Borrowed Horses (27 page)

At work, Don Bridges, the local rep for Jackson Medical, was the only excitement. He was a salesman to the core, but we all looked forward to his rounds. His voice brought me out of my cave to the reception desk.

“Joannie, Joannie,” Don beamed. “Still single I suppose.”

I shrugged and smiled.

“No young man with a twinkle in his eye?”

One young man with too much twinkle, one young man without enough
. I only shook my head.

“Great looking gal like you? What is this world coming to? Never would’ve happened in my day.” He reminded me of my grandfather, my dad’s dad. “I thought for sure you’d find some hotshot surgeon back east and we’d never see you again.”

“You sorry I didn’t?”

“Me?” He looked at me with gentle but distant eyes. “Nah,” he said. “You three gorgeous gals are the best part of my rounds.”

Cheryl’s eyes shone with the compliment. She’d been carrying a torch for him for years. “Don,” she said, “are you flirting with us?”

Tread lightly, Don
, I thought.

“Now you know I can’t say that I am, not with all this sexual harassment hooey, so I’ll just say that you three make it hard on an old man, looking more beautiful every time I see you.”

“Boy,” I laughed, “you must be selling something
really
expensive today.”

Don smoothed his neck-tie, over-playing being offended to show how little offended he really was. “Joannie, I’m hurt you’d think I’d stoop so low.”

I was about to retort when Dr. Rivers appeared. He turned to me as if about to say something, but appeared to think better of it. “Don, you must be looking for Nathan.”

“He just popped over to accounting,” Cheryl said. “He’ll be back in a tick. No need to rush off.”

Don looked at Dr. Rivers and then at me, smiling slyly. “Any twinkle there?”

I shot him a nasty look. Dr. Rivers looked at Don, then me, and cleared his throat. “Well, I’m sure we’ve all got work to be done.”

“Right,” I said, and slumped off back to Room One, trying to decide if it was a cave or a chrysalis or merely a stall.

In the late afternoon, light slanted through the barn door. It gleamed in the dust like gold, like the color of Timothy’s eyes.

Hobbes trotted along obediently, mouthing his new Herm Sprenger KK Ultra loose ring snaffle bit, which cost triple the price of my best bit. No amount of money could still the bounce of Jenny’s inexperienced hands and the meaningless Morse code they sent to Hobbes’ sensitive, knowing mouth. He carried himself anyway.

I brushed at the manure stains on Zephyr’s sides with the quick hard strokes that she’d grown to enjoy. Why did all greys roll? Hobbes rocked into a perfect canter. Jenny beamed from his back. “Why didn’t anyone tell me riding could be this easy?”

Because it’s not
, I wanted to scream.
You didn’t train that horse. You aren’t the one who made his neck arch, who helped him learn to reach underneath himself behind, who taught him that carriage and confidence. You only paid for it
.

At a slight pressure, Hobbes transitioned from canter to trot to halt, his feet perfectly square underneath him. A dressage judge would salivate over such perfect foot placement. A solid eight, if not even a nine. I could see their scores adding up, the tests they would have.

Zephyr kicked me, the hoof deflecting off the leather of my half chaps. I glared at her and swung the saddle pads on her back as she danced below them, snorting and tossing her head. We would work outside; I wouldn’t talk to Jenny that night. I would simply wave as she drove out, smiling as if I meant it, pretending I felt no jealousy, riding in the darkening light. I wanted my barn back. Jenny could go to hell; she could take Dave and Hobbes with her.

At home, I chopped vegetables for stir-fry. I made extra rice for easy leftovers, and foresaw a future of forever eating alone.
Fine
, I thought. Look at what reaching out had done: the trouble with Dave, and now with Jenny. Zephyr and I had a bad ride. She took advantage of my distraction to remind me of all the reasons we would never be a team. I was foolish to put my hopes on such a horse. I could already see us lined up in the ring, being placed by the judge; Jenny in first; me, empty-handed. “No one ever told me it was so easy,” I mouthed. A summer in the ring, a pocketful of cash, and she’d be the one with the blue ribbon flapping. She, who’d never sacrificed a day in her life, who bitched and moaned when Eddie had her ride without stirrups, who’d never broken a bone on a fence, who’d never taken an iron-clad kick and stifled pain in a clenched jaw, who pouted over that tiny scratch she’d gotten on Zip,
she
would be serious competition.

I pulled a partially frozen steak out and began my ferocious slicing. The hot oil seethed in the skillet. I’d worked too hard for too long only to be back at the bottom. The knife clip, clip, clipped against the cutting board, neatly cleaving each slice under the pressure of my hand. Flesh divided. What I had put asunder, let no man join together. I dropped a handful of beef in the skillet and began slicing the remaining half, listening to the crackle and hiss of ice in oil. Dave would have bought a winner for me, if I’d asked him too.

Love was a promise for idealistic fools. The knife, keen at hand, cut on sure and steady. I’d made my bed. I’d chosen my course and would not diverge. Dave was a madness, a sickness to excise. I threw my palm into my work, the blade sharp and true. Hobbes’ burnished coat hung red in my glare. It colored everything.

