READING THOSE words was like opening a gate to go at a gallop. I drank them in, gulp after gulp, late into the night. Mother came up to my room twice to insist on more laudanum, but I shook my head. The third time she spooned the awful stuff into me by threat—“I’ll take that book away, I promise you”—before turning down the lamp and even pushing my manual out of reach. I lay in the darkness, my heart thudding. Mice skittered behind the walls. I was galloping beyond them. Over the next several days I read every moment that I could—whenever Mother allowed me a good dose of light and a light dose of laudanum. The pain came and went unpredictably: Some mornings I awoke to terrible, feverish spasms that pinned me to my bed, writhing, for hours. Other days I could block out the waves of nausea by staring at the ceiling and reciting as many as twenty-seven different bones on an imaginary horse skeleton that I saw there. In one rain-filled week I made more progress through that manual than in the entire six months that I’d owned it.
What do You think about Firehorse (9781442403352) (2006)?
