Chapter 26
Chapter Twenty-Six
ADDY
T wo petite hooves poke through toward us from the pliable opening of the mare on the ground. Foal number nine is moments away. Hudson is anxious. Like a doting first-time dad. It’s the sweetest thing.
I chuckle as he pulls off his hat and runs a hand through his hair for the twelfth time in the last ten minutes. It’s adorable, the way he worries for his mares. So far, so good—nine foals, and three to go. The hard ones, apparently.
“You always like this for the births?” I ask.
He stops dead and shakes his hands before shoving them into his back pockets. I smile and he bends down, lips brushing my ear. “Thank you for being here, Addy.”
“It’s my job, Huddy. But I wouldn’t have missed this for the world.”
Birthing a baby is hard on most mammals, but with horses and cows, the chance of prolapse and a breech birth is high. So, I take my time and monitor for any sign of distress or trouble.
But I’m distracted. My conversation with Harry has been twisting around in my mind since we left the clinic. Now, for the first time since I made my grand veterinary career plan all those years ago, I am weighing up the possibility of changing course. And twelve foaling mares is a handful for two vets, let alone solo, all going well. I am going to need help. I pull out my phone.
A missed call from Adam.
God, that is the last thing I need right now. I had five text messages and two missed calls when I got home from the roundup. All asking if I’m alright, and can he visit. I don’t even want to consider that possibility.
But if I’m being honest, his skill and expertise wouldn’t be unwelcome right now. I am wholly in over my head with a dozen foaling mares all in labor at once. And the man is a brilliant vet and has a knack with horses that most don’t. The one and only thing he has in common with Hudson.
I tap out a message to Justin, asking for his help. He replies straight away.
Off duty doing paperwork, but I will send someone soon.
Great. Just great. He couldn’t care less, that guy.
I dump my phone onto my bag and push to my feet. With a minute between contractions, I check the other mares, one by one. All twelve of them in the barn. It’s better than being out in the cold and haze of snow that has started falling.
The bag vibrates. No, my phone is ringing.
Justin.
I swipe it up from the bag on my way past to check Vanity, two stalls down.
“Justin, I really need a hand here.”
“Hello to you too, Adeline. I can’t be out there today. Would a nurse be enou?—”
Something bangs in the background where he is. Is he at the clinic?
“Sorry, someone is pounding at the front doors. All the locals know we are closed Sunday. Must be some out of towner. Call you back in a sec.”
Beep, beep, beep.
Fuck.
Even a nurse would be okay, if that’s all he can spare today. If this is one of his plays to set me up for trouble, I am not taking this one lying down. These are Hudson’s mares we are talking about. The phone buzzes in my hand.
Sending someone out now.
Thanks.
I have no idea why I’m still polite to that giant donkey’s ass—my parents’ civilized ways imprinted on me, no doubt. Hudson is talking to a mare in the stall. When I hear him shift in the hay, he calls out, “Addy!”
I fly into the stall. Two feet, legs, and a slick head spill from Vanity. She groans, rocking as the contractions take her hostage and the foal slips from her. Hudson clears away from her, still talking to the mama mare. A bay foal scrambles to his feet and face-plants in the straw. I chuckle and Hudson slips through the stall door and shuts it before leaning on it. I check Vanity over, making sure there is no excessive bleeding and her vitals are stable. I rub her face as she looks around for her foal. “Well done, Mama.”
Hudson’s gaze follows the foal before tracking to me. The broad smile on his happy face is everything. The afterbirth hangs when Vanity finally stands and starts to clean her baby. I wait, making sure it falls away.
When I walk toward the stall half door, Hudson lets me out. “She did so good.”
“Always does. It’s Whimsy we need to watch,” he says, and we track to the mare’s stall. She’s weaving against the barn’s half door when we reach her.
Shit—she’s distressed.
“Hold her head, Huddy. I need to check her.”
I run a hand down her neck and over her back and rump as I move to check her over. She swishes her tail urgently, and I try to hold it aside to check on her progress. I pull a long glove from my back pocket and stand close as I slip a hand in to check the foal’s position. When my fingers find a little rump instead of a nose and feet, my stomach plummets. She’s breech. Dammit.
This far into the labor, turning the foal is almost impossible. “This one is gonna hurt, Mama.”
“She’s breech?”
“Yeah. I can’t turn the foal, either.”
I pull my arm out as another contraction starts. Poor Whimsy, I can’t imagine how painful that must be. Peeling the glove from my hand, I slip out the barn door. I could really use that backup right about now.
I wander back to the bags and double-check I have everything I need to stitch her up after a bad delivery or to make the delivery easier. When I have organized everything I will need for whichever way this turns out, I do another round of checks on each mare.
