Chapter 27 Annie
ANNIE
By noon, I feel like a wind-up toy that’s run down to a random tick.
The medic tent is too much. Everything is grating, even the things I usually find soothing—the soft rip of tape, the clean click of a sharps container, Jaden’s habit of narrating our stock counts so he remembers what we need.
We’ve been on this fairground long enough that the rhythm should make me numb.
Instead, it makes me tired in the marrow.
“Hydration station refilled,” Jaden announces, setting a fresh jug on the corner table and writing a cheerful WATER IS FREE in block letters on a new sheet of cardstock because the old one looked “sad.” “And I negotiated two extra bags of ice from the lemonade stand with charm and slander.”
“Whose reputation did you destroy on my behalf?” I ask without looking up.
“Mine. I told the guy I’d become a regular customer for life if he helped me keep people alive today. He said that seemed like a conflict of interest. I said, welcome to healthcare.”
I snort. The sound comes out brittle around the edges.
We’ve been busy all day—people in, people out, a parade of small emergencies and a few honest ones, heat-sick toddlers, cowboys pretending a gash is a scratch, anxious moms, bored dads.
It’s as if everyone thought that since the festival is ending, they should get checked out for free, just in case.
“No, Mrs. Douglas, what we do is included in the price of your ticket,” I tell them on repeat.
The sweet old lady huffs frustratedly, then says, “Well, you deserve something for all your hard work.”
“It was just a splinter—”
“Here you go, dear.” She tries to press a twenty into my palm. “For your troubles.”
“I can’t take that.”
“Sure, you can.” She glances at Jaden. “I’m sure your boss won’t mind.”
Over a decade of schooling. A rotation at a prestigious hospital. Owning my own clinic. And every person over fifty assumes my employee is my boss because he’s a guy.
I silently count to ten, because I know she doesn’t mean anything by it, and because I know I’m on edge and my fuse is nonexistent. Force a smile. Try not to be smarmy. “He works for me.”
“Oh.” Her cheeks pink.
“Happens all the time,” I say dismissively, trying to sweep it under the rug. “And I appreciate the sentiment, but doctors don’t take tips.”
“Well, alright, if you insist…”
Jaden cracks in. “If you want to give your money away to someone, Mrs. Douglass, I saw the Cowboy Crisis Fund is collecting by the kettle corn.”
“Perfect. Thank you.” Her smile is warm again. “Thank you both.” I’m grateful that she takes her sharp perfume scent with her.
We fix what we can fix and deflect what we can’t, and no matter how many times I wipe the counter, the faint smell of blood and Betadine and sweat hangs around like a stubborn thought. Or maybe my senses are heightened thanks to the time bomb in my uterus.
“You good?” Jaden asks in the soft voice he reserves for the moments when my spine looks straight but my face gives me away.
“Fine.”
“Liar.”
“Functional,” I correct. It’s the best I can do today.
He accepts it with a little nod and turns his attention back to triage. It’s hot enough that the edges of the paper curl as we write. He presses them flat with his palm as if the forms will ever behave.
We have a lull—ten minutes where the tent sits and hums—so I re-check the lot I already checked, because inventory feels like a thing I can control. Gauze, sutures, steri-strips. Oral rehydration packets. Habits and rituals to keep me calm for now.
A shadow cuts across the flap, and before I can decide whether to be grateful for the shade, he’s inside.
Reno.
He comes in loud even before the sound, shoulders squared in a way that says he’s braced for a fight, and I better be too.
He’s handsome and furious and not sober enough for this conversation, not today, not ever.
The smell hits first—whiskey and heat and the kind of sweat that means a body’s trying to rinse something from the inside out.
“We’re open to patients, not tantrums,” I say, and my voice is calmer than I feel.
He doesn’t blink. “You ruined my life.”
Jaden straightens at the sink and goes very still, the way a person does when lightning lands closer than the forecast promised.
He looks at me. I give the quickest tilt of my head that says, I’ve got this.
