Easy like pop-quizzes that begin with “hit me,” “tell me no,” and “run!” and all end with him pinning me down and teaching me another lesson in domination. The “run” pop-quizzes are especially interesting because they can happen at any time. When I’m naked and just getting out of the shower, when I’m fully clothed and making dinner—once even, while we were taking a walk in the woods. That’s how I learned what it feels like to get chased for several minutes through nature, get tackled to the ground, and taken in the most animalistic way in dirt and leaves.

Easy like taking me to the compound to dance any Saturday I ask, even though he doesn’t love it. Their clubhouse is just as noisy but not nearly as murderous as the one in Tennessee, I’m relieved to find out. The old ladies go out of their way to talk to me, but their men mostly avoid me unless they have a medical question. And on the rare occasion I do speak to them, they're comically polite. “They all heard about what happened to Dr. Johnny,” Lucinda tells me the one time she and Crazytown join us for a night out. “Nobody wants to piss you off and miss out on their house.”

Easy like never having to break that one-hundred-dollar bill Waylon gave me because everything in town is free. By the end of September, I stop carrying money.

Easy like more and more people moving into Angel Pond until suddenly we’re a town where everybody knows everybody. I call out hello to all the folks I’ve somehow become acquainted with when I walk down the main road underneath Waylon’s arm for Sunday dinners at Meemaw’s Inn.

Easy like realizing one day that everybody calls me Amira here because I never got around to introducing my Mimi nickname. I only started using it after high school because my guidance counselor told me it would be “easier to digest” for all the non-ethnic people I’d be working with as a hopeful nurse. But I don’t tell anyone in Angel Pond to call me that. I’ve decided not to be easier to digest anymore—I’m exactly who I am here whether people like me or not.

Easy like having a closer relationship with my patients because I can track their progress and hunt them down if necessary for follow-ups. I’m much more respectful of HIPAA laws than my predecessor. But I’m not above re-scheduling missed appointments, then asking Waylon to have a conversation with the no-show about making sure they don’t miss whatever time slot I’ve given them. So far, I’ve yet to have anyone skip appointments twice. And many of my patients are thriving, which makes me happy with my job on a level I had no idea even existed before becoming a small-town nurse practitioner.