Horse Heaven (80 page)

The attendant opened the passenger door of the van while another attendant brought out a wheelchair. The two of them helped Deedee out of the van. Marvelous Martha went around and took Deedee’s hand. Deedee said, “Can you find Leon?”

“I’ll try.”

“Thank you for being at Safeway.”

Marvelous Martha smiled and said, “Is your conscience clear now?”

“Mostly.”

“Then go have a baby!”

But then, after she got back into the van and pulled it out of the emergency entrance, she decided to park and go in, just to see.

Inside the emergency-room door, they had already stretched Deedee out on a gurney. One nurse had hold of one leg and another nurse had hold of the other leg. A woman doctor was leaning forward, looking at the opening of the birth canal. Just as Marvelous Martha approached them, she stood up and said, “Baby’s crowning. Let’s do it. What’s your name, Deanie?”

“Deedee,” said Marvelous Martha.

“Deedee. Well, Deedee, give us a push.”

“Hunnnnnhhhhhhhhh,” exclaimed Deedee.

“Good one,” said the doctor.

Marvelous Martha took Deedee’s hand.

“HUUUUUNNNNNNNHHHHHH!” exclaimed Deedee.

“All right! Here we go! Yes!” shouted everyone all at once, including several patients waiting in the emergency room to be treated.

“One more for good measure,” said the doctor.

“OOOOOOOOOHHHHHHHHHHHAAAAAUUUUUNNNNNH!” ululated Deedee.

All over the emergency room, “Yeah! Go! Wow! Yeah! Yeah!”

“Here she is,” said the doctor.

Marvelous Martha stroked Deedee on the forehead and then leaned down. Deedee’s eyes closed briefly. She was panting. Before she could say anything, Marvelous Martha whispered in Deedee’s ear, “It’s a filly.”

———

B
UDDY AND
L
EON
had gone to New York with a horse who was running in the Dwyer Handicap, and Marvelous Martha was supposed to follow a week later with Residual, who was entered in the Coaching Club American Oaks. The filly was working well, and seemed, Marvelous Martha thought, to have rededicated herself to pure speed. In four starts since January, not counting the race that ended prematurely, she had won twice, run third once, and run fifth once. With each race she got tougher and faster. Getting kicked in Texas had hardly set her back, except for the Derby. The top fillies, especially on the West Coast, were very fast company this year, much more interesting than the males, and Residual herself wanted to keep up with them. They had gone from being debutantes to being M.B.A.’s in one year of racing. They ran for the finish line with their eyes rolling and their ears pinned, the vigorous daughters of mares who ruled their pastures, and Marvelous Martha, who had ridden many a tough mare in her day, admired the filly’s willingness to learn what it took. In fact, she was enjoying herself so much, with Buddy and Leon gone and Deedee cocooned in her condo with Alana Marie Taylor-O’Connor, that she forgot anything could happen, and then something did. She got out to the track for her daily session, this time a jog after the previous day’s work, and the filly had a big soft swelling, warm and painful, in and around her right knee. She was off but not hobbling. It was easy to guess the problem—it was a common racehorse problem, especially with a speedball. The question was not whether she had a chip in her knee, it was how many. The groom put the filly back in her stall while Marvelous Martha went into Buddy’s office to find the vet list.

After putting in a call to Karen Busher-Sysonby, D.V.M., whose work she had seen and admired, Marvelous Martha called Andrea Melanie Kingston, who was right there beside the phone. Marvelous Martha reported that the horse probably had a chip in her knee, and would Jason mind coming out to the track and speaking to the vet. Andrea Melanie said, “Jason is in Europe.”

“Well, if she wants to do a surgery, which she probably will want to do, she should talk to the owner about it.”

“Really?”

“I think so.”

“Is Buddy there?”

“No, Buddy’s in New York.”

“Are you going to consult him?”

Marvelous Martha pondered that word, “consult.” If the horse had a chip in her knee, that was a pretty cut-and-dried matter, upon which little consultation was needed. Besides that, the authority Marvelous Martha most often consulted was her own intuition. Limiting her consultations in this way resulted in a much more productive use of time and much less interpersonal
conflict. And in addition to that, she had noticed over the years that everyone more or less agreed about a fait accompli. She said, “Well, let’s talk to the vet. You can make up your mind.”

“I can?”

“Of course you can. Though, of course, Buddy and your husband are readily available by phone.”

“And computer link,” said Andrea Melanie. “We can send any pictures or other information to Jason’s personal computer.”

