As Mary J Blige did not sing: 'Way more drama.'
It was Friday lunchtime. I was sitting in my courtyard garden for the first time this year. My phone buzzed. It was Nic. She usually texts. This was different.
'Hey, Liz. I've had a bit of an accident.'
My dogs started barking, as they always do when my phone goes.
'What's happened?'
'I was getting Pocket [the Blue Cross rescue pony I took in] and she shied at something in the garden. She crashed into me, knocked me to the ground and I think I have dislocated my shoulder.'
This is just days since she got concussion when Pocket bashed her on the cheekbone with her head. It's the spring grass: horses go nuts. As my posh friend said when I told her, 'Darling, it's like vintage champagne.'
Me: 'Do you have to go to hospital?' And, 'How is Pocket?' Not necessarily in that order.
Nic: 'She's fine. And, yes, I can't move my arms. Can you come and sort the horses?'
I loaded Teddy into the car and sped to the yard. When I got there, Nic looked white as a sheet. I put Pocket in the field with my rescued racehorse Swirly and turned Nic's horse out to join my two girls. Nic was on the phone to the paramedics. They must have asked her to spell her name 15 times: not great when you're in shock. Also, what does it matter? They told her they couldn't get to her for two hours at the earliest; dear god, how many emergencies are there in the Yorkshire Dales? Looking at her face, I could see she couldn't wait that long. I carefully helped her into my car along with her dog Boris aka 'the b*d beagle'. The nearest hospital with an A&E is in Northallerton; I only know its location as it's near the M&S Foodhall. I tried to drive slowly over potholes but Nic still screamed in agony. She never makes a fuss. She has been looking after the horses even with concussion.
I helped her to a hard chair in A&E then checked her in. I'm more used to five-star hotels. 'Date of birth?' the receptionist asked me. I have no idea. 'Mobile phone number?' Again, no idea. I had to leave her there as two dogs were in a hot car. She was given gas and air. No baby at the end of it all to cheer her up.
I later learned that a team of four had tried to pop her shoulder back into place for over two hours, to no avail. So she was put into an ambulance and taken to the major trauma centre in Middlesbrough. They gave her morphine, and I was reminded of the time I was given morphine so a surgeon could drain an abscess in my tonsils; an injury caused not by a pony but by oral sex with the philandering liar Neil. Nic had been at my side the whole time. She even held the suction tube as the surgeons worked, trilling, 'I feel like Debbie McGee!'
I was sitting at home with her dog and mine, desperately trying not to drink crémant just in case, when my phone rang at midnight. She was being discharged. The shoulder was back in but cracked. She will be out of action for six weeks or more: there goes my Belfast mini break. I got in my car and drove to the hospital, pulling up at A&E to find her slumped in a wheelchair, completely broken. Her jumper had been cut off, as she couldn't bear to lift her arms, so it was as though she was wearing a boob tube.
I helped her to my car, and I suddenly had a premonition of what the future holds. Two old women in bad sportswear, shuffling, in the neon light of a hospital, hands clutching crisp white bags full of medication. There are no men in this scenario. Neither Nic nor I have children, so there are no concerned leggy teens. Just us, shuffling, wincing in discomfort and disappointment, managing to giggle through the pain (me: 'Have you been to a disco in Brentwood, given the boob tube?'), shoring each other up. Surviving.