“He might,” she said. “But I’ve got news for you. They’re all weird.”
I put Coronado back in motion, easing him into a trot toward the far end of the ring. Mom was still hanging over the fence, clearly happy to be outside, happy to be back in this world, even on the sidelines. Her next stop, I knew, was the gym.
Coronado and I were rounding the far end of the ring when I brought him to a stop.
“He’s limping!” I yelled.
EIGHTEEN
Maggie
IN A BLINK, Daniel and Emilio both came running, Maggie Atwood trailing behind on her crutches, feeling as slow as a plow horse. Emilio got to Coronado first, helping Becky down.
“Which leg?” Daniel said.
“Hind left, pretty sure,” Becky said.
The horse could not be hurt, Maggie repeated to herself. Could. Not. Be.
“What did I do to get the horse gods pissing on me this way?” she said to Becky, borrowing an expression from Caroline.
Daniel had taken the reins and was walking Coronado, noticeably limping now, slowly back to the barn. Emilio ran up to the house to get Caroline Atwood.
When they had Coronado in his stall, Emilio took off his saddle and Daniel carefully removed the horse’s boots from his lower legs. All Maggie and Becky could do was stand and watch helplessly.
“Somebody should call Dr. Howser,” Maggie said.
“I already did,” Daniel said without looking up.
Maggie hadn’t even noticed him on his phone. She had been too focused on her horse.
Maggie heard Becky say, in a voice that wasn’t much louder than a whisper, “Please don’t let it be bad.”
“Back at you,” Maggie said.
“I wish we could ask Coronado,” Becky said.
“You always want to ask,” Maggie said. “But they never talk.”
Then they both heard Daniel say, “Maybe here.”
He was in a crouch next to Coronado’s hind left leg, the boot from the lower leg still in his hand. He pointed to an angry-looking red spot, the size of a show ribbon, some dirt caked on it. To Maggie, a former high school soccer player, it looked like turf burn.
Emilio carried a bowl, sponge, and clean white towel from the tack room. Daniel gently went to work soaping the bruise, already looking hot and painful and swollen, while Emilio patted Coronado’s head and spoke softly to him in Spanish.
“Did I do something wrong?” Becky said to her mom. “You can tell me if I did.”
Maggie put her hand on her daughter’s shoulder.
“You rode your horse,” she said.
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.