Chapter Twenty-three 3 page

'In a coma, you mean,' Annie said, her tone challenging him to talk straight with her.

'That's not what they're calling it, but yes, I guess that's what it is.'

'What else?' There was a pause. 'Come on Robert, for God's sake.'

'Her leg's pretty bad too. It seems the truck went over it.' Annie took a wincing little breath.

'They're looking at it now. Listen Annie, I better get back there. I'll meet you at the train.'

'No, don't. Stay with her. I'll get a cab.'

'Okay. I'll call you again if there's news.' He paused. 'She's going to be alright.'

'Yes, I know.' She pressed a button on the phone and put it down. Outside, sunlit fields of perfect white altered their geometry as the train sped by. Annie rummaged in her bag for her sunglasses, put them on and laid her head back against the seat.

The guilt had started immediately upon Robert's first call. She should have been up there. It was the first thing she said to Don Farlow when she hung up. He was sweet and came and put his arm around her, saying all the right things.

'It would have made no difference Annie. You couldn't have done anything.'

'Yes I could. I could have stopped her going. What was Robert thinking of, letting her go out riding on a day like this?'

'It's a beautiful day. You wouldn't have stopped her.'

Farlow was right of course, but the guilt remained because it wasn't, she knew, about whether or not she should have gone up with them last night. It was the mere tip of a long seam of guilt that snaked its way back through the thirteen years her daughter had been alive.

Annie had taken six weeks off work when Grace was born and had loved every minute. True, a lot of the less lovable minutes had been delegated to Elsa, their Jamaican nanny, who remained to this day the linchpin of their domestic life.

Like many ambitious women of her generation, Annie had been determined to prove the compatibility of motherhood and career. But while other media mothers used their work to promote this ethic, Annie, had never flaunted it, shunning so many requests for photo spreads of her with Grace that women's magazines soon stopped asking. Not so long ago she had found Grace flipping through such a piece about a TV anchor-woman, proudly pictured with her new baby.

'Why didn't we ever do this?' Grace said, not looking up. Annie answered, rather too tartly, that she thought it was immoral, like product placement. And Grace had nodded thoughtfully, still not looking at her. 'Uh-huh,' she said, matter-of-fact, flipping on to something else. 'I guess people think you're younger if you make out you haven't got kids.'

This comment and the fact that it was uttered without a trace of malice had given Annie such a shock that for several weeks she thought of little else than her relationship with Grace or, as she now saw it, her lack of one.

It hadn't always been so. In fact until four years ago when she'd taken her first editorship, Annie had prided herself that she and Grace were closer than almost any mother and daughter she could think of. As a celebrated journalist, more famous than many of those she wrote about, her time until then had been her own. If she so chose, she could work from home or take days off whenever she wanted. When she traveled, she would often take Grace with her. Once they'd spent the best part of a week, just the two of them, at a famously fancy hotel in Paris, waiting for some prima donna fashion designer to grant Annie a promised audience. Every day they walked miles shopping and sightseeing and spent the evenings guzzling delicious room service in front of the TV, snuggled in a gilded, emperor-size bed like a pair of naughty sisters.

Executive life was very different. And in the strain and euphoria of transforming a stuffy, little-read magazine into the hottest read in town, Annie had at first refused to acknowledge the toll it was taking at home. She and Grace now had what she proudly referred to as 'quality time'. From her present perspective, its main quality seemed to Annie to be oppression.

They had one hour together in the mornings when she forced the child to do her piano practice and two hours in the evening when she forced her to do homework. Words intended as motherly guidance seemed increasingly doomed to be taken as criticism.

At weekends things were better and the horse riding helped keep intact what fragile bridge there remained between them. Annie herself no longer rode but, unlike Robert, had from her own childhood an understanding of the peculiar tribal world of riding and showjumping. She enjoyed driving Grace and her horse to events. But even at its best, their time together never matched the easy trust that Grace shared with Robert.

In a myriad minor ways, it was to her father that the girl first turned. And Annie was by now resigned to the notion that here history was inexorably repeating. She herself had been her father's child, her mother unwilling or unable to see beyond the pool of golden light encircling Annie's brother. Now Annie, with no such excuse, felt herself propelled by pitiless genes to replicate the pattern with Grace.

