13. Oatman
Oatman
KNOX
The next time our days off hit a Saturday, I pulled into Barb's driveway at eight.
I wanted to take her on my motorcycle. Nora called it a death trap and told me she wouldn't come if I showed up on one, so I showed up in the truck.
Nora came out the front door before I could text her.
She was in boots and a skirt that sat just above her knees, a black top with a neckline that I was going to have trouble not looking at for the next two hours, a sling bag across one shoulder.
Her hair was down, loose around her shoulders, catching the light as she walked toward me.
She looked like she'd thought about what to wear, and whatever she'd decided on was going to be a problem for me all day.
When she saw me she smiled, and the whole morning sharpened into focus.
She climbed into the passenger seat and set her bag between her feet. "Morning."
I backed out of the driveway and turned south.
"So what's in Oatman?"
"You'll see."
The drive to Oatman was just over two hours. South through the sprawl, past Searchlight, then east toward the river where the highway opens up and the desert flattens into nothing for miles.
Nora plugged her phone in and scrolled through her library while I drove, picking songs I didn't recognize, skipping halfway through some and letting others play twice.
She sang along to a few of them, quietly, under her breath, like she'd forgotten I was there.
I didn't say anything. I just drove and let her fill the truck with whatever she wanted.
I parked the truck along Route 66 at the edge of town. Nora looked through the windshield at the wooden boardwalks, the old storefronts, the mountains rising behind the rooftops.
"You could have seen all this from a motorcycle," I said.
She looked at me. "And you could have seen it from an ambulance."
I grinned. She was already climbing out.
The boardwalk smelled like cedar, sun-warmed pine.
Dry dirt. The town was one street, Route 66 running straight through the middle of it, and everything on both sides looked like it hadn't been touched since the miners walked out.
We found a vendor on the boardwalk selling frybread, warm and drizzled with honey and cinnamon, and the woman behind the counter handed it to us on a single paper plate.
Nora tore off a piece and held it out to me.
We ate it walking, passing the plate back and forth between us.
We didn't get five steps before a burro wandered out from between two buildings and headed straight for us.
I stepped between Nora and the animal before I thought about it. My hand went to the small of her back and I moved her behind me. It stopped a few feet away and looked at us with its ears forward.
Nora was laughing behind me. "Knox, it's a donkey."
"It's a burro. And it's bigger than it looks."
The burro lost interest and wandered back between the buildings. Nora watched it go, then fell into step beside me.
We walked the length of Main Street finishing the frybread. Nora stopped at every shop window and studied every faded photograph on every wall. I carried the plate and let her lead.
She spotted the photo booth tucked outside a shop at the far end of the boardwalk. Old curtain, wooden bench, the kind that prints a strip of four frames. She grabbed my arm and pulled me inside before I could object.
"Nora."
"Sit down."
The bench was built for one person. With both of us on it, my shoulders pressed against the walls on either side and her thigh was flush against mine. She fed two dollars into the slot and the screen started counting down.
The first flash caught me looking comically crammed into the booth while Nora beamed beside me.
The second one, she pulled a face so ridiculous I laughed before I could stop it, a real laugh, and the flash caught that too.
The third frame, I missed the camera entirely.
I was looking at her. Her profile, the line of her jaw, her chin tilted up because she was happy.
The flash went off and I was still looking.
The fourth one, she turned toward me at the last second.
Our faces were inches apart. Neither of us was smiling. Neither of us looked away.
Two strips dropped into the tray. Nora picked them up and held them side by side.
She laughed at the third frame. "You weren't even looking at the camera."
I took one of the strips from her, studied it, then slid it into my wallet.
"That's going in my turnout helmet."
Nora looked at me. Her cheeks went pink, and she smiled without saying anything.
We had dinner at a saloon off the boardwalk.
Roast beef, fries, sarsaparilla floats in tall glasses.
The place was dim and cool, and Nora sat across from me in a leather booth with her chin in her hand.
The low light from the bar caught the side of her face, and I let myself look at her the way I'd been wanting to look at her all day.
"I had a really good time today, Knox."
