Saving Baby (17 page)

So I let my concerns go and went forward again with the excitement that had been building all these months from Baby's last race the previous June, where he had been beaten by only a fraction of a length despite a stretched tendon. At this point he was going like a tiger, a freight train. We knew we were on our way to wins, first with him and then with Scarlett.

Baby's race date, May 25th, was during Memorial Day weekend, and the weather was a cloudless, summery seventy-eight degrees, so there were more people at the track than typically.

As usual, Baby let out his hello honk when I entered his shedrow that morning. I breathed into his nose (no treats—he wasn't allowed apples or carrots on race day), and brushed my nose and lips across his velvety muzzle, as usual. He seemed incredibly alert, right on the muscle. “Boy, he's ready,” I said to Jerry. It was that same hopeful feeling as when Baby had come back from Florida. I knew how much swimming he had done all winter, how much fitter he was than horses who began to work out only when the track opened in March. I also knew that since this was to be a $10,000 claiming race rather than an allowance race, Baby's competition was not going to be fierce. Furthermore, Baby's last timed work before the race was a bullet work, meaning he ran the fastest and a bullet mark was put next to his name in the
Daily Racing Form
.

Baby himself was completely comfortable, with not a hint of nervousness. He knew the routine backward and forward—another romp in the park.

We walked with Baby, Pam, and Jerry up to the saddling area and, as usual, I told the jockey, Joey Judice, to come back safe and squeezed his hand. Then, while Pam was giving Joey instructions—“you know what to do, just stay a bit off the leader”—I put my hand on Baby's neck, moving it under his mane. “It's okay, Baby. You be a big boy. We'll be waiting for you. We love you.” I was speaking softly; you don't want to be saying those intimate things loudly enough for everybody to hear.

I lingered just a bit, after which Pam gave Joey a leg up, and Baby was paraded in front of the grandstand with the other horses while John, Pam, Jerry, and I went to take our seats, about eight rows up, along with Jessica and Rebecca, my parents, my sister, an aunt and uncle, and lots of friends—as usual, about twenty people altogether.

I felt on top of the world. It was the start of what was going to be a stellar year, with Baby about to win his second race and Scarlett poised to run her first race of the season the very next week. And we had a ten-day-old filly at home who would someday be making wins for us, too. It was like I had reached the top of Mount Everest. I felt so confident I even bet $200 on Baby that day, ten times more than I ever bet. We couldn't have been in a better spot.

The bell went off. It was the last race of the day, close to 6
P.M.
We'd soon be getting our second win picture. The first was already hanging in the main hallway on the first floor of our house.

Baby was never quite a jackrabbit out of the gate, even at his best, but he came out sixth of twelve, a good enough position and just a length and a half off the leader. Going along the back stretch of the track, he slid into perfect position, with his head right off the flank of the first horse—exactly where Pam said she wanted him. The rest of the field was a couple of lengths behind.

About halfway through the race, Baby was clearly poised to win. Despite my confidence, I could feel my heart beating in my chest—Baby hadn't even kicked into gear yet. Joey was still holding him back. John and I had our hands clasped together. Then, suddenly, almost imperceptibly, he drifted slightly off to the right—and stopped.

“Oh my God!” I cried out.

“Don't worry,” Pam said. “The saddle probably slipped.” She took my binoculars to get a closer view, then handed them back to me. “Here, look at him,” she instructed. “You can see his front legs. There's nothing wrong.”

That calmed me down. The vast majority of breakdowns occur in the front legs. Then Joey took off the saddle, which was in keeping with what Pam thought had happened. But he and Baby just kept standing there. The other horses had already crossed the finish line. Why are they waiting, I wondered.

Then I saw the horse ambulance coming out, a trailer painted white. Pam grabbed my arm—she didn't want me running onto the track. “It's going to be alright,” she said. “It'll be alright. Come on. We've got to go.”

 

CHAPTER EIGHT

“Oh, Baby, Oh, Baby.” I put my nose right against his because I wanted to make sure he knew it was me. Just like with the plastic chair stuck on his head, with his first view of a grey horse, with anything that made him feel scared, it was always me. Then I threw my arms around his neck and lay my cheek against his, speaking in the same quiet, reassuring voice I had used so many times since he was born. “I'm here, Baby. It's Mommy. It's okay.” I knew I had to stay calm so that he could stay calm. “I'll take care of everything, Baby. Don't worry.”

