Chapter 2
Chapter Two
Janey
“Morning, Doc.”
Logan is already feeding the patients when I walk into the clinic.
Although, clinic is a big word for what once was simply a barn.
Doc Evans—my predecessor—converted half of it into a clinic space with a waiting room, an office, bathroom, examination room, and a combined surgical and recovery room. The other half is still a barn of sorts, and it’s where we keep any overnight guests . The old tack room barely holds the full-sized bed we sometimes use when a patient needs closer monitoring.
Logan slept there last night, keeping an eye on a pet goat that was brought in yesterday with a perforated gut. I did the best I could fixing him, but the shard of glass that had pierced his bowel had done quite a bit of damage. Miraculously, the animal came through surgery, but we have to monitor him closely for any signs of infection.
“Morning, Logan. How is our patient?”
“Hanging in.”
I poke my head over the stall door and notice the animal is still pretty lethargic.
“Any sign of fever?”
Logan shakes his head, his floppy blond hair hanging in his eyes. He is one of my assistants, at least he is for the summer until he returns to college in Bozeman, where he is a third-year veterinary student.
“Not so far.”
“Good. Let’s hope he perks up a little over the next twenty-four hours.”
It had been my recommendation to euthanize the animal, given the damage done and the questionable chance for recovery. Surgery would be expensive, and I ended up having to resect a substantial portion of his small intestines. Best-case scenario is the goat will need a special diet for the remainder of his life, or else he’ll have ongoing digestive problems. However, the owners insisted I do whatever possible to save the goat, since their nine-year-old daughter is very attached to him.
Hey, I wasn’t going to argue with them, but I won’t stand by and watch any animal suffer unnecessarily. If he starts going downhill, I will strongly urge them to put him down.
“How did he end up with glass in his bowels anyway?” Logan wants to know.
I’m curious myself. I know there’s a preconceived notion out there that goats will eat anything, and I guess some of them eat weird stuff, but I can’t see one picking up a piece of glass and eating it. Unless, it was stuck inside food of some kind.
“I asked the owners to look around his pen, see if there are any broken light bulbs, make sure there is nothing in his feed, but I haven’t heard anything yet.”
“I don’t think that glass came from a broken lightbulb, it was too thick for that.”
He probably has a point. It was more the thickness of a clear bottle or a mason jar.
I do a quick check on our one other patient; a shepherd mix found on the side of the highway, probably hit by a car. She’s not microchipped and I don’t know her. I had Frankie—my full-time assistant—contact the other two small animal clinics in town to see if they were familiar with the dog, but no one knows who she is.
It’s possible she was actually tossed from a car. It wouldn’t be the first time that’s happened. For whatever reason, some idiot owners think that’s a valid solution when they can no longer keep the animal, instead of dropping it off at a rescue or even a clinic like mine. I don’t run a rescue, but I wouldn’t turn my back on an animal. Most people here in Libby know that.
She seems to be a sweetheart. Her tail is wagging when I sit down in the straw with her. The poor thing looks like she was dragged a ways, with deep abrasions along one side of her body. She also suffered a broken hind leg, some cracked ribs, and a fractured orbital bone. She must be in quite a bit of pain but still manages to be loving to anyone who gives her attention.
“Do we have a name for her yet?” Logan asks, hanging over the stall door.
“I don’t know. What does she look like to you?”
“How about Ginger? She’s got a bit of a reddish coat,” he suggests.
“Yeah, we can call her Ginger. Do you like that name, girl?”
Her tail wags even faster at my voice.
“Let’s see how she does eating, and maybe after try to coax her into a little walk outside.”
“Will do.”
I get up and brush the straw off my butt, when my phone buzzes in my pocket. It’s the High Meadow Ranch number.
“Doc Richards.”
I use Doc, a title I inherited the first time I showed up at the ranch and it stuck. I don’t mind it, doctor seems so stuffy, and Janey is too easy to dismiss, especially for some of these ranchers who are more set in their ways. Doc seems to hold the perfect balance, it’s casual, but the title still affords me some professional respect, albeit reluctantly in some cases.
