have you heard hope whisper through this hospital?
it ghosts along corridors and seeps under doors
one clear morning, it swirled around four grey fetlocks
trembling in the stocks of the treatment room.
would you go to surgery, doctor? if he were yours?
well, i wouldn’t have the money.
say you did?
if i had fifteen thousand dollars to light on fire?
i guess i’d try.
twenty percent.
the thing about hope is,
it has no regard for odds.
six pairs of eyes lowered as we rolled to surgery
heads shook
and hope stayed.
it curled up next to a plush grey muzzle
and went to sleep.
the operating room hummed quietly
as the anesthesiologist’s nimble fingers
dosed out sleep
pressors, pain control, postive inotropes,
a careful finger on a pulse point, a grave expression.
i held his intestines as surgeons measured, cut and sutured.
and watched the dark coils brighten to pink.
it is surprising how slow the surgeons’ swift hands can seem
when each breath is a victory.
we left bloody footprints down the hall
spots and drizzles to recovery
the big grey horse soaked with red
stood up
swayed
and stayed standing
and the surgeon’s eyes danced.
fifty percent, maybe.
hope crept along as he stumbled to the ICU
dizzy with discomfort and residual drugs.
it melted into the warm bags of plasma
and brightened each golden and expensive drop
but he shivered in his ice boots
and his guts stayed sick and slow.
i watched the lazy loops on the ultrasound screen
and poured buckets of reflux away.
we weren’t sleeping.
i asked my stethoscope for anything but silence
a quiet query for the warm rumble of digestion
then i sat on the textured rubber floor
and watched him breathe.
i was filling a bucket of ice, maybe
when the resident came to his stall.
he said my big grey horse was dying
and i told him he was wrong.
see, though his bloodwork’s in the toilet
and you’d think he’s getting worse
hope is twirled through his forelock
and humming in his heart.
and he will be better tomorrow.
i said the words like ice chips
crisp and cold and tingly
just like that, they felt true.
and they were.
he dragged me across the pavement
two days later, or maybe it was three
so eager for the succulent grass
that he forgot his manners
you know, once –
in a dizzy day after a night in the OR
I heard an exasperated resident ask the air:
why do we even do colic surgery?
some days the horse dies on the trailer
or exsanguinates on the table
or expires after a septic stint in the ICU
but sometimes hope catches up
and hope is powerful.
it can carry a horse over and nudge him forward
get him on the trailer and send him home.
have you seen a grey horse gallop joyfully
with just a shadow of a surgical clip on his belly?
i have.