Chosen by a Horse

by Susan Richards

My dessert arrived and Hank’s herbal tea. The cake was such a slender wedge, I was surprised it had remained upright on its journey from the kitchen. I took a bite and understood the small portion. It was incredibly rich.

  “Delicious,” I reported to the sugar hater.

  He picked up his spoon and let it hover over my plate. “May I?”

  “Sure.” I nudged the plate in his direction.

  He pulled the plate over until it was right in front of him, then he cut the cake in half with his spoon and shoved the whole piece into his mouth. While he chewed, he didn’t push the plate back toward me, so I put my fork down and pretended. What chocolate cake? What hypocrite of a sugar-hating nonwriter?

  “Like it?” I asked, as he took another bite of the piece that was left on my plate.

  He shoved the plate away and wiped his mouth with a napkin. The bottom half of his face was contorted as though he’d just sucked a lemon. “Terrible,” he said, picking up his cup and gulping tea. “I can already feel a canker sore.” He traced the inside of his lip with his tongue.

  For this man I had lost sleep? I had wept in front of my vet? Had torn my bedroom apart looking for something with lace to wear? For this man I had become daring and courageous, a Christopher Columbus rat?

  I stared at the remaining morsel of cake. “What happens when you like something?”

  He shook his head, still chewing, still hunting for that canker sore with his tongue. “It’s not the taste,” he said. “Did you know that sugar is the primary cause for the dumbing down of America? For turning everyone into zombies?”

  “I thought not reading was,” I said.

  “Nope. Sugar.” He smiled. “I feel dumber already; how about you?”

  It was the first time he’d smiled all night, and his smile was nice. It changed his whole face, made him seem sexy, like someone who’d like to lick chocolate off my toes. Then I thought of all the time I’d wasted being nervous about this date, about whether this man would like me.

  “I don’t need sugar to feel dumb,” I said.

  “You? Dumb?” Still smiling, he shook his head. “I don’t date dumb women. Only smart, pretty ones.”

  Maybe it was a line but I fell for it. Still, I couldn’t help it. He’d made me suffer too long. “Is that what this is,” I asked, “a date?”

  “Touché.” He smiled and leaned over to spear the last bite of cake.

  [ 10 ]

  A WEEK AFTER my date, Allie stopped by early on a Saturday morning before the bugs were bad. We stood at the fence with our coffee watching my four horses. They were still two separate couples, but now the pairs were grazing closer together, the geldings always positioned between the mares.

  “She looks so good,” Allie said about Lay Me Down’s recovery. She was still limping from Georgia’s attack, but the Vetrap was gone, and she was on the mend. Gone, too, was the dull coat, the hacking cough, the skin with open sores stretched over protruding bones. She looked as sleek and brown as a Hershey bar, as sweet as one, too.

  As if she knew we were talking about her, Lay Me Down stopped grazing and walked over to the fence where Allie and I stood. She came up to us and sighed into Allie’s cup. Allie spilled a little coffee into the palm of her hand and let Lay Me Down lick it up.

  “Stingy,” I said, watching the big tongue search for more in the emptied palm.

  “OK, OK,” she said and let Lay Me Down lick it right out of the cup.

  As Lay Me Down lapped coffee, Allie looked at her in that funny way she looked at people when she was trying to figure out something. It made me nervous.

  “What?” I chewed my bottom lip.

  “When was the last time you had the vet here?”

  “A week ago. After the fight with Georgia.”

  “Look at her eyes,” Allie said.

  I looked. They were big and brown with enormous black eyelashes. They were beautiful. “What about them?”

  “They’re not the same,” she said.

  I looked again. They seemed exactly the same to me.

  “The right eye protrudes more than the left.” She pointed at it.

  Horse eyes protrude. All of them. That’s the way horses are made. Lay Me Down’s looked normal to me. But this was Allie talking, and she looked concerned.

  “Are you saying something’s wrong?”

  Allie studied Lay Me Down for a few more minutes. “See if you can get the vet to come today,” she said.