“Doc, it’s Alex at High Meadow. Sunny, that paint mare you saw a few weeks ago, is in labor, but she’s struggling. Looks like the foal is wanting to come backward but one leg is folded forward.”
Shit . That’s a tricky presentation.
Only thing worse would be if the foal was a full breech with both legs forward. As it is, I’m going to have to try and move that stubborn leg backward without damaging the uterus. Once we have both legs, we can help the mare deliver quickly. Any time the back end comes first, there is a risk of the foal dying. The umbilical cord is compressed between the foal and the birth canal, cutting off oxygen to the foal. It’s imperative it is delivered immediately, with or without the mare’s help.
“On my way. Keep her on her feet and moving. Hopefully, it’ll keep her from straining.”
“Difficult delivery?” Logan asks, having guessed at the problem.
“Backward presentation with one leg breech,” I tell him. “Sorry, kid, you’re gonna have to hold down the fort. Frankie will be here in half an hour to give you a hand.”
I know he’d love to come—and it would be good experience for him—but I have open clinic this morning and someone has to be here. He’ll be able to handle most of the complaints that walk in.
I rush to toss any supplies I might need in the back of my truck and jump behind the wheel. Time is critical. But even as I’m peeling out onto the road, I find myself wondering if I’ll bump into JD at the ranch. I haven’t seen him since that awkward scene at Foxy’s a couple of weeks ago.
It sure looked like he was coming straight for my table when the waitress bolted out of the kitchen and jumped into his arms, practically mauling him on the spot. He was quick to pluck her off him, setting her back on her feet, and he didn’t seem too pleased with that course of events, but he did change direction. Instead of heading my way, he veered off to sit at the bar.
At that point, I turned away, and tried to put JD out of my mind. The man is as aggravating as he is attractive, or maybe I find him aggravating because he’s attractive. In my experience, men who are that good-looking tend to be cocky, arrogant, and often players.
That last encounter did little to prove me wrong.
JD
“Come on, girl, keep moving,” I urge the pretty little paint, who keeps wanting to lay down.
When I walked into the barn earlier, Alex was trying to manage this mare by herself.
It’s quiet at the ranch, Jonas and Sully are on day two of a three-day trip to Billings for a livestock auction, while Fletch, Jackson, and my father are on a search for a missing hiker. Dan is sticking close to home since Sloane is on bedrest with only five more weeks until her due date.
This time I volunteered to help Alex keep an eye on things here. Sunny isn’t the only mare about to pop, there are two others who are getting close. Maybe I wanted to stick around because of the possibility we’d need to call Doc in. I haven’t seen her since that disaster at Foxy’s after I finally worked up the balls to approach her. I should’ve explained what she witnessed right on the spot, but I didn’t, and there really hasn’t been an opportunity since.
Staying behind appears to have paid off, as I watch her stride into the barn, all business. She’s already wearing coveralls—probably wise, since birthing can be a messy business—and her hair is in two braids with a bandana tied around her head. Her eyes are focused on the mare, and she barely even acknowledges me as she puts down her bag and starts rummaging through it.
She works with a singular focus, which is one of the things that drew me to her in the first place. The animals are her first and main concern, and she has a bedside manner many a physician could learn from when dealing with their human patients.
“Did her water break?” she asks when she rounds the mare.
I notice she’s looking at the dark wet spot running down the horse’s legs.
“No. She had the shits and made a mess of herself. I rinsed her down.”
Her eyes briefly flash my way before I get a mumbled, “Thanks.”
Then she hands me the horse’s tail to keep it out of her way.
“Alex is just up at the house grabbing a thermos of coffee for us,” I share.
She barely nods, already easing her gloved right arm into the mare’s birth canal.
“Hold her tight,” she warns, her cheek pressed against Sunny’s butt.
I can see the concentration on her face as she closes her eyes and frowns. The mare shifts uncomfortably, the invasion of her body not exactly a pleasant one.
“Hush, girl, you’ll feel better soon,” I mumble at Sunny.
The poor mare is grunting, her eyes are wild and every muscle in her body is trembling. She’s in obvious distress.
Over her head I catch Alex walking into the barn.
“Morning,” she greets.