Covered in sweat so profuse it turned into foam that cascaded down his neck and chest, he was trembling all over. But I took comfort in the fact that his eyes, widened with fear, had relaxed some. He recognized my presence. Better still, I saw that everything was okay because he was still standing on both his front legs, where nearly all fatal injuries occur. Also, there was no blood. It had to be something minor, although clearly very painful. Maybe there's a bone chip in a joint, I thought, or a pulled muscle.

We were together in Baby's shedrow, where the ambulance trailer had been brought. The back of the trailer was down, but I had run to the front, where a little door lets you into a very small area right by the horse's head. Larry Wales, the private track vet, was already in the trailer when I came on.

I can't remember exactly how we had made it from the grandstand to Baby. John and I, and I guess Pam and Jerry, too, climbed down to the bottom row, then went through a little gate where Pam had parked the golf cart that she used to navigate the roads on the backside. I don't know how many people climbed onto the cart with us. The guard wasn't checking IDs, as he usually did. He was just letting everyone through.

Along the way, we ran into Baby's jockey, Joey, who was holding the saddle. “It was like an explosion,” he blurted. “The leg broke.”

I looked at John, and he looked directly back at me. But as in a tsunami, what was clear, even familiar—it was a simple statement, after all—became jumbled with everything else ordinarily recognizable until, all caught together, the whole became a chaotic blur, with Pam and all of our guests running alongside us tossed into the flow.

“Joey doesn't know what he's talking about!” Pam shouted furiously. “He's not a vet. He doesn't know.”

At some point Larry had caught up with us in his truck. “Jo Anne, do you want me there?” he asked. Usually, when the ambulance is called, the official vet at the track, the one from the Office of the Racing Commission, is sent out to take care of everything. But Larry knew me so well. He knew I would take Baby home when he had stretched his tendon rather than continue to let him race. He saw Scarlett go through tying-up syndrome.

“Yes. Please. Thank you, Larry.”

I don't know how he arrived at the ambulance before we did. “Jo Anne, it's not good,” he said. I was still breathing into Baby's nose.

“We'll take him to Michigan State and fix it, whatever it is,” I answered.

“Jo Anne, his leg is broken.”

Larry didn't know what he was talking about again, like when he gave Scarlett the wrong antibiotic all through the previous spring. All you had to do was look at Baby to see that neither of his front legs was broken. “Larry, we'll take him to Michigan State. It's okay. Money is no object. We'll do whatever it takes.”

“Jo Anne, it's really bad. It can't be—“

But I stopped hearing him. The foam—my God, Baby just kept shaking. “I'm here, Baby. It's going to be okay. Baby…”

Larry was interrupting me again. “Jo Anne it's not going to be alright. This is bad. We can't—”

I felt that if he wasn't going to do something he should just get out of the way. “It's
okay
, Larry,” I responded, letting him know with my tone, calm but firm, that I was in charge. “We'll take him to Michigan State. We'll spend whatever's necessary. We need to get a trailer.” I knew we couldn't transport Baby in that one.

“Jo Anne, let me talk to you,” Pam said from outside the trailer, so I left Baby for a moment and my mother came on to be with him. “It's all right, Baby,” she whispered. “It's going to be all right.” I had been composed to that point, but my mother's tender manner with Baby made me start to cry.

“Jo Anne, this isn't good,” Pam said. There, outside the trailer, I realized just how many people had crowded around, not just my own family and friends but dozens of others from the backstretch. Ours had been the last race of the day, so nobody was in a rush with any horses.

Not you, too, Pam, I thought to myself. Don't
you
agree with him. She, more than anybody outside my family, knew what Baby meant to me. How could she say that? My eyes went again to the blur of people—people I knew, people I yakked with in the kitchen, backstretch workers I didn't recognize but who recognized me, perhaps because I was on the two boards, and had crowded around out of curiosity. Then I looked again at Pam and just went back in with Baby, my mother stepping off.

