Page 9 of A Photo Finish
“Any word from Mira on DD?” Mira Thorne is our friend and our newly hired farm veterinarian. She takes care of all the horses in the Gold Rush Ranch program, both at the track and at the farm.
Billie nibbles at her lip nervously now and shoves her hands into her pockets, obviously worried about our boy too. “She said he’s fine,” is her quiet reply. “She’ll call as soon as she knows anything more.”
“You should have gone with her.”
Billie rolls her eyes. “And what? Left you all by yourself? Mira’s got this.”
I let my lashes flutter shut and sink back into the lumpy pillow. It’s like they want you to be uncomfortable in the hospital. With my eyes closed, all I can see on the back of my eyelids is this entire season swirling down the porcelain bowl with a loud flush. My chance to prove I’m good at this, rather than just the girl who got the ride on one of the world’s most exceptional racehorses and struck gold.
This fuckingsucks.
“Okay, Miss Eaton,” a middle-aged man with a white coat over his slacks and dress shirt breezes into the room, “I have good news for you today.”
I furrow my brow. Nothing about today screams good news to me.
“The imaging we had done tells me that nothing is badly broken.”
I stare at my black and blue leg. It looks pretty broken.
“Are you sure?”
He laughs good-naturedly. “Very sure. There’s a lot of bruising. Soft tissue trauma in the knee. And a small fracture in your fibula.”
I continue to stare at my leg, still not fully convinced that it’s not totally shattered.
The doctor takes my silence as an opportunity to keep talking. Looking down at the clipboard in his hands, he continues, “No surgery required. But you need to take it easy for at least a month. Crutches at the start, at least until the swelling goes down. Try to keep off any stairs. And definitely no riding.”
I snort.Yeah. That’s not going to happen.
“Miss Eaton, I’m serious. I know how athletes can be. But if you fracture the bone further, or tear something in your knee, you will require surgery. And the rehabilitation timeline for that is much longer. You’re lucky it’s not worse. Don’t squander that.”
Lucky?
Billie steps in now. No doubt reading the look on my face. “No problem, Doc. I’ll keep her on the straight and narrow.”
The man barely looks at Billie. Instead, he raises his eyebrows and inclines his head toward me, obviously seeking some sort of affirmation. I wave one hand in the air dismissively before crossing my arms. He won’t know what I do once I leave this place.
“Got it,” I mumble, dropping my eyes and sighing, feeling more than a little chastised.
“Good. Let me grab you some painkillers, and then we’ll get you discharged.”
I force my cheeks up into some semblance of a smile. Too sore and pissed off to do much else. I’m ready for some pain relief and my own bed. He turns on his heel and strides out of the room.
“Don’t worry, Vi. We’ll find you somewhere comfortable to stay.”
“What?” I look at Billie, confused.
“You’re not doing those crazy stairs up to your apartment right now. And back down?” She shudders. “I don’t even want to hear about it.”
“Okay, mom. Where are you planning on putting me then?”
Billie scrubs her face, clearly stressed, even though she’s trying to play it cool and hold it all together for me.
“I’ll get Vaughn to stay with his brother at the main house and you can stay with me at the cottage.”
“In the love shack?” I blurt out just as a nurse walks in with a small white cup and hands it to me.
“The love shack?” Billie looks confused as I eye the two pills in the paper cup, toss them back, and then chase them with the water from the table beside me. I almost spit it back up. City water tastes all wrong.
