Stable Vices (Show Jumping Dreams ~ Book 21)

by Claire Svendsen

  “There is a clinic in New York,” Frankie said, tapping the computer screen with her finger. “They are doing an experimental drug regime. I bet they would take him.”

  “But how are you going to get him there?” I asked her gently. “That is a really long trailer ride. Do you think that he would make it?”

  “He’s tough,” she said through gritted teeth. “He’d make it.”

  But I’d seen the horse come hobbling back to his stall. It took four people to stop him from falling over and Quantum looked really bad. I knew that Frankie wanted to do whatever she could to save him. I’d do the same for Bluebird but I also knew that there came a time when you couldn’t force them to stay any longer and Quantum was there. Frankie just couldn’t see it.

  “You should go and spend some time with him,” I finally said after pretending to look up stuff on my phone like I was supposed to be doing instead of playing a game, which was what I was actually doing. “Go and love on him. Give him kisses. Let him know you’re still here and that you love him.”

  “I’m proving my love for him by trying to save him,” she said.

  “The vets are doing that,” I told her. “He just wants you to be with him.”

  I wanted to tell her that she was fighting a losing battle. That it was hopeless. And all those hours she wasted staring at her laptop were hours that she could have been with her horse when he needed her most and instead she’d wasted them.

  “I’ll come with you if you like,” I said.

  “No, I have to keep searching.”

  “Well I’m going to go and see Bluebird,” I said.

  She didn’t seem like she heard me. She’d already gone back to scrolling through pages of worthless articles. Experimental procedures and the vets who were reckless enough to use them wouldn’t save her horse now and I knew that all he really wanted was his friend to sit with him one last time.

  I passed his stall on the way to my pony. Quantum looked like he had given up. His head was low. His eyes dull. All they were doing was prolonging his misery.

  “I promise I’ll never do that to you,” I whispered as I went into Bluebird’s stall and buried my face in his mane. But when it came down to it, was I really any different than Frankie? Searching for a cure. Praying for answers that no one could give me.

  I sat with Bluebird for a while, camping out in the corner of his stall watching him eat his hay. I couldn’t go back to the lounge and sit with Frankie. I didn’t know what to say to her because what I really wanted to say, she wouldn’t want to hear. And it was comforting to watch my pony eat. It had been days since I’d seen him attack a pile of hay, burying his nose in it and tossing aside the long stalks to find the sweet, small pieces that had fallen through. We had been right to bring him here. Maybe he would have got better on his own back at home and maybe he wouldn’t but that wasn’t a risk that I was willing to take, no matter what it cost.

  I put my head back against the block wall and closed my eyes, listening to the sounds of the hospital. Horses munching or shifting in their stalls and the sound of the vents as they sucked out all the potentially contagious germs. The beeps of medical equipment and the intercom that crackled static as different vets and techs were summoned to other parts of the barn.

  I was almost drifting off to sleep when I heard a strangled sob followed by the intercom sounding an alert and I knew that Frankie was never going to get her horse to New York.

  CHAPTER FORTY TWO

  I ran to see what the matter was, passing vets and techs that were doing the same. I wanted to stay out of their way but I really had to see for myself.

  Quantum was lying down flat out in his stall. Frankie was sobbing over him.

  “Is he dead?” I whispered.

  “He just sort of fell down,” Frankie screamed at one of the vets. “He was standing there and then it was like he just couldn’t stand any longer.”

  They pulled her out of the way, flailing and screaming that she wanted to be with her horse.

  “You have to let them work,” I said as she stood there sobbing. “Let them help him.”

  But we all knew that Quantum was beyond help. They buzzed around, checking his vitals and listening with stethoscopes. Feeling his feet for heat and a pulse. Dr. Brown was there in the thick of it, examining the horse himself.

  “Let’s try and get him back up on his feet,” he finally said.

  But no matter what they did, the horse wouldn’t budge. They rocked him and made clucking noises, trying to encourage him to stand. Getting him to sit up with his legs under him and using all their weight to try and get him to stand. He wouldn’t. Or he just couldn’t. Quantum had given up.

  “It’s time,” Dr. Brown said as he came out of the stall, pulling off his rubber gloves with a sigh. “I’m going to call your parents and tell them to come.”

  “No,” Frankie said, her voice wobbling. “There is a place in New York where they have experimental treatments. Maybe they could help him.”

  “You’ll never get him there,” Dr. Brown said. “We can’t even get him on his feet let alone in a trailer. You are only prolonging his agony. It’s time and that is final. I’ve given him something more for the pain and when your parents arrive, he will be euthanized. I’m sorry but it’s the kindest thing for him now.”

  He left and so did the techs, except for one who stood outside the stall monitoring, though whether he was monitoring the horse or us I wasn’t sure. I knew that Frankie would have stolen Quantum away if she could but he wasn’t going anywhere now. Dr. Brown was right, it was too late for that.

  “Come on,” I said, putting my arm around Frankie. “Let’s sit with him for a while.”

  “I can’t,” she said.

