The Horses

(Content Warning: Hospitalisation and terminal illness.)

In her crisp white coat and with her dark hair pulled into a bun, Doctor Bailey peered over her black-rimmed specs. Brenda sat across from her, in a room at the hospital set up much like any other office Brenda had visited.

Doctor Bailey tilted the screen in Brenda’s direction. “You see this?” She tapped the LCD with a pen. “This is your left kidney.”

Brenda scanned the monochrome image. “Why doesn’t it look like the right one?”

“Because it’s shrivelled like a dried-up old prune. It’s functioning at about two percent of what it should be.”

“I don’t understand.”

“It’s possibly congenital. And your numbers are fine. But essentially you only have one functioning kidney.”

“But…”

Doctor Bailey sat back in her chair and threw her glasses on the desk. She sighed and rubbed her eyes. “You are so young, Brenda. You have a lot of living to do yet. I am sorry. I know you wanted to do this for her.”

“But the blood tests. You said…”

“You are compatible. But, sweetheart, you don’t have a kidney to give.”

Uncomfortable with presenting any kind of feeling, Brenda swallowed the ones she was having into her gullet and brushed her mousy fringe behind her ear. “Okay.”

“I wish… I wish I had better news.”

Not one for words, Brenda simply nodded. She stood and walked to the door, then turned. “She doesn’t know anything about this, right?”

“If there’s one thing a doctor understands, it’s discretion. I haven’t breathed a word, I promise you.”

Brenda gave another nod, then exited.

Brenda sat outside Macy’s hospital room, with her head lolled against the wall. She shook it, rather pointlessly, as no one was watching. But she was angry.

Brenda Ashton was not a good person. She knew that, because she didn’t believe people could be good. They were ultimately selfish, self-serving, and never to be trusted. It’s what she believed of most people, herself included. Maybe it was because of her mother. Brenda’s father had died when she was nine, and her memories of him before he got sick were wonderful. Her mother was a factory worker who, since that dreadful day, had drank herself to sleep every other night. Brenda had basically raised herself. When Lindy died in 2018 from alcohol poisoning, Brenda went to stay with her Aunt Carol. Aunt Carol was her mother’s sister, and she insisted:

‘Don’t be angry with your mother, Bren. It wasn’t the booze that killed her. She never did recover from the death of Clay. Those two were made for each other. When you find the one person in the world you’re meant to be with, and they’re taken away from you… well, for some, there’s no coming back from that. Your mother died of a broken heart, plain and simple.’

If it were true, then death seemed to Brenda to be remarkably inefficient. If her father’s demise by cancer were not considered slow by normal standards, then most assuredly her mother’s broken heart – endured over almost a decade – must be. And then there was Macy.

Macy had been on the ward for her stupid busted kidneys, and Brenda wound up there for stupid alcohol poisoning, which was not her fault, but the fault of the stupid stalker who had spiked her drink. Of course, no charges had been laid against him, because that’s how this world rolls. But she now carried a dagger in her boot, and had every intention of using it if he ever came near her again. She fully expected she’d be in jail before the year was out.

Since Brenda had known her, Macy had almost always had a book in her hand. But she didn’t have a book with her on that first fateful encounter. It didn’t matter though. Macy recited poetry to her from memory, written by some old fellow named Alfred something. Oh, Noyes. The Highwayman. Brenda never cared a lick for poetry, but Macy – unlike Brenda – did have a way with words, and she reeled them off that day in a manner that held Brenda enthralled.

And so they became friends. Since then, Brenda had spent a lot of time at the hospital. But she never resented it. Not the smell. Not the sickness. Not the beeping of machines or constant flapping about of doctors and nurses. Not once did she resent the inconvenience of being friended to a person who could never go horse riding with her, or road tripping with her, or strolling the beach with her, or that thing she had imagined sometimes but would never, ever say. Right now, though, resentment was bubbling like a cauldron of filth, and the lid was rattling.

Nurse Yasmin stirred Brenda to attention. “Are you going in, darlin’? I know she’s been waiting to see you.”

Brenda nodded, and Nurse Yasmin continued in her shuffle down the corridor. Brenda stood. She sucked in a breath, straightened her shirt, and walked into the room.

The twenty-two-year-old Macy lay in her bed, hooked to a machine and reading. Her eyes were sunken like golf holes, her skin grey like nimbus. But when she looked up and saw Brenda standing there, her face lit up like daisies reaching for a cloudless sky.

“Beautiful Bee, come to me, in the hours that see us to joy.”

She always does this. Why does she always do this? Why does she insist on acting like the world is some goddam bleeding love poem? And that smile. It was a treacherous, tempting smile that conspired with the devil in its deceit.

