calm down. Hercules responded to gentle sound commands rather than you digging your heels in his belly. Blake was all about loving and gentle methods when it came to her horses and everyone on the Triple H followed them to the letter.
Hercules started to settle down, his body relaxing under us again, so I pulled Farron back to where I wanted her.
“Shhh, this story has a happy ending, I promise,” I said encouragingly, not able to resist kissing the side of her neck just under her ear, smiling against her skin when she shivered.
“So the time bomb ended up being something called ASD, Atrial Septal Defect. Mum noticed as we grew up that I was sickly. I got colds a lot, tired easily and was a bit smaller than my brothers. When I was six, we noticed that my feet swelled, then my legs, I had trouble breathing, then one day, I collapsed after kicking the footy at school. Mum and Dad rushed me to the local hospital and they found I had a heart murmur. They referred us to a specialist in Melbourne and that is how we found out about the ASD.”
“What is ASD?” Farron whispered in a small frightened voice.
“Basic description is a hole in the wall between the heart and the top two chambers, very fixable if diagnosed early, but as we didn’t know for six years, it was complicated a smidge. I developed pneumonia quite a few times, severe bronchitis and to top it off childhood asthma.”
“Just a smidge! Really Fenixx!” Farron whisper yelled, for Hercules’s benefit, I’m sure.
“Nixx,” I growled, “you call me Nixx or honey.” Softening my reprimand with a chaste kiss to her silky hair. “Now shush and let me finish. Anyway, after the diagnosis, life took a busy twist of trips to Melbourne to see specialists and staying there while Dad and my brothers were back home. Having the family separated was hard for not only Mum and Dad, but us kids as well. The bond between the three of us has always been strong; it was from the second we were born and still is today. I really don’t know how I would have gotten through those years without Noxx and Drixx.” Emotion clogged my throat thinking back to those horrible times being without my brothers on those occasions when they had not been able to travel with Mum and me. I felt their loss keenly when stuck in the hospital or the hotel room, not allowed to go outside for fear of getting a cold or infection. Phone calls to home the only thing that kept Mum and me sane, clinging to the news and stories Lenoxx and Hendrixx relayed to us of life back at home.
While the memories tended to be sad ones, I remembered the way my brothers played down the fun around the Triple H so as not to upset me. Many times they told me they felt my sadness and theirs not being able to help me. I know they had guilt because they didn’t get the ASD as well; being triplets, we should have all been the same, but sometimes shit happens, and the universe throws a curveball at you. As a family, we came through it, and now those days were just a distant memory, thanks to the grace of a higher power looking over us.
Farron was silent while I told her the story of my childhood illness, but I could feel her body tensing even though I finished speaking. This, I did not like. I didn’t tell her to have her feel sorry for me or worry, my heart problems were well and truly behind me, and just like the doctors assured us, I grew out of asthma. While I still had the bronchitis infection in me, all I had to do was make sure when I did ever get a cold to treat it properly with preventive medications and look after myself.
Maybe she was quiet because she didn’t want to saddle herself with a sick person, which I wasn’t now, but still having open heart surgery in my past had to be freaking her to some degree.
“Baby, you okay?” I asked, giving her body a squeeze between my arms.
“Yeah, um … just digesting everything you told me,” she answered huskily, not sounding concerned more reflective, her tone confusing me sightly.
“Wanna let me in on what you are digesting?”
Farron turned her head and looked up at me, her soft hair feeling so