The following excerpt is from Chapter 9 of Adventures of the Horse Doctor’s Husband 3.

 

Chapter 9

Managing Madness

One Sunday morning, Erica was out back riding her horse, which is how she tempts fate when she’s on call. To be fair, she can be back in the barn, unsaddled, and upstairs to change clothes in less than five minutes. I was at the computer, editing the latest podcast recording. I had Google Voice open on my second screen, just so I would have a heads up if an emergency happened.

We use Google Voice for our emergency hotline. That allows us to transfer the number to whichever doctor is on call. It also allows me to see the transcripts of the voicemails people leave, which is often entertaining. Not because of the emergencies, mind you, but because the transcript software doesn’t always do a very good job. The message that popped up on my screen took me a minute to decipher.

This is Monica caution. I just got hit by an archer. I think the house is are fine but the doors are cursed. I need help. Please call me back.

Archer is the name of the next town south of us, and also the name of the road between Archer and Gainesville. That part was fairly easy to figure out, but the rest of it left me scratching my head. I stepped out on the porch to see if Erica had gotten the message yet. She was riding up to the barn, already on the phone.

“Is it safe to drive?” Erica asked. She was on her Bluetooth headset, so I couldn’t hear the other side of the conversation. “Okay, I think the best answer is to go back to your house and we’ll work on getting them out there. That way we don’t have to figure out another trailer to get them home.”

We were clearly going to see whatever this was, so I went back in and closed the podcast I’d been working on. By the time I filled my water bottle and grabbed a granola bar, Erica was upstairs.

“What do we have?” I asked, following her to the bedroom.

“Trailer wreck. Not a bad one, but the trailer doors are caved in, so we’re going to have to figure out how to get them open so we can get the horses off.”

“Ah, she got hit by Archer,” I said. “I was trying to decipher Google’s transcription. Who is it?”

“Monica Cauthon. She’s on Archer Road.”

“Oh, I know her. And she thinks the horses are fine. Got it.”

Erica pulled a light green scrub top over her head and tucked it into her pants. “She texted me a picture of the trailer. I think we can probably cut it open with the Sawzall.”

I grabbed her phone off the bed and opened the text. The trailer doors were indeed crushed in, and the vertical bar with the camlocks that locked them in the closed position were bent in at the top and bottom at a 45° angle. The top camlock was still latched, but the bottom one was nearly a foot inside the trailer, wedged into the floor. There was a one-foot gap between the doors, just enough to see that there was a horse inside.

“Alright, let me get some tools,” I said. “We might be able to take the hinges apart, but we may have to cut that bar. That’s going to make a ton of noise and probably freak out the horses, so that will be a last resort. How many horses are on the trailer?”

“Two. And they’re pretty good most of the time.”

“Well, they just got the back of their trailer caved in, so I wouldn’t blame them for being panicky. She lives on the south side of Paynes Prairie, right?” I grabbed my water bottle off the counter as we went out the door.

“Right. But she has to wrap things up with the police before she can leave the scene, so we’re not racing to get there.”

I stopped at my toolbox down in the feed room and gathered everything I thought I might need to get the doors off the trailer. Sawzall, prybars, screwdrivers, grinder, and a handful of wrenches. We loaded it all in the backseat of the vet truck and took off down the driveway.

It was a thirty-five-minute drive to Monica’s house, according to Google Maps. About fifteen minutes into the trip, Erica’s phone rang again. I turned down the music.

“Hello, Dr. Lacher.”

“Just hold the dang horse, Emily! I’m calling the vet right now.” The woman’s voice coming over the speakers was unfamiliar, but I recognized the tone of stress that mothers get when dealing with an exasperating child.

“Hello, this is Dr. Lacher,” Erica repeated. “Can you hear me?”

“Yes, sorry about that. This is Jennifer King.”

“Oh, hi, Jennifer. What’s going on?”

