Page 38 of Sprog
"I'm going to inject some numbing medication around the wound," I tell him. "It’ll sting for a second and then the area will go numb, and you won't feel the stitches going in."
"How many stitches?"
"Four. Maybe five."
He nods again. "Dad." His voice drops to something quieter. "I want to be tough, but I can't."
"You can hold my hand," Austin says, and he's at EJ's side before I can nod at him, one hand wrapped around his son's and the other brushing his hair back from his forehead with a gentleness I wasn't prepared for from those hands.
I give the injection. EJ's grip on Austin's hand tightens and he makes a sound through his nose that he clearly doesn't want to make, and then the medication takes hold and his whole body softens slightly with the absence of pain.
"Better?"
"Yeah." He exhales. "Yeah, that's better."
"Good. A few minutes and then I'll start the stitches. You won't feel them at all."
I keep my hands moving, preparing the suture kit, and I don't look at Austin. I'm aware of him the way you're aware ofsomething warm in a cold room. This particular peripheral heat that I've been successfully not thinking about for ten years and which is now approximately three feet away from me.
I know without looking that he's watching me work. I know by the quality of the silence he's making.
"Are you going to be a doctor?" EJ asks me, out of nowhere.
I pause. "I already am one."
"I mean when you grow up." He looks at me with complete seriousness. "When you're older."
I hear Austin make a sound that he converts into a cough.
"This is my grown-up job," I tell EJ. "I went to school for a very long time to learn how to do it."
He thinks about this. "How long?"
"Six years of pre-med, then I went to medical school. And a few years of residency and working at a hospital after that."
His eyes go wide. "That's longer than I've been alive."
"It is."
"Did you like school?"
"Most of it. The parts where I got to learn things I didn't know yet. Does that make sense?"
"Yeah." He considers. "I like math. Dad says I'm good at it, but I think he just says that because he's my dad."
"Dads do that," I agree. "But sometimes they're also right."
I start the stitches. EJ watches my hands with the same focused attention, asking questions between each one. What's the thread made of? Does it dissolve or do I have to take it out? Is there a special needle for skin or just a normal one? I answer all of them straight, no simplifying, no talking down to him, just the actual answers. And he takes each one in and files it away with the diligence of a person who is storing information for later use.
"Do you like being a doctor?" he asks, while I'm on the third stitch.
"Yes."
"Even the bad parts?"
I think about that. "Not the bad parts themselves. But yes to what the bad parts teach you."
He thinks about this for a moment. "Dad says that about the club. That the hard parts make you better."
