Pulse

by Felix Francis

  He knew he had no choice. If he refused to accept the form, the stewards could impose a much longer suspension from riding than the Red Entry would warrant, plus a fine on top. He scowled at me but he picked up the form and took it out with him into the changing room.

  I could be just as nasty as him if I wanted to.

  ‘You OK, Ellie?’ I asked with a smile, turning towards my lady jockey who was currently sitting up on the physio’s couch with her injured leg straight out in front of her. ‘An ambulance has been ordered to take you to Cheltenham General for an X-ray.’

  ‘I can’t believe this,’ she said gloomily. ‘I’m meant to be my sister’s bridesmaid on Saturday.’

  ‘You might still be able to,’ I said. ‘The hospital may just ensure the ends of the bone are aligned properly and put your foot in a walking cast. Your weight is mostly taken by the tibia, the other bone in your lower leg. Is the bridesmaid’s dress long?’

  ‘Yes,’ she said, suddenly more cheerful.

  ‘Well, there you are, then,’ I said. ‘Wear a high heel on your good leg and no one will ever know, although dancing might be a problem.’

  Or else she might need surgery to have a metal plate put in, I thought silently. Only the X-ray would determine that.

  The third occupant of a bed was Dick McGee, lying back with his arms behind his head. I looked at him.

  ‘So, Dick,’ I said, ‘Dr Kings tells me you believe you’re fit enough to ride in the next race.’

  ‘I certainly am,’ he replied. ‘Watch.’

  He stood up quickly and started repeatedly touching his toes next to the bed before I had a chance to prevent him. He certainly looked all right. Was I being overcautious in believing that he needed a scan?

  ‘It only hurts a bit,’ he said. ‘I can easily ride through that.’

  I didn’t believe him for a second. I could see the pain etched plainly in his face.

  ‘Stop it,’ I said to him urgently. ‘Just forty minutes ago you couldn’t feel your legs. Don’t you remember how frightening that was?’

  He suddenly stopped the exercises and looked at me.

  ‘Do you want to go back there?’ I said. ‘I think it’s best to have a scan to check that everything really is all right and your back is stable. You obviously gave it quite a hefty clout. Is one ride now worth a lifetime in a wheelchair?’ I stared at him and raised my eyebrows. ‘Please lie down flat again for me.’

  He immediately lay back down on the bed like a scolded schoolboy.

  Adrian Kings and Jack Otley walked into the medical room together.

  ‘No fallers, thank God,’ Adrian said, dumping his doctor’s bag on the floor. ‘How are things here?’

  ‘Jason Conway has gone to Cheltenham General for a brain scan. I’ve spoken to the hospital. I’ve also ordered an ambulance for Ellie Lowe and Dick McGee.’ I looked at Dick, who made no objection. ‘And I gave Mike Sheraton a Red Entry on RIMANI. I told him he couldn’t ride again today.’

  Adrian looked surprised. ‘Did his injury warrant that?’

  ‘I had a good look at it,’ I said, ‘and in my opinion it did. He has a deep laceration over a joint and I consider that, if he flexes his knee to its full range, the stitches will probably rupture.’

  ‘I agree with Dr Rankin,’ said the nurse. ‘Nasty cut.’

  Good girl, I thought, and winked at her.

  ‘What did Sheraton say?’

  ‘He didn’t much like it,’ I said.

  ‘Did you give him a Red Entry form?’

  ‘I did,’ I said, without elaborating.

  Adrian needed that information for his report, which would be telephoned through to the racing authority’s Chief Medical Adviser at the end of the day, giving details of any rider transferred to hospital or otherwise deemed medically unfit to ride.

  The off-course ambulance arrived and the crew agreed to take both Ellie and Dick together, the latter being transferred from the medical room to the vehicle by stretcher even though he clearly thought it was unnecessary.

  ‘Brainless doctor,’ I overheard him say to one of the paramedics as he was lifted from the bed onto the stretcher. ‘She doesn’t know one end of an effing thermometer from the other.’

  I ignored him and went out to the ambulance with the jockeys’ notes, which explained the causes and apparent nature of their injuries.

  ‘A&E at Cheltenham General is expecting them,’ I said to the ambulance driver. ‘I’ve already spoken to Dr Cook, the consultant on duty.’

