The child comes running up to us with a look of sheer panic on his face, maybe ten, twelve years old at most. He doesn’t seem to have been throwing the Frisbee to anyone, just flinging it through the air for fun. He clams up and straightens his posture like a soldier about to be reprimanded.
“S-sorry, sir! I’m not very good at aiming.”
The fear on his face tells me plenty, long before his mother storms over like the proverbial general to his foot soldier. “Malcolm! You have been warned three times now!” She seizes the kid by the wrist with enough force to nearly lift him off the grass.
My blood boils from far more than the summer heat. I stride forward, grabbing her wrist in kind. Not harshly, not so firm as to bruise like she is likely bruising her son, but with expertdeflection from years of training my body and reflexes. In one swift rotation, I turn her arm not in a way that would hurt but that forces her hand to release her grip on him, freeing her son to be handed back the Frisbee.
“No harm done, Ma’am. An adult can take the bumps and bruises children shouldn’t have to.”
She scowls at me, clearly shocked, likely offended, but also disarmed for how to respond. “Come on, Malcom.” She wrenches her hand from me, choosing to grab him again almost as brusquely as before to drag him away.
I feel the urge to slip the switchblade from my pocket and jam it into the back of her head, but naturally, I resist. If I couldn’t fight those impulses, I would have been caught long ago.
“Thanks, mister!” the kid calls back at me, waving the Frisbee.
I wave back.
“A hopeless romantic and a softie with kids, huh?” Walker steps up beside me with a warm smile.
“Everyone loses their cool occasionally, but that is never an excuse to be rough with the people one claims to care about, especially children. And she didn’t look like that was a first offence.”
“No.” Walker’s smile falters while looking after the retreating mother and child. “I hate seeing people like that. Even in the hospital, when families are supposed to be supporting each other, you still see it. We call it sepsis of the soul. Because sepsis—” He turns to me, but I already know what he is going to explain.
“Because sepsis is when the body thinks it’s helping but it’s actually overreacting and hurting what it aims to protect.”
“Yeah.” Walker’s smile returns, and he reaches up to gently brush his thumb through my hair over the spot where the Frisbee struck. Even that faint touch throbs a little. “It’s already goose-egging.”
“I’ll survive. Perhaps this walking date calls for a stroll to a pharmacy.”
Walker chuckles. “No ibuprofen in that messenger bag?”
“I’m afraid not.”
“Well, I know a more immediate remedy that might help.” Walker brushes over the growing bump again and then leans forward to lightly kiss it, like an echo of when I have kissed above his healing cut. In that moment, the wound tingles more than throbs, with the tickle of his lips on my hair. “All better?”
“Miraculously so…doctor.”
I can tell from the flush to his cheeks when he pulls away that he might have been tempted to respond with,Your welcome, Daddy.After all, whether I call him doctor or good boy, both have two syllables and can be equally purred.
I slowly, purposely, wet my lips while holding Walker’s gaze.
He eventually tears his eyes away from me like the contact is too hot to handle.
“I hope that young patient you’re worried about doesn’t have a family like that,” I say.
“Oh no. They’re wonderful. He has the kind of family that reinvigorates your faith in the world.” Walker gestures forward for us to continue our stroll through the park.
“I appreciate you confiding in me your concern for him but isn’t discussing a patient with a non-involved party a HIPPA violation,” I tease.
Walker laughs again. “It’s all about no identifying information. You don’t know his age, his ailment, or his name. Believe me, if health professionals couldn’t discuss some of this stuff by being vague, we’d go insane.”
“My mother has said something similar.”
“Tell me about her. About your family. Is it just you or do you have a gaggle of younger siblings to explain being so good with kids?”
“No, no. I’m an only child. But what’s the old saying? It doesn’t take a good actor to recognize a bad one? The same works for everything. It doesn’t take being a parent or having younger siblings to recognize what decent behavior toward children should and should not look like. I didn’t always get the good end of that growing up.”
“Oh.” Walker falters along the path. “I’m sorry.”