Bill Frank, the Racing Commission vet, was already on the trailer, whispering with Larry. I hadn't seen him step in. “Jo Anne, do you want a second opinion?” he asked.

I suppose I said yes because Bill looked at Larry and Larry nodded, and the two of them switched places. Bill palpated the tibia on Baby's back left leg—a very long bone that runs along the upper part of the limb—going up and down, up and down, with both hands, and then he looked at Larry and nodded and turned to me and said what Larry had tried not to say. “Jo Anne, it—the tibia—it's fractured.” I must have had a blank look on my face because after a moment he added, “It's shattered. He can't be saved.”

Why are you all against me? I wondered. Why doesn't anybody understand? All we have to do is take him to the hospital. It doesn't matter how much it costs. Even if the leg is broken, they can fix broken legs. Years ago, maybe no. But not now. This was the 1990s. I wasn't able to entertain the idea that there was a fracture they couldn't fix.

“… can feel it, even though you can't see it,” Larry was saying. He had tried not giving me the details to spare me, but he saw that neither Bill nor he was getting through. “It's in multiple pieces. I can't even count how many—”

We have to get out of here, I realized. We have to get away. “Don't worry, Baby,” I said in a low, almost conspiratorial, voice, going down to his nose again. “Don't worry. I'm going to get you away from here.”

I looked out of the trailer and once again saw all those people, but it was impossible to recognize anyone. It was like one of those dreams where what doesn't make sense makes sense and vice versa.

At some point—I don't know if Pam took my arm or one of the two vets came over—someone said, “He's in pain. He's in shock. Can you see him trembling? We have to put him down.”

Until that point my thoughts seemed very logical to me. I had my charge cards in my purse. I could make the very sane, very practical decision to transport my horse to the hospital and save him. I just had to find a way to sneak away with him. Now, I felt numb, as if somebody had tied me up and gagged me. I needed to move, to get Baby onto another trailer and take him away, save him, but couldn't budge from the spot, couldn't scream. I had lost control, didn't exist anymore, was going with them. Someone was directing me, moving me, I don't know who, although I remember Larry saying, “Let me take care of it. You don't have to go,” and I answered back, “I'm going, I'm going, I have to be there.”

I turned to Pam, and she said something to Larry, and there was commotion as to who was going in what vehicle and who would be on the golf cart. To this day I don't know if I went in Pam's cart or someone's car. Maybe it was a car, but I don't know whose, and we were traveling, but I didn't know where, we could have been in my pasture driving a car, passing a lot of people. Nobody was talking, and I don't know if John and the girls were with me at that point.

Then we stopped, and we were way behind the track on the acres and acres of fields, beyond which stretched some woods. We stepped out of the car, and on the far side of a field was a bit of a hill that we had to walk up. It was then that I saw the ambulance trailer, which snapped me to attention a little—Oh, I have to go to Baby.

He was already standing there, still covered in sweat and foam. Larry was there, too, and by that point John and my daughters were with me, right next to him. Some friends and family, I don't remember who, drove up with us but stayed at a respectful distance, maybe twenty feet behind.

It wasn't quite sinking in yet why I was there. Baby still looked so strong. When you think about it, for him to have shattered his tibia into an uncountable number of pieces and not to have gone down on the track, to take that bumpy ride back to the shedrow, out to the back acres, and still be standing—it took amazing heart, and strength, strength that possibly saved not just his own jockey's life but also the lives of the other jockeys and horses who were behind him and, had he gone down, could have tripped over him at blazing speeds and broken their own necks. His response to his pain was, literally, heroic. I understood that day in a way I never had before what was meant by the phrase, “the heart of a Thoroughbred.”

“We have to do this now,” Larry said, which pushed me out of my daze. The girls were patting Baby and crying, John was crying, and then Baby and I were alone together. “I'm sorry, Baby. I did this to you,” I said, pressing my face to his wet neck and cupping his muzzle with my hand, kissing him over and over. “I failed you. This is all my fault. I'm so sorry.” Then I breathed my scent into his nostril, whispering good-bye, wishing, crazily, that the gesture could breathe life into him, as it did five years earlier.