  ‘You’re not coming with them, then?’ he asked.

  ‘No. I’m needed here.’

  The ambulance drove away, without flashing its blue lights, and a degree of calm returned to the jockeys’ medical room, at least until the next race.

  28

  It was just one of those days.

  When you’re short-handed you hope for a nice quiet time but, of course, fate has other ideas.

  Three fallers in the fourth race had the doctors again stretched to the limit but, thankfully, there were no significant injuries other than a few bruises to both bodies and egos.

  I was once more out on the course in the Land Rover and my first customer was a red-and-white-clad individual who had been unceremoniously dumped onto the turf when his mount had pecked deeply on landing, going down onto its knees, before recovering and galloping away unaccompanied.

  It was Dave Leigh and, by the time I reached him, he was sitting up on the ground more frustrated than injured.

  ‘Stupid, stupid, stupid,’ he said.

  ‘You or the horse?’ I asked.

  ‘Both,’ he said with a smile. ‘More me, I suppose. I shouldn’t have fallen off. It was a spare ride and he won’t ever ask me again.’

  ‘Who won’t?’ I said.

  ‘Peter Hammond. Not often I get to ride for such a prestigious stable and now I’ve blown it.’

  ‘Never mind, Dave,’ I said. ‘Be thankful you haven’t damaged your collarbone again.’

  I helped him to his feet and we walked off the track together.

  ‘Whose ride was it meant to be?’ I asked.

  ‘Dick McGee’s,’ he said. ‘But he had a fall and got hurt in the second.’

  And he was now in hospital, I thought, probably still complaining about the brainless doctor who’d sent him there.

  ‘Fancy a lift?’ I asked. We were a long way from the weighing room.

  ‘Thanks,’ Dave said. ‘But there should be a jockey transport somewhere.’ He was looking round for it.

  ‘I waved it on,’ I said.

  We climbed into the Land Rover and set off along the vehicle track.

  ‘So, doc,’ Dave said, ‘what on earth did you do to Mike Sheraton? He was mouthing off all sorts of obscenities about you just now in the changing room. I can’t tell you what he said. It would make me blush to repeat it.’

  ‘I gave him a Red Entry for a perfectly legitimate medical reason. He didn’t agree with me, that’s all. Not a problem. I’ve got a thick skin.’

  I surprised myself by saying that.

  At least for the past six months, my skin had actually been pretty thin. Even the slightest criticism would have been likely to cause me to burst into tears and descend into a deep hell of self-doubt. Going back to my job at the hospital had helped and I also relished the literal rough and tumble of the racecourse work.

  Was I on my way back to normality?

  Not until I could eat again, I thought. Stephen Butler even reckoned that sorting out the anorexia was only the first step. Without that, he said, there could be no proper recovery at all.

  ‘If you don’t eat, you will die,’ Stephen had told me bluntly at our most recent session. ‘It’s not a game. It’s a reality. Anorexia kills far more people than any other psychiatric disorder.’

  But it didn’t seem real.

  Surely I was fine, wasn’t I?

  I didn’t feel like I was dying. Yet, even the intimation that I was somehow playing with God, was
in itself both exhilarating and illusory.

  Most anorexics don’t want to die. They simply remain in denial, not paying attention as the severity of their condition creeps up on them, and then death snuffs them out before they even have a chance to shout ‘Give me some food!’

  It wasn’t that I didn’t want to eat. It was more that I physically couldn’t. Something seemed to go wrong with the signals from my brain to my hand holding a fork that wouldn’t allow it to travel to my mouth.

  I’d taken to forcing myself to eat only a poached fish fillet, sea bass or sole, for most of my meals, with perhaps a little fruit for dessert, and even I was getting fed up with the monotony.

  And, since I’d gone back to work, I was losing weight again.

  I had tried hard to eat more but . . . I couldn’t. I simply couldn’t. Not eating had become a habit, and I was addicted to it.

  ‘Don’t forget to report in at the medical room,’ I said to Dave as we climbed out of the Land Rover. ‘You’ll need to be checked and cleared.’

  ‘Don’t worry, doc,’ he said. ‘I know the rules.’

