Whitehorse (44 page)
Scraping back his chair, Foster stood and exited the restaurant.
TWENTY
T
aliazDancinDarlin was the favorite for the night's biggest race, offering the highest purse of the season so far: Forty-five thousand, the winner taking sixty percent. A groom had found her on her side that morning in her stall, obviously having been rolling; not a good sign. That meant colic. By the looks of her beat-up hocks and the bruising on her head, she'd been floundering in her stall for the better part of the night.
They had pumped enough mineral oil through her gut to grease a Boeing 747. Had there been an obstruction it should have passed by now. Instead of showing signs of improvement, the mare appeared to be growing worse. Respiration, heartbeat, temperature were climbing.
Both Jake and Leah suspected a gut twist, which meant surgery. But even that outcome was iffy, certainly no guarantee that they could save the suffering mare. Especially if the gut had been twisted for a long period of time.
Jake shook his head. "I can't do anything else for her without opening her up, Mr. Davison. Or we can put her down. That's your call, of course. Either way, this mare isn't running tonight or anytime in the foreseeable future."
Bill Davison closed his eyes briefly, and his shoulders slumped. Behind him, his wife Betty began to cry. Both in their late fifties, they had spent their lives breeding for the horse that would make their farm respected in the business. TaliazDancinDarlin, named after their granddaughter, Talia, had shown every promise of doing just that. She had broken her maiden the first time out, going on to win five of the next seven races.
"Will she ever run again?" Bill asked.
"Maybe. Maybe not. Founder usually follows this kind of colic, and that means lameness. If she survives, she might make you one hell of a brood mare." Jake ran his hand along the mare's sweating neck. "She's a nice horse. She's made you some decent money. If she was mine, I'd open her up. Give her every chance."
"Easy for you to say. It ain't as if I've got five grand ready to toss down the crapper if she dies."
The mare's trainer laid his hand on Davison's shoulder. "You gotta do what you gotta do, Bill. There will be other horses. Don't beat yourself up over this."
Davison turned his gaze to Leah where she stood at Jake's side, her heart in her throat as she wondered to herself if she would ever get used to witnessing the pain on her clients' faces when confronted with life-and-death decisions regarding their animals, and, more often than not, the end of their dreams.
"It's a hell of a thing, isn't it?" Bill said. "You pour your heart and soul into raising these beauties. You pamper them like they was the Queen of England, invest half a lifetime of money and dreams. One minute they're fine, on top of the world, the next they're useless for anything other than Jell-O." He ran one hand through his hair and cleared his throat. "I'll call my brother, see if he can loan me the money."
Davison, his wife, and the trainer headed for the door, and Jake gave his assistants orders to prepare the mare for surgery.
"Shouldn't you wait until Mr. Davison returns?" Leah asked, raising her voice to be heard over the roaring of the lifts that would move the anesthetized horse onto the operating table. She followed Jake into the scrub room, grabbed up a surgical gown that was sterilized in plastic bags and began to slide the garment on over her clothes.
Jake turned on the water and began to brush his hands with disinfectant. "There isn't time to wait," he said as she moved up beside him and began to scrub. "I suspect we'll be lucky to save her as it is."
"But the money—"
"We'll cross that bridge when we come to it, Doctor. I've known Bill a long time. He'll come across with the money. It might take a while, but he'll pay me."
Within fifteen minutes the mare was on the table, flat on her back, tubes running out her nose and mouth, her feet supported by chains from the overhead lift. Leah prepped the mare's belly, shaved away the hair with a #40 surgical clipper blade, and swabbed the skin down with Betadine scrub. Then Jake stepped in and opened her up.
Leah gagged and turned her face away.
Jake cursed, flinging the scalpel to the far side of the room.
Leah had not wanted to be present when Jake broke the news to Bill and Betty Davison that their horse was dead, that the colon had been twisted so long it had ruptured, spilling poisons throughout her body cavity. Sitting in a lawn chair outside the clinic, the sun hot on her face, Leah closed her eyes and did her best to will away the stench of peritonitis that permeated even her hair. She wanted to go home and spend a long, lazy Sunday afternoon with Val. They would cuddle in the hammock hanging from the pine trees out back of the house until the heat got too unbearable, then they would put on their swimsuit and play in the blue wading pool until their shoulders became sensitive to the sun. They would nap, snack on microwave popcorn, watch old Godzilla movies and laugh until their sides hurt.
