Sixteen Horses by Greg Buchanan (readict TXT) 📕

the scene of a murder,’ Cooper said, anger entering her voice. ‘It was the first time I’d ever been called out to one. What was I supposed to do? Cry?’

The therapist just stared back at her. She was not like Cooper’s previous therapist: that woman had been warm, filling out big green jumpers with smiles and echoes of whatever Cooper was feeling. There was sympathy, empathy, everything. This woman . . .

Her eyes were cold.

‘I was twenty-five. I took the hairs from the crime scene, I looked over the rest, and I made it five feet from the building before I poured my guts out into the grass.’ Cooper angled forward a bit. ‘I did a good job.’

‘Do you think you were prepared for it?’

‘Of course I was prepared. They wouldn’t have let me be there if I wasn’t prepared.’

‘You’re not a police officer. You’re not CSI. You’re—’

‘I was prepared,’ Cooper interrupted. ‘I’m quite a professional, actually.’

‘You’re a vet.’

Cooper looked away. There was silence for a time, so she raised her wrist and stared at her watch.

2.18 p.m.

2.19 p.m.

‘Those cat hairs we found on the victim’s leg – they were from a friend of the man’s brother-in-law. We found a small quantity in the sister’s house, we traced his associates, we found the friend. The evidence helped us to convict him of the murder.’ Cooper paused.

The therapist said nothing, and Cooper’s muscles tensed.

‘I still don’t think you understand exactly what I—’

‘Why did you focus on the smell? I’m curious about that.’

‘You ever smelt a dead body?’

The therapist shook her head.

‘Not much room to think about anything else.’ Cooper picked up her water bottle from her feet and drank a bit. ‘Part of us lives on after our death, all right, but it’s nothing like a soul or anything. It’s just our gut.’

‘You said we eat ourselves.’

‘We do. The bacteria inside us, they start breaking everything down.’

‘So it’s not us then, exactly.’

‘We’re sixty per cent water. There’s room in us for a lot of things.’

Cooper straightened herself and looked at her watch again. 2.23 p.m. The therapist was studying her notes.

‘Why did you become a vet?’ the woman asked.

Cooper looked at her.

‘Why did you make that choice?’

‘I wanted to help animals.’

‘Is that true?’

‘Yes.’

‘Is that all the truth?’

There was a pause.

‘If you wanted to help animals,’ the therapist said, ‘you’d be helping animals. What you do, it’s different than that, if I understand correctly.’

Cooper nodded.

‘So, why do you do it?’

‘Because I didn’t want to be polite for a living.’

‘To who do you not want to be polite?’

‘To whom.’

‘Cooper . . .’ The therapist sighed.

‘To everyone.’

‘Tell me what you mean.’

‘What I mean is, most people don’t think about the fact they’re going to die one day.’

‘Do you actually know what most people think?’

‘Yes,’ Cooper said. ‘So do you. It’s your job.’ She snorted. ‘You honestly think most people truly understand the nature of dying? You see it in their faces when you bring it up. “Oh, I’m not worried about death, it’s fine, as long as I don’t feel much pain then I won’t know I’m dead so what’s the problem?”’

‘What is the problem?’

‘The fact you won’t know,’ Cooper said. ‘The fact any of us won’t know, that “knowing” won’t even be a thing any more, that all of this we’re experiencing right now – every moment of my life – it will be as if it had never even happened. The end will just be absence.’

‘Others will live on,’ the therapist said.

‘Does it matter?’

There was silence for a time. Cooper did not look at her watch.

‘I went to vet school because I didn’t know what else I wanted to be.’

‘And now?’

‘Now I’m thirty-one and I haven’t practised on a live animal in years.’

‘How does that make you feel?’

‘It doesn’t make me feel anything.’

‘Do you have regrets?’

‘No. I . . .’

The therapist wrote something down. ‘Go on.’

‘I love what I do.’

The therapist put her pad down on the table. ‘The way you’re sitting – the way you just said that – it clearly bothered you to say you love your job. That’s interesting to me.’

‘I’m glad you’re having fun.’

‘Cooper . . .’

The light had faded a little outside.

‘I can’t work with you if you don’t work with me,’ the therapist said.

‘I don’t want to work with you. I’m only here because I have to be here.’

‘As you’ve said.’

‘As I’ve said.’

‘I thought you were worried about wasting your life, Cooper. It seems like you’re choosing to do so.’

‘It does seem like that, doesn’t it?’

The therapist tensed up, hesitating before she spoke again. ‘Tell me about—’

‘Did you know that a veterinary surgeon is four times more likely to kill themselves than the average person?’ Cooper paused. ‘It’s not a recent statistic either – we’ve been dying for years.’

‘Why do you think that is?’

‘We know how to end suffering.’

There was a long gap, then, where neither woman said a thing. Where both looked at the other, not entirely angry, not entirely civil. Where Cooper’s breath was faster than she’d like.

Finally, the therapist spoke.

‘Why are we here, Cooper?’ She paused. ‘I asked you twenty minutes ago – why are we here?’

‘I answered you.’

‘No . . . No, you didn’t. The real reason. Not stories you tell yourself. Not any of this . . .’

Cooper stared.

‘I need you to say it.’

‘Because the people I work with decided I wasn’t coping. Because they thought this would be a good fit for me. Because they don’t know me at all.’

The therapist sighed. ‘I’ll ask you again, and I want you to be honest this time.’

Cooper said nothing.

‘Why are we really here, Cooper?’

There was movement in the hallway. She looked at her watch. 2.38 p.m. Not much time to go.

She looked up, her eyes tired, her body still tense.

‘The horses,’ Cooper said. ‘We’re here because of the horses . . .’

The van moved through the night.

‘It’s happened again.’

They met no one on that road.

‘And it’s going to keep happening, isn’t it?’

The driver did not answer.

‘Tell me.’

Ahead, there were fireworks in the sky.

‘Would you rather be careless or cruel?’

PART ONE:

ILMARSH

Day One

CHAPTER ONE

‘Legs, eleven,’