  My heart skipped a beat. I gripped my coffee cup with sweaty fingers. I was torn between wanting to ask more and telling her to shut up. I hurried inside to call. Jeannie, the woman who ran the office, answered. She was knowledgeable about horses so I told her what Allie had said about the eye protruding. All five vets at the clinic knew Allie, and they knew she wouldn’t have asked for someone to come that quickly if there wasn’t a good reason. Dr. Grice was on call and could get to my place sometime in the afternoon. I wished that I knew a human doctor’s office that was run as well and caringly as Rhinebeck Equine. If you needed them, they came, day or night.

  When I went back outside, Lay Me Down had finished Allie’s coffee and had returned to the herd to graze. We stayed at the fence a few more minutes before Allie had to leave.

  “It might be nothing,” she said, brushing flyaway hairs off her forehead. Her fingers were smooth and muscular from years of giving massages with oils. After they brushed away the hair, her fingers traced the length of the still-neat braid falling forward over her shoulder.

  “You never wear your wedding ring,” I remarked.

  She held up her bare left hand, fanning out the fingers and rubbing the joints. They ached, a result of advanced Lyme disease, something she’d had for over fifteen years. Sometimes the stiffness would become so painful and debilitating that she’d go back on antibiotics for several weeks to kill off some of the spirochetes. “Did what’s-his-name call yet?” she asked, massaging her sore hands. She meant Hank.

  “What a jerk,” I said, shaking my head.

  Most of my friends thought I was the jerk, however, Allie included. They thought I was judging Hank unfairly, being hasty. When I said it bothered me that he’d put his hand on my back and then eaten most of my dinner, they looked at me like they were still waiting to hear the annoying part.

  That’s just men.

  Men like food.

  Men always talk about themselves.

  Strip malls? At least he has money.

  “You should call him,” Allie said.

  “He told me he’s allergic to most animals. Especially horses.”

  She turned and scrutinized me the same way she had just scrutinized Lay Me Down. She sighed and shook her head.

  I would not call this man. It would have meant admitting that I wanted this man, whom I didn’t like, to like me. We’d had dinner and he’d never called. Despite my feelings, I wanted him to want me. I already felt abandoned. The scary part was, this made perfect sense to me.

  “He’s not even divorced,” I said.

  She gave me a look. “A technicality. Give him another chance.” She started walking toward her car. “Call me later. Tell me what the vet says.”

  After she left, I went to the barn to get a halter for Lay Me Down. While I was putting it on, I looked at her eyes again, comparing them. I still saw no difference, none whatsoever. She sighed as I snapped shut the cheek latch and waited for me to indicate what we were going to do next. I stroked her neck and then gently pushed her away to let her know we weren’t going anywhere, she could go back to grazing.

  I would have petted her more, scratched along her neck, her belly, the top of her withers, all the places she loved to be scratched. But I couldn’t, not in front of Georgia. Giving Lay Me Down more than a few minutes of attention was all it took to bring Georgia trotting across the pasture looking for a fight.

  After lunch, I shut all four horses in their stalls and opened the pasture gate so Dr. Grice could drive right up to the barn. Forty-five minutes later
, her blue truck stopped in front of the barn entrance. This time her assistant was with her, a young woman named Donna, who waved hello before she got out of the truck. I waved back from where I stood, just inside the entrance. I was always apprehensive when the vet came, and this time I was too nervous to make small talk.

  “Thanks for coming,” I said when they got out of the truck. “Do you want her inside or out?” Inside, there was more control over the horse; outside, there was better light. Dr. Grice knew it was going to be an eye exam because Jeannie had told her about my earlier call.

  “Let’s start inside,” she said, walking toward the entrance where I stood with my arms crossed, hoping I didn’t look as nervous as I felt.

  I opened Lay Me Down’s stall door and followed Dr. Grice and Donna to the end of the aisle. Lay Me Down seemed curious about her visitors but not anxious. While she sniffed the two newcomers, I snapped a lead line on her halter and waited to be told what to do.

  “Allie thinks it’s the right eye?” Dr. Grice asked, already widening the opening of Lay Me Down’s right eye with her thumb and forefinger and looking into it. Lay Me Down let her examine it without pulling away. The assistant stood on the other side, scratching Lay Me Down’s neck and mumbling soothing words.

