Bolt - By Dick Francis Page 0,74
I thought, ‘Just like Litsi at Bradbury, heigh ho.’ My colleague unbuckled my helmet and pushed it off, for which I couldn’t thank him.
Breath came back, as it does. By the time the ambulance arrived along with a doctor in a car, I’d come to the welcome conclusion that nothing was broken at all and that it was time to stand up and get on with things. Standing, I felt hammered and sore in several places, but one had to accept that, and I reckoned I’d been lucky to get out of that sort of crash so lightly.
One of the other jockeys hadn’t been so fortunate and was flat out, white and silent, with the first-aid men kneeling anxiously beside him. He woke up slightly during the ambulance ride back to the stands and began groaning intermittently which alarmed his attendants but at least showed signs of life.
When we reached the first-aid room and the ambulance’s rear doors were opened, I climbed out first, and found the other jockey’s wife waiting there, pregnant and pretty, screwed up with anxiety.
‘Is Joe all right?’ she said to me, and then saw him coming out on the stretcher, very far from all right. I saw the deep shock in her face, the quick pallor, the dry mouth … the agony.
That was what had happened to Danielle, I thought. That was much what she’d seen, and that was what she’d felt.
I put my arm round Joe’s wife and held her close, and told her Joe would be fine, he would be fine, and neither of us knew if he would.
Joe was carried into the first-aid room, the door closing behind him, but presently the doctor came out with kindness and told Joe’s wife they would be sending him to the hospital as soon as an outside ambulance could be brought.
‘You can come in and sit with him, if you like,’ he said to her, and to me added, ‘You’d better come in too, hadn’t you?’
I went in and he checked me over, and said, ‘What aren’t you telling me?’
‘Nothing.’
‘I know you,’ he said. ‘And everywhere I touch you, you stifle a wince.’
‘Ouch, then,’ I said.
‘Where is ouch?’
‘Ankle, mostly.’
He pulled my boot off and I said ‘ouch’ quite loudly but, as I’d believed, there were no cracked bits. He said to get some strapping and some rest, and added that I could ride on Monday, if I could walk and if I were mad enough.
He went back to tending Joe, and one of the nurses answered a knock on the door, coming back to tell me that I was wanted outside. I put my boot on again, ran my fingers through my hair and went out, to find Litsi and Danielle there, waiting.
Litsi had his arm round Danielle’s shoulders, and Danielle looked as if this were the last place on earth she wanted to be.
I was aware of my dishevelled state, of the limp I couldn’t help, of the grass stains and the tear in my breeches down my left thigh.
Litsi took it all in, and I smiled at him slightly.
‘The nitty gritty,’ I said.
‘So I see.’ He looked thoughtful. ‘Aunt Casilia sent us to see … how you were.’
It had taken a great deal of courage, I thought, for Danielle to be there, to face what might have happened again as it had happened in January. I said to Litsi, but with my eyes on Danielle, ‘Please tell her I’m all right. I’ll be riding on Monday.’
‘How can you ride?’ Danielle said intensely.
‘Sit in the saddle, put the feet in the stirrups, pick up the reins.’
‘Don’t be damn stupid. How can you joke … and don’t answer that. I know both the answers. Easily or with difficulty, whichever is funnier.’
She suddenly couldn’t help laughing, but it was partly hysterical, and it was against Litsi’s big shoulder she smothered her face.
‘I’ll come up to the box,’ I said to him, and he nodded, but before they could leave, the first-aid room door opened and Joe’s wife came out.
‘Kit,’ she said with relief, seeing me still there. ‘I’ve got to go to the ladies … my stomach’s all churning up … they say I can go to the hospital with Joe but if they come for him while I’m not here, they may take him without me … Will you wait here and tell them? Don’t let him go without me.’
‘I’ll see to it,’ I said.
She said ‘thanks’ faintly and half ran in the direction of