Love and Peaches by Jodi Lynn Anderson

Author:Jodi Lynn Anderson
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins

Seventeen

“You sure you’re gonna be okay, Bird?” Leeda asked.

Birdie nodded, wincing and holding her calf. Poopie and Walter were sitting beside her, Uncle Walter looking at his daughter with worry. Birdie’s mom was on her way, and Murphy was finding a vending machine. Grey, miraculously unscathed, stood behind Leeda.

Birdie looked embarrassed. Poopie had explained exasperatedly, on the way over, that Walter wasn’t selling to Horatio Balmeade, and that he had intended to turn him down in the meeting. Now, huddled on the hard emergency-room chair, Birdie looked apologetic and pained at the same time. Leeda felt for her.

“You go on, Leeda,” Uncle Walter said. “We’ll take good care of her. It’s probably just a sprain.” He reached out his hand to shake Grey’s. “It was nice to meet you.”

“You too.”

Leeda and Grey walked out into the hallway and down to the parking lot where Grey’s truck was waiting.

He had explained to her on the way to the hospital that Sneezy had colic, and he needed her help. He’d tried her on her BlackBerry, but when Leeda had seen it was Grey calling, she’d ignored it. That’s why he’d come to the orchard.

“So I don’t understand,” Leeda said. “What’s colic? And why can’t we have a vet out?”

“It’s a big deal for horses. It’s basically constipation, but the thing is that to try to soothe the pain, they sometimes roll. And rolling, when they’re all blocked up like that, can burst their intestines.”

Leeda winced. In her head, she cursed her grandmother for leaving her the ponies. She didn’t want to deal with a pony that might die. Grey drove fast, and it worried her all the more.

When they arrived at the corral, several of the ponies were up at the fence looking jittery, their ears pointed forward and their fur spiky. Leeda’s eyes swept the field as she crossed the lawn behind Grey. She gasped when she saw a lump over toward the trees. Grey was already hauling himself over the fence. She followed, her shirt snagging on one of the nails as she tried ineptly to climb over.

Sneezy was on her left side. Leeda breathed a sigh of relief to see her eyes open and her chest moving, although her breath was extremely labored. She yanked her shirt off the nail and crossed the lot, standing beside the pony, helpless.

“We gotta get her up. We can’t let her roll.”

Leeda pictured intestines bursting and started to feel a little light-headed.

“Leeda, come on.” Grey was gesturing to the pony’s back. “I’ll pull the head; you push her off her side toward her feet.”

Leeda nodded, kneeling on the ground, feeling all thumbs and totally graceless. When Grey gave the signal, she heaved. For something miniature, Sneezy was incredibly heavy, and she merely sank back against Leeda’s hands.

“Again—one, two, three.”

He pulled and Leeda pushed, and this time Sneezy seemed to become suddenly alert. She tottered up, first onto her hind legs, then straightening her front legs out underneath herself.

Leeda shot a bright, relieved smile at Grey, but he looked only slightly mollified.

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