Badd Medicine

by Jasinda Wilder

  “Jesus, Izz.”

  “So yeah, things got worse from there. Evil Cunt took over. Kicked me out to the little loft over the garage.”

  “How could she kick you out of your own house?”

  “She controlled the money. I’d been buying food and whatever else with his credit cards, and she took them and cut them up and got new ones. And I was just so depressed already, and then further devastated by Dad dying that I just stopped caring, stopped fighting her.” I’d run out of twigs to snap, so I grabbed another and resumed breaking it into smaller sections and tossing the pieces into the fire. “I reached a point where I couldn’t do it anymore, couldn’t handle Tracey or Trina anymore. So I left. I’d managed to save a few thousand dollars, essentially siphoning it off while taking care of Dad—it was stealing, if you want to get technical about it, but I guess deep down I knew which way the wind was blowing and took precautions. So I had some money, and I ran away. I mean, I was eighteen, so it wasn’t really running away, just leaving. I ran into some people I used to babysit for. They’d lived in the same neighborhood as us for years, and they had three kids a lot younger than me, so babysitting was a way to earn some spending cash, because Dad didn’t believe in allowance. Anyway, they’d moved to a different neighborhood, and I got talking to the mother, and it came up that they were looking for a live-in nanny. So…that was how I survived for the next couple years.”

  He eyed me with curiosity. “You? A live-in nanny?”

  I laughed. “Don’t sound so surprised. I do have a nurturing side.”

  “I guess I just have a hard time visualizing you changing diapers and making bottles.”

  I laughed again. “Oh, no. The kids were older by then, kindergarten, third grade, and fifth grade. I was mainly there to keep them from burning the house down, or killing each other. I also prepared the meals and did laundry, since the mom and dad both worked full time out of the house. Live-in nanny basically means housekeeper and babysitter in one.”

  “Isadora Styles, domestic goddess.”

  I snickered. “Hey, I can make a mean lasagna, and fold baskets of laundry faster than you can blink. I’m out of practice these days, though.”

  He grinned at me. “I’m definitely interested in the lasagna.”

  “If you’re really nice, I’ll make it for you someday.”

  “I can be nice,” he murmured. “Very, very nice.”

  I flushed hot, remembering how nice he had been on the trail earlier today. “Don’t remind me,” I muttered.

  He grinned, letting out a low, lascivious chuckle. “No? I think that’d be something you’d want to remember.”

  “How could I forget?” I closed my eyes and breathed slowly, counting to ten. “Anyway…I nannied for them for about a year and a half, maybe two years, and then Alan, the father, got transferred here. Well, to Alaska. Anchorage, actually. I moved with them, helping with the transition, but even though the transfer was a promotion, the change in living situation meant the house they ended up buying was too small for all of them, plus a live-in nanny. And the increase in pay meant Lucy, the wife, didn’t have to work as much, so they just didn’t need me anymore. It was great for them, overall, but it left me out of a job and living in Alaska by myself.”

  “So how’d you end up in Ketchikan?”

  “Alan knew someone who lived here who needed temporary help around the house—his wife was a high-risk pregnancy and on bed rest, and they needed help with the other kids and keeping up the house. So I moved down here, and then once she’d given birth and had recovered, I was out of a job again. By that time, I was twenty-two, almost twenty-three. No college, barely enough money to survive, no friends, no family. I mean, I have Aunt Mary and Uncle Nick in St. Paul, but I wasn’t about to go banging on their door again.”

  “What’d you do?”

  “I walked by a newly remodeled retail space right as the owner was hanging up a help wanted sign. I went in, asked if I could fill out an application, and ended up getting hired on the spot. That was Angelique, and I’ve worked for her ever since. I went from cashier and salesgirl to manager, to now basically running the place on my own while Angelique is semi-retired. She spends most of her time in Paris, sourcing inventory.”

  He looked at me, long and hard and intently. “You’ve been through a hell of a lot.”

  I shrugged. “When I was a kid and my mom and dad were alive, I never could have imagined what the future held for me. I went from love and security to one impossible situation after another, just sort of…surviving.”

  “Don’t downplay it, Izzy. You survived on your own from a very young age. You’ve made good.”

  I rolled a shoulder. “I guess.”

