Falling For A Cowboy

And if she ever let herself think so, then she’d be the biggest fool of all.

Chapter Two (#u2657647f-54b3-5eb5-a2c4-5fdb59e4a466)

“STARGARDT’S DISEASE?”

Amberley strained to bring the wavy lines of her ophthalmologist, Dr. Hamilton, into focus. Shameful tears pricked the back of her eyes. It’d been a long six weeks of appointments and tests since she’d returned home and begun searching for an answer about her failing eyesight, and now this...some strange name that seemed like it had nothing to do with her.

Dr. Hamilton’s chair creaked as he leaned forward. “It’s a genetic disorder that causes macular degeneration.”

Her heart dropped all the way to the floor and splattered.

Was there a cure?

Lately, her central vision had deteriorated at a terrifying rate, hobbling her at home, her spirit and independence vanishing with it.

“Should we have discovered this when she was born?” her mother asked in what Amberley called her “Interrogation Voice.” She’d been a Carbondale county judge for almost ten years and a prosecutor for fifteen before that.

Out of the corner of Amberley’s eye, she spied her mother’s white face in sharp detail. A line where she hadn’t blended her makeup. A mole the size of a pencil eraser. A few strands of gray-brown hair that’d escaped her braid and fell across her cheek.

Strange that while the center of her vision failed, her peripheral vision still worked fine.

“Not necessarily. The condition appears, symptomatically, in childhood with some vision deficit that’s correctable with glasses or contacts. However, the loss of sight increases rapidly in the twenties, in some instances progressing to legal blindness.”

Her gasp cracked loud in the ophthalmologist’s office.

A hand—her mother’s—fell on Amberley’s knee. Squeezed.

Suddenly it became hard to breath.

“Am I going blind?”

Dr. Hamilton moved his head toward her. That much she could tell, but if he nodded or made a face, she didn’t have a clue. He appeared as just a fuzzy blob of tan and brown wearing something white—a lab coat she guessed.

“Complete blindness?” He paused—maybe waiting for her to affirm the question? Her mouth froze along with the rest of her, her heart beating down deep in a block of ice. “That would be rare, but we can’t rule it out.”

Panic rose. Would her vision be this way from now on? Forever? The world had morphed into a carnival fun house full of twisted, stretched and squashed reflections.

“There isn’t a procedure that could help? An implant? Gene therapy?” Her mother’s crisp voice turned sharp.

Another knee squeeze.

A drumming sound signaled Dr. Hamilton tapping on his desk. Then a long sigh.

“Gene therapy studies are still too early to be conclusive. Charlotte, I wish I had a better prognosis for Amberley. This is a heck of a thing.”

“So—so that’s it?” Amberley’s voice shook.

“We can arrange for a service dog.”

“I don’t need a dog,” she cried. “I need my eyes back.”

My life.

“The Lord doesn’t give us more than we can handle—”

Easy for a sighted person to say. Amberley shook off her mother’s hand, shot to her feet, stepped forward, then bumped into the desk with her thigh. Hard. Her teeth ground together. She’d become a hermit these last few weeks for this exact reason. At home, she navigated the space well enough, keeping the tormenting sense of helpless, hopeless at bay.

But here—here she couldn’t hide from it. In the real world, her vision blossomed into a bigger problem and she shrunk into someone incompetent, dependent, weak, a person she never wanted to be.

“I can handle a fifteen-hundred-pound stallion at fifty miles an hour. But this—I can’t deal with this. What am I supposed to do with my life?”

She’d been planning on trying out for the ERA Premier tour team again at their end-of-summer qualifiers. Now she’d never be good enough to ride with them.

Or ride at all...

The life she’d always wanted ended before it’d even started, and she had no contingency plan.

“Honey, let’s not think so far ahead.”

Dr. Hamilton made a soothing noise. “Your mother’s right. Take it day by day.”

“And what do I do with those days?”

Unable to pace for fear of smacking into anything else in her obstacle course of a world, she dropped back into her seat. A sense of helplessness washed over her. Crushing. Unfamiliar. Did her life matter anymore? One without riding? Competing? Winning?

If you aren’t first, you’re last. Her father’s words floated inside, stinging.

What am I if I can’t compete?

Nothing.

No. Less than nothing.

You may as well not even exist.

She dropped her head in her hands.

“There’s plenty you can do,” her no-nonsense mother protested. Staunch as her pioneer ancestry.

“Like...”

After a painful beat of silence, her mother cleared her throat. “You could come down and assist my office clerk.”

“Doesn’t that require reading?”

Metal grated on metal. A drawer opened by the sound of it. Then Dr. Hamilton said, “There’s an equine therapy program for people with disabilities.”

“I can’t help people with disabilities,” Amberley protested. “Not when I’m...”