Louisa walks into the barn carrying a tray of steaming mugs and a plate of something. “Thought you two could use something warm.”
“Thanks, Ma,” Hudson says, taking the mugs from the tray and handing me one. I wrap my hands around the hot cocoa and sip it. It travels all the way down to my stomach. Mmmm.
“Thank you, Louisa. We needed that; it’s going to be a long day, and most likely a long night.”
“Oh?”
“Whimsy, again,” Hudson offers.
“Every year without fail, that poor girl. Next year she gets a break, Hudson. There is only so much a woman can take.”
Hudson chuckles and nods, sipping the cocoa. But the humor slips from his face when his eyes meet mine. I’m not happy that she is breech and there are only the two of us. Far from it. I finish the cocoa and replace it on the tray. Louisa leaves with the tray but insists on leaving the cookies behind. I set them down on the bales of hay and head to check the first of the foals.
He is getting cleaned still when I lean over the barn door, and I take in the beauty of Mother Nature’s design for a moment. A low whinny, followed by thumping hooves, breaks me from my short respite. I turn to track the sound. Whimsy. She whinnies before dropping to the floor of her stall. God, here goes.
Hudson beats me to the stall and has the door flung open and is by her side a heartbeat later. I round her rump and move her flicking tail away the best I can. The foal is close. His rump appears with every contraction but sinks back down. Damn it, where is our help? I rush back to the bags and decide to pluck up both before running back to her stall.
I fling it open, snatching up a syringe, a numbing agent, and a scalpel. I draw up the medicine and inject it into the area I intend to cut. After waiting two minutes, I make a cut to widen the foal’s exit. We wait for the next push. Whimsy groans, her head nodding up and down against the bed of hay she lies on.
When the foal edges closer to the exit again, I don a glove and take his tail in my hand before he can slip back again. I pull as Whimsy pushes. The contraction is huge. His little rump clears the exit and stays when the contraction stops. Good. Good work, Mama. The skin around the exit starts to blanch, over stretched. Whimsy is panting hard. Only the section where I cut is numbed. Everything else must be so painful right now.
Tires on the slushy gravel drive outside the barn track closer and stop, and I look to Hudson.
“Must be your help, Addy.”
“Good. I’ll take anything at this point.”
Another contraction, and Hudson strokes her face as I tug on the foal’s tail. He slips out past his hips as the contraction ends.
“Hello? Help is here, Addy girl.”
Hands tight on the foal’s tail, I freeze.
The familiar voice.
The very British accent.
Hudson raises an eyebrow and wire twists in my belly, my breaths shortening. I force my eyes shut for a heartbeat, sucking in a long lungful of air.
This is not about me.
He is here to help with Huddy’s mares.
“In here, Adam,” I call out.
“Marco!”
Hudson’s face has slackened. His eyes burn into mine.
“P-Polo,” I force out. When Adam comes to fill the stall doorway, he is loaded up with medical bags. His neat, gelled brown hair is fixed as it always is, to the side. His blue eyes are lit with excitement, his crooked smile pushing the happiness around his face the way it always has.
He is wearing loafers, Calvin Klein jeans, a button-down shirt, and a vest that probably cost more than my phone. He is immaculate and put together, as always. Hudson glances between the two of us. He has disheveled hair, a muddy and bloodied t-shirt tight over his chest that has ridden up over his wrangler-clad hips. His cowboy boots are covered in muck. And the contrast between the two is staggering.
Whimsy, ignorant of the tension that landed like freshly poured cement throughout her stall, groans as she contracts again. I snap my attention back to the foal in my hands and pull with everything I have. This time, it’s a big one, and the foal shoots out. He slips from his mother and onto me, and I fall backward with his rump squarely on my stomach. Afterbirth, fluid, and blood soak into my shirt.
I move him to the side as he starts to flail around and stand. Hands hanging by my sides, hair in my face and covered in muck, I stand staring at the man who broke my heart more times than I can count. And the only emotion I feel is relief. Thank god he is here. Because I cannot let anything happen to Huddy’s mares.
Hudson stands and holds out a hand, but his jaw clenches. Adam glances down to it before shaking it tentatively. “You look happy, Adeline. But then again, you always were happiest playing around in the muck and dirt.”
I open my mouth to say something, but Hudson ushers him out of the stall. Snapping from my daze, I drop down by Whimsy’s head and rest a hand on her chest. Taking the stethoscope from the bag by the door, I check her heart rate and breathing. I will have to stitch up that cut. But when I turn back to gather the gear, Adam walks in, sleeves rolled up and vest off. “I can stitch her, Addy. I think your friend needs your help with another mare, three stalls down.”
“What are you doing here?” I utter.