  “Why do you doubt?”

  I sighed. “I just…I’ve bounced from thing to thing. Place to place. Working for Angelique has been amazing, and I do love blogging, and I’ve got quite a big following, and even a few pretty big sponsors.”

  “But…?”

  Gahhh, here we go. The thing I hated facing. The thing I’d never even allowed myself to think about.

  “But…before Mom died, I wanted…”

  He waited a moment. When I didn’t finish, he nudged me with a broad, hard, warm shoulder. “You wanted what, Izzy?”

  I blinked hard against the tears pooling in my eyes. It was stupid—why was this so hard to talk about?

  “I wanted to be a doctor.” I whispered it, so low I barely heard myself. “Even after Mom died, I wanted to be a doctor. Even more so, in some ways. Like, maybe I could save someone else’s mother so they wouldn’t have to go through what I was going through, you know?”

  “But then life happened.” His voice was close, rumbling in my ear, buzzing in my bones and in my blood. “Life got in the way of those plans.”

  “And now I’m thirty years old with nothing but a high school diploma and a stupid fashion blog.”

  “It’s not stupid.”

  “Yes, it is.”

  “Do you still want to go into medicine?”

  I shrugged. “I don’t know. Is it even possible, at this point in my life? I’d be forty before I finished.”

  “Anything’s possible,” Ram said. “Don’t you know? Forty is the new twenty.”

  I snorted, unable to suppress a grin and a giggle. “That’s stupid and you’re an idiot. Twenty is twenty, forty is forty, and old is old.”

  He shook his head. “Now who’s an idiot? You’re not old. You’re barely thirty.”

  “And I’m supposed to just…start over? Go back to school? Med school at that?” I laughed. “Med school is next to impossible for twenty-somethings with boundless energy and the ability to function on three hours of sleep.”

  He bumped me with his shoulder again. “Okay, granted. I’m just saying, it’s never too late to chase your dreams. It’s never too late to start over. And if you want something bad enough, you’ll make the time, and you’ll get through it, if it’s important to you.”

  “Says the man still working at his brother’s bar,” I said, knowing I was being unfair.

  “Okay, well I’m not still working there out of fear, I’m doing it out of loyalty to my brother.”

  I sighed. “I’m not afraid.”

  He quirked an eyebrow at me. “No? Then what’s holding you back?”

  I groaned. “Shut up. I hate you.”

  He chuckled. “Because you know I’m right.”

  “Yeah, I’m scared, okay?” I snapped. “I’m scared of going a hundred grand in debt, I’m scared of going to med school with kids ten or twelve years younger than me, smarter than me, with more energy than me. I’m scared of leaving the job I know pays the bills.”

  “No one is saying you have to do anything.” Ram rolled a shoulder. “I’m just saying you shouldn’t let being afraid stop you.”

  “Easy for you to say. You parachuted into wildfires. You don’t get scared.”

  He scoffed. “Is that what you think?”

  I nodde
d. “Um…yeah?”

  “Wrong. I was scared every single time I jumped out of an airplane. If you’re not scared to jump out an airplane with nothing keeping you from smacking into the ground but some silk and some string, you’re crazy—and I mean that honestly. And if you’re not scared to do that into the middle of a raging wildfire, you’re even more so.” He added a log to the fire, sending sparks winkling and floating up into the night sky. “I was scared shitless my first time jumping out of the plane. The instructor had to actually shove me out, as a matter of fact. And then I was out and in the air, free falling, and it was…the craziest rush of my life. There’s absolutely nothing like it. The scariest part of it is that moment when you have to convince yourself to do something legitimately moronic: voluntarily leaping out of an airplane ten thousand feet in the air. After that, it’s a rush. It’s fun, exhilarating, freeing. The part where you jump into a wildfire and have to start fighting it? That’s a different kind of scary. That’s where you have to fall back on your training. But that’s scary, too. So yeah, babe, I was scared of every plane I jumped out of, and every fire I went into.”

  “I guess I thought because you did a dangerous job like that, that you just didn’t get scared. Like, you thrived on the danger or whatever.”

