Chapter 5 Annie
ANNIE
By the time we drop the tent flaps and bungee them to the poles, the fairground has gone from blistering to just plain hot.
The floodlights click on one by one around the arena, throwing long spears of white across dusty air.
The crowd thins to trickles. I stack a final tray, wipe a last smear of Betadine from the table, and peel my gloves off with that soft, rubbery sigh that tells my body the day is over, even if my mind still hums like a generator.
Jaden shoulders the med bag he never actually hands off to anyone and tips his cap like he’s introducing act two. “Come on, Doc. You need fries and something brown poured over ice.”
“I need a shower and eight hours of silence,” I say, and then my stomach betrays me with a long, hollow growl. “Fine. Fries first. Silence later.”
“There’s a bar two blocks from your place,” he says. “We’ll Uber there, you can shuffle home like a tipsy grandmother after.”
“Tremendous medical plan.”
“It’s evidence-based,” he deadpans. “I have multiple randomized controlled trials proving salt and grease cure rodeo-adjacent headaches.”
“Lead the way.”
We lock the tent and wave to the volunteer guards.
The shuttle path is a churned-up ribbon of dirt, light bulbs strung overhead like a carnival spine guiding the stragglers toward the parking lots and rides that still hum for whoever refuses to go home.
A kid runs past us with a corn dog longer than his forearm.
Someone laughs too loud. A bull bellows, indignant at the indignity of bedtime.
In the rideshare, I let my head sink against the seat and close my eyes.
Heat still clings to my scalp under the elastic of my ponytail.
My wrists ache in that tender, overused way that means tomorrow will be a symphony of tendon complaints.
Jaden scrolls his phone, the screen light painting his face pale and blue.
“You did good,” he says without looking up. “Only one sprain you argued into sitting out. That’s a record.”
“She’ll hate me until she’s forty,” I say. “Then she’ll realize keeping her ligament attached was a gift.”
“Delayed gratitude is still gratitude.”
The driver drops us on a side street where string lights zigzag over a patio and a chalkboard sign promises live music later.
The bar is one of those neighborhood places that tried to grow up without losing the sticky floors—reclaimed wood, old rodeo posters, three televisions tuned to different sports.
The air smells like beer, fryer oil, and lime.
At a high-top near the bar, two men argue warmly about a call on the screen.
Someone tosses a dart; it thunks into cork and someone else groans.
We slide into a booth against the half wall that separates the bar from the dining tables.
It’s the kind of booth with springs that sigh when you sit, the kind that remembers everyone who’s ever complained about their day here.
I put my back to the wall and the room in front of me. Old habits die hard.
A bartender with a braid down to her waist swings by with two laminated menus tucked under her arm. “What’re we drinking?”
“Whiskey, rocks,” I say, surprising myself with how fast the answer jumps out. “And a basket of fries the size of a small state.”
She grins. “Iowa or Delaware?”
“Iowa.”
“Two Iowas,” Jaden adds. “Make the fries a double. And can we get the spicy aioli, the ranch, and the mystery orange one that seems to be on everything?”
“You mean the house sauce?”
“I never met a house I didn’t want sauce from.”
She laughs, scribbles, and glides away.
I let my shoulders sag until my spine hits the backrest with a quiet thud. The wood is cool through my scrub top. Jaden’s knee bounces under the table. He’s incapable of being still, even at rest.
“You’re vibrating.”
“I pre-gamed with a Red Bull.”
“You’re a nurse. You can’t handle your caffeine?”
“I’m also a person.”
“Debatable.”
The whiskey arrives in heavy-bottomed glasses that make a satisfying little clunk when the bartender sets them down.
Condensation blooms immediately. I wrap my fingers around mine and feel the cold bleed into my palms. First sip, and the burn is a smooth, woody wash that unclenches something at the base of my skull. My whole body exhales.
“Rough day?” Jaden asks.
“Just a day,” I say, then shake my head. “No. That’s a lie. It was rough. I saw Reno.”
His brows flick. “Yeah. I didn’t ask anything earlier, because I figured you’d want to have liquor in your hand first. How’d that go?”
“Like a paper cut. Small, stupid, still stings.”
“You okay?”
“Ask me after the fries.”
The basket lands like a parade float, mounded and steaming, a dusting of salt glittering under the bar lights. I dip one in the orange sauce. It tastes like ketchup that took a sabbatical and came home with secrets. We devour the first layer without speaking. Grease soothes.