“We were bringing the horses in to saddle up a few minutes ago. Emily was walking Snooter across the asphalt part of the driveway, and the neighbor started his mower, and it backfired. And you know Snooter, he’s flighty, so he spooked hard, and slipped on the asphalt and went down pretty hard. He’s skinned up in a few spots, and he’s limping a little bit, but I don’t know if you need to come see him or not.”

“Mom, he’s bleeding, she needs to come!” The teenage girl in the background wasn’t near as calm as her mother.

“Let’s start with some pictures of all the scrapes and bloody spots,” Erica said. “Then if you want to walk him around in a figure eight and video that, I can take a look at how he’s moving. You can send those to me on the emergency number. But if he’s not overtly lame, my guess is that he’s just a bit sore from the fall, and that will go away in a day or two.”

“Okay, we can do that,” Jennifer said. “I’ll send you some pictures right now.”

“Sounds good,” Erica said. “I’ll call you back as soon as I get a look at them, and we’ll make a plan.”

I turned left onto Archer Road as they hung up. “Where do they live?” I asked.

“The other direction, unfortunately,” Erica said, opening her computer. “She’s between Alachua and High Springs.”

“Oh boy. Hopefully it’s not bad.” We were still fifteen minutes away from Monica’s, plus the time it would take to get the horse trailer opened. “At least we can take the interstate up from here. That will be a little faster, if we have to go, but we’re probably two hours away at best.”

Erica’s phone dinged as the pictures began arriving. Before she could even scroll through them, it began ringing again. She waited for the number to pop up before answering.

“Is that Jennifer again?” I asked, hoping for the best.

Erica shook her head. “Nope, different number. Hello, this is Dr. Lacher.”

The voice that filled the truck was that of an old man trying not to cry and losing the battle. “Dr. Lacher, this is Edward Stanton.” He took a shaky breath and cleared his throat. “Old Milton is down out in the back pasture. I’ve been trying to get him up, but he just ain’t wanting to do it.”

I remained silent as I navigated the lights and traffic around the interstate exchange, but inside I was starting to panic. The emergencies were piling up on us faster than Erica could even manage the phone calls. As usual, she was calm and controlled as she answered him.

“Oh, no,” she said. “Do you know how long he’s been down?”

“I reckon he’s been there a good part of the night,” Edward said. His voice was rough, like someone was shaking a can of wet gravel. “He’s got the ground tore up a bit, like he was trying to get up, but he ain’t tried since I came out to find him this morning. It ain’t like him to skip breakfast.”

“No, he’s definitely food-motivated,” Erica agreed, tapping the keys on her computer. “It looks like he’s twenty-nine now, is that right?”

“Carol bought him in 1997,” Edward said. “I told her she didn’t have no business trying to train a three-year-old at her age. She was sixty-four then, you know, but she didn’t pay me no mind. So I guess he’d be twenty-nine now.”

“Carol always did what she wanted to do,” Erica said with a chuckle. “You were just there to make sure it all happened the way she wanted it.”

“She had her own plans for things.” Edward managed a chuckle. “She had Milton driving a cart in two years, and they won their first marathon two years after that. I’m glad she’s not here to see him down like this, it’d tear her up inside.”

“I’m about to pull up to another emergency right now,” Erica said. “It’s a minor trailer wreck, but I don’t know how long it’s going to take me. If Milton is safe where he is, I’d just let him be still for now. It’s cloudy today, so that’s a good thing. You might bring a bucket of water out where he can reach it, and some hay for him to munch on, just to try and make him as comfortable as possible. I’ll give you a call when we get done here, and we’ll go from there. Okay?”

“I’ll get him took care of,” Edward said. “Carol would have me build him a shade canopy, I expect. I’ll keep him in hay and water until you get out here.”

We were pulling into Monica’s neighborhood as Erica hung up the phone. Ahead of us, an empty rollback tow truck was pulling into her driveway. “Looks like she called in reinforcements,” I said. “That’ll make this a whole lot easier.”

I pulled in behind the tow truck and followed him around the curve to the barn.

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