26. Marcus
26
MARCUS
I was beginning to worry about Emma, having not seen her for several days. She was either avoiding me completely or something was wrong, and she wasn’t coming into the hospital for one reason or another.
“You haven’t seen Dr. Chen?” I asked Rosa Hernandez one afternoon as we were essentially just hanging out at the nurses’ station. The emergency department was quiet—too quiet—and we were all on edge, just waiting for something major to come in.
“What do you mean, have I seen Dr. Chen?” She practically laughed at me as if I were asking a silly question.
“I haven’t seen Emma in a while, and I was wondering if she was sick or something.”
Rosa squinted at me and looked at me like I had a few too many heads.
“She left.”
“Oh. Did I just miss her?” I asked for confirmation. “Did she get put on the overnight schedule?” Which would have explained her leaving before I came in, or more likely, leaving as I was just coming on my rotation.
“No, Dr. Walker. She left the hospital. She no longer works here.”
“What do you mean?”
I heard the words coming out of Rosa’s mouth, but they really weren’t making much sense to me. “You mean she quit?” Had Kevin finally managed to get through and ruin her, just as she had said he would? Had there really been a conspiracy against her? I certainly was more inclined to believe that there had been.
Rosa shrugged. “Well, considering how quickly she left, there are a few people around here who think she may have been let go.”
“You mean fired?”
“That is what ‘let go’ typically means,” she said, as if I were Dr. Dumb and didn’t know the meaning of words. Of course, I was acting as if she were speaking a foreign language. “She left so suddenly… You know, we’re really not sure what else to make of it. She was here one day, and then she wasn’t on the schedule the next. What are we supposed to think?” She threw her arms up and quirked her brows together.
I agreed. That did seem rather suspicious.
“And you’re only just now noticing?” She was right. Only just now realizing that my favorite work colleague was no longer at work did not bode well, and it did not look good.
“I’ve been a little overwhelmed at home,” I admitted, which wasn’t exactly a lie. The fights with Lily seemed to be getting worse, and even though I managed to locate a therapist who was willing to take us on, they didn’t have an opening in their schedule for quite a while. It was going to be another week or two before Lily got in to see them. And it’s not as if I were doing a very good job at being Mr. Compassionate Parent.
“You’ve got teenagers, don’t you?” Rosa asked.
I nodded. “Yeah, and the oldest is just absolutely wearing me out.”
“Being a teenager is tough,” she said.
“Being a parent of a teenager is tough,” I countered.
“You can say that again. Everything is so traumatic, the world is completely against them, and they can never do anything wrong… or right, as the case may be.”
“You have kids?” I asked.
She shook her head. “I’ve got nieces. My sister’s kids are more than enough for me. When they were little, I loved being able to hand them back and say, ‘Here, you change a diaper.’ And now that they’re older, I can hand them back and say, ‘Here, you deal with today’s trauma.’ And it’s always trauma. Always trauma with those girls.”
“Yeah, my Lily can be pretty dramatic. It’s like she thinks life needs to be a soap opera.”
“Right?”
“Every choice is made directly to ruin her life, especially when it’s her little brother.”
“It sounds like you have a handful,” she said.
I shrugged. “Normally, they’re good kids, but lately…”
I trailed off. I didn’t have the answers.
“Well, it’s too bad Dr. Emma left without saying goodbye,” I said. “She must have had her reasons.”
Rosa looked at me and nodded. In her mind, those reasons were clearly that Emma had been fired, and considering the level of interference that I had even witnessed from Kevin, it unfortunately made perfect sense to me.
She lifted the stack of patient folders she had been working on and gave me a look that I interpreted to mean she had to get on with her job and that I probably should get on with mine. I made my rounds and was grateful for the respite between the more intense cases.
By the time I got home, I was completely exhausted. The house was suspiciously quiet. Had peace returned to us once more? I could only hope.
“Hey, kiddo,” I said, catching Jason’s attention as he played his video game. “Is your sister around?”
He shrugged. “I don’t know. She was earlier. She’s not yelling at me, so I don’t care.”
Which seemed like a reasonable observation.
I headed into the kitchen to see if Lily had started dinner. The kitchen was dark and silent. I let out a grunt before heading back to the living room.
“Did Lily say anything about dinner?”
“No,” Jason said. “Hey, do you want to play with me?”
“You know I don’t play video games.”
He mumbled something. Probably complaining that I never played with him.
“When is Dr. Emma going to come over again?” Jason asked. “You need to invite her over. She plays with me. I like her. She’s nice.”
She was nice, but whatever had broken between us, and now with her leaving Manhattan Memorial, it was well and truly over.
“No, no. Dr. Emma will probably not be coming over for a while.”
“But why?” he whined.
“Adults get busy, and sometimes, that’s just what happens.”
“Is it because of what Lily did?”
I shook my head, thinking of the last time Emma had been here and Lily had pitched one of her overly dramatic fits, tipping a chair over to emphasize her disdain for the entire situation.
“No. Dr. Emma knows that your sister was upset and a little overwrought that night. It was a hard day for everyone.”
“That’s not what I’m talking about,” Jason said, his eyes staying on the TV screen as his thumbs flew over the game controller in his hand.
“What are you talking about?” I stared at the back of his head.
“Oh, nothing,” he quickly said as if he realized he had let out a secret.
“Jason. What aren’t you telling me?” I asked slowly and deliberately. “What did Lily do?”
He began talking a mile a minute. “You know how she is when she doesn’t get her way. She tries to make everything really difficult for everyone. So she wanted to get Dr. Emma in trouble at work and called and said something about the two of you. She wanted you to see that Dr. Emma wasn’t a nice person, especially if you saw that she got in trouble at work. And that seems to be when Lily got really mad. I thought she got caught and got in trouble. And that’s when you seemed to start getting really sad and mad, and I figured that’s why Dr. Emma stopped coming over.”
I literally bit my tongue and sucked on my teeth to prevent myself from growling and yelling. I needed to have a chat with Lily.
“Please don’t let Lily know I said anything. She said she would kill me if I so much as breathed a word of it.”
“How long have you been keeping this secret from me?”
He twisted up his face before looking up at me. He was already flinching away from me as he spoke. “I don’t know, the day after Dr. Emma was here?”
I lifted my brows and gave my son the best ‘keep talking’ look I could muster. His mother could have gotten him to confess anything with an emotive glance. I was trying my best to copy that look.
“I walked in the kitchen when she was making the calls.”
I turned to head up the stairs.
“She said she would destroy my PlayStation,” he wailed.
I let out a heavy breath. Tonight was going to be a long night. I didn’t have the wherewithal to face making dinner at this point. I pulled my wallet out of my back pocket and tossed my credit card onto the floor next to where Jason sat. “Could you maybe order pizza or some sandwiches to be delivered? Don’t go too crazy.”
I took the stairs two at a time and didn’t knock before I threw open Lily’s bedroom door.
“Lily!” I roared.
She flinched, throwing her headphones off her head. “What the hell, Dad? You scared the crap out of me.”
“We need to have a serious talk.”
She rolled her eyes. “All talks with you, Dad, are serious.”
“I don’t want your attitude or that tone, and I want you to tell me exactly what you have done.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about. I’ve been doing my homework.”
I grimaced, pulling in hard on my anger and reminding myself that she was just a kid. She was just a kid, and she was lashing out because she was hurt.
“What did you do to Dr. Chen? What—” I cut myself off, shaking my head. “Who did you call? What were those calls about? And what did you say?”
Panic washed over Lily. Her skin went pale, her eyes went wide, and her mouth made a tiny little O as she realized this was not going to be a good conversation.