“There aren’t really any decisions to make in this case. She’s got a chip in her knee. It has to come out. We can thank God that we have a vet to do it. You know, I had a boyfriend once, this was when I was very young, who was a real cowboy, and one time I saw him build a fire and stick his big pointed knife into it, and I said, ‘Lester, what are you doing?,’ and he pushed his chaw of tobacco to one side and looked up at me and said, ‘Honey, I’m gonna take that chip out of that horse’s knee.’ And he did. Once he pulled his own tooth, too.”

“He was your boyfriend?”

“Not for long after that.”

“Have you had a lot of boyfriends?”

“Yes, I have, and we can talk about that, but why don’t you come on out here and talk to the vet with me.” And so she did and so there was no further discussion of telephones or computer links.

Although Karen Busher-Sysonby, D.V.M., was scientifically trained and also excelled at objectivity, she was not unaware of the circumstances of the present surgery. The horse was beautiful and famous; the trainer, whom she had worked for only once and who did not have the best reputation, was out of town; she herself had more credentials than experience; the owner of the horse was not herself a horseman; the guiding hand here, Martha Someone, was assuming more responsibility than was hers by right; and the horse’s bloodwork showed a slightly elevated concentration of red blood cells. All the same, the X-ray showed a simple, dime-shaped chip on the distal aspect of the radius, right front. You could get in and out of that in forty minutes, and looking to others who were older and male for permission to do the obvious was a characteristic of women that Karen Busher-Sysonby did not like, especially in herself. You could float teeth and give vaccinations all your life, or you could go ahead and do what you had been asked to do, and Karen Busher-Sysonby had not gotten through vet school by refusing to go ahead and do what she was asked to do.

Now she had the horse on her back on the table in the surgery, her right front leg propped on a pole, the knee bent about thirty degrees. Her anesthesiologist, Portia Vedette, looked half asleep, as always, and the technicians were
talking to one another in low voices. Karen scrubbed the knee three times, and made two small incisions for the arthroscope. The interior of the knee joint appeared suddenly on the TV screen beside her, and she began making the subtle movements with the scope that would enable her to find the location and dimensions of the chip—here was one edge—a new monitor would be nice in this surgery, she knew a guy who was working for sporthorse people, and he had much better equipment, you’d think that the richest track in America, if not the world—Portia said, “Huh,” and she followed around the edge, it was very thin, but seemed to be—Portia said, “Uhhhh, shit.” Karen looked at the EKG monitor, and the oscillating line depicting Residual’s heartbeat was flat as the Pacific horizon. She looked at Portia. Portia was wide awake, and the technicians had stopped talking and started gawking. Portia said, “Atropine,” and gave the filly a shot. The line began to oscillate again.

Karen said, “How long was it flat?” She was breathing hard.

“Only a few seconds, twenty, maybe. Where are you?” She was breathing hard, too.

“I was finding the perimeters of the chip.”

“Well, grab it and take it out, because this operation is over.”

Looking back at the TV monitor, Karen inserted her forceps, found the chip, and eased it out of the incision.

“Close it up,” said Portia, and Karen began suturing two small incisions. On her second stitch, Portia said, “Dead again.”

Karen looked at the EKG monitor. The flatness of the line was absolute. She tied the suture, removed the drapes, and Karen had administered another shot of atropine, and still the line was laser-flat. “How long has it been?”

“About forty seconds at this point.”

“What now?”

“Oxygen. Prayer.”

Behind them, one of the technicians, Dorothy, said, “Come down, baby. Come down, sweetie.”

Karen glanced at her. She was staring up into one corner of the room. She said, “I see you up there, floating around, trying to decide. It’s up to you, Mama. Your life has just begun. You’ve got a lot of stuff to do, Mama. You’ve got to win some more races and all of that.” Now the woman closed her eyes and rocked her head back and forth, and said “Yes, filly-girl. Yes, filly-girl, yes, filly-girl.” She was almost keening. Karen looked at Portia, who tore her gaze away from the monitor long enough to shrug a tiny shrug. The technician crooned, “There we go. There we go. Come on, little darling. Who are those babies going to go to if they can’t find you? Come on down, sweetheart.”

Portia said, “She’s started again. There. It’s pretty strong, too.”

The technician hadn’t heard. She was still rocking her head. She blew out her breath, snorted, and cried, “Come back, little girlie, little filly-girl!” Karen touched her on the shoulder. She said, “She’s started again.” The technician stood still and nodded, but she didn’t look at all embarrassed. She said, “Good. It worked.”

“Something worked,” said the other technician.