Or she could march into the clinic and tell Jake that she was taking tomorrow off because she was flying to Las Vegas with Johnny Whitehorse—yes, Johnny Whitehorse—and they were going to get married in some tacky little chapel with a justice of the peace who looked, talked, and dressed like Elvis. In all probability she would not return to work because she would no longer
need
to work to pay for her son's therapy, medications, wheelchairs, and thousand-dollar bathtub seats that were nothing more than molded plastic and which Val would outgrow in another three months.
Jake would say in his typical dry manner: "You're joking, right? Allow a man to take care of you? I thought you were a millennium kind of girl, too independent to rely on a man." Then he would remark: "What about the senator? How is he going to take the news that his only daughter has gone over to the enemy?"
Her father the enemy. Even after their meeting last night she couldn't bring herself to believe Johnny's innuendos that her father was in bed with Formation Media. That he had, in some way, played a part in the bankruptcy of the Apache Casino and Resort.
Then she reminded herself that the fallout of the bankruptcy didn't affect just the resort, but an entire state of people who had sunk their entire lives into a dream that had left thousands destitute.
Granted, Senator Foster might never win Husband or Father of the Year, but she refused to believe that he was the kind of man who would destroy another for financial gain.
"Mind if I join you?"
She looked around as Jake sat down beside her, a diet cola in one hand, his stethoscope in the other. He had changed out of his surgical smock. His shirt was pale blue and his jeans were faded to the point of being white. He needed to shave. His eyes looked weary and sad. "How did they take it?" she asked.
"Better than I expected. He's lucky to have a wife like Betty. She'll get him through it. They'll be back next year with another contender. Bill raises good horses." He swigged the cola and regarded her closely. "Why do I get the impression you'd rather be someplace else today?"
"Wouldn't you?"
He shrugged. "Not really."
"Don't you have a social life?"
"Are you asking me if I have a girlfriend?" He grinned.
"Yeah." Leah laughed. "I guess I am."
"If I didn't read the papers I'd think you were flirting with me."
As Leah frowned, Jake got up and walked back into the office. He reappeared with a newspaper that he tossed into her lap. She stared down at an image of herself,
Val,
and Johnny, taken the day before at the park, just moments before they were forced to run for their lives from Johnny's fans. Below that was a photograph of her father attending a Clinton White House function.
WHITEHORSE
TO MARRY SENATOR'S DAUGHTER
Sources close to Johnny Whitehorse have indicated that wedding bells will soon be ringing for
America
's most eligible bachelor. Identified as Leah Foster Starr, only daughter of Senator Carl Foster, the two have been seen together frequently, despite the tragic accident that recently took the life of Whitehorse'
s fiancée,
Dolores Rainwater, news anchor for KRXR Channel 10. Starr, who practices veterinary medicine, recently returned to
Ruidoso after a twelve-year absence, during which time she married Richard Starr, graduated from
Texas
A&M
University
, and practiced medicine in
Pilot Point
,
Texas
. Dr. Starr and her husband were divorced four years ago.
Problems between
Whitehorse
and Senator Foster have been ongoing since Foster stood hard against the compact reformation allowing gambling on the
New Mexico
reservations.
Whitehorse
, representing the
New Mexico
tribes, subsequently sued the state of New
Mexico
for its refusal to negotiate in good faith, and to force it to work out a compact. However, the
U.S.
Supreme Court reaffirmed the state's sovereign immunity to lawsuits by Indian tribes in gambling compact matters. Six months later Foster, in an act of good will toward the state's Native Americans, reversed his stand and spearheaded the legalization of casino gambling on the state's reservations. "Too little, too late,"
Whitehorse
was quoted. "Foster's sudden turnaround, coming eight months after the Apache Casino and Resort development faced bankruptcy and rolled over to Formation Media, smacks of corruption and collusion. I intend to launch a full-scale investigation of the senator and his dealings with Formation Media. I assure the people of this state that Foster has not heard the last of this issue. "