Page 2 of Sexting the Cowboy
“Tell me again,” he says, eyes still on the crowd. “We’re doing the whole month?”
“Whole month.” I make myself keep my tone neutral. “Thursday through Sunday rodeos. Weekday events are concerts and reenactments. We’re on call the entire time.”
He whistles. “Your aunt still think you should’ve stuck to pediatrics?”
“My aunt thinks I should’ve moved to Seattle and married a dentist,” I say. “But she also thinks apple cider vinegar cures everything and that my name would look nicer if it started withMrs., so…”
He snorts. “I, for one, am thrilled you chose us over the Seattle dentist.”
Usis the clinic—a narrow, hopeful space in a strip mall in Sandy with a lobby I painted myself and a plant I’ve kept alive against its will. I opened six months ago with too much faith and too little capital, then ran headfirst into every predictable problem. The margins for small private practices are razor-thin. Insurance contracts move like glaciers until they don’t, then they smack you with denials.
The month I actually thought I’d close, this rodeo coordinator called, waving money I couldn’t ignore. I closed the clinic temporarily—I hope—and flipped the voicemail to the emergency message. Only one appointment had to be postponed. A Pap smear that could wait until I got back. My patient told me to bring her some kettle corn and to try to havefun. I smiled and told her I’d do my best, and I felt like a liar in both directions.
“Meredith from the committee is supposed to check in on us soon,” Jaden says, tapping his watch. “You want me to charm her out of extra ice?”
“Please. Also, ask about radios. The ambulance service is staged at the main gate, one ALS and one BLS, but if production is on a different channel we need to be able to hear them swear when something goes sideways.”
He salutes and disappears into the heat.
I put my empty cup in the trash and turn back to the table. I lay out exam gloves in stacks by size. I set the otoscope where I won’t knock it off because I always knock it off. I tuck a secret stash of smiley stickers under the edge of the table because three-year-olds who throw up on my shoes deserve something for the indignity of existing in this heat.
A teenage barrel racer limps in just as I’m wondering if we’ll sit in a hot box all afternoon doing nothing. Her braid swings when she sits on the end cot and tries not to cry. “I rolled it,” she says, and points at an ankle that’s ballooning.
“Let’s take a look.” I ask questions while I palpate—where’s the pain, any numbness, can you bear weight. She can’t without cussing, which answers that. I stabilize, tape, brace, lecture gently, and tell her she’s done for today. She glares at me like I broke her on purpose. Her mother thanks me with both hands and mouthssorryas she steers her child out. I’ve been the bad guy before. It’s part of the job. “Better mad now than busted forever.”
A ranch hand shows up next with a thumb he jammed catching a gate. I tape him in a figure eight and send him to the bleachers with instructions not to be a hero.
Then a little boy wanders in wide-eyed, cheeks the color of boiled shrimp, damp hair stuck to his temple. His mother fans him with a program. I sit him on a cot with an ice pack tucked under each armpit, drip water into his mouth with patience, and feel the tight coil in my chest ease as his skin cools and his smile returns. I slap a sticker on his shirt, and he looks at it like it’s a treasure.
This part I love. The work. The logic. Symptom, exam, plan. Even here, wrapped in noise and dust and the stink of risk, medicine makes sense of it all.
By the time Jaden returns—with ice, radios, and the satisfaction of a successful charm offensive—the sun has lifted to a mean angle. The announcer is fully in his groove now, calling out sponsors and promising thrills, the sound swelling and falling in waves. Eventually, that’ll be background noise, but for now, it’s hard not to pay attention.
“Production is on channel two,” Jaden reports. “Medical on three, grounds on one. The sheriff’s office brought in extras for the weekends. Meredith says if we need a golf cart, we can grab the one by the infield gate, but it squeals like a dying rabbit.”
“Copy.” I key the radio.
He slides a folded sheet of paper out of a folder and smirks. “You want to hear today’s talent roll, or shall I spare your delicate sensibilities?”
“My sensibilities are fine,” I say, then soften it because he doesn’t deserve the edge I reserve for everything rodeo. “Give me the highlights.”
He reads event by event, voice drifting into announcer cadence: saddle bronc, steer wrestling, tie-down roping, the junior mutton-busting heats that will end in tears and adorable belt buckles. I make appropriate noises when he hits names that ring a bell with locals—famous in a radius defined by radio towers and bar gossip. The ground shakes on another bellow from the pens. I can feel it in my molars.
I pretend I don’t.
“You sure you’re okay?” Jaden asks, not looking up. He’s been with me long enough to sense when I’m pretending.
“I’m fine.” The first person you have to convince is always yourself. I suck at that too. “It’s an easy day so far. Mostly sprains and bruises.”
“And you are emphatically not looking forward to bull riding,” he says, as if he can pluck the thought from my brain.
“Yep.” The word is sharper than it needs to be.
Jaden doesn’t flinch. He never flinches. It’s why he’s such a good nurse.
I’d rather think about that than what I’ve been actively avoiding thinking about since I signed the contract to work here.
Reno.
