Ricky shrugged.
“One of my childhood friends got in trouble when we were in high school, so his mom made him start coming here to teach him a lesson. Of course, I tagged along. But then it turned out volunteering here meant playing Call of Duty with the teenagers who were stuck here forever, so it wasn’t actually a punishment. We made a few friends.” He paused to wet his lips. I read between the lines. Some of those friends didn’t make it. “And I just never quit. Thankfully, work is pretty accommodating—I just go into the office earlier on the days that I’m here. And since I’m a veteran volunteer, Child Life mostly lets me do what I want.”
“Is that why you’re the paint guy?” I asked. Other volunteers seemed to be tasked with whatever needed doing: reading with kids, playing games with them, or playing music, but I’d only ever seen Ricky here with a brush in hand. “I only ever see you doing that.”
He nodded.
“The ‘paint guy.’ Sure, I guess,” he mused. “I mean, there are real art therapists here too. I mostly help stave off boredom.” He rocked back to his feet, Arnie’s body sloshing around him. “I need to go change out of this.”
“Oh, okay.” I tried to keep the disappointment out of my voice. “Nice running into you. Have a good night.”
“Wait,” Ricky said. “It’ll take me like three minutes to change. Are you headed to the parking garage?”
I shook my head.
“No, um, I walk.”
Ricky looked aghast.
“But it’s late! And dark out!” He looked down at my hand, from where my keys hung. “Oh good, you have pepper spray. There’s creeps out there, you know.”
“Sounds like something a creep would say,” I said, enjoying the way Ricky instantly seemed to clutch his pearls.
“Wow,” he said. “I was going to offer you a ride!”
“So,” I said, tilting my head. “Are you not going to offer me one anymore?”
Ricky shook his head and started waddling toward the office. Just before he disappeared from view, he pointed back at me.
“Don’t go anywhere!” he shouted.
I nodded. Distantly, I could hear the door to Child Life slam shut. The air in the lobby felt still, and suddenly I was alone with my thoughts. Part of me wanted to go back to the trauma bay, to see whether the scene I’d left was still intact. Had they been able to resuscitate the boy? I doubted it—his blood pressure had barely registered on the monitor, and Shruti hadn’t looked hopeful. Had they let his mother into the bay?
“You ready?”
I whipped around. Ricky was behind me, dressed in joggers and a thin T-shirt. Out of Arnie the Ankylosaurus, he’d become a boy again. A boy whose every word I stowed away in the back of my mind to revisit when my mind was idle. A boy, I reminded myself, who was very much not available.
I dragged my hands down my face. He’d said it himself: Not every guy who is nice to you is hitting on you.
“Yeah,” I said, hoisting my bag farther up on my shoulder.
We walked farther into the hospital, toward the bridge to the parking lot. Ricky was talking, relaying the events of the birthday boy’s party, but I found myself staring off into hallways as we passed. Maybe Shruti would run into us. Maybe one of the nurses, or worse, another sobbing person who looked eerily like the good side of the boy’s face.
The humid air hit us all at once. I realized Ricky had opened the door to the parking lot.
“You are so far away right now,” he said. He looked concerned. “You can tell me what’s up, you know.”
I sighed. There didn’t seem to be a point in hiding it anymore.
“I saw a kid who’d been shot in the head today.”
Ricky’s eyes widened.
“Shit.”
“Yeah.” I shrugged. “There’re no words, right?”
“None at all,” he agreed. He swore again. “Are you okay? You can’t be, right?”
I thought about it. Was I okay? In general, yes. Less okay than everyone else in the trauma bay, for whom a dead child was par for the course. But not devastated like I ought to be. I would sleep okay tonight. Two years ago, I’d felt the same way cutting into my cadaver for the first time. There had been a voice in the back of my head saying, You know this is messed up, but it was all too easy to turn the volume down.
“I guess,” I said. “It’s not really about me. I’m not the one who’s dying. Or who might lose a child.” I remembered the mother’s sobs, the officers barricading her with their bodies and trying to determine if his death was his own fault. “You know the worst part, though? His mom showed up. And the first thing the cops did was basically ask her if her kid was gangbanging.” I bit the inside of my cheek to keep my rage from boiling over. “I mean, Jesus Christ, she just found out that her son was shot. Can she get a minute to deal with that?”