  Dr. Grice didn’t offer any preliminary opinions, and I didn’t ask. She spent a few minutes looking into each eye, then did it a second time. When she was done, she wiped her hands on a towel and looked thoughtful.

  “We’ll do a sonogram on the right eye,” she said. “It does seem to be protruding. We’ll set it up right here. The light’s good enough.”

  I wanted to leave, hide in the house until this was over and Dr. Grice was gone. Instead, I nodded and, as I waited while they went back to the truck for whatever they needed, I stood next to Lay Me Down and scratched her neck. She leaned into my hand, into the scratch, letting me know the places she liked. Her trust in me felt awful. I had brought her to my farm to be safe but she wasn’t. I was helpless against a protruding eye.

  They came back with all kinds of supplies, most of which Donna carried in a stainless-steel bucket. Dr. Grice had a stethoscope around her neck and carried a small box in her arms that turned out to be the ultrasound machine. They put everything down on the cement floor, and we let Lay Me Down sniff as much of it as she wanted because if horses are allowed to sniff new things, they are less afraid. (Not Tempo. He was afraid of everything and became more fearful if you let him sniff, especially if it was medical. With Tempo, the trick was speed and, if that didn’t work, a tranquilizer shot.)

  The only thing I’d ever seen Lay Me Down afraid of was Georgia, but Georgia was locked in her stall so Lay Me Down seemed relaxed. She sighed over the bucket and licked the lid of the sonogram machine. Everything she did seemed precious to me, precious and tender. For me, her terrible past was always a presence, a reminder of what it was that had survived: this sweet, kind nature, qualities so lacking in my human family they seemed like miracles to me now.

  Before she did the sonogram, Dr. Grice listened to Lay Me Down’s heart and lungs and pronounced them both strong and healthy: I had a moment of elation, of crazy hope. How sick could a horse be with a good heart and clear lungs? Next she gave her a tranquilizer shot because, even though she was calm and good-natured, the tranquilizer would help keep the eye from blinking when the sonogram wand touched it.

  While we waited for the shot to take effect, Dr. Grice set up her equipment. The ultrasound machine was a metal cube, half the size of a briefcase, with a long cord attached to a smooth wand on the end. There was a second small box attached to the first. This was the printer that would print out the image of Lay Me Down’s eye. No waiting. In a few minutes we’d know why this eye protruded.

  We knew the tranquilizer had taken effect when Lay Me Down let her head drop a foot or so closer to the floor. She blinked slowly, sighed slowly, and she’d forgotten she had a tail. It hung off her rump as limp as laundry. I stood to the left of her head, holding her halter so Dr. Grice had access to the eye on the right. I would have liked a little of whatever was in Lay Me Down’s shot.

  “Can you lift her head?” Dr. Grice asked.

  “Come on, Lay Me Down,” I said, cradling her head in my arms and urging it upward an inch or two. Her head was heavy, she was sleepy. I liked having the giant head in my arms. Under normal conditions, it would never have been possible to snuggle a horse like that.

  “Right there,” Dr. Grice said when the eye was at our shoulder level. She snapped on a pair of latex gloves and squeezed some clear gel onto her fingers. She held Lay Me Down’s sleepy eye open with one hand, and, with the other, spread the gel all over it. Lay Me Down didn’t blink at all. When the eye was coated, Dr. Grice’s assistant handed her the wand, and, right away, Dr. Grice started moving the smooth, round end over the surface of the slippery eye.

  It seemed to take no time at all, less than five minutes, before the little printer began chattering. It printed out several separate images. From where I stood, they looked like dirty smudges. Dr. Grice finished and handed the wand to her assistant.

  “Let me take a look at the printouts before we put her back in the stall,” she said. “If they’re not clear, we may need to repeat some.”

  She took off her gloves and knelt by the printer. The barn was so quiet. The only sounds were the horses eating hay and the swallows scolding us in high-pitched cries as they swooped in and out, tending their nests, one in every stall, right on top of the light fixture. A swallow roommate for each horse. Sometimes I wondered if they got the same roommates year after year. I worried about fire but couldn’t bring myself to destroy the nests. Mostly they were made of mud, but tendrils of horse tail and straw hung down, forming little lamp shades of debris around the bare bulbs.

