Stable Vices (Show Jumping Dreams ~ Book 21)

by Claire Svendsen

  “So prove it,” Frankie said.

  “How?” I asked.

  “I don’t know but there has to be a way.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  In the end hanging out at the vet hospital was kind of boring. I did some school work just so that I didn’t fall too far behind and Frankie played games on her phone. Every time the door opened, we both jumped, expecting it to be a vet coming to update us on one of our horses but it never was. Instead it was the office workers coming to refill their coffee cups and get more cookies. Too bad we’d already eaten them all. It turned out that when it came down to it I wasn’t one of those people who couldn’t eat in a crisis and lost a bunch of weight and when it was over everyone told them how great they looked. Instead I ate everything in sight, gained ten pounds and broke out in zits all over my face but right now I didn’t care. Cookies were comfort.

  “Let’s order a pizza,” Frankie said when it got to lunchtime.

  “Can we do that?” I asked, looking around the room.

  “Why not?” she said. “What do you think? The pizza police are going to come in and yell at us? Our horses are sick. That means we get a free pass to do whatever we want. No one wants to be the one to yell at us in case our horses die. Trust me. I’ve been here nearly every day for the last two weeks. You should see some of the stuff that I’ve got away with.”

  “Then I think a pizza would be awesome.” I grinned. “I’m starving.”

  “Me too,” she said.

  I guess Frankie was a stress eater too. And it turned out that we both liked the same kind of weird pizza as well, ham and pineapple.

  “Cheesy bread or cinnamon sticks?” Frankie asked, looking up from her phone.

  “Both?” I said.

  “You’re right.” She laughed. “What was I thinking? Of course we need both.”

  While we were waiting for the pizza to come, we decided to go and check on our horses. Quantum had his head down and didn’t lift it when Frankie opened his stall door. I looked away, feeling bad for her and hurried on to see my own sick pony. His head was up and his ears were pricked and he nickered when he saw me.

  “Bluebird,” I whispered, not wanting to upset Frankie. “You look better already.”

  I gave him a hug, being careful not to disturb his IV. He’d already finished his bag of fluids and it had been unhooked but the tubes were still there in case he needed more, tucked up under the vet wrap so that he couldn’t pull them out.

  I knew it just had to be the fluids making him feel better and that they hadn’t cured him yet and since he’d had fluids back at Fox Run, I knew that he would only feel better for a little while but any small improvement was better than no improvement at all.

  I stayed with him a while, hoping that one of the vets would come by so that I could ask them if they had any of the test results back yet but they never did. They were probably all on their lunch break too. The only person around was a guy cleaning the stalls and he didn’t seem to speak any English. Either that or he did but figured pretending he didn’t was the best way to avoid questions from nervous owners about how their horse was doing when he didn’t have a clue.

  “I’m going to eat lunch and then I’ll come back and see you again,” I told Bluebird, kissing him on the nose. “I promise I won’t be gone long.”

  He went to a pile of hay in the corner and sniffed at it and I slipped out of the stall quietly so that I wouldn’t disturb him if he was actually going to eat something. I was really glad that he was feeling better but I was also a little worried. My father would be furious if we’d brought him here and were paying through the nose for special treatment when he would have just got better on his own back home.

  Frankie was in her horse’s stall but she wasn’t hugging him. It was kind of hard with all the tubes and IVs that he had going in and out of him. I didn’t want to say anything but the horse pretty much looked like he was on death’s door.

  “Should we go and see if the pizza is here yet?” I asked gently. “Then we can come back and check on them after we’ve eaten. Don’t the vets usually come through after lunch?”

  “Yes,” Frankie said.

  As she turned I saw her rub her face on her sleeve, wiping away tears that she didn’t want me to see. I looked the other way. I knew that if Bluebird was as sick as Quantum was then I would be a complete wreck. I also wasn’t sure how long I would let him suffer. Quantum looked miserable. The treatments he was on didn’t seem to be working. He was dying a slow death hooked up to tubes and machines and his dignity and spirit were being stripped away. I didn’t know how Frankie was able to cope with that but I couldn’t fault her. Maybe if Bluebird was ever that sick, I’d do the same. No one wanted to essentially pull the plug on their best friend. Not without doing everything in their power to save them first.

  CHAPTER THIRTY ONE

  By the time the pizza came, Frankie seemed back to her old self again. We inhaled the warm slices and she told me about how she’d had Quantum since she was seven, when her father brought him home from an auction and how her mother had almost had a heart attack because she was terrified of horses. But he’d lived in their back yard ever since and her father had built him a barn and homemade jumps and a round pen.

  Quantum hadn’t had the sort of career that Bluebird had but in a way it didn’t matter. He’d been Frankie’s companion and best friend just like Bluebird was mine and they’d done everything together. Trail riding and obstacle courses. They’d tried western for a while and run barrels, even though she laughed when she said Quantum thought the objective was to knock the barrels down instead of run around them. They’d ridden bareback through the rain and galloped along the beach. Gone to camp where they slept out under the stars with the horses nearby in makeshift paddocks. To see the horse he was now, the horse he’d been and how far he’d fallen. How his illness had robbed his once vibrant body, it wasn’t fair.