  “You’re right and wrong at the same time—you do get scared, and that fear is what keeps you alive. It forces you to double, triple, and quadruple check your gear. It keeps you alert, keeps you training as hard as possible so you stay on the knife-edge of your skills. The part you’re wrong about is that people doing scary and dangerous jobs don’t get scared. You’re right about thriving on the fear and the danger, though. The adrenaline rush, the danger, the fear, the challenge, I did love it and thrive on it. You’re never so alive as when you’re hyperaware of your own mortality.”

  “Were you scared to move up here to Alaska?” I asked. “It’s kind of like starting over, I guess.”

  He nodded. “Not kind of like, it was starting over. We’d quit jobs we’d trained for, chased after, and loved. We left California, the home we’d chosen, and we were leaving Oklahoma, the home we were born to. We had no safety net up here, no family, no friends, no jobs. We had a business loan and an idea—Rome’s dream of opening a bar.”

  “But you did have family up here, though.”

  He shrugged. “Yeah, but we walked into their bar and met them for the first time…and nearly got into a fist fight with them. Actually, Rome did get decked by Bast that night, come to think of it.” He laughed. “He deserved it, though. The point is, Rome had said we had long-lost cousins up here, but that didn’t really mean anything to me until we met them and slowly started developing relationships with them.”

  “It’s good you have them,” I said.

  He just nodded, and we were both content to let the silence stretch out, then. Ram slid off the log to sit on the ground with his back to the log, legs stretched out. He scraped his hand through his hair, and then dragged his fingers through his beard, sighing.

  Eventually, a pressing need I’d been avoiding all day became too strong to ignore.

  “Um, Ram?”

  He eyed me, a smirk on his face. “You’re finally desperate enough that you’re willing to piss in the woods?”

  I nodded, flushing and refusing to look at him. “Something like that,” I mumbled.

  “Well, obviously I ain’t a girl, but from what I understand, the best way to go about peeing in the woods without a toilet is to dig a nice deep hole. Doesn’t have to be wide, or more than a foot deep or so, but digging a hole keeps your pee from splashing back up on you. The other trick I’ve heard girls talk about is keeping your knees wide, for some reason. Not sure on that one, but I’ve heard it more than a few times, so I imagine it’s true. Last, get your pants way down around your ankles, if not take them off entirely.”

  I nodded. “Got it.” Another hesitation. “Um…did you bring a shovel?”

  He laughed again. “I got you.”

  Ram stood up in a smooth, lithe movement, went to his pack, and unstrapped a small, collapsible spade from it, and then dug out a roll of TP, grabbing a canteen on the way. He jerked his head in a gesture to follow him, and guided me out behind the tent a few feet. He unclipped a small flashlight from his belt, turned it on, and handed it to me, and then dug a hole about a foot wide and a foot deep.

  He gestured at the hole, leaving the spade and the canteen against a nearby tree. “Do your business, and use as little TP as possible. When you’re done, dump some water on the TP to help it break down faster. This is a fairly damp area, and not really all that sensitive, so it’s fine to bury the mess. Scoop the dirt and pine needles over the hole, and you’re good.”

  “Um, so…if you don’t bury it, what do you do with it?”

  He chuckled. “Well, if you’re hiking in an arid area, or a place where the ecosystem is fragile or sensitive, you live by the phrase ‘leave no trace.’ So you pack it all out with you.”

  I frowned in disgust. “You pack out used toilet paper?”

  He nodded. “Poop too. Human fecal matter isn’t part of most ecological systems, so if you’re hiking in a sensitive ecosystem, you have to take it out with you.”

  “Oh my god, that’s so gross. How do you even do that?”

  “Special bags. I’ve done it a couple times.”

  I shuddered. “Nasty. This is about as far as I’m willing to go, at this point.” I shooed him away. “Dump water on the TP and then cover the hole. Got it.” I laughed, shaking my hands. “What a weird conversation.”

  “It’s all natural, baby!” he said, laughing. “Okay. I’ll be at the fire. Give a shout if you need help.”

  I snorted. “I think I can manage to pee by myself.”

  “Just sayin’, I’ll be within earshot,” he said, walking away.

  It felt a little silly to be so glad for the flashlight he’d left me. Away from the fire, it was pitch-black in the forest, and I could see very little. I pushed down my jeans and underwear, oriented myself over the hole, and took care of business. And, let me tell you, it was every bit as weird as I thought it would be.