The train slowed in a long curve and came to a halt in Hudson and she sat still and looked out toward the restored veranda of the platform, with its cast-iron pillars. There was a man standing exactly where Robert normally waited and he stepped forward and held out his arms to a woman with two small children who had just climbed down from the train. Annie watched him hug each of them in turn, then shepherd them toward the parking lot. The boy insisted on trying to carry the heaviest bag and the man laughed and let him. Annie looked away and was glad when the train started to move out again. In twenty-five minutes she would be in Albany.

They picked up Pilgrim's tracks farther back along the road. There were spots of blood still red in the snow among the hoofprints. It was the hunter who saw them first and he followed them, leading Logan and Koopman down through the trees toward the river.

Harry Logan knew the horse they were looking for, though not as well as the one whose mangled carcass he had just watched them cut from the wreckage of the jackknifed trailer. Gulliver was one of a number of horses he looked after up at Mrs Dyer's place but the Macleans used another local vet instead. Logan had noticed the flashy new Morgan a couple of times in the stable. From the blood it was trailing, he knew it must be badly hurt. He still felt shaken by what he had seen and wished he could have got here earlier to put Gulliver out of his misery. But then he might have had to watch them taking Judith's body away and that would have been tough. She was such a nice kid. It was bad enough seeing the Maclean girl whom he hardly knew.

The rushing noise of the river was getting loud and now he caught sight of it down there through the trees. The hunter had stopped and was waiting for them. Logan stumbled on a dead branch and nearly fell and the hunter looked at him with scarcely veiled contempt. Macho little shit, thought Logan. He had taken an instant dislike to the guy as he did to all hunters. He wished he'd told him to put his goddamn rifle back in the car.

The water was running fast, breaking over rocks and surging around a silver birch that had toppled from the bank. The three men stood looking down at where the tracks disappeared by the water.

'Must have tried crossing over or something,' said Koopman, trying to be helpful. But the hunter shook his head. The opposite bank was steep and there were no tracks going up it.

They walked along the bank, nobody speaking. Then the hunter stopped and put his hand out for them to do the same.

'There,' he said, in a low voice, nodding up ahead.

They were about twenty yards from the old railroad bridge. Logan peered, shielding his eyes against the sun. He couldn't see a thing. Then there was a movement under the bridge and at last Logan saw him. The horse was on the far side, in the shadows, looking right at them. His face was wet and there was a steady dark dripping from his chest into the water. There seemed to be something stuck to his front, just below the base of the neck, though from here Logan couldn't make out what it was. Every so often the horse jerked his head down and to the side and blew out a strand of pink froth that floated quickly away downstream and dissolved. The hunter swung the gun bag off his shoulder and started unzipping it.

'Sorry pal, they're out of season,' Logan said, casual as he could, pushing past. The hunter didn't even look up, just pulled the rifle out, a sleek Winchester .308 with a telescopic sight as fat as a bottle. Koopman looked on admiringly. The hunter took some bullets from a pocket and calmly started loading the rifle.

'Thing's bleedin' to death,' he said.

'Oh yeah?' said Logan. 'You're a vet too, huh?'

The guy gave a scornful little laugh. He went on slotting bullets into the magazine with the infuriating air of someone who knew he would be proven right. Logan wanted to strangle him. He turned back toward the bridge and took a careful step forward. Immediately the horse backed away and now he was in the sunlight on the far side of the bridge and Logan could see there wasn't anything stuck to the animal's chest. It was a flap of pink skin hanging loose from a terrible L-shaped gash, about two feet long. Blood was pulsing out of the exposed flesh and streaming down his breast into the water. Logan could now see that the wetness on the horse's face was blood too. Even from here he could tell the nasal bone had been smashed in.

Logan had a sinking feeling in his stomach. This was one hell of a beautiful horse and he hated the idea of putting him down. But even if he could get near enough to control the bleeding, the damage looked so severe, it was odds on the animal would die. He took another step toward him and Pilgrim backed off again, turning to check out the escape upstream. There was a sharp sound behind him, the hunter racking the bolt of his rifle. Logan turned on him.