I let the whiskey work and let the fry salt hit the dried-out places in my brain that forgot what satisfaction feels like.
My tight, precise posture melts by degrees until I’m slouched with the kind of indifference I only allow when I’m too tired to defend the ramparts.
Noise becomes a cushion instead of an assault.
The TV above the bar plays a slow-motion replay of a hockey fight, and for a moment, I’m seven again, watching my dad stand too close to the glass at a Thunderbirds game and shouting like his voice could change physics.
Two men in snap shirts and too-clean boots drift past our booth and hover. Their smiles are the kind that think they’re charming because they’ve worked on other people. The shorter one has a belt buckle I can see my annoyed reflection in.
“Evenin’,” he says, leaning a forearm on the lip of our half wall.
“Evening,” I say without looking up.
“Long day?” the taller one asks.
“Long life.”
“You work at the Fest?” Belt Buckle says, eyes flicking to my scrub pants like he’s connecting dots.
“Medical tent.”
“So you’re a nurse.”
“Doctor,” I correct, and I don’t try to soften it.
“Pretty for a doctor,” the taller one says, like it’s a compliment I’ll pay back with a giggle.
Jaden’s smile goes from polite to protectiveness in a blink. “We’re having a conversation,” he says, not unkindly. “Appreciate the neighborliness.”
“We’re just being friendly,” Belt Buckle says, both palms up like he’s a mime dropping any threatening objects he doesn’t own.
“Friendly’s fine,” I say. “Hovering is drafty.”
They laugh. They don’t move. The taller one points at my glass. “What’re you drinking? We’ll get your next round.”
“I can buy my own whiskey.”
They grin at each other like I’ve challenged them to a game and then finally amble away when the bartender shouts an order number that might be theirs.
Jaden exhales. “You good?”
“Thriving.”
He shakes his head, amused. “What would you have done if they didn’t leave?”
“Ordered Iowa number two and a restraining order.”
We eat more fries. Jaden tells me a story about the volunteer EMT who kept offering life advice to his patients and then went ghost-white at the sight of a paper cut. We laugh more than the stories warrant because the laughing is the point.
Two whiskeys and half a field of fries later, my edges are soft enough that I almost forget I hate this town in the summer. Jaden stands, points to the hallway by the jukebox. “Bathroom. Don’t get adopted by any more cowboys while I’m gone.”
“I’ll screen them for rabies first.”
He disappears into the narrow corridor painted with old concert posters.
I pick through the fries for the crispy ends, the ones that taste most like the fryer.
I check my phone out of habit—two emails from the clinic account, one from a supplier asking about reorders, one from a patient rebooking for next month.
I flag both and tuck the phone face down.
The shadow falls over me before I clock the boots.
It’s Belt Buckle, returned and heavy with the confidence of a man who believes the world is here to furnish him with stories where he’s the hero. He plants a palm on the table and leans over into my slice of air.
“You sure about that drink?” he asks, breath a slur of beer and bravado.
“Positive,” I say without looking up. I reach for a fry I don’t want and lift it to my mouth with calm I don’t feel. The shape of his hand on my table irritates me more than it should.
“Come on,” he says, closer now, bending at the waist like he’s stage-whispering secrets. “We’re just saying hi. My buddy over there says he knows your ex. Figured we could all get acquainted.”
I set the fry down. “You’re blocking my view of the television.”
“You’re pretending you don’t like us,” he says, laughing, and it isn’t the laugh of a man who can read a room. “That’s cute.”
What flicks in me is small but sharp. It’s not fear. It’s not even anger. It’s a click. A tired, decisive click that says no.
I keep my voice pleasant. “Hey. Look at me.”
He blinks and does.
I smile, sweet as cinnamon. Then I pick up my steak knife, feel the weight of it settle into my hand, and drive the point into the table between his splayed fingers.
The wood gives with a startled, satisfying thunk, and the metal sings.
He jerks his hand back on instinct, eyes going wide like I just taught him fire was real.
The room doesn’t go silent. Bars in real life don’t do that. But the noise around us shifts, the way wind changes before a storm. His buddy, the tall one, snorts an “oh, damn” that’s half laugh, half warning.
I leave my hand on the knife handle, not tight, just there, and tilt my head. “I’m a doctor,” I say, as pleasant as can be. “Next time you bother me, this knife goes into something vital.”
His mouth opens, but nothing comes out. He looks at the knife, looks at me, looks back at the knife like he can’t reconcile the sparkle of the bar lights on the blade with the woman who didn’t blink putting it there.