Riding Friends

Chapter Five

"Harriet? Harriet!"
Harriet half-opened her eyes. 'That must be Mum calling me to get out of bed,' she thought. 'That dream must have only been a dream. I'm still in bed, and later I'll have my riding lesson, and it'll be fine. I was only dreaming, after all.' She snapped open her eyes, but instead of seeing her own familiar pale blue ceiling, she was greeted with a sight of Mum, Pipa, Kelly and Katherine, who was clutching a first aid box, crowded around her. Mum looked like she was about to burst into desperate tears, but was the first to notice that Harriet was conscious.
"She's awake!" Mum cried, the colour flooding back into her pale cheeks. Harriet still felt dazed as she tried to sit up on the sandy arena floor.
"That's it," Katherine soothed, putting the first aid box down when she could see that Harriet was not fatally hurt. The world wobbled in front of Harriet's eyes, and she winced as she gingerly placed her right hand on the ground, than hastily withdrew it with an expression of pain on her face.
"Is that where it hurts?" Kelly asked calmly; she had probably been in many similar situations herself. Harriet nodded slowly, her face screwed up with the pain.
Katherine gently took her hand and studyed it.
"Looks like a broken, or at least fractured wrist. You'll need to see a doctor soon," She noted, carefully winding a sling around Harriet's neck and wrist. Pipa turned, impossibly, even paler, and suddenly broke out in tears.
"It's...all...my...fault!" She choked out in between sobs, burying her face in her riding gloves. Mum put an arm around her, telling her it was all an accident, it was no one's fault.
"We'd better get her to a hospital," Katherine decided, turning to Kelly. "And you'd better sort out this lot!" She added, pointing at the rest of the lesson, who were all wearing slightly confused, concerned faces, and whose jaws couldn't get any lower.
"Right..." Kelly frowned.

The hospital was busy, so Mum, Harriet and Katherine, who had decided to come along too, were directed to a row of plastic blue waiting chairs along one wall, next to many other grumbling patients. Harriet flicked through a horse magazine that was fortunately in the stack of magazines, not once even twitching her broken wrist in the sling, so that the throbbing pain, which had disappeared for now, wouldn't return any time soon. Half an hour later, the doctor, a lady in a spotless white lab-style coat, poked her head around the examination room door.
"Harriet-Charlie?" Dr. Miller called, looking through her glasses at a clipboard. Harriet, Mum and Katherine stood up. Dr. Miller beckoned them inside, and they were admitted into a, in Harriet's opinion, very white room. At one side stood a white bed for the patients, with a desk, computer and what looked like an X-ray next to a couple of chairs opposite. They all sat down on the chairs, the doctor still peering down at her clipboard.
"So, broken right wrist?" Miller asked. Mum nodded.
"She fell off a horse — we're not sure how bad it is."
Miller nodded; "Okay, the X-ray will show us how bad it is, don't worry."

An hour later, after passing under the X-ray machine and having her turquoise-blue wrist cast put on, Harriet stepped out of the hospital with a new spring in her step. Although it was strange and she knew it would become itchy before long, Harriet was still excited about having a cast; all her friends could sign it; she would have an excuse not to write, as she was right-handed; and she, like many other kids, had always wanted a cast, never thinking about the pain it would take to get one, only thinking that it was 'cool'. However, now that she had got one anyway, Harriet was going to make the most of it.