The Horsewoman(18)

Maggie took in some air, felt the pain she still felt in her ribs when she didn’t regulate her breathing properly, and let it out.

“I’m just worried it might be cellulitis,” she said then. “Not like I haven’t seen that before.”

Daniel turned to look at Maggie and said, “Please, let’s not go there.”

“Try and stop me,” Maggie said.

Lord Stanley had been stricken with the bad bacterial infection the last time she was on the Olympic short list, the first time she felt as if the gods had pissed on her, royally.

Maggie had been around vets her whole life and had educated herself as best she could about what could go wrong with horses. She called it her advanced barn degree in veterinary medicine.

Cellulitis attacked the tissue below a horse’s skin and could affect any part of a horse’s body. And could cause the kind of swelling they were all looking at right now with Coronado. It was most common in the hind legs and could cause lameness so severe that eventually the horse was unable to bear weight on the affected leg.

That was where the infection attacked Lord Stanley, Maggie’s dream horse before Coronado became her dream horse. They had treated him with antibiotics, but then the cellulitis came back, worse than before, and more lameness along with it. The antibiotics had worked better the second time around. The horse eventually stopped limping, but he never jumped again. He was now living at a farm in North Carolina owned by a rich woman who took in injured horses the way shelters took in stray dogs.

“What happened?” Maggie heard her mother say now as Caroline Atwood marched into the stall.

Maggie told her, keeping her voice down, her eyes locked on Daniel and Coronado.

“Shit,” her mother said. “Shit shit shit.”

“Happens,” Becky said.

How fragile a thousand-pound animal, even one fast and strong and amazing in the ring, can be, Maggie thought. How fragile the whole damn sport can be. She’d just found out herself, the hard way, on what was supposed to be a simple trail ride.

“Where’s our goddamn vet?” her mother said.

“On his way,” Daniel said.

A few minutes later Dr. Richard Howser walked into the barn.

Steve Gorton was right behind him.

“Just what we need,” Maggie whispered to Becky.

“Somebody needs to tell me what the hell is going on here!” Gorton said, as if addressing all of them, and maybe the horse, too.

“He was limping when he left the ring,” Maggie said in a quiet voice. “We found some bruising, and called Richard, Dr. Howser, and now here we all are.”

Gorton turned and looked at Becky.

“Did you do something?” he said.

For once, Maggie watched her daughter hold her tongue.

“I rode the horse, Mr. Gorton,” Becky said.

“Why don’t we let Richard do his work,” Maggie said, “and then we can all talk about it.”

The verbal fire that burned in Caroline and Becky had skipped a generation with her. Maggie’s anxiety ebbed a bit as she watched Dr. Howser at work. He was as calm as anybody Maggie knew, with the possible exception of her ex-husband.

The vet methodically examined all of Coronado’s legs, then took some blood, promising he would fast-track it at the lab.

“So what is it?” Gorton said, with the authority that signaled this stall was now his office.

“I wouldn’t even speculate at this point,” Howser said, then reached into his medical bag for bandages he began to apply to Coronado’s left hind leg.

When he’d finished, they all stepped outside. Steve Gorton said, “All due respect, I need to get a second opinion here.”

Maggie fought back a smile at hearing “all due respect”—blunt-force code for bad news.

“With all due respect to you, Mr. Gorton,” the vet said, “any second opinion would be the same as mine. We just have to wait and see. And not jump to any conclusions.”

Gorton looked at Maggie now and said, “He’s aware that he works for me, too, right?”

“Richard is the best there is,” Maggie said, attempting to avert a scene. “Coronado is in good hands.”

Gorton turned back to Becky.

“You’re sure you didn’t notice something on your ride, and the Atwood Farm family isn’t just covering for some mistake you made in the ring?” he said.

“I can answer that, Steve,” Maggie said, “because I watched the round and watched the video of it afterward. It was a perfect ride.”

“No shit?” he said. “If it was such a perfect ride why’d the doctor have to make a damn house call once it was over?”

Dr. Howser held up the vial of blood he’d taken and said, “I need to get this to the lab. As soon as I get the results, I’ll call.”

“I want to be in the loop on this,” Gorton said.

“You will be,” Maggie said.

“Just so we’re clear,” he said.

Maggie thought, We couldn’t be more clear if you’d hired a skywriter.

“By the way, Steve?” she said. “How is it that you happened to show up right behind Dr. Howser?”

She saw him hesitate, just slightly.

“I was meeting a friend at the tent,” he said. “Thought I’d pop in, maybe get to see her ride him. Good that I did. I don’t like to get this shit secondhand.”