  “I’m sure he’ll get better,” I told her. After all, it was what I’d want to hear even if it wasn’t true.

  “I’m not sure that he will,” she said, her voice wobbly. “Mom keeps saying that we should let him go. That it’s not fair to prolong his agony but Dad says that we should keep trying and maybe he’ll still get better.”

  “What do the vets say?” I asked.

  “They can’t put him to sleep unless we agree so they just keep treating him,” she said.

  “But what do you want to do?” I asked her.

  I wanted to know what she was thinking and how she was going to deal with it because it was like she was a future version of myself, one I could learn from even though I didn’t want to.

  “I don’t know,” she said. “I keep waiting for a sign. Something to let me know if I should end his suffering or keep going.”

  “And?” I said.

  “I haven’t seen one yet.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY TWO

  When I finally managed to catch Dr. Brown, hanging by the door and peeking out until I saw him and then making a run for it, he was vague with his diagnosis.

  “We are still running tests,” he said. “But he seems to be responding to treatment.”

  “But treatment for what?” I said.

  “Its supportive treatment really,” the old vet said.

  I wasn’t convinced. “I think maybe he was poisoned,” I blurted out.

  “We are looking into every possible cause of his illness,” he said, patting me on the back. “Don’t you worry.”

  And all my faith in Dr. Brown went out of me like the air from a popped balloon. I went back to the lounge feeling oddly deflated.

  “Well?” Frankie asked.

  “They are still running tests. Looking into every possible cause. I shouldn’t worry.”

  “Told you,” she said, laying back and putting her feet up on the couch. “They don’t want you to know. It’s like my Granny was in the hospital last year and we all knew she was dying. The woman was eighty nine. It was totally her time to go
but the doctors kept saying that she had a fighting chance and they were going to try this medicine and that medicine. Always rushing in with the paddles every time she crashed, shocking her back to us when all she really wanted was to go to sleep and not wake up.”

  “I just want to know what is wrong with my pony,” I said, flopping down on the other couch.

  “You watch,” Frankie said. “I bet they’ll tell your father when he comes to pick you up. They think we’re little kids. That we are too delicate to know what is really going on. Plus we don’t pay the bills so they figure they don’t owe us.”

  “I may be paying the bill,” I said with a sigh. “I might have to sell my other horses.”

  “That sucks,” Frankie said.

  “I know but Bluebird was my first. I bought him with my own money. I’ve shared the last two years of my life with him. I’ll do anything to save him.”

  “Don’t be so melodramatic,” Dad said.

  He was standing in the doorway listening.

  “Dad,” I said, sitting back up. “Did you see the vet? Did he tell you what is wrong?”

  “They are still running tests but he is responding to treatment. That’s good enough, isn’t it?” he said.

  I looked at Frankie and rolled my eyes. Either my father really didn’t know or he was lying to me too and if there was one thing I hated more than anything it was people lying to me, especially when I could see straight through those lies.

  “Come on,” he said. “Get your stuff. It’s time to go.”

  “I have to say goodbye to Bluebird,” I said, grabbing my bag. “Bye Frankie. See you tomorrow?”

  “I’ll be here,” she said.

  “Are you sure I can’t sleep here?” I asked Dad as I squeezed past him.

  “Positive,” he replied. “Besides, it’s not allowed.”

  “You’re just saying that,” I said.

  “No, I’m not. Now let’s go. You have other horses to take care of when you get back. They won’t ride themselves you know.”

  I wanted to tell him that he should take his own advice because his horse Canterbury hadn’t been ridden since he dumped my father off at the show. He hadn’t even been put on the lunge line. He sat there getting fat while my father tried to decide if he was going to give him a second chance or sell him.

  “I’ll be back tomorrow,” I told Bluebird.

  He didn’t seem as perky as he had been earlier and he felt hot again like his fever was back. I hated to leave him. What if something bad happened to him in the middle of the night and I wasn’t there? At least back at our barn I could have slept in his stall again. But here he had vets watching him twenty four hours a day. If he took a turn for the worse then they could rush in and save him. If he took a turn for the worse back at Fox Run then there would be frantic phone calls and never ending panic as I waited for the vet to get there. This way was better for him. It just wasn’t better for my heart.

  “I love you,” I told him as I slid his stall door shut and he softly nickered back but his head was low and his eyes were heavy. He wasn’t better yet. Not by a long shot.

  CHAPTER THIRTY THREE

  Dad didn’t say much on the ride home and neither did I. It was like there were unspoken words buzzing around in the air between us but neither one of us could actually speak them. We were almost back at Fox Run when Dad finally sighed.

  “I want you to work Socks tonight,” he said.

  “What? Why?”

  I hadn’t ridden Socks in ages, not really much at all since Missy had started riding again and even though she had decided to put her career on the back burner, I still thought that it was only fair that she had her own horse again. As had been pointed out to me on numerous occasions, I had so many horses to ride. It wasn’t fair to take away the only one that Missy had.

