around Viet for a while now—ever since their first run after the winter break. That it wasn’t because someone was flirting, but because he was flirting with her.

But she couldn’t help but remember Jake’s words about her neediness. The logical part of her knew he said it out of spite, that she shouldn’t believe him. And yet—and yet—

Evie exited her car and lost her grip on her Stanley cup, which rolled and rolled away, until someone’s foot brought it to a stop.

“Thank you—”

Evie stopped. It was Jake.

“Hey.” She tightened her grip on her keys and reached for the cup in his hand. Jake was the one who said he didn’t want to see her again. Why was he the one to say hello? Why was he here? But she realized the answer soon enough; they both frequently used the parking lot, so of course his car would be here. “Did you just come back from the clinic?”

“Yeah.”

She hadn’t seen him for two months. She readied herself for heartache or a surge of pity. But she only felt minor annoyance creeping in. And it only grew as Jake remained in front of her.

“Um, is there anything you wanted to say?”

“My parents are visiting the campus in a couple of weeks. Henry and his girlfriend, now his fiancée, are coming too and they all want to get dinner.”

Eldest. She recalled from one of his phone calls that Jake’s future sister-in-law seemed to be the exact opposite of what the family wanted: someone who chose a creative career—pottery work—and was considered a gold digger. Evie mentally shook her head; all these facts that she knew about her ex-boyfriend—when would they disappear from her brain?

“Your parents must be excited to see you. And congrats.”

“Hmm,” he answered, not divulging much more on that.

He wasn’t just here to inform her about a family visit, right? They had nothing to do with her, unless… A guess took form in her mind, but it was too ridiculous for her to consider. “So, you’re telling me all this because…?”

“I didn’t want to show up alone. Everyone still thinks I still have a girlfriend.” Oh no. No way. “So I said you’d be coming.”

“Jake, please tell me you’re lying.”

“Look, I’m sorry. It just came out!”

Evie pushed past him and walked ahead. “This is ridiculous. I can’t believe you’d lie like that. What’s wrong with showing up alone?”

“The words just came out,” Jake said. He raised his hands in defense. He glanced around, lowered his voice. Some passerby looked, but lost interest quickly. “It was too late before I could stop myself.”

“Why are you here?”

Her ex-boyfriend blinked, almost as if he didn’t believe he’d get this far into the conversation. Everything urged Evie to get back up and leave him, but she couldn’t understand why he’d lie to his own family like that. He always did what his parents said; he never wanted to fail their academic standards, or worse, continue to be compared with Henry and his other brothers. But did this weird family dynamic also dictate her ex-boyfriend’s own personal life? How seriously messed up.

She then took stock of the boy’s appearance: dark circles under his eyes, ruffled hair, wrinkled jeans, and white tee, as if he had just rolled out of bed and grabbed whatever was lying on the floor.

“Well?” Evie prompted, suppressing her volume. “What do you want from me?”

Jake took a deep breath. “Can you go with me to the dinner? Just dinner, and that’s all. After that, we don’t need to see each other again. I need you, Evie, and I promise I won’t ask anything else of you again.”

She bit back the emotions roiling in her. Of course he needed her. It seemed that he always needed her, to be there to comfort him, reassure him. “Now who’s being needy?”

“Yeah, I know.” He swallowed. “I was just angry. It wasn’t needy to ask things of me. I am—I was your boyfriend. I should have been better.”

Evie didn’t hear the word sorry but continued to listen.

“Before we dated, we were friends, though. Before… everything, that’s what we were. Even though we can’t ever go back, can you do me this favor, just one last time? As a friend?”

First-year Jake came to mind. He’d dropped his mask around her; he wasn’t popular Jake or privileged Jake; he’d struggled to live up to his family’s expectations. Once upon a time, he’d allowed himself to be vulnerable with her. Once upon a time, her heart was moved by the dichotomy of how he presented himself to the world and to others. And try as she might, as all these past emotions surged through her, she felt herself sway. Not because she still liked him romantically. Evie supposed it was first-year Evie who had found someone outside her family who unquestionably relied on her; she was used to this role.

“I need to think,” she whispered.

Emotions rippled across Jake’s face, but the one that won out was relief. He leaned back and smiled meekly. “Yes, sure thing. I promise, after this, you won’t have to see me again.”