Horse Spy

by Bonnie Bryant

  It was Max, climbing into the shelter of the ambulance. He’d run all the way from the stable when he heard the sirens.

  Carole opened her eyes and nodded to Max. “I’m okay,” she said. “Just shook up.”

  “Me too,” Stevie said. “But Callie’s hurt. She was unconscious in the car. We didn’t try to move her.”

  “Good,” Max said. “The EMTs are down there now. But how did it happen?”

  Stevie explained. “The rain just came out of nowhere, pelting down so hard I could barely see, and then something came at the car. I tried to get out of the way, but I slammed into it. Was it a horse, Max? Did I hurt a horse?”

  “It was,” Max said. “The police called Judy. She’s with him now.”

  “Who was it?” Stevie asked, her voice rising hysterically.

  Carole didn’t need to hear the answer. She knew exactly which horse it was. She knew which horse had been in that paddock, and she knew which horse would be seriously spooked by thunder, which horse had the strength and endurance to jump or smash down one of Pine Hollow’s high fences and flee.

  “Fez,” she said quietly.

  “Right,” Max confirmed. He put his arm around Stevie comfortingly.

  “Is he okay?” Stevie asked.

  “He was hurt badly,” Max said. “Judy will save him if she can. Look, you two are going to go to the hospital. I’ll go back to Pine Hollow and call your parents. They’ll meet you over there. I’ll come over later. Okay?”

  “Okay,” Stevie agreed. “Max, I didn’t mean to do it. I didn’t mean to hit Fez.”

  “I know that,” Max said. “Everybody does. Don’t worry about him. Worry about making sure you’re all right.”

  Stevie and Carole nodded glumly. Max left them.

  An EMT climbed into the back of the ambulance as a second ambulance drew up behind theirs. The rain that had started so suddenly was tapering off. Through the crowd, Stevie and Carole could see a gurney being rolled up to the other ambulance. Callie was strapped flat onto it. Her eyes were closed, and she had an IV bag suspended above her head. The EMTs who were pushing the gurney looked grim.

  “Callie?” Stevie called out. “Is she okay?”

  The EMT pulled the doors of the ambulance closed. “They’re doing what they can,” he said. “Now, let’s get you two to the ER.”

  All her life, Stevie had thought it would be fun to ride in an ambulance, lights flashing, siren wailing. What she’d never fully absorbed before that, however, was that a ride in an ambulance meant something was wrong, really wrong. The thought made her shiver. She pulled a blanket tightly around her.

  The siren wailed, the lights flashed. Ahead of them traffic pulled aside to give them the right of way. They drove right up to the hospital door and walked off the ambulance into the emergency room. There were nurses there, offering them wheelchairs, and they were taken to an examining room.

  Nobody would tell them anything about Callie.

  “It was my fault. I was driving,” Stevie said.

  “You couldn’t help it,” Carole consoled her. “You did what you could. The horse ran right at us. I saw it happen.”

  “There must be something I could have done,” Stevie said. She didn’t even want to say what was in her heart. Anybody could have an accident. They happened. It wasn’t the accident that upset her. It was the consequences of that accident. Callie and Fez, but mostly Callie.

  “I never told her I was sorry,” Carole said. “I wanted to. I wanted to tell her about how I rode Fez today, but, but …” She choked on her own thoughts. Tears streaked down her cheeks.

  “Carole! Are you okay?” It was her father. He hurried into the examining area and ran over to her. “And you, Stevie? Are you okay?”

  The two girls nodded. “We’re both okay, Dad,” Carole said. “I mean, we got some bumps. The EMT thinks Stevie might have broken a rib, but we’re basically okay. What about Callie? Did they say anything?”

  “Not yet,” he said. “They’re examining her. She’s still unconscious.”

  Stevie’s parents arrived then. Once again she and Carole promised that they were okay. Once again they asked for news of Callie. There was none.

  Outside the curtain that surrounded them, they heard the congressman arrive. “Where’s my daughter?” he demanded, his voice filled with uncertainty.

  “This way, Congressman, Mrs. Forester,” a doctor said.