  “You can put Lay Me Down back in her stall,” Dr. Grice said. “The pictures are nice and clear.”

  I knew something was wrong because of what Dr. Grice didn’t say. She didn’t say, Everything’s OK. Wobbly-kneed with anxiety, I led Lay Me Down back to her stall slowly. She was too sedated to go any faster. I slipped off her halter with shaky hands, gave her a pat, and left her dozing until the drug wore off.

  Dr. Grice and her assistant were standing in the barn entry where the light was good, studying the sonograms. I joined them, looking over Dr. Grice’s shoulder at the lines and smears on the the piece of paper in her hand. She started to talk about the eye, pointing at the different blotches and telling me what they were, what they did, how an eye worked. I was listening but I wasn’t, partly because no matter what she pointed at, I saw nothing recognizable. The smudges and lines weren’t even in the shape of an eye. They were scattered across the paper in no pattern meaningful to me.

  The other reason I wasn’t attending was because I was really only listening for one word. The one word in all the medical jargon that I’d understand, that would communicate to me exactly what we were in for. Not just in the medical sense, maybe least of all in the medical sense. Were we climbing or falling? Was there a way out or not?

  She started to say words I understood. Not the word I was looking for, but close cousins. Tumor. Mass. Growth. Then she said the word. She said cancer. She said it might or it might not be cancer. She said it wasn’t someplace we could biopsy. It was too dangerous, too many blood vessels and optic nerves. There was no telling how deep it was, how far into her brain it might already be. She kept referring to the printout, to different parts of the smudge, but I wasn’t really looking. Not even when she pointed right to the mass, to the tumor, and said, “See, it’s this whole area. The readout is very clear.”

  What was clear to me was we were falling. I didn’t know how fast but we were falling. And what I wanted to know was, what did the way down look like.

  “Well,” Dr. Grice said, chosing her words carefully, “I don’t know. She could have a month, six months, a year, even two. Depends how fast this grows and what parts of the brain it affects.”

  Th
ere were sure to be neurological horrors I had never considered. There might be seizures, for instance, a thousand pounds of twitching, thrashing horse. There might be dementia, frenzy, paralysis. My mother died blind, paralyzed, and wasted. I didn’t remember it but I had seen her, I had been there. The memory was in me somewhere. It came out here, in this barn with Dr. Grice, as I learned how sick this horse was, what might happen, and realized how scared I was and how helpless.

  Dr. Grice would send the sonogram results to the veterinary hospital at Cornell for a second opinion, to a vet there who specialized in eye tumors. Maybe he’d suggest a treatment protocol other than wait and see. I asked her for a copy of the printouts to send to a homeopathic vet in Florida I used sometimes. I didn’t know what he would say about the tumor but his treatment approach was nontraditional, noninvasive, and holistic. I’d never met him but had had several lengthy phone consultations with him over the past ten years. In the back of my mind I was thinking about pain management.

  I tried to imagine what it would feel like to have something pressing against my eye hard enough to make it protrude. “Does her eye hurt?” I asked. Did horses get headaches?

  Dr. Grice didn’t think she was in pain. Lay Me Down might have felt some pressure but not pain, not yet. However, there would be signs to watch for, signs of discomfort: if she held her head at a strange angle, rubbed her eye or forehead against her leg, didn’t eat, swung her head from side to side, any behavior that was outside the norm for this horse, anything at all.

  “Could this have been caused by the way she was treated?” I asked as I walked Dr. Grice out to her truck. “From being hit around the eyes and head?” Even as I asked, I realized it made no difference. It wouldn’t help us to save her.

  “We don’t know what causes these eye tumors,” she said as she washed her hands. Her assistant was pulling out drawers and cabinets, putting away the sonogram machine and printer and emptying the contents of the stainless-steel bucket they had carried into the barn. Then she pulled out a flat aluminum box that held medical forms and also acted as a writing desk and began writing up my bill.