'Will you shut the fuck up?'

The hunter didn't respond, just gave Koopman a knowing look. There was a rapport developing here that Logan was keen to break. He put his bag down and squatted to get some things out of it, talking to Koopman now.

'I want to see if I can get to him. Could you loop over to the far side of the bridge there and block him off?'

'Yes sir.'

'Maybe get yourself a branch or something and wave it at him if he looks like heading your way. You might have to get your feet wet.'

'Yes sir.' He was already going back up into the trees. Logan called after him.

'Holler when you're ready. And don't get too close!'

Logan loaded a syringe with sedative and stuffed some other things he thought he might need into the pockets of his parka. He was aware of the hunter's eyes on him but ignored him and stood up. Pilgrim's head was low but he was watching every move they made. They waited, the rush of water loud about them. Then Koopman called and as the horse turned to see, Logan stepped carefully down into the river, concealing the syringe in his hand as best he could.

Here and there among the torrent were slabs of exposed rock, washed clean of snow, and he tried to use them as stepping-stones. Pilgrim turned back and saw him. He was getting agitated now, not knowing which way to run and he pawed the water and snorted out another slick of bloody froth. Logan had run out of stepping-stones and knew the moment had come to get wet. He lowered one foot into the current and felt the icy surge over the top of his boot. It was so cold, it made him gasp.

Koopman appeared in the bend of the river beyond the bridge. He too was up to his knees in the water and he had a big birch branch in his hand. The horse was looking from one of them to the other. Logan could see the fear in the animal's eye and there was something else there too which scared him a little. But he spoke to him in a soft, soothing lilt.

'It's okay fella. It's okay now.'

He was within twenty feet of the horse now and was trying to figure out how he was going to do this. If he could get hold of the bridle, he might have a chance of giving the shot in the neck. In case something went wrong, he had loaded more sedative into the syringe than he would need. If he could get it into a vein in the neck, he would have to inject less than if he shot into a muscle. In either case, he would have to take care not to give too much. A horse in as bad a state as this couldn't be allowed to fall unconscious. He would have to try and inject just enough to calm him so they could lead him out of the river and get him somewhere safer.

Now that he was this close, Logan could see the chest wound. It was as bad as anything he'd ever seen and he knew they didn't have long. From the way the blood was pumping, he figured that the horse had already lost maybe up to a gallon of it.

'It's okay young fella. No one's going to hurt you.'

Pilgrim snorted and wheeled away from him, taking a few steps toward Koopman, stumbling and sending up a flash of water that rainbowed in the sun.

'Shake your branch!' Logan yelled.

Koopman did and Pilgrim stopped. Logan used the flurry to lunge nearer, stepping into a hole as he did and wetting himself up to the crotch. Sweet Jesus, it was cold. The horse's white-rimmed eyes saw him come and he started off again toward Koopman.

'And again!'

The shake of the branch stopped him and Logan dived forward and made a grab. He got the reins, taking a turn in them and felt the horse brace and twist against him. He tried to step into the shoulder, keeping as clear as he could from the hind feet that were coming around to get him and he reached up quickly and managed to get the needle into the horse's neck. At the touch of the needle, Pilgrim exploded. He reared up, screaming in alarm and Logan had a fraction of a moment to push the plunger. But as he did so, the horse knocked him sideways, driving into him so that Logan lost all balance and control. Without meaning to, he injected the entire contents of the syringe into Pilgrim's neck.

The horse knew now who was the more dangerous of these men and he leapt away toward Koopman. Logan still had the reins twisted over his left hand, so he was whipped off his feet and pulled headfirst into the water. He felt the icy water streaming through his clothes as he was dragged along like a tangled waterskier. All he could see was surf. The reins bit into the flesh of his hand and his shoulder hit a rock and he cried out in pain. Then the reins came free and he was able to lift his head and take a lungful of air. He could see Koopman now, diving out of the way and the horse splashing past him and scrambling up the bank. The syringe was still hanging from his neck. Logan stood up and watched the horse disappearing up through the trees.

'Shit,' he said.

'You alright?' Koopman asked.