  The next few hours were a confusion of questions, X rays, questions, pain pills, and even more questions. Stevie did have a broken rib from the steering wheel. Carole’s injuries were limited to scrapes and bruises. Everybody who talked to the girls told them how lucky they were and how smart they were to wear their seat belts. Neither of them felt lucky or smart.

  The police asked them questions about what had happened. Stevie and Carole each described the events over and over again. Each time was more painful than the last. Stevie could still hear the awful silence in the car when Callie didn’t answer.

  Outside, they could see the flurry of activity around the trauma room where the doctors were working on Callie.

  Finally, when the doctor said they could go, Stevie stood up weakly and walked over to the plastic-covered couch where Congressman Forester and his wife were sitting with Scott, talking in hushed tones.

  “Is Callie going to be okay?” Stevie asked.

  “We hope so,” said Mrs. Forester. “She’s in a coma. The doctors say she hit her head and got a bad concussion. There was some bleeding. They have to operate. They keep saying we’re going to have to wait.”

  Stevie gasped involuntarily. It was so utterly frightening.

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “I don’t know what or how, but if I could have—”

  The Foresters just looked at Stevie. The usually garrulous Scott was out of chatter. And so, for once, was Stevie. She didn’t know what to say anymore. There were no words to make it better. The best any of the Foresters could do was the nod of acknowledgment that Mrs. Forester gave.

  “Come on, Stevie. I think it’s time to go home,” Mr. Lake said, putting his arm around his daughter. She took strength from his warmth and walked meekly to the car.

  It was still raining when they left the hospital. Stevie sat in the backseat of the car, listening to the windshield wipers all the way home.

  WHAT FOLLOWED were the longest two weeks of Stevie’s and Carole’s lives. Every time Stevie breathed, moved, spoke, or laughed, her broken rib reminded her of what had happened. Medicine could help with the pain she had in her body, but it couldn’t do anything to repair the agony she felt in her heart. Even the comfort of her daily conversations with Carole and Lisa couldn’t ease her pangs of guilt.

  Fez was getting the best care veterinary medicine could offer. Most horses hurt that badly would have been put down because the cost of healing would be so great and the chances of a successful recovery so slim. The accident had left Fez with cuts and scrapes, which would leave him scarred, and a broken leg, which might have rendered him totally incapacitated. Judy Barker didn’t have to spell it out. Everybody knew that a horse bore half its weight on its powerful, muscular rear legs and half its weight on its slim and fragile front legs. Horses asked a particularly heavy task of their forelegs, and weaknesses there were particularly troublesome. The accident had broken Fez’s foreleg.

  Judy had kept Fez at her clinic so that she could watch him closely. He was suspended in a sling. It wasn’t for Fez’s leg but for his body, holding him up in a standing position so that his legs just touched the floor. He could reach his grain, water, and hay, but he couldn’t walk around at all.

  It wasn’t easy on Fez. In spite of everything Carole had learned about controlling him, the horse was as enthusiastic about being immobilized in his sling as he had been about being in a van. He flailed and fretted all day long, and every attempt to loose himself from the sling brought a scream of pain caused by his broken leg. Judy gave him as much pain medicine as she dared, hoping to spa
re him a fate that was worse still.

  Stevie and Carole took turns visiting him, anticipating his needs, calming and soothing the fretting horse. By the end of a week, he had learned to trust them just enough that he didn’t kick and fuss constantly—merely most of the time.

  And while they worked to help Fez, Callie lay in a hospital bed. She had two operations to relieve pressure on her brain, and she remained in a coma. While Stevie and Carole spent every minute they could looking after Fez, neither one of them could stand the idea of seeing Callie. Not yet.

  A week after the accident, the police formally dismissed all potential charges against Stevie. Another driver had been on the road, behind Stevie’s car. He’d seen everything that happened and said there was no way Stevie could have avoided the horse, which had run straight into her car.

  Still it wasn’t enough. Even though the law exonerated her, Stevie wasn’t ready to exonerate herself.