Disgusting words swelled inside her, bitter and rancid like a dead clam rotting inside its shell. Brenda grumbled, “I hate you.”

Macy’s outstretched hand retracted. Then it was delicately placed into the folds of that vapid white blanket. With hostility barely contained, Brenda circled the room to the window. Gay streams of sunshine marked her chest, and in the moment, Brenda resented them too. More than the machines, more than the gowns, more than these goddam horizontal blinds. She peered down into the parking lot, and the cars blurred so that they might have been half melted MnM’s.

She turned on Macy and hissed, “I wish I’d never met you.”

There was a strain in Macy’s jaw, followed by a swallowing action in her neck. Streaks of sadness washed over those ashen cheeks, and careened off her unmoving chin. The next words that came to Brenda made her own jaw quiver for their vileness. But she couldn’t stop them. “I hope you know I won’t be sad if you die. I won’t care.”

Macy fiddled with the blanket at her lap. “Okay,” she murmured. They stared at each other across the room, silent in their misery.

Macy broke eye contact. She sniffed and opened the book that Brenda had bought for her – Anna Sewell’s Black Beauty – flipped over a page and said, “I had a dream about you last night.” She looked up, but not at Brenda. Instead, she laid her head back and stared at the ceiling. “We were riding horses. Yours was a stunning black beast, and you raced ahead, with your gorgeous brown hair flowing behind you. I was on a palomino. As hard as I tried, I couldn’t catch you. You were laughing, and I was too. I desperately wanted to reach you. I had something important to say, and I kept shouting at you to stop, but you just kept laughing and racing, and I was giddy with happiness.”

Brenda’s armour threatened to buckle, and she loped to the bed. Macy turned her an eye-popping fright, and Brenda growled, “Stop this. You hear me? Stop it.”

Macy whispered, “Stop what?”

“Stop acting like you’re not afraid. Stop acting like you think this is some goddam fairy-tale!” Bloodshot eyes stared back at her. “No claret-dressed bad boy is gonna ride up on some goddam steed and whisk you away. No one is coming to save you!”

“Bee.”

“No!” Brenda pulled away, and Macy latched onto her hand. “Bee.”

Brenda wasn’t sure what she was seeing in those hollowed hazel eyes. “Why are you looking at me like that?”

“Like what? Like I love you?”

Brenda’s throat closed, as if a wasp had settled in it and was driving its vicious sting into her trachea. Her stomach was twisting, her eyes flooding a whirlpool of grief, which took her in a tumultuous grip, helpless and flailing into its depths. All she wanted to do was sink beneath the waves.

Macy threw the covers over, exposing her thinned frame under a dreary hospital gown. “Come on,” she said. “Lie with me. Let me read to you.”

Brenda’s anger had fizzled, as if suddenly the demon inside of her had been driven out by a skilled exorcist, to some other, far-away plane. She tried to speak, but only one word blubbered out of her. “Mace.”

Macy reached a hand. “It’s okay.”

“I’m sorry.”

“It’s okay. Come.”

Brenda wiped her sodden cheeks, then climbed onto the bed. She snuggled in, and was enveloped in a warm embrace. Macy kissed Brenda’s crown, then recounted Black Beauty’s tale to the end.

Forty-eight hours later, a miracle happened. A kidney was found for the ailing Macy, who was barely lucid enough to register the news.

Doctor Bailey leaned over her and said, “We’re prepping you for surgery, Macy. Everything’s going to be okay.”

By her side was Macy’s mother, who gripped her hand. “We’re right here, sweetheart. We’ll be here when you wake up. You’re going to be fine.”

“Where is Bee? Is she here?”

“You don’t need to worry about anything. We love you, sweetheart. We’ll see you soon.”

As they wheeled Macy away, she craned her neck to her mother. “Does Bee know? Will you tell her what’s happening?”

“Everything’s going to be okay, baby. You’re going to get well. We love you so much.”

Earlier that day, Brenda snuck into Doctor Bailey’s office and gently closed the door. She sat cross-legged in the middle of the room, then took her phone from her breast pocket. Doctor Bailey had been kind enough to share her private number, but Brenda had never had cause to use it. She called and pressed the phone to her ear.

“Hello, this is Monica.”

“Doctor Bailey?”

“Yes. Sorry, who is this?”

“It’s Brenda.”

“Brenda, sweetheart. Is everything alright?”

“Are you at the hospital?”

“I am. I’m just finishing up my rounds. Do you need to see me?”

“Can you be at your office in five minutes?”

“Of course. I’ll head over now.”

“I’ve left a note on your desk, but I trust you’ll know what to do when you get here.”

Brenda terminated the call.

She thought about her mother and her broken heart.

She took the dagger from her boot.

Then she stuck it in her neck.