Annie Oakley's Arc

Chapter 6 of 13

The paint horse carried them into the next town by midmorning. Lainey kept one arm tight around Annie the whole ride. Annie held the moose against her belly and did not let go. The doctor's office sat on a corner, a small wood building with a striped awning and a sign that read DOCTOR OFFICE in plain block letters. Flowers grew in a pot by the step. Lainey slid down first, then lifted Annie off the saddle and carried her to the door. The woman inside took one look and waved them past the front bench. She led them to a back room with a padded table and a window that faced the yard. Lainey set Annie down. Annie curled onto her side, moose tucked under her chin. The doctor came in wiping his hands on a towel. He was older, gray at the temples, calm the way a man is calm when he has seen worse. He did not rush. He asked Annie where it hurt and how long. He pressed her stomach in four places, slow, watching her face. Annie flinched at the first press and breathed through the next three. "Eat this morning?" he asked. "No, sir." "Yesterday?" "A little bread." "Scared before you sing?" Annie's eyes went wet. She nodded. He stepped back and folded the towel. "It's her nerves," he said. "Her stomach knots up when she's frightened. Might be the start of a small ulcer. Nothing that won't heal." He looked at Lainey. "We call it Nervous Stomach Syndrome. NSS. I see it in preachers and soldiers and children who carry too much." Lainey's shoulders dropped a half inch. She did not smile. She said, "So she isn't dying." "No," the doctor said. "She is not dying." Annie began to cry the quiet way, into the moose's fur. Lainey put a hand on her back and left it there. The doctor wrote on a slip of paper. "Milk in the morning. Soft food. No riding on an empty stomach. And she needs to eat before she sings, not after." He handed the slip to Lainey. "The fear won't kill her. But if she keeps starving through it, the ulcer will grow." "I hear you," Lainey said. He looked at Annie. "Little miss. What you do is hard on a body. You can still do it. You just have to feed the body that does it." Annie wiped her face on the moose. "Yes, sir." Outside, Lainey lifted Annie back into the saddle, gentler now that she knew the shape of the trouble. Annie held the paper slip in one fist and the moose in the other. "I thought it was worse," Annie said. "I know." "I still have to go to the mining camp." "You will," Lainey said. "After breakfast." She turned the horse toward home.