  “It almost doesn’t matter what they say,” she told Carole. “What matters is Callie.”

  “At least you were nice to her,” said Carole. “I never gave her a chance. I was going to tell her I was sorry, but I couldn’t think of a way to say anything when we went to the airport, and now I don’t know if I’ll ever have a chance.”

  There was nothing more to say. Fortunately, there was a lot to do. Fez was a demanding patient, and they were determined to do everything they could for him, since they couldn’t do anything for his owner.

  After two weeks Callie woke up. She opened her eyes for the first time at three o’clock in the morning. Scott was by her bedside, sleeping in a chair, when he heard her speak.

  “Hello? Who’s there?” she asked.

  Scott sat bolt upright, hardly believing what he’d just heard.

  “Callie? Are you all right?”

  “I guess so,” she said. “Where am I? What’s going on? What happened?”

  Scott was so relieved to hear his sister speak that he almost didn’t notice his own tears.

  “Oh, it’s a long story,” he said. “You’ve been out of it for about two weeks. Do you remember anything?”

  “I don’t think so,” Callie said. “I just remember windshield wipers. I thought they’d never stop. Oh, my god, Stevie and Carole. Are they okay?”

  “They’re fine,” Scott said. “Minor injuries. Now, just relax. I’m going to call Mom and Dad. Then I’ll tell you everything. Like I said, it’s a long story.”

  “In that case, get me something to eat before you talk. I’m starving!”

  Over the course of the next few hours, Callie learned everything that had happened since the accident. Scott told her how Stevie and Carole were looking after Fez and that they called every day to say how he was doing. Callie’s parents came over to the hospital to see her and just hug her. Callie ate some Jell-O, which the hospital provided, and some pizza, which her father brought from home.

  And then the doctors arrived. They tested, questioned, poked, prodded, tapped, tickled, and beamed.

  “Good … Hmmm … Interesting … Very good … Amazing,” they said.

  In the end they were very pleased with how well Callie was doing.

  “When can we bring her home?” her parents asked when they spoke with the doctors in the hall after they’d completed their examination.

  The doctors looked at one another. Dr. Amandson shook his head.

  “Not for a while,” he told them. “You see, she’s partially paralyzed on her left side.”

  “We thought you said she was doing well.”

  “She is. Extremely well. With the kinds of injuries she sustained, we were expecting much worse. She’s doing extraordinarily well, in fact. She is alert. She can talk, think, reason, and use all five senses. The only residual damage to the extreme trauma her brain suffered is that her left side doesn’t work very well.”

  “But paralyzed? What does this mean?” Mrs. Forester asked.

  “She’s going to need physical therapy—lots of it,” said Dr. Amandson. “What’s happened, basically, is that some of her brain was damaged—the part that controls movement on the left side of her body. That part of her brain may heal itself in time, or it may not. The brain is a marvelous invention, especially the brain of a young, healthy girl like your daughter. If the damaged part doesn’t heal, another part of the brain can be encouraged to learn whatever got lost in the accident. With hard work, concentration, and endurance, Callie will be up and walking soon. Eventually she may be as good as new. The therapist will be here in the morning to help plan a program for her. Now, tell me, do you have any questions?”

  “Not right now,” said Mr. Forester.

  “Yes, one—or maybe a few,” said Mrs. Forester.

  “Yes?”

  “Is Callie out of danger?”

  “I don’t know,” Dr. Amandson told her. “We’ll have to watch her closely, for a long time, until we’re sure.”

  “Is there any way this physical therapy could be dangerous to her?”

  “No, not really,” said the doctor. “As long as it’s carefully monitored.”

  “What kinds of things will they do?”

  “The therapist will develop a program that will begin very slowly, building up muscles and working on balance and coordination skills. We’ve found that the progressive healing of patients in physical therapy is a lot like the way babies learn motor skills, crawling, walking, and so on. They try to create a program that is interesting as well as useful. I don’t know Callie other than as a comatose patient. Is there some activity that she enjoys more than others that we might try to incorporate in her therapy? Swimming perhaps?”

  “Well, she does like to swim,” said Mrs. Forester.