He drifts toward the back flap like he’s stepping out for ice.
He doesn’t leave. His eyes are locked on Reno.
“I’m treating patients,” I say, turning the stack of forms so the clip faces me. “If you need medical attention, get on a cot. If not, get out.”
“So you’re just gonna sit there and pretend you’ve done nothing wrong?”
I arch a brow his direction. “I haven’t. And what happened between me and him isn’t about you—”
“What happens between you and my father has everything to do with me!”
“No,” I say, meeting his eyes. “It doesn’t. Your father’s life is his. My life is mine. What happens between us has nothing to do with you.”
“You only met him because of me,” he snaps.
“I met him long after you and I broke up. Our meeting had nothing to do with you, Reno.”
“We were good together, Annie. And you threw it all away!”
“I threw nothing away. Things changed between us. People break up. Reality doesn’t ask your permission first. If you can’t handle reality, put the bottle down.”
His mouth hardens. He steps closer, invading the safe space I draw around my cot line like he wants to be a problem instead of a person. “You think you’re better than me because you never went through shit—”
“I lost my parents when I was still in college, you piece of—” I cut myself off.
Shouting at him isn’t going to fix a damn thing.
“You know what? I’m busy, and you’re drunk.
And the only person who gets to decide what I do with my heart and body is me.
If you have a medical complaint, say it. If not, get out of my tent.”
He laughs, a sharp, ugly sound that doesn’t make it to his eyes. “You ruined me, and now you’re just gonna walk away?” He glances at Jaden. “Doesn’t seem right, does it?”
To my surprise, Jaden’s eyes darken as he stands taller. “You don’t want my opinion on you, Reno.” I have never seen him look menacing—the man is practically a golden retriever in human form—but right now, I wouldn’t cross him.
Better take the temperature down in here.
“I didn’t ruin you, Reno, you did that yourself.
Every time you reach for a bottle instead of a person.
I tried to be there for you, and you know it.
So don’t blame me because you didn’t let me help you.
Get your shit together, and do it on your own time. I have patients to see.”
He sways, just a fraction, like the ground isn’t exactly where he left it. For a raw moment, I see the other version of him, the one with a book in his hands and a kindness under his bones he doesn’t know what to do with. Then anger wins the coin toss. “You’ll never see me again.”
“Good.” I don’t look away.
He stomps out, muttering something under his breath that sounds like cursing and a promise he can’t keep. The flap smacks back into place.
My hands are steady. My heart is not.
Jaden reappears at my elbow and nudges my shoulder with his in a sideways hug meant for stoic people. “Proud of you.”
I let out the breath I’ve been holding since Reno walked in. “I’m proud of me too. And you. Didn’t know you could do scary.”
He chuckles. “That’s what makes it effective.”
I pick up the clipboard and set it down again, because the movement is what keeps me from shaking. “Okay. Who’s next?”
“Kid with a knee,” Jaden says, leaning out to catch the worried mother’s eye and gesture them in. “And a ranch hand who thinks duct tape is an appropriate wound closure.”
“Of course he does.” I wash my hands and let the ritual reset my muscles. “Bring in the duct tape evangelist after the kid.”
Between patients, Jaden slides a cold water bottle across the table. The crowd swells to afternoon roar. The speakers rumble and then blare. My shirt sticks between my shoulder blades. The pulse at my throat remembers it has opinions.
Reno doesn’t come back. No one else from the Wyatt camp does either, not for a while. It’s a relief and a strange ache.
We treat a sunburn that will punish somebody tomorrow, a hand that got in an argument with a rope and lost, a concussion I send to the hospital because I refuse to let a seventeen-year-old sleep it off in the back of a pickup.
The truth is, I am worn out by this and by everything else, but the only way I know how to rest is to keep moving. Brick’s face keeps showing up in my peripheral vision, and I keep refusing to turn my head. I looked once, but it turned out to be another cowboy. Guess I’m seeing him everywhere.
Everywhere but where I want him.
With me.