The Best Australian Stories 2014 Read Online Free PDF Page B

Melbourne at 1.45 am and it is now 8 am on the same day. She wears the required white lab coat, with a stethoscope looped over the back of her neck. In the green treatment area of the horse hospital, she waits to be told what she should be doing. First, a man who is also dressed in white – a groom’s uniform, she thinks – leads a chestnut filly through the barn doors. Next, a man in a suit emerges from a long green hallway. He’s a horse vet, Jackie guesses, because he approaches the filly and slides his hand down its leg. Once he’s inspected the horse, he walks over to Jackie and seems to inspect her too.
    â€˜What do you think?’ he says. ‘Osteoarthritis?’ His accent is English and he is more than forty years old.
    Jackie is a student intern; she hardly knows anything. Besides that, she hasn’t seen the horse trot out and therefore can’t tell if it is lame. The vet squeezes her arm.
    â€˜Muscles,’ he says. ‘Where are you from?’
    Jackie – who is a couple of centimetres taller than this man – squares her shoulders. His hand lingers on her biceps and she shifts her arm to dislodge it.
    â€˜Where do you think?’ she says.
    â€˜You’re an Aussie. I’m Dr Rick.’
    She holds out her hand. ‘Jackie.’
    Dr Rick presses his dumpling-white palm against hers and then her hand is dropped and he slides his arm across her shoulders. ‘Babu, meet my new wife,’ he says to the man who is holding the horse.
    Babu nods at her. She nods back and says, ‘Like I need another husband.’
    â€˜You’re not married,’ Dr Rick says.
    â€˜I am.’ She holds up her third finger, where she wears her wedding band. Dr Rick doesn’t notice she is sort of giving him the finger.
    â€˜I don’t believe you, but you can be my Dubai wife,’ Dr Rick says. ‘Really I could only tie the knot with a hotshot divorce lawyer, so that I’d be terrified to leave her.’
    Jackie tries to catch Babu’s eye – is that really his name? Or just something that Dr Rick calls him? – but he is stroking the filly’s neck. Dr Rick steps forward and slides a needle into the horse’s jugular.
    Right then a woman appears through the double doors separating the stables and hospital from the interns’ living quarters. The woman is wearing a white coat and a stethoscope too. Her hair is completely dry – Jackie’s is still damp from the shower – and the woman’s eyebrows are symmetrical arches on her fine-pored face.
    â€˜Mila,’ the woman says, holding out her hand to Jackie. She is American. The woman introduces herself to Rick and then asks, ‘You’re injecting fetlocks? May I do it, under your supervision? I’m the new graduate intern: I’m here for six months.’
    Jackie is only in Dubai for a month.
    Rick says, ‘You’ve brave, coming here. You Yanks are usually too scared to come.’
    â€˜Why?’ Mila asks.
    â€˜Something to do with the Gulf War?’
    â€˜That was over years ago,’ Mila says. ‘Clinton’s our president now. You know that, right?’
    â€˜Smart one,’ Rick says. His voice is loaded with sarcasm, but Mila doesn’t notice. He lays a hand on Mila’s biceps, stopping her, and tries to catch Babu’s eye. ‘Wow, you’ve got some muscle there.’ He attempts to imitate Mila’s accent.
    â€˜Used to be a gymnast,’ Mila says.
    Rick rests his arm on the back of Mila’s neck and at that moment Mila turns slightly in Jackie’s direction so that Jackie catches a glimpse of her curled lip.
    â€˜Babu,’ Rick says to the groom, ‘meet my new wife.’
    Cock, Jackie thinks. She mouths the word at Mila, but Mila doesn’t see.
    â€˜Good one,’ Babu says, nodding. The horse snorts, as though the heady rush of sedative has reached its brain.
    *
    Dr Rick drives