Mistress of the Runes by Andrews

Author:Andrews [Andrews and Austin]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781602823884
Publisher: Bold Strokes Books, Inc.
Published: 2007-09-15T04:00:00+00:00

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Hospitals of any kind are scary places late at night on emergency runs, but horse hospitals, in most parts of the world, are scarier, lacking comforting colorful décor and people in starched uniforms to signal that patients are in professional hands. Mostly horse hospitals look like the inside of an old concrete garage, where someone’s installed a set of horse stocks that keeps the horse from bolting and leaving. All the equipment looks primitive and, at best, like something that might be used under the hood of a car.

Dr. Brown, in blue jeans and an old shirt, said we’d better do a belly tap, and without further discussion, he began shaving the underside of Hlatur’s furry red tummy.

“What do you think it is?” I tried to sound calm for Liz’s sake.

“That’s what we’re trying to find out.”

“What will the belly tap tell you?” I persisted.

“What’s going on in this guy—infection, parasites, something.”

I sucked in my breath when the unimaginably long needle went into Hlatur’s sweet belly, and I let it out minutes later when the needle came out.

Liz had her arms around Hlatur’s big neck and her head buried in his thick mane, silent tears running down her cheeks. Perhaps she was trying to console him, but she also couldn’t bring herself to watch her precious horse’s belly being prodded with a needle as long as a sword.

“Okay.” Brown pulled back from his work. “We’re going to put him on IVs and watch him around the clock. I’ll let you know what the tests show tomorrow.”

“Is he in danger…?” I didn’t want to say of dying, but I knew Dr. Brown could finish the sentence.

“He’s a pretty sick boy. We’ll just have to take it a day at a time and see what happens.”

A wiry vet tech in her fifties, wearing faded blue jeans and a dirty work shirt, came out of the office and led Hlatur out of the garage-like examining room across a driveway and into a large open barn containing several oversized stalls in the middle of a dirt arena. The sides of the stalls were nothing more than rough wooden slats running from the floor to a height of seven feet, but there was plenty of soft bedding on the floor and fresh water.

“He’s so ill,” I said, following close behind her as a wind kicked up, swirling a fine, soft dust around our ankles, and for a moment the fragrant, balmy air that seemed to come from nowhere lifted my heart and gave me inexplicable hope.

She looked at me over her shoulder, acknowledging my concern. “He is what you see,” she said, and while I thought her remark cold, I noticed her eyes were warm and as clear as crystals, and she had a gentleness about her that made me believe she would take care of poor Hlatur, whom she led into his hospital stall.

Overhead a pulley system held the hookups for large IV bags that would dangle above him out of his reach. The IV line and needle extended out of the sky and found its mark in his neck.

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