  “You have to,” I told her. “He’s been there for you your whole life. You told me so. Now it’s your turn to be there for him. You have to be strong so that he won’t be afraid.”

  “You’re right,” she said, pulling a tissue out of her pocket and blowing her nose. “I don’t know why I’ve been so selfish.”

  “Because you wanted to save him,” I told her. “But now its time to say goodbye.”

  CHAPTER FORTY THREE

  We sat with Quantum in his stall. I was off to the side and Frankie had his head in her lap. I didn’t want to intrude but she begged me to stay. I think if I hadn’t been there then she wouldn’t have gone in at all. Death was scary. It was something we were all afraid of. Afraid of it happening to our pets, our family and our friends. It was something unknown. Where did they go when they left this world and us behind and how were we supposed to go on without them? These were questions for philosophers, not two teenage girls in a stall with a dying horse and yet we thought about them anyway because we wanted to know.

  “Do you think there are treats in horse heaven?” Frankie asked.

  “Buckets of them,” I said, leaning back and closing my eyes. “Rolling green pastures with the juiciest grass and warm sunny days with soft breezes. The horses all run together and play but no one ever gets hurt and they sleep under the stars because it never gets too cold or too hot and they wait.”

  “For what?” Frankie said.

  “For us,” I told her.

  “Do you really believe that?” she said.

  “Why not? Who’s to say it isn’t true.”

  “But I don’t want him to go,” she said, a tear rolling down her cheek. “I want him to stay.”

  “I know you do,” I said. “But his time is up and you’ve had so many good days together. Tell me about them again.”

  “I don’t want to,” she said.

  “Please?”

  I knew that to get through this she had to remember the good times. The happiness they had shared. It was all she’d have to hang onto in the days that followed. It was all I had left of my sister. Old memories that were faded by time because we didn’t talk about her anymore and I wanted Frankie to remember every single thing about the horse she had shared her life with.<
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  She started to talk. Telling me everything that had happened from the day she first got him as a scruffy ten year old. Every ride, each show, all their adventures. And as she did Quantum closed his eyes and sighed like he was remembering too.

  We forgot where we were, in a place where sick horses came to be healed and not all of them were. Instead we were galloping across the hills and up the mountains when they took Quantum to Virginia and ran into a bear. We splashed through shallow lakes and went on a paper chase where they found an injured fox and tried to save him. We groomed him and showed him and took him for bareback rides in our imagination and maybe those memories were seen through rose tinted glasses but they were still a lot better than the reality that was right in front of us and we stayed there until we heard a voice.

  “Frankie,” a woman screeched.

  Her parents had arrived.

  CHAPTER FORTY FOUR

  “Mom,” Frankie cried, dashing out of the stall and into her mother’s arms.

  I turned away and left them to their grief. If anything like that had happened to Bluebird, I wouldn’t have had a mother to comfort me. I would have had my father, telling me that there were plenty of other horses in the world and patting me on the back.

  I went to Bluebird’s stall and hid in there while Dr. Brown explained the situation to Frankie’s parents. How there was no hope and the horse was in too much pain to keep going on. That putting him to sleep was now not only the kindest thing to do but the only thing to do. Frankie didn’t tell them about the clinic in New York. I was pretty sure she’d faced the fact that it was never going to happen.

  I hugged my pony as they wheeled the medicine cart past and closed my eyes as I heard them go into his stall, telling Frankie what they were doing. And Quantum didn’t leave this world with anything other than a soft sigh, as though he was thanking Frankie for letting him go. Then Frankie started to wail and her parents dragged her away.

  “I promise if the time comes, I’ll never let you suffer,” I told Bluebird.

  It had been a hard thing to watch, facing my own fears in someone else. But some lessons were harder to learn than others and I stayed in Bluebird’s stall, wanting to give Frankie and her family privacy but by the time I had to pee and left Bluebird’s stall to go back to the lounge, they’d gone.

  I didn’t look in Quantum’s stall as I went by. I knew they’d covered him with a blanket and eventually they’d take his body away but I didn’t want to see because there was nothing left to see. What made Quantum special, what made him who he was, his soul, it wasn’t in that body anymore. It was somewhere else altogether now.

  CHAPTER FORTY FIVE

  Bluebird did so well that Dr. Brown relented and said that he could go home that night. I was glad. The place had only been bearable because of Frankie and her cheerful optimism but now that she had gone, I just felt alone.

  People came into the lounge and sat there in breeches and boots, tapping their feet like they were mad that their show horse was sick. Others just paced back and forth. Some of their horses were in for routine procedures like hock injections. Things that would keep their horses performing better longer. They weren’t stuck in a life and death situation like we had been in, wondering if our horses were going to make it. I’d been there and so had Frankie and I had nothing in common with these people. Plus even if I did, I didn’t need to relive it again or go through anyone else’s pain. I just wanted to go home. I wandered through the barn where my pony was eating merrily in his stall and out of the infectious disease wing into the other part where the less critical patients were kept.