  “Horseback riding,” Mr. Forester said. “It’s the thing she loves the most in the world.”

  The doctor smiled. “Have you ever heard of therapeutic riding?” he asked.

  “No,” said Mrs. Forester. “But I have the feeling we’re going to hear a lot about it—and soon.”

  A few weeks after that, Emily found Carole and Stevie in Fez’s stall.

  “Ouch!” said Carole, shaking her hand. Fez had nipped at her fingers when she gave him a carrot. “Didn’t you ever hear the saying Don’t bite the hand that feeds you?”

  “Being sick has not improved his disposition,” Stevie said.

  “It rarely does,” Emily told them. “And, speaking of being sick, guess who called me. I hate it when people say things like that, so I’ll tell you. Callie Forester. She was calling me from the physical therapy room at the hospital. Her therapist thinks horseback riding would be good. They wanted her to go to Free Rein—the therapeutic riding center where I learned to ride—but she said that if she was going to ride again, it was going to be at Pine Hollow. She wants me to be her instructor.”

  “Perfect,” said Carole. “Absolutely perfect. You’ll be perfect for her.”

  “Maybe I will be, but PC definitely will be. He’ll be glad to have another rider from time to time.” Emily had utter faith in her horse, and everybody who had ever seen him perform knew she had reason to feel that way.

  “When will she be at Pine Hollow?” Stevie asked.

  “Right, how soon?” Carole echoed.

  “We made a date for next Wednesday morning. You’ll both be here, won’t you?”

  “Absolutely,” said Stevie.

  “Of course,” Carole told her. “We wouldn’t miss that for anything.”

  “Good, because she’ll be here with her therapist and her parents. I think Scott’s coming, too. It’s going to be a real family outing for them. There’s a lot of work to be done before then, too.”

  “Yes,” Carole said. She knew what Emily meant, but she had work of her own to do before she saw Callie. She had to figure out how to apologize for the past and make the future better.

  “Both her parents?” Stevie asked. “They’ll be here?”

  “That’s what she said.”

  Stevie felt a shiver. The wh
ole family would be there. She hadn’t seen them since the hospital. Now she’d see them all. Scott, whom Stevie liked because he was charming and funny, probably wouldn’t be funny anymore. Stevie had been driving in the accident that hurt his sister. Congressman and Mrs. Forester wouldn’t want to see Stevie because Stevie’s car had nearly killed their daughter when it struck their horse.

  And Callie?

  Could Stevie look at any of them? What would she say? How could she say she was sorry in a way that meant anything when she’d hurt them all so badly? Could she ever face them?

  She didn’t know.

  THE FIRST person to arrive on Wednesday was Scott. Carole, Stevie, and Emily were tacking up PC for Callie when Scott came up the driveway, riding a bicycle.

  He looked around uncertainly and then, recognizing Carole, walked over to the girls. Stevie was glad she was standing on the far side of the horse. Maybe she’d never have to speak to anyone.

  “Hi,” Carole said. “I guess it’s Callie’s big day.”

  “I don’t know. This seems pretty crazy to me.” Scott shook his head.

  “You’ll see.” Carole introduced him to Emily, who leaned forward with a crutch under her left arm to shake hands with her right.

  “I know, I know,” she said, anticipating his concern. “You’re trying to figure out if this is a case of the blind leading the blind …”

  Scott blanched. Clearly Emily had been right on the mark. “I wasn’t going to put it that way,” he protested, shifting his eyes away from her crutch and back to her face.

  “Of course not,” said Emily.

  “Well, I guess my sister knows what she’s doing.”

  “We’ll see, won’t we?” Emily asked. “Anyway, I was as uncertain as you are, but I’ve talked with Callie’s therapist, and we have a pretty good program lined up for your sister. Besides, it’s not me who is going to be doing the instructing. It’s good old PC here. He knows absolutely everything. He’s the best teacher in the world.” She gave him a firm pat on the neck to punctuate her statement. The well-behaved horse didn’t budge.

  “You named your horse after a computer?” Scott asked, smiling for the first time.