Page 7 of Crash: Love in Scrubs
Tears burned behind my eyes before I could stop them. I turned my face toward the wall, breathing slowly through my nose the way I’d learned to do at fire scenes when the emotion threatened to overwhelm the job.
“This is my fault.”
“The other driver ran a red light while texting. Now how is that your fault?”
“I was distracted. We were arguing, and I wasn’t paying attention…”
“Sametra.” The way he said my name made me look back at him. Direct, but not harsh. “You’re a firefighter, right? How many accident scenes have you worked?”
“Yeah, and too many to count.”
“You save lives for a living and still look this beautiful after a car accident? Yeah, I’m in trouble.”
“Excuse me?” I said with my eyebrows bunched together, but I couldn’t help the laugh that bubbled up. His smooth delivery made my pulse quicken. Here I was, looking like death warmed over, and this fine-ass man was talking about being in trouble. If anyone was in trouble, it was me. My mind had slipped into the gutter a few times since I laid eyes on him.
“Nothing,” he said, waving me off. “You know better than most that sometimes bad things just happen. Doesn’t matter how careful you are, how good a driver you are, how much you love the person in the passenger seat.” He pulled a chair closer to my bed and sat down, bringing himself to my eye level. “Blame won’t do anything but add more hurdles. He needs you now. You two need each other.”
I studied his face, looking for the platitudes and false comfort I’d grown to hate from well-meaning people. Instead, I found kindness, understanding, and maybe a little poetry. I was typically a glass-half-full type of woman, always looking for the lesson in the mess. Maybe God was trying to tell me something through all this pain. It felt crazy to think that way about an accident that nearly killed my son, but the truth was, we’d been drifting apart for months. Maybe this was our wake-up call.
“What happens now?”
“Now we wait for him to get stronger. Then we start the real work. We’ll be teaching his body how to move again, how to trust itself. It’s going to be hard, and it’s going to take time.”
“How much time? And don’t bullshit me.”
“Months. Maybe longer, depending on how he responds to treatment.” Malik leaned forward slightly. “And it’s going to be just as hard on you as it is on him. Maybe harder.”
“I can handle it.”
“Can you handle admitting when you can’t?”
Before I could respond, he walked out and came back with a wheelchair from the hallway.
“I think it’s time for you to take a ride in my Cadillac with a diamond in the back,” he said with the biggest grin, clearly proud of his corny joke. “Up for a visit?”
“Curtis Mayfield or Ludacris?”
“Ludacris by way of Curtis Mayfield,” he winked. If I weren’t laid up and bruised, I might’ve blushed hard enough to need oxygen.
“What part of the south?” I asked, causing him to open his mouth and close it with a smirk. His smirk told me no one had paid enough attention to ask him that.
“Alabama. Ever been?”
“Ouu, I’m good. Georgia was my second guess. And no, but I heard Alabama summers are brutal. Like fry an egg on concrete hot.”
He almost choked laughing. “You heard right. But we got sweet tea to make up for it.”
“Well, that fixes everything until you get diabetes. I heard about the sweet tea obsession.”
“I take very good care of myself I’m good. You ready or what?” he asked, lowering the bed rail with that amused grin still on his face. “He’s been asking for you every hour. Thought it might do y’all both some good.”
Before I could argue and say I could walk, say I didn’t need help, he was already helping me swing my legs over the side, careful with every movement, not wanting to hurt me or move me too fast. I hated how good it felt to be handled that way.
“Thank you. I thought I was going to be stuck in that room.”
“My pleasure.”
He steadied me as I stood, eased me into the chair, and adjusted the blanket over my legs without saying a word. As he pushed me down the hallway, the silence between us wasn’t awkward. But I felt bad; my guilt began to rear its head. Here I was flirting with this man and wasting valuable time checking on my son. That was so unlike me. Samaj always came first.