  He jogged off up the horse-walk towards the parade ring and the weighing room while I followed him at a more sedate pace. My GP had advised me against doing any unnecessary exercise so as not to put too much strain on my heart. ‘Anorexics don’t die from lack of energy,’ he had told me bluntly, ‘they die from heart failure.’

  Thanks, I’d thought, that was all I needed to hear.

  The remainder of the afternoon was quiet in comparison with no more fallers in any of the last three races.

  ‘Well done, everybody,’ Adrian said in his debrief to the medical team. ‘A busy afternoon but I think we coped rather well. Time now for tea. See you all tomorrow.’

  ‘Do you need me tomorrow?’ I asked. ‘You only asked for Wednesday.’

  ‘Did I?’ Adrian said. ‘Sorry. My mistake. Can you do it?’

  ‘I’ll have to check with Grant,’ I said. ‘We have children on Easter holiday as well.’

  ‘We really need you,’ he said.

  It was nice to be needed, I thought. ‘I’ll do my best.’

  ‘Good. And could you also give the hospital a quick call? See how everything is? Then I can phone through my report to headquarters. Best if you do it. You know the staff there better than me.’

  I wondered why that mattered but I did as he asked.

  I caught Jeremy Cook just as he was going off duty.

  ‘How are our jockeys?’ I asked him.

  ‘Mixed,’ he replied. ‘The girl with the broken fibula shouldn’t need surgery. Simple fracture. She’s been fitted with an Aircast walking boot and sent home. I’ve referred her to see a specialist at the Nuffield Orthopaedic Hospital in Oxford on Friday.’

  So she might get to the wedding, I thought.

  ‘The young man with the head injury . . .’ He paused.

  ‘Jason Conway?’ I said.

  ‘Yes, that’s right, Jason Conway. We did a CT and there’s no evidence of bleeding into the brain but he still seems confused so he’s been admitted for observation. Classic case of concussion, if you ask me.’

  I was asking him.

  ‘And Dick McGee?’

  ‘He’s a lucky lad, that one,’ Jeremy said.

  ‘How so?’ I asked.

  ‘T-six and T-seven cracked right through from top to bottom. Severe instability.’

  T6 and T7 were thoracic vertebrae in the middle of the spine. I went hot and cold just thinking about his toe-touching antics. They could so easily have paralysed him. I hadn’t been such a brainless doctor after all.

  ‘How is he now?’ I asked.

  ‘Contrite,’ Jeremy said. ‘He was complaining like crazy when he arrived. Claimed it was a waste of time his being here. Calling you all sorts of names too. Never seen anyone go so white when I showed him the results of the scan. As I say, he’s a lucky man.’

  ‘Where is he?’

  ‘Lying completely flat upstairs on a board in the orthopaedic ward. I sent the results of the scan by email to the top spine man in Bristol and he doesn’t feel it needs any surgery. McGee has already been measured for a TLSO and it should be fitted tomorrow. He should be out of here by the weekend, but it will be a lot longer than that before he can ride again. At least six weeks.’

  A TLSO was a thoracolumbosacral orthosis, a light-weight moulded-plastic body cast that fitted tightly around the patient from shoulders to pelvis. It would allow him to walk while giving support to the back and preventing any relative movement of the damaged vertebrae while they healed.

  ‘Thanks, Jeremy. I’ll pass on the details to the racing authorities.’

  ‘One more thing,’ he said. ‘McGee’s asking to see you. Probably wants to thank you for saving him from paralysis.’

  ‘I doubt that,’ I said, remembering back to some of our previous encounters.

  ‘He also wants his clothes and stuff, his mobile in particular.’

  ‘I’ll see what I can do,’ I said, and disconnected.

  I relayed the news to Adrian.

  ‘Well done, you,’ he said, ‘for insisting McGee went to hospital for a scan.’

  ‘I was there at the fence,’ I said. ‘I saw the initial distress.’

  But it had been touch and go and, if truth be told, I’d only really insisted because he’d previously been so rude to me.

  ‘He’s now crying out for his clothes. And he wants his phone.’

  ‘The valets will arrange that,’ Adrian said firmly. ‘It’s not our problem.’

  Nevertheless, I went into the changing room and asked the valets working there which of them looked after Dick McGee.

