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“That would be great,” the woman said. “I’ve got such a headache and so much I need to talk to you about. I finally had those two horses I was working on purchasing dropped off, and let me tell you, the guy wasn’t lying about this one not being really cut out for therapy work.”
“That bad, huh?” my nurse asked. “What are you going to do?”
“I don’t know. I’ve got to come up with someone who can work with him and get him trained. I don’t want to give up on him, but I can’t have him working with people who have issues when he’s clearly got a number of issues himself, if you know what I mean,” the woman replied.
I was hooked. I had no idea who this woman was my nurse was talking to, but I wanted information. Of course, I had to find a way to get my nurse to talk to me about this, and after being a jerk to her about answering her phone in the first place, I wasn’t sure how far I could get with her by just asking.
To ease the tension in the room as much as I could, I tossed back the pills and drained the juice. I didn’t care in that moment how much those things were going to cost me. The fact that the nurse looked surprised that I had finally given into her request was enough to give me hope she might actually want to talk to me.
“That makes sense,” my nurse said. “Well, let me have another ten minutes to finish up here, and I’ll be off for the day. I can pick you up if you want?”
“That would be great,” the other voice said. “Text me when you get out of there.”
“Will do,” she said before hanging up the phone and putting the device in her pocket. “That wasn’t so hard, was it?”
“I wasn’t trying to eavesdrop just now, but I couldn’t help but hear your friend on the other end of the line. She has horses?”
“Who? Raya?” Nurse Wrenley asked.
“I guess,” I said. “I don’t know who you were talking to, I just heard her say something about a horse she was having a tough time with. Something about therapy.”
“She’s an equine therapist,” my nurse said. “She uses horses to help people. I guess she’s got one now that’s quite a handful, and she’s not quite sure how she’s going to deal with him. I don’t know.”
“Can you give her my name?” I asked. “I’m a horse trainer, and I would love to give her a hand if she needs.”
“I’ll be sure to pass it along,” my nurse said, but there was something about her tone that told me she wasn’t sincere. I had a feeling it had something to do with the way our day had gone with each other, and I felt I better fix it before she left for the night and I missed my chance.
“I’m sorry for how I was acting today,” I said.
The look she gave me told me my apology fell on deaf ears. She was checking my vitals one last time and writing down a few notes, so I felt I better hurry up with my apology and sweeten it enough for her to at least give me some of her attention.
“I don’t have insurance,” I explained. “I feel like every time I’m in one of these places I’m getting nickeled and dimed to death, and I hate that. If we can do the bare minimum and call it good, that’s good for me.”
She relaxed a little, and I could tell my words hadn’t fallen entirely on deaf ears. She looked at me with a bit more compassion in her face than she had before, and I knew I’d appealed to her more sympathetic side. She was in the medical field, she knew how expensive this shit was, and life didn’t care if someone had insurance or not.
“I’ll let her know when I see her tonight,” she said, this time her tone far more sincere than it had been before. “I understand the hardship, and I’ll be sure to let the next shift talk to you about your options for a payment plan. It can get really expensive, really quickly, unfortunately.”
“Thank you,” I said.
She nodded as she finished with what she was doing, then she wrote down one final note on the board next to the door before bidding me goodnight. A wave of guilt washed over me as soon as she was out of the room, and I wished I had been more amicable for her to get through her shift.
But, it was done and over with now, and there was no taking it back.
I just hoped she would really be true to her word and talk to her friend about my services. This wasn’t going to be cheap, no matter how I tried to work out a payment plan.
Moving forward, any little bit would certainly help, that was for damn sure.
And even then, I wasn’t sure it would be enough.