I couldn’t say whether it was the ring of the phone that caused my hand to slip or whether I simply misjudged the final cut. The two things seemed to happen simultaneously. The knife was deep before I felt it: a long cut down the inside edge of my index finger. The callus built from years of reins against skin along with a good bit of the flesh below it now flapped loose, exposing the finger’s meat as hundreds of capillaries opened at once. The phone rang again. I watched the finger bleed, my stomach collapsing. I was lucky to have missed the joint. I was lucky not to have cut fully through. I’d severed the finger nail and the top edge of my finger cleanly in a cut that ran from nearly the center of the top of my finger and down to the edge of the first knuckle leaving only the scantest bit of skin. I had no memory of stopping the knife short of its job, but I must have.

The phone rang again and I picked it up with my good hand. I couldn’t feel its plastic in my hand. Only my eyes told me I held the receiver.

It was Timothy. “I just got back into town,” he said. He was far away. He wasn’t a real person. He was a specter I’d conjured.

My mouth worked, but I couldn’t call a word to mind. I gripped the side of the counter. “Hello,” I managed, but the voice was not my own.

“Joannie, are you O.K.?”

“Not,” I said, but I couldn’t think of a word to follow it. I stood for a moment, then moved the phone to its cradle. Was that right? The world folded in again, full of smoke and hissing. I pushed the chunk of my finger that had hinged away back into its place. Blood coursed down the side of my arm in a narrow stream. I tried to focus. I ran the hand under water, every nerve objected to the sting. I grunted and flinched. My ears were full of ringing phones.

With a sheet of paper towel, spattered with hot oil, I pressed the finger closed again. The white bloomed geraniums of blood. My hand pulsed and my stomach fell. The kitchen I stood in was distant and falling. Tiles receded under foot; the counter swung away. I caught at it, the trailing edge of paper towel picking up the flame of the gas stove. The fire leaped up at me, and I fell, my knees failing. I stomped at the paper towel with my paddock-booted foot, but I misjudged and crushed my hand with the flame, smearing dirt and horseshit into the wound.

I couldn’t stifle a cry. The scarred linoleum tiles refused to steady themselves beneath me. The blood was lurid in the kitchen’s florescent light, but my head was wrapped in cotton. It fogged my vision and muffled sound.

I closed my eyes, swallowed hard, and waited for the white fog to roll away, but it persisted. My finger throbbed, the paper towel wrapped around it now blood soaked. My legs shook as I tried to stand.

In the fog, Timothy stood before me. For a moment, it seemed I dreamt him there.

“You’re white as a sheet,” he said, holding my arm in his warm hand. He led me to a chair, then faced the kitchen. He pushed the skillet off the burner, turned off the stove, and opened the window, fanning away smoke from the burning oil. “What happened?”

My whole body felt cold and I couldn’t trust my voice.

“How long have you been bleeding?” His eyes traveled the paths of dripped blood over the tiles.

He was so far away. “It seems like you’re coming from a whole other world,” I whispered.

“I am.” A rueful smirk played over his face, then vanished. He peeled the paper towel back; already it had began to stick.

A moment later he was patting my face. “You still with me?” He smiled as my eyes opened. “You fainted,” he said.

“This is ridiculous.” I was shocked by the quavering weakness of my own distant voice. “Blood doesn’t bother me.”

“This is your own blood. It’s different.” He rose and soaked a new paper towel, gently sponging it around my wound. “Shit, Joannie. It’s like you took off half your finger. We’d better take you to the hospital.”

“No,” I said. Dr. Rivers would be on shift. I looked at the ceiling and took in a deep breath. Pride pushed back some of the clouds. “Butterfly closures,” I said.

Timothy’s eyebrows rose. “Are you serious?”

“There’s a first aid kit in the bathroom. Under the sink. Blue tub.”

“Joannie.”

“I know what I’m doing.” I smiled weakly. “Trust me.”

Timothy emerged a moment later carrying the familiar plastic box. He pried open its scuffed lid and shifted through tubes of bacitracin, packets of sterile non-stick pads, assorted gauze, rolls of ace bandages, various widths of medical tape, and boxes upon boxes of bandages. His lashes lay dark against his skin as he dug through the neatly ordered boxes.

“Stop, stop.” I pushed him gently aside. “There’s a system.” I plucked the butterfly closures from their dedicated position and shifted the other boxes back into place. The work helped; it was as if putting the box in order helped order my thoughts as well.

Timothy was smiling, though worry still hung about his eyes. “Does one person really need this many bandages?”

“You’ve obviously never been to a horse show.” I ran my hand under water, gritting my teeth as I again rubbed soap into the door of flesh that swung obscenely open on the skin. I felt stronger. Timothy’s hand on my back gave me strength. My finger bled, but that too was good. Blood would clean out bacteria; the body’s logic working when the mind failed. I squeezed a bead of ointment in. It was easier to work, now, almost as if someone else’s hand was at the end of my wrist, and I was merely its doctor. Timothy handed me clean towels, and I daubed as he taped me shut with the small white closures.

Timothy looked at the open box and sighed. “What next?”

I handed him a non-stick pad, a thin roll of gauze, and white medical tape.