Logan just nodded and started to wring the water from his parka. Something caught his eye up on the bridge and he looked up to see the hunter, leaning on the parapet. He'd been watching and was grinning from ear to ear.

'Why don't you get the fuck out of here,' said Logan.

She saw Robert as soon as she came through the swing doors. At the end of the corridor there was a waiting area with pale gray sofas and a low table with flowers on it and he was standing there looking out of a tall window, the sun streaming in about him. He turned at the sound of her footsteps and had to screw his eyes up to see into the relative dark of the corridor. Annie was touched by how vulnerable he looked in this moment before he saw her, with half his face lit by the sun and his skin so pale it was all but translucent. Then he found her and came walking toward her, with a grim little smile. They put their arms around each other and stayed like that for a while, saying nothing.

'Where is she?' Annie asked at last.

He took hold of her arms and held her away from him a little so he could look at her.

'They've taken her downstairs. They're operating on her now.' He saw her frown and went on quickly before she could say anything. 'They said she's going to be okay. She's still unconscious but they've done all these checks and scans and it doesn't look like there's any brain damage.'

He stopped and swallowed and Annie waited, watching his face. She knew from the way he was trying so hard to keep his voice steady that of course there was something else.

'Go on.'

But he couldn't. He started to cry. Just hung his head and stood there with his shoulders shaking. He was still holding Annie's arms and she gently disengaged herself and held him the same way.

'Go on. Tell me.'

He took a long breath and tilted his head back, looking at the ceiling before he could look at her again. He made one false start then managed to say it.

'They're taking her leg off.'

Annie would later come to feel both wonder and shame at her reaction that afternoon. She had never thought herself particularly stalwart in moments of crisis, except at work where she positively relished them. Nor did she normally find it difficult to show her emotions. Perhaps it was simply that Robert made the decision for her by breaking down. He cried, so she didn't. Someone had to hold on or they would all be swept away.

But Annie had no doubt that it could easily have gone the other way. As it was, the news of what they were doing to her daughter in that building at that very moment entered her like a shaft of ice. Apart from a quickly suppressed urge to scream, all that came into her head was a string of questions, so objective and practical that they seemed callous. 'How much of it?' He frowned, lost. 'What?' 'Her leg. How much of it are they taking off?' 'From above the—' He broke off, having to summon control. The detail seemed so shocking. 'Above the knee.'

'Which leg?'

'The right.'

'How far above the knee?'

'Jesus Christ Annie! What the hell does it matter?' He pulled away from her, freeing himself, wiping his wet face with the back of a hand.

'Well, it matters quite a lot I think.' She was astonishing even herself. He was right, of course it didn't matter. It was academic, ghoulish even, to pursue it but she wasn't going to stop now. 'Is it just above the knee or is she losing the top of her leg as well?'

'Just above the knee. I haven't got the exact measurements but why don't you just go on down and I'm sure they'll let you have a look.'

He turned away to the window and Annie stood watching as he took out a handkerchief and did a proper job on the mucus and tears, angry at himself now for having wept. There were footsteps in the corridor behind her.

'Mrs Maclean?'

Annie turned. A young nurse, all in white, darted a look at Robert and decided Annie was the one to talk to.

'There's a call for you.'

The nurse led the way, walking in small rapid steps, her white shoes making no sound on the shining tiled floor of the corridor so that she seemed to Annie to be gliding. She showed Annie to a phone near the reception desk and put the call through from the office.

It was Joan Dyer from the stables. She apologized for calling and asked nervously after Grace. Annie said she was still in a coma. She didn't mention the leg. Mrs Dyer didn't linger. The reason she had called was Pilgrim. They'd found him and Harry Logan had been on the phone asking what they should do.

'What do you mean?' Annie asked.

'The horse is in a very bad way. There are broken bones, deep flesh wounds and he's lost a lot of blood. Even if they do all they can to save him and he survives, he's never going to be the same.'

'Where's Liz? Can't we get her down there?'

Liz Hammond was the vet who looked after Pilgrim and was also a family friend. It was she who had gone down to Kentucky for them last summer to check Pilgrim out before they bought him. She'd been equally smitten.