  I knew that she had other horses up north. They’d been in training while she was pregnant and now they were all out on lease. Maybe she could sell them to pay my father’s hospital bill. But I had to keep my own horses ticking over so that they’d be ready to sell if I needed to pay for Bluebird’s care. Especially Four. He’d be the first to go and I’d already made up my mind to put him into a much more vigorous training schedule now that he was fitter so that he would be ready to sell in the fall.

  “Four needs work the most,” I told Dad. “I need to get him ready to sell. He was only ever meant to be a summer project, remember?”

  “I know,” Dad said. “But Socks is a horse that you can win on if they let you substitute him for Bluebird at the next Talent Scout show.”

  “You really think they’d do that?” I asked.

  “You’ve already missed one class through no fault of your own and lucky for you, all your major competition bombed because of the weather. If you ride at the last show there is still a chance you could finish in the top five.” Dad looked at me and smiled. “I already called them. They said they’d think about it because of your special circumstances.”

  “A sick horse isn’t special,” I mumbled. “Things like that happen all the time. It doesn’t make me any different than anyone else.”

  “But it does,” Dad said.

  I knew he was trying to be nice and help me but it felt like he was bending the rules. He was doing something that Jess and her father would do, say that the rules didn’t apply to them. And the rules said that you had to ride the same horse in all three shows. That was part of the challenge. Keeping your horse fit enough for all three classes. If you were allowed to ride a different horse at each show then what was the point?

  “Maybe Bluebird will be better by then,” I said.

  “Maybe,” Dad replied. “But don’t count on it.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY FOUR

  By the time we got back to the barn the last thing I wanted to do was ride but Dad insisted he was going to give me a lesson on Socks and I also insisted that I was going to work Four so that meant I had two horses to ride instead of showering, flopping down onto my bed and pulling the covers over my head.

  “How is the foal?” I asked.

  I felt bad that I hadn’t thought about him all day. I hadn’t even been worried about him but it turned out that I didn’t need to be anyway.

  “Thanks to your little mini he’s learning to drink his milk out of a bucket and the vet said that we can start putting him outside next week,” Dad said.

  “It’s funny how things work out, isn’t it?” I said. “You can’t complain that Bandit doesn’t have a job now.”

  “Yes it worked out really great,” Dad said. “We have a mare we can’t use and a foal we didn’t need in the first place.”

  I just shook my head. Dad didn’t get it but I knew that there had to have been a reason that Sandy brought Jupiter to us and the Jordan gave me Bandit. If it all hadn’t worked out the way it had then maybe things would have turned out a lot worse. Sandy could have shoved Jupiter in some field somewhere and she would have given birth and probably killed her foal before anyone noticed. Even if Dad didn’t think so, I knew we’d saved a life and that did mean something. I just wasn’t sure what the point of Bluebird being sick was. I couldn’t see any good in that no matter how hard I tried.

  “Go straight up to the house and get showered,” Dad said. “I don’t want you bringing any of those vet clinic germs into our barn. Meet me in the ring in thirty minutes on Socks.”

  “Alright,” I said.

  I felt like I was in boot camp. How was I supposed to mope around and feel sorry for myself when I had all this work to do? Then again maybe that was part of my father’s evil plan.

  “Did you have a rough day?” Missy asked as I walked into the kitchen, grabbing a cupcake off the counter.

  “Pretty much,” I said.

  “And Bluebird, is he okay?” she asked, looking worried.

  “He’s kind of the same,” I said with a sigh. “Did you know that Dad wants me to ride Socks? Are you okay with that?”

  I liked Missy and she was already
having enough problems with my father. I wasn’t about to go behind her back and ride her horse without her knowing it even though she had let Sandy ride Hashtag.

  “He mentioned something about it,” she said. “It sounded like one of his hair brained schemes.”

  “He wants the committee to let me ride Socks in the last Talent Scout show if Bluebird isn’t better by then but I don’t know.” I sighed. “I’d rather just not ride at all.”

  “Are you sure?” Missy said.

  “Why? What do you mean?”

  I sat down on one of the bar stools, scooping up Meatball as he rubbed up against my legs. The fat orange cat began to purr as I scratched under his chin.

  “Well you have to decide. Are you going to be a one pony girl? A casual rider who does it for the love of her horse? Or is this your job? Your career? Your life?”

  “Can’t I just have both?” I said.

  “No.” Missy shook her head. “If you are only doing this because of Bluebird then what is going to happen when the day comes that he can’t keep up with the horses anymore but you can? When he has a career ending injury or has to be retired? Will you stop riding then too? Get a job in a store at the mall? Go back to school and become a lawyer or a doctor?”

  I stared at the half eaten cupcake, feeling sick. “Why do you have to make it sound so complicated?”

  “It’s not complicated at all.” Missy sat next to me. “It’s easy. If you want this to be your life you have to accept that you will love lots of horses and ride even more than that. That your horses will get hurt or maybe just won’t be up to the job that you expect them to do. You’ll have back up horses and backups for the backups. You’ll have some that you save for the speed classes and others that you’ll bring out when you have a class on the grass. And you’ll love all of them in their own way but if the thought of losing just one of them makes you want to quit then you shouldn’t make this your life. Not if you mean it. The losses will be too hard. They’ll kill you from the inside out like a cancer. Trust me. I know.”