“I’m going to try and move the second leg back,” Doc announces without bothering to return pleasantries. “But I can’t have her moving on me or I could damage her uterus. JD, I need you to brace her against the wall and use your body weight to keep her there, but glove up first, because as soon as I have the leg back, I need your help getting this baby out. Alex, if you’ll take her head and keep it still.”
The urgency in her voice has us jumping into action, and the next ten minutes it’s all-hands-on-deck. I end up on my ass in the stall, the slippery foal between my legs as I rub her roughly with handfuls of straw to stimulate her to breathe.
“How is she doing?” Doc asks, as she keeps a close eye on the mare, who is barely able to stay on her legs.
“Nothing yet,” I report.
“Clean her nose, keep one nostril covered and blow puffs in the other,” she orders. “We need to get some air in those lungs.”
“I can do it,” Alex offers, but I wave her off.
“I’ve got this.”
I whip my shirt over my head, wipe as much of the mess off the foal’s nose as I can, cover one nostril, and fit my mouth over the other. I’m really gonna need that coffee after this.
“Easy puffs,” Doc warns. “Watch her chest move.”
It only ends up taking a few before the little foal takes over breathing by herself.
“Good job.”
When I look up at Janey, she’s wearing a big smile aimed at me. Fuck if that doesn’t make me feel like a million bucks. Worth the ruined shirt and the mouthful of gunk.
“Now I’m going to need some help back here again. Poor mom has a prolapsed uterus we need to get back into place.”
Making sure the foal is okay by herself, I get to my feet and toss my dirty shirt on the other side of the stall door. Then I go see what Doc wants me to do.
“I need you to keep this elevated while I get things ready. We can’t let it hang down, or it could cause tearing.” She’s holding up a substantial mass of bloody tissue in her hands. “But first wash your hands. Then grab one of the green sterile sheets from the bottom of my kit and bring it to me.”
As I’m washing up at the sink, Bo comes strolling in. He stops in his tracks when he catches sight of me.
“Whoa.”
“Not mine,” I assure him when I see him scanning my body for injury. “Sunny had a messy delivery.”
“You don’t say. Giving Doc a hand, are ya? Flashing some skin in the process?”
Bo is our resident comedian. A good guy, but he sure loves to poke fun at people.
“Shut up and wash your hands,” I grumble, bending over to rummage through Doc’s bag for the sterile sheet. “You can give us a hand.”
Bo—a former surgical nurse—does as asked. “Poor baby’s got a prolapse,” he establishes when he pokes his head into the stall. “Morning, ladies.”
Armed with the green sheet, I motion for Bo to stand on Doc’s other side, before reaching between her and the horse’s back end to hand Bo two corners of the sheet. Holding on to my own two corners, we lift the sheet like a hammock underneath the inverted uterus Doc is holding.
“Perfect,” she mumbles, when she’s able to remove her hands.
“What did she have?” Bo asks, while Doc gets herself cleaned up.
“Little filly,” Alex fills him in.
“Pretty markings,” he points out.
The little one has a completely white mask, with chestnut on her stomach and legs, as well as framing every patch of white on her body. Her eyes are the kind of pale blue you know is going to stick. She’ll be a beauty.
Doc sidles up to me, a roll of bandages in her hands, the rough fabric of her coveralls brushes my bare skin causing goosebumps to rise up.
“Don’t move,” she warns me. “I’ll just work around you.”
She gets even closer as she tries to wrap up the mare’s tail to keep it out of the way. I close my eyes and groan on the inside, my body all too aware of her proximity. A soft deep chuckle has me snap my eyes open, only to find Bo’s amused look aimed at me. When I narrow my eyes on him, it only makes him chuckle more.
Asshole.
The entire process of waiting for sedation to take effect, making sure the uterus is cleaned, and slowly massaging it back into the mare’s abdominal cavity, feels like it takes hours. By the time I can let go of the sheet and help clean up, my arms feel like lead and my resistance is almost nonexistent.
So when Janey approaches the sink where I’m washing up—her coveralls hanging down from the waist, revealing her strong upper body in nothing more than a white tank top—the last string of resistance breaks.
“We need to talk.”
Her eyes snap wide open.
“We do?”
“Damn right.”