'She's away on some conference,' Mrs Dyer said. 'She's not back until next weekend.'

'Logan wants to put him down?'

'Yes. I'm sorry Annie. Pilgrim's under sedation now and Harry says he may not even come around. He'd like your authority to put him down.'

'You mean shoot him?' She heard herself doing it again, hammering away at irrelevant detail as she had just now with Robert. What the hell did it matter how they were going to kill the horse?

'By injection, I imagine.'

'And what if I say no?'

There was a pause at the other end.

'Well, I suppose they'd have to try and get him somewhere they could operate on him. Cornell maybe.' She paused again. 'Apart from anything else Annie, it would end up costing you a lot more than he's insured for.'

It was the mention of money that clinched it for Annie, for the thought had yet to coalesce that there might be some connection between the life of this horse and the life of her daughter.

'I don't care what the hell it costs,' she snapped and she could feel the older woman flinch. 'You tell Logan if he kills that horse, I'll sue him.'

She hung up.

'Come on. You're okay, come on.'

Koopman was walking backward down the slope, waving the truck on with both arms. It reversed slowly down after him into the trees and the chains hanging from the hoist on its rear end swung and clinked as it came. It was the truck that the mill people had standing by to unload their new turbines and Koopman had commandeered it, and them, for this new purpose. Following close behind it was a big Ford pickup hitched to an open-top trailer. Koopman looked over his shoulder to where Logan and a small crowd of helpers were kneeling around the horse.

Pilgrim was lying on his side in a giant bloodstain that was spreading out through the snow under the knees of those trying to save him. This was as far as he'd got when the flood of sedative hit. His forelegs buckled and he went down on his knees. For a few moments he'd tried to fight it but by the time Logan arrived he was out for the count.

Logan had got Koopman to call Joan Dyer on his mobile and was glad the hunter wasn't around to hear him asking her to get the owner's permission to put the animal down. Then he'd sent Koopman running for help, knelt by the horse and got to work trying to stem the bleeding. He reached deep into the steaming chest wound, his hand groping through layers of torn soft-tissue till he was up to his elbow in gore. He felt around for the source of the bleeding and found it, a punctured artery, thank God a small one. He could feel it pumping hot blood into his hand and he remembered the little clamps he had put in his pocket and scrabbled with his other hand to find one. He clipped it on and immediately felt the pumping stop. But there was still blood flowing from a hundred ruptured veins so he struggled out of his sodden parka, emptied its pockets and squeezed as much water and blood as he could from it. Then he rolled it up and stuffed it as gently as he could into the wound. He cursed out loud. What he really needed now was fluids. The bag of Plasmalyte he had brought was in his bag down by the river. He got to his feet and half ran, half fell back down there to get it.

By the time he returned, the rescue-squad paramedics were there and were covering Pilgrim with blankets. One of them was holding out a phone to him.

'Mrs Dyer for you,' he said.

'I can't talk to her now, for Christsakes,' Logan said. He knelt down and hitched the five-liter bag of Plasmalyte to Pilgrim's neck, then gave him a shot of steroids to fight the shock. The horse's breathing was shallow and irregular and his limbs rapidly losing temperature and Logan yelled for more blankets to wrap around the animal's legs after they had bandaged them to lessen the blood flow.

One of the rescue-squad people had some green drapes from an ambulance and Logan carefully extracted his blood-soaked parka from the chest wound and packed the drapes in instead. He leaned back on his heels, out of breath, and started loading a syringe with penicillin. His shirt was dark red and sodden and blood dripped from his elbows as he held the syringe up to flick the bubbles out.

'This is fucking crazy,' he said.

He injected the penicillin into Pilgrim's neck. The horse was as good as dead. The chest wound alone was enough to justify putting him down but that wasn't the half of it. His nasal bone was hideously crunched in, there were clearly some broken ribs, an ugly gash over the left cannon bone and God knows how many other smaller cuts and bruises. He could also tell from the way the horse had run up the slope that there was lameness high up in the right foreleg. He should just put the poor beast out of its agony. But now he'd got this far, he was damned if he was going to give that trigger-happy little fucker of a hunter the satisfaction of knowing he was right. If the horse died of his own accord, so be it.

