Fear of Falling Read Online Free

“There!”
    The second her horns are free of the fence, Sabrina jerks her head back and bolts across the pen.
    Ashley trots around the pen after Sabrina, who stops and lets Ashley pet her. “Ooh, look at all her fancy curls everywhere. And her white eyelashes!” my sister marvels. “Hey, David, look—the poor goat is crying. Do you think she’s sad that she doesn’t get to eat my crusts?”
    â€œAnimals don’t cry, Ashley.”
    â€œThen how come there are tears coming out of her eye?”
    What on earth is Ashley babbling about this time? I go over to the goat. Sure enough, tears are running out of Sabrina’s left eye and down her furry cheek. The eyelids look squinty, too.
    â€œSee?” Ashley’s lower lip trembles. She’s about to cry herself. “We have to comfort her!” She reaches her arms through the fence, trying to give Sabrina a hug.
    â€œWe have to find out what’s wrong with her eye,” I reply, peering more closely. Suddenly Sabrina shakes her head, and I catch a flash of red on her neck. What was that?
    I pull apart the long woolly ringlets. On the skin of her neck, I find a red cut about two inches long, with blood oozing out. It was practically hidden in all her hair.
    I go back and examine the place in the pen where Sabrina was stuck. Where the fence is nailed to the post, there’s a sharp piece of wire sticking out with a tangle of long white hairs stuck on it. Sabrina must have scratched herself when she yanked her head back through the fence.
    I tell Ashley to stay put, and then I run back to the girl at the table to borrow some paper towels and a cell phone. I hope Dr. Mac has her pager switched on.
    A few minutes later, while we’re waiting for Dr. Mac to arrive, the girl and her mother look at Sabrina’s injuries. The neck cut looks terrible now, with blood dripping all down the goat’s white hair. I press a wad of paper towels firmly onto the cut, like a pressure bandage, to stop the bleeding. But it’s the scratched eye that worries me the most.
    Ashley is trying to be brave, but as we wait for Dr. Mac, she begins to sob. The girl, whose name is Julie, cries a little, too, and her mom looks anxious. Only Sabrina seems calm and unconcerned.
    When Dr. Mac arrives, she puts a drop of anesthetic into Sabrina’s eye to numb it, and then a drop of yellow-green stain. Then she examines the eye with her ophthalmoscope, which looks just like the kind people doctors use to check their patients’ eyes. Peering through the scope, she rolls back the goat’s eyelid and shines a little beam of light all around. Goats have funny eyes, yellow with a flat pupil shaped like a bar.
    â€œThere’s a scratch on the cornea,” Dr. Mac announces. “The stain makes it show up. That’s why this eye is tearing so badly.”
    â€œWill she be all right?” Julie whispers.
    â€œI think so. I’ll give you some antibiotic ointment to use so the eye doesn’t become infected, and I’ll recheck her in a few days. The eye should heal up nicely on its own.”
    Next Dr. Mac rinses the neck wound with saline from a squeeze bottle. She examines the wound closely, frowning. “This cut’s rather deep. It’ll have to be stitched up.”
    Dr. Mac gives Sabrina a shot to sedate her. Next, as I hand Dr. Mac the tools one by one, she shaves the wound, cleans it with antibacterial soap, paints it with iodine, then sutures it up using a long needle and surgical thread.
    I didn’t think Ashley would be able to handle seeing Dr. Mac push the needle into Sabrina’s skin, but Ashley is fascinated. “Hey, it’s just like sewing,” she exclaims. “We did that in preschool!”
    Dr. Mac smiles. “That’s right, it’s exactly the same thing. And the skin will grow right back together where the stitches are.” She gives Sabrina an injection of antibiotics