  ‘That would be me,’ said a wiry-looking man wearing an off-white shirt with rolled-up sleeves under a dark blue cotton apron. ‘Jim Morris by name, but most folk call me Whizz.’

  We didn’t shake hands as he was in the process of removing a clod of Cheltenham Racecourse mud from a saddle.

  Jockeys’ valets are like the engine room of an ocean liner, totally hidden from the paying public but essential to the smooth running of the ship. They are not valets in the gentleman’s gentleman manner of a domestic servant, and they are certainly no Jeeves to a jockeyed Bertie Wooster but, without them, racing would unquestionably grind to a halt.

  In short, they are responsible for ensuring that each jockey in their care is properly dressed and presented to the Clerk of the Scales before a race wearing the correct, clean silks and carrying a saddle, number cloth, etc. such that rider plus equipment are at the precise weight specified in the racecard.

  To achieve that end requires many hours of unseen preparation with valets arriving at a racecourse at least four hours before racing begins to wash, dry and iron the silks and britches from the previous day, sort and soap saddles, polish boots, check and launder girths, plus a hundred other tasks before even the first punter passes through the turnstiles.

  ‘How can I help?’ Whizz said, tucking his hands inside the top part of his apron, which had a line of spare safety pins fastened down one side.

  ‘Dick McGee wants his things sent over to Cheltenham General, especially his mobile phone.’

  ‘Is he staying in?’ Whizz asked with surprise. ‘I thought he was fine.’

  I shook my head. ‘Fractured two vertebrae clean through. He’s a lucky boy not to be paralysed.’

  ‘Shit,’ Whizz said with feeling. ‘He’ll be off for a while then.’

  ‘Sure will,’ I said. ‘Can I leave it to you?’

  He hesitated. ‘Does he need everything this evening or will tomorrow do?’

  ‘I’ve no idea,’ I said. ‘I’m just passing on the message.’

  ‘It’s my wedding anniversary today,’ Whizz said. ‘Promised the wife I’d be home early. Got some friends coming over for dinner and the hospital’s in the wrong direction.’ He paused as if thinking. ‘I’ll do it in the morning before I get here.’

  ‘If you pack up his things, I’ll dr
op them in,’ I said. ‘I have to go into town anyway. My sons have been at an Easter-holiday sports club at Cheltenham College. I’m picking them up soon and the hospital’s just across the road.’

  ‘That would be great, thank you,’ said Whizz. ‘I’ll try to get someone to drive his car home.’ He picked up a Tupperware box containing several sets of car keys and rifled through it. ‘Dick’s will be in here somewhere.’

  ‘Do you also look after Jason Conway?’ I asked. ‘He’s in the same hospital with concussion.’

  ‘Sure do,’ he said. ‘Got his car keys in here too. In the old days, back when I was riding, wives and girlfriends always came racing to drive us home if we got injured, but now they all have jobs, or kids to look after.’ He made it sound like a retrograde step. ‘I may have to leave the cars until tomorrow now but they’ll be safe enough overnight in the car park.’

  While talking, he’d been stuffing things into two large plastic carrier bags.

  ‘This one’s Dick’s,’ he said, holding out the bag in his right hand, ‘and this is Jason’s.’ He held out the other. ‘Tell them I say hi and not to worry about their cars. I’ll make some calls and get someone to share lifts here tomorrow to drive them home after.’

  ‘Thanks, I’ll tell them,’ I said, taking the two bags.

  Acting as a delivery girl for Jason Conway had not exactly been on my agenda but, I supposed, in for one, in for them both.

  ‘How about the girl?’ Whizz said. ‘Ellie. Someone told me she’d broken her leg.’

  ‘Simple fracture of the fibula,’ I said. ‘She’s been sent home wearing a boot.’

  He nodded and went back to removing the mud from the saddle. ‘She’ll sort herself out then. Tough old bird, she is.’

  Tough? Yes. Old? No. Bird? Maybe.

  I left Whizz and his fellow valets busily packing kit into large rectangular wicker baskets. At least, with a two-day meeting, much of it could remain here overnight stacked ready to be washed and dried in the laundry room adjoining the changing room, in time for it to be worn and dirtied once again, and so the cycle went on relentlessly, day after day.