“Don’t worry, I have a job for you.”
“Can you tell me?”
“It might take three weeks, but I think you should help Faith by being her assistant.”
“Excuse me?” Shay asked in shock. “No offense, Cole, but I’m not really jockey size. You do realize that I’m six-foot-three, and weigh at least two ten, right?”
Cole waved that off as he pulled out onto the highway.
“I’m not asking you to ride a horse, but I’m asking you to assist with the stats. You’ll have a clipboard with a check list, a stopwatch to time Faith as she runs the track with each horse. You’ll also observe and tell her things you see. If you don’t know the correct terminology, you can either learn it, or tell her what you see, and she can correct or enhance it.”
“Ah, I understand, and what about mucking out the stalls? What about helping Ann and Tony?”
“I’m not being harsh, but you can’t muck out stalls with crutches, and if you want to get better, then I suggest you get to know the horses better. Faith is only here for one night, she’s leaving tomorrow to head back home to finish what she has to do in order to move here permanently. She said she will be back inthree weeks. In the meantime, between Clem, Naomi, and I, we have plenty of information for you to read and view to get a feel for what we want you to do.” Cole looked at him with a solid nod as he slowed down to pull into Broken Two.
“Trust me, if I didn’t think you could do this job, then I wouldn’t have suggested it to Noomie.”
“I thought her name was Naomi.” Shay scowled at the other name.
“It is, but you might not know this. I was at her ranch over in Wyoming before she was even born. She would zoom around that ranch on the back of a pony, dirt bike, and eventually she’d zoom around an arena when she barrel raced. Clem and I started calling her Noomie when she zoomed around. You know, Noomie doing zoomies.”
Shay grinned when he pictured what he said, and sighed when they stopped before Caleb’s office. He had never been there before, but he had heard about it from Tony. Before the truck was even shut off, his door opened and Tony was right there to help him from it.
Using the door, and the crutches, then Tony’s support, he finally made it into the office and sighed in relief when he sat in the waiting wheelchair.
“This is a funny looking chair.”
“It was Naomi’s, she was in it for six years. She didn’t want to throw it away, so she gave it for Caleb to use here.”
They went down the hallway, and Caleb came out of a room. “Come on back.” He stepped aside and he and Tony got Shay situated on the table. Fifteen minutes later, he looked up from his computer.
“Well?”
“Nothing’s broken,” Caleb said with relief in his face. “No fractures, no broken bones. However, I would recommend an MRI.”
“Why?”
“X-rays won’t show whether there’s a torn ligament or anything deeper. They won’t show if your ACL is messed up. I can only look for broken bones. I know of two doctors that are taking new patients. However, one is in Fool’s Gold, and one is in Colorado Springs. Each place is roughly an hour from here. That’s the good news.”
“What’s the bad?”
“No driving.” He held up his hand and shook his head. “Shay, you messed up the outside of your right knee, your accelerator leg.” At Shay’s look, he shook his head. “How did you get from the barn to your cabin?”
“I drove.”
“How did that feel?”
“Like my knee was about to explode.”
“There you go.Ican’t tell you not to work, but I’m going to recommend it until you see the doctor.” He looked up when Katherine knocked on the door, and came in at his bidding to hand him a piece of paper. Caleb nodded when he read it.
“The doctor in Colorado Springs can see you tomorrow at eleven. It’s Dr. Amelia Johnson.” Caleb handed him the paper, and Shay only looked at it.
“We’ll figure something out,” Cole said. “If need be, Lois or Laurie can drive you.”
“I don’t want to put anyone out.”
“Stop it,” Tony said firmly. When Shay looked at him, he shook his head. “What you’re feeling right now? Helpless, not wanting to rely on others? That’s exactly how I felt after my operations, and you were the one to drive me home and to my appointments. Let someone do something for you now.”