Koopman had the mill truck and the trailer down beside them now and Logan saw they had managed to find a canvas sling from somewhere. The rescue-squad guy still had Mrs Dyer standing by on the phone and Logan took it from him.

'Okay, I'm yours,' he said and as he listened, he indicated to them where to put the sling. When he heard the poor woman's tactful rendering of Annie's message, he just smiled and shook his head.

'Terrific,' he said.'Nice to be appreciated.'

He handed the phone back and helped drag the two canvas sling straps under Pilgrim's barrel, through what was now a sea of red slush. Everyone was standing and Logan thought they all looked funny with their matching red knees. Someone handed him a dry jacket and for the first time since he was in the river he realized how cold he was.

Koopman and the driver hitched the ends of the sling to the hoist chains and then stood back with the others as Pilgrim was slowly lifted into the air and swung like a carcass onto the trailer. Logan climbed up there with two paramedics and they manhandled the horse's limbs so that eventually he lay as before on his side. Koopman passed the vet's things up to him while others spread blankets over the horse.

Logan gave another shot of steroids and took out a new bag of Plasmalyte. He suddenly felt very tired. He figured the chances of the horse being alive by the time they got to his clinic were odds on against.

'We'll call ahead,' Koopman said. 'So they'll know when to expect you.'

'Thanks.'

'All set now?'

'I guess so.'

Koopman slapped the rear end of the pickup that was hitched to the trailer and yelled for the driver to move out. It started slowly up the slope.

'Good luck,' Koopman called after them but Logan didn't seem to hear. The young deputy looked vaguely disappointed. It was all over and everyone was going home. There was a zipping sound behind him and he turned to look. The hunter was putting his rifle back in its bag.

'Thanks for your help,' Koopman said. The hunter nodded, swung the bag over his shoulder and walked away.

Robert woke with a jolt and for a moment thought he was in his office. The screen of his computer had gone berserk, quivering green lines racing each other across ranges of jagged peaks. Oh no, he thought, a virus. Rampaging through his files on the Dunford Securities case. Then he saw the bed with its covers neatly tented over what remained of his daughter's leg and he remembered where he was.

He looked at his watch. It was nearly five a.m. The room was dark except for where the angle-lamp behind the bed cast a cocoon of soft light over Grace's head and her naked shoulders. Her eyes were closed and her face serene as if she didn't mind at all the snaking coils of plastic tube that had invaded her body. There was a tube into her mouth from the respirator and another up her nose and down into her stomach through which she could be fed. More tubes looped down from the bottles and bags that hung above the bed and they met in a tangled fury at her neck, as if fighting to be first into the valve slotted into her jugular. The valve was masked by flesh-colored tape, as were the electrodes on her temples and chest and the hole they had cut above one of her young breasts to insert a fiber-optic tube into her heart.

Without a riding hat, the doctors said, the girl might well be dead. When her head hit the road, the hat had cracked but not the skull. A second scan however had found some diffused bleeding in the brain so they had drilled a tiny hole in her skull and inserted something that was now monitoring the pressure inside. The respirator, they said, would help stop the swelling in the brain. Its rhythmic whoosh, like the waves of a mechanical sea breaking on shingle, was what had lulled Robert into sleep. He had been holding her hand and it lay palm up where he had unwittingly discarded it. He took it again in both of his and felt the falsely reassuring warmth of her.

He leaned forward and gently pressed down a piece of tape that had come unstuck from one of the catheters in her arm. He looked up at the battery of machines each of whose precise purpose Robert had insisted on having them explain. Now, without having to move, he carried out a systematic check, scanned each screen, valve and fluid level to make sure nothing had happened while he slept. He knew it was all computerized and alarms would sound at the central monitoring desk around the corner if anything went wrong, but he had to see for himself. Satisfied now, still holding Grace's hand, he settled back in his seat. Annie was sleeping in a little room they had provided down the corridor. She had wanted him to wake her at midnight so that she could take over the vigil but as he himself had dozed Robert thought he would let her go on sleeping.

Date: 2015-12-17; view: 641