"I'm glad you did." I turned my glass on the table. "I come here sometimes. When my head gets loud after a shift. I get on the motorcycle and ride Route 66 through the pass, and by the time I get here, whatever I was carrying feels smaller."
She looked at me. "Is that why you brought me here?"
"You were upset the other night. At The Lantern. I thought this might help you clear your head too."
Nora picked at the edge of her napkin.
"A few weeks ago, one of Jen's patients crashed and I got reassigned to cover her bay.
" She said it like she'd been holding it and was tired of the weight.
"When the attending checked the chart afterward, there was a dosage that didn't match his order.
Jen's credentials were on the entry, but I was the nurse on the patient when he caught it.
I should have seen the discrepancy and I didn't. Gracelyn told me this has been happening for a while.
That administration's been cracking down on charting errors on the floor, and it's Liz and Jen's charts that keep flagging. "
I knew who Liz and Jen were. Every firefighter who'd ever come through those ER doors knew who they were. They flirted with anyone in turnout gear, and I'd never liked either of them.
"That's not on you, Nora."
"I know. But I'm the one who missed it." She turned her glass on the table.
"And on top of that, Liz and Jen are telling people that Dr. Harlan gives me special treatment.
That he pulls me onto cases and spends extra time with me at the workstation.
He doesn't. He's just a good doctor. He treats everyone like that.
" She took a breath. "And they saw us at the diner when we went for the chicken tenders.
So now the story is that I'm playing both sides.
Getting special treatment from Harlan at work and seeing you on the outside. "
I looked at her across the table. She was frustrated and tired of explaining herself to people who didn't deserve the explanation. I could see it in her shoulders.
"Tell them you're with me."
She blinked. "What?"
"This is a date, Nora. We're dating. Tell them that."
She stared at me. "Just like that?"
"Just like that. You don't owe them a story that makes them comfortable. Give them the truth and let them do whatever they're going to do with it."
"What if the stories come back to bite me?"
"Do people actually take Liz and Jen seriously?"
She was quiet for a long moment. Then something in her face loosened, and she smiled. It wasn't the big smile from the photo booth or the easy one from the boardwalk. It was smaller and steadier, and it looked like relief.
After dinner we walked back along the boardwalk.
The sky had changed while we were inside.
The blue from this afternoon was gone, replaced by a bruised purple rolling over the peaks.
The wind was picking up, pushing warm air down the street, carrying dust and the smell of rain that hadn't arrived yet.
"Knox, look." Nora had stopped at a shop window. Raw stones displayed on a piece of velvet behind the glass, deep purples and cloudy pinks and something rough and dark that caught the light from a lamp inside. They glowed against the dust.
She stood there looking at them.
"Do you want to go inside?"
She nodded.
The shop was small and quiet, cooler than the street.
Shelves lined every wall, and every shelf was full.
Rough stones arranged by color, polished pieces under glass, clusters of something translucent sitting on wooden stands with handwritten labels beside them.
Colors I didn't know rocks came in. Nora moved through the rows with her hands behind her back, leaning close to read each label without touching anything.
"I used to have a collection of these," she said. She was looking at a tray of raw stones near the register. "Six pieces. I kept them on my bedroom shelf. Amethyst, rose quartz, black tourmaline, carnelian, a couple of others." She touched the edge of the tray. "They all burned with the house."
I watched her look at them. Her fingers hovered over the tray without touching anything, and her face had the same quiet ache as when she talked about the house. She missed them.
"Why don't we rebuild your collection?"
She looked up at me.
"We can buy them again. One by one."
"Knox, rebuilding my crystal collection isn't exactly a priority right now."
"Consider it a gift from me. Pick one."
She looked at me for a long second. Then she turned back to the tray and moved her fingers over the stones without picking any of them up. She passed the purple ones, the pink ones. Stopped at a rough gray stone that looked like nothing next to the others.
She picked it up and turned it under the lamp. From one angle it was plain and dull. Then she tilted it and the surface flashed with color, a deep blue-green that caught the light and vanished when she turned it back.
"Labradorite," she said. "It's a stone for new beginnings. For when you're starting over."