  Done, I dumped water on the TP, filled in the hole, and returned to the campfire, leaving the spade and canteen with Ram’s pack. I handed him the flashlight as I sat down on the log. He opened a pouch on his belt and withdrew a small bottle of hand sanitizer.

  I laughed gratefully. “Oh thank god,” I said. “Clean hands.”

  “Always prepared,” he said, holding up a hand in the Boy Scout salute.

  “What else do you have in all those pouches on your belt?” I asked.

  He winked up at me. “Trade secret, babe. I could tell you, but then I’d have to kill you.”

  “Wouldn’t be hard,” I joked. “All you’d have to do is leave me out here alone.”

  He chuckled. “Nah, you’d survive. You’re smart and tough.”

  “You really think so?” I asked, stretching and yawning.

  When I came out of my stretch, I discovered that somehow, I’d ended up with my legs on either side of Ramsey’s torso, so he was leaning against the log between my thighs. And for some stupid, ridiculous reason, my fingers started tracing through his hair, toying with the long, feathery, silk-soft blond locks.

  “Yes, Izzy, I do think so. I wouldn’t say it otherwise. I’m not in the habit of sayin’ shit I don’t mean.” He leaned his head backward, letting it rest against my belly.

  What was I doing? Caressing his hair, stroking his scalp lightly with my fingernails…such intimate affection. Why?

  I wasn’t sure. I just knew I couldn’t stop. I knew I should—this kind of intimacy was foolish, risky, too much too soon. I haven’t even had sex with him. I didn’t engage in affection like this with men I did have sex with, much less men I barely knew.

  I bolted up off the log, abruptly and awkwardly, and lurched toward the tent. “I’m…tired. Gonna go see if I can figure out how to sleep in a weird bag on the ground.�
��

  Ram didn’t say anything, but there was something knowing in his silence. I bet if I’d turned around, I’d have seen him smirking.

  But I didn’t turn around. I unzipped the tent, took off my hiking boots and set them in a corner of the tent; they sat there for about forty-six seconds before I realized they stank to high heaven, so I set them outside the tent. I took off my bra without taking off my shirt, and climbed into the sleeping bag.

  The ground was hard, but at least Ram had made sure I bought a weird little compressible hiking pillow—I pulled it out of its little bag and it sprang rapidly outward into shape, and turned out to be pretty comfy.

  I’d come in here not because I was sleepy, but to escape the intimacy of the moment with Ram, but once I lay down and put my head on the pillow, I found myself drifting off to sleep faster than I’d ever fallen asleep in my life.

  9

  Ramsey

  though Izzy was mere inches away from me in the tent, she was wrapped up in her sleeping bag and facing the wall, snoring softly, the sleeping bag up to her nose, only a hint of strawberry blonde hair peeking out the top. Her bra lay in the corner of the tent, and her boots sat outside, but I saw no other clothes so I assumed she was sleeping in what she’d worn that day. I typically sleep naked, even when hiking. Weird, possibly, but I just sleep better that way and always have, with the exception of those firefighting missions; tonight, though, I decided to stay clothed, for Izzy’s sake.

  I fell asleep thinking of Izzy. She was so defensive, so prickly, and so sarcastic. So quick to escape any situation that even remotely suggested intimacy, vulnerability, or romance. She’d opened up a few times about her past, and I’d been shocked—and honored—each time, but she’d immediately retreated afterward, and had taken a long time to warm up to me again.

  I understood, though.

  What was less clear to me was why it stung so hard every time she retreated from me, closed off, put up her walls. Why did I care? What was it I wanted from her? If one of my brothers or my cousins were to ask what I wanted from Izzy Styles, I’d have said to get her naked and fuck her a few times. I wouldn’t have said that I wanted to get to know her, that I wanted to understand what made her tick, that I craved nonsexual physical affection from her—her fingers trailing through my hair, her hand on my shoulder, back, neck, face; I wouldn’t have said how much I wanted her to like me for who I was. I’ve never given a shit about who likes me, who approves of me; as long as I’ve got Rem and Rome, nobody else counts for shit. They’re all I’ve ever needed, their approval and their—mostly unspoken but obvious—love. Girls are for a good time, for fun, for sex, but that’s it.