  There were a couple of newcomers. A pony with a leg bandaged from armpit to hoof and a draft cross whose skin looked like it was peeling off. I passed them without looking too long until I got to the pregnant mare, only she wasn’t pregnant anymore.

  “Did she have her foal?” I asked the vet tech who was standing off to the side making notes on a clipboard.

  “Yeah,” he replied.

  “Well where is it?” I asked, peering closer into the stall.

  “Died,” he said.

  “Oh no, what happened?”

  “Just one of those things,” he said with a shrug. “It was a high risk pregnancy. Sometimes we can’t save them all.”

  I looked at the mare that still had a mildly fat belly and milk dripping from her teats. She looked uncomfortable and sad and suddenly I had an idea.

  “Do you know who she belongs to?” I asked.

  “Some breeding farm,” he said, consulting the file that was hanging on the stall door. “She was just a surrogate mare for some fancy dressage horse. It was the foal they were invested in, not the poor old mare but she got the blame anyway.”

  “Do you know what they are going to do with her?” I asked, my heart beating faster.

  “Well she’s no good as a surrogate anymore. Not her fault but they won’t risk it again. She’s slated to be euthanized.”

  “Wait, what?” I said. “Why?”

  “They don’t want her and she’s unbroken so not good for much else than having babies and apparently not even good at that. They’ve donated her to the university. She’ll be used to teach the students how to do a necropsy.”

  “No,” I said, my voice rising.

  “Listen kid,” the tech said. “Death is a part of life here. Get used to it.”

  “No,” I said. “You don’t understand. We have a foal at our farm that was just rejected by his mother. He needs a nurse mare. She has milk. Maybe she would accept him as her own?”

  The vet tech scrunched up his face like he was thinking.

  “Could work,” he said. “Not as fun as dissecting her but still …”

  I swallowed back the words I wanted to yell at the vet tech who thought dissecting a horse was a better choice than giving her a second chance at a real life.

  “Who do I have to talk to about buying her,” I said.

  “That would be Dr. Brown,” he said, going back to his note taking like he was bored with me already. “He runs everything.”

  “Great. Where can I find him?”

  CHAPTER FORTY SIX

  Dr. Brown was sitting behind a big oak desk. His office was all intimidating with diplomas framed on the walls and shelves of books, mostly medical texts that probably included gross diagrams of dissections, just like they wanted to do to the poor mare.

  “Can I help you?” he said as I knocked on the half open door. “I already called your father. He’s going to bring the trailer back for your pony.”

  “Thanks,” I said. “But that is not it. It’s something else.”

  “You’d better have a seat then,” he said, motioning to one of the chairs in front of his desk.

  I sat down feeling like I was a little kid, like I didn’t belong but I told myself that I did belong. If horses were going to be my life and my career then this was exactly the sort of place I belonged and I wasn’t going to let the vet who was sitting in front of me with the white lab coat and years of experience tell me I was wrong when I wasn’t. We needed that mare more than they did.

  “It’s about the pregnant mare,” I said. “The one who lost the foal.”

  “Yes, sad business,” he said, closing a file on his desk. “It happens sometimes though. We can’t save them all.”

  That seemed to be the mantra at the vet clinic. I didn’t think it inspired much confidence in the vets who worked there or the patients that were brought in. We can’t save them all didn’t seem like the sort of slogan you should be advertising your business with. Couldn’t you just pretend that you tried to save them all? At least it sounded a lot better.

  “I heard she is going to be euthanized,” I said, trying not to sound too defensive. “Is there anything wrong with her?”

  “No,” he replied. “The owners didn’t want her back so they donated her to the student program. We already have enough live specimens for the students to work on and we don’t have room for any more so she is
going to show them how to perform a necropsy.”

  “And by show them you mean after she’s dead,” I said, scrunching up my face.

  “Yes,” he said in the way my father did when he was starting to get annoyed.

  “Couldn’t they just do that on a horse that has already died?” I asked. “Like Quantum?”

  “Not everyone agrees to have their horse cut open and mutilated after they’ve passed away,” he said. “It’s not like you can save them if you find out what was really wrong because they’re already dead aren’t they.”

  “But it could give them peace of mind,” I said.

  “Peace of mind is extra money tacked onto an already expensive vet bill that most people don’t want. And sometimes it’s better not to know.”

  “Yes, I can see that it might be,” I said, thinking that if Frankie ever found out there was something else she could have done to save Quantum then she would never forgive herself.

  “And you are here because you thought that you could save the mare from certain death?” he said. “She’s unbroken you know. She’ll probably never make a good riding horse. All she’s ever known is being pregnant.”

  “That’s why I need her,” I said. “We have an orphaned foal. His mother rejected him a couple of days ago. He’s doing okay with formula out of bottles and buckets and my mini has been keeping him company but if she would accept him as her own, if she could be a nurse mare for him then it would help him get a much better start in life than he’s getting right now without a mother to show him the ropes.”

  “I see,” he said, crossing his fingers thoughtfully and resting his head on them. “And I just thought you were another one of those starry eyed girls who wants to save every horse in the world.”

  “Well that too,” I said. “But at least this one would have a purpose.”