“The horse,” said Karen to Marvelous Martha and Andrea Melanie about half an hour later, “cannot undergo another surgery. She’s, let’s say, allergic to the anesthetic halothane. A certain percentage of horses are. It causes cardiac arrest.”

“Oh my God,” said Andrea Melanie.

“She did arrest on the operating table,” said Karen.

“I knew we should have told Buddy,” said Andrea Melanie.

“I doubt that he would have known of her allergy, unless she’s had surgery before.”

“No, she hasn’t,” said Andrea Melanie. “She arrested? What exactly does that mean?”

“She died,” said Marvelous Martha.

“Yes,” said Karen. “She did. She died for about thirty seconds, and then she died for about a minute.”

“Oh, Jason would kill me if she died!” exclaimed the owner. “Is she awake yet?”

“No. We’re waiting for that. There’s one thing you should know,” she said.

“She could wake up an idiot,” said Marvelous Martha.

“There is a chance she’ll have the equine equivalent of cerebral palsy, yes. Why don’t we all go in and watch her for a bit.”

The filly was still stretched out in the recovery stall when they entered it, an IV into her neck. The two technicians were squatting beside her. One was stroking her head. Marvelous Martha went and knelt beside her and touched her on the ears. There was no talking. After a minute or two, the filly opened her eyes and lifted her head. She sighed and looked around, then, a little hesitantly, she rolled up on her sternum and looked around again. “She’s quiet,” said Karen. “That’s a very good sign. If she was flopping around, that could mean there’s brain damage.” But it was clear to Marvelous Martha that the filly continued to be herself—calm, well disposed, sane. All she did was sigh a couple of times and shake her head and ears, the way you would. She passed her tongue over her lips, yawned, looked at everyone. Then she stuck out her forelegs and levered herself up.

“Did you get the chip?” said Marvelous Martha.

“I got the chip,” said Karen Busher-Sysonby. “And now I have another
surgery. Please call me if there’s a problem.” Everyone nodded. As she left, Karen hooked her finger around the sleeve of Dorothy, and urged her toward the door. Dorothy gave her a look, an intimidated look. Karen leaned over her—the technician was rather short—and whispered in her ear, “You can work with me anytime. Thank you.”

Scientific training and a natural bent toward objectivity were all very well, she thought, but with a filly worth over a million dollars, you had to play all the angles you could find.

L
ATER THAT NIGHT
, after she had returned to Berkeley, Marvelous Martha placed a call to Karen Busher-Sysonby. She said, “Did that filly die of natural causes?”

“Ask me if she revived of natural causes.”

“What do you mean?”

“One of the technicians called her back. She said she was floating in the room and asked her to get back into her body.”

“I know someone that happened to. Her kids called her back.”

“This was a horse.”

“Well, you know, doctors always doubted acupuncture until they saw it work on horses.”

“Maybe.”

“But what killed her?”

“Oh, as I said, sensitivity to halothane isn’t uncommon.”

“And everything else was normal? All the pre-surgical workup and everything?”

“Oh, yes. I mean, within the range. Her red blood count was high-normal, but that was all. Why do you ask?”

“I ride her every day. I’m fifty-three years old. I want to make sure she has four legs, a heart, and a brain before I get on.”

“Well, you won’t be getting back on for four months, anyway, so, when she comes back to the track, let me know, and I’ll keep an eye on her.”

A
WEEK LATER
, after Buddy was back and the filly had gone to the farm to recuperate from her surgery (Buddy was angry that he hadn’t been consulted, but what could he do, it was a done deal), Marvelous Martha came down to San Diego from Berkeley for the day but did not go to the track. Instead she took a cab out to La Jolla, and paid a call on Andrea Melanie.

Marvelous Martha was brown and stringy—all her flesh, of which there
had never been much, looked welded to her bones. Her hands and her shoulders were large and powerful, as if leased from another body. Her hair and her blue eyes had lightened in the sun. Andrea Melanie was intimidated, the way you got looking at the desert horizon. She could not imagine how a person, a woman, could do such a poor job of taking care of herself. She was therefore somewhat distracted while Marvelous Martha was talking to her. On the one hand, sun damage was sun damage, not easy to repair, the best policy was always prevention. On the other hand, a peel, or even a dermabrasion, worked wonders, especially the first one. You didn’t have to do it over and over and get that look you sometimes saw of a sort of incandescent fish-belly white. She said, “Excuse me?” Marvelous Martha repeated, “Deedee made some childbed confessions, and one of them was that Leon had seen Buddy and a well-known crooked vet standing outside Residual’s stall.”