“You didn’t answer your phone. I got worried. So, I came out to make sure you were alright.”
“But why are you here , here?”
“Your boss said you needed a hand. I told him I was the best equine vet for the job. Literally. So, he gave me the directions. Lucky I got here when I did, baby.”
“Don’t call me that.”
“Oh, come on, Addy girl.”
“Nope, no Addy girl. Just Addy. The only thing I need you here for is to keep these mares and their babies safe. End of story.”
He throws his hands up as if to say don’t shoot . “Okay, if you insist. Here to work. Now, off you go and let me fix this poor girl up.”
“Fine.” I grab up one of the bags and walk three stalls down, torn between hating Adam right now and being desperate for his help. Hudson is leaning on the side of the stall three doors down, chewing a piece of straw. And when his blue eyes find mine, they are consumed with concern.
“I’m sorry, I didn’t know he was coming.”
“It’s alright, Addy. You said we needed help. Here it is.”
“At least he is a brilliant vet. I’ll give him that.”
When I’m inside the stall, Hudson pulls me into his arms and drops his head into my hair.
“God, Huddy, I’m filthy. You don’t have to.”
“I also need a long, hot shower, sweet girl.” But the last two words fade out a little. When the mare behind us starts pacing, we uncouple. She twitches, pawing the ground as Hudson clips a lead to her halter. Something’s not right. Plucking the charts from the bag, I flick through them until I find Cherry’s.
Healthy heartbeat, size was a little small, but the last ultrasound was fine. A bit hazy and all legs but... I snap the images out from last time. And then I see it. Six legs, not four... No, is that? Eight! How the hell did I miss twins!? Fucking hell.
“Shit.”
“What is it?”
I look up at Hudson and he reads my face, rushing to my side to grip the folder and scan the page.
“Twins. I have no idea how I missed it. She should be in the clinic. I should have monitored her better.”
“It’s fine. We deliver them one by one like human babies, right?”
“Actually,” Adam says from outside the stall. “The odds of both twins being viable in horses are much less than in humans.”
“Jesus.” Hudson pinches his nose, slamming his eyes shut. “And what about Cherry? Will she make it through this?”
“She has Addy and I; of course she will.” He is so confident. Cocky. But he backs it up by helping work her over while Hudson stands outside. We run a baseline set of vitals between contractions. Make a plan and a backup plan. Plan A – deliver each foal naturally, one after the other. Plan B – Cherry isn’t coping or one of the foals goes into distress, then we deliver them by caesarean.
Working with Adam is like clockwork. Everything is routine. Automatic. We are so used to working together that we easily fall into the roles we had for four years in the clinic together. I stand and walk to the barn door and fill Hudson in. He nods and steps back. He stares at Adam, then drags his gaze back to me. “Can you two do all that here?”
“Yes. Ideally, she would be in a clinic environment, but this will suffice.”
When Cherry starts kicking her belly with her back foot and her tail is switching erratically, we know it’s time to intervene. She isn’t instinctually laying down. As if she knows something is wrong.
When I do another internal assessment, I find out why. The first foal is tangled with the second. There will be no Plan A. No clean birth followed by another. They must have shared the same sack. Dammit.
Hudson paces outside the stall.
“Plan B, Adam. It’s a TTTS and... Tangled babies.”
“Shit, okay. Twin-to-twin transfusion is rare. I’m surprised she made it to term at all... I’ll prep the gear. You get her ready.”
Seeing Adam flustered is rare, and I stare at him for a heartbeat before glancing at Hudson. We cannot lose either of these foals. I am kicking myself for not noticing the twins on one of the other visits. Internal exams only ever felt like two feet and a muzzle, and I guess the second foal was underneath at that point in time. Now, however they are so entwined there is no way she can birth them naturally.
I clean Cherry the best I can with the surgical wash and draw the incision line on her belly. When Adam has the anesthesia set up and my instruments laid out, I call Hudson over. “Hudson, can you help Cherry down when she gets dozy?”
He is by her head in a heartbeat, talking to her. He’s nervous, glancing between Adam and me every few minutes.
“It’ll be okay. She will be okay,” I say when he glances at me.
I slip a gown over my mucky clothes and scrub my hands in the bowl full of antiseptic solution as I would in the clinic before surgery. Adam does the same, and when he secures a cannula and administers the drug into Cherry’s vein, it is only minutes before she sways on her feet.
Hudson guides her down, as he did with Sergeant when I was stuck. Something aches in my chest at that memory. Once Cherry is on her side and Adam has her set up with a manual breathing apparatus, I clean her belly again with the solution before making the long incision.
Thirty minutes later, two small foals are huddled tight in the straw on the opposite side of the stall. And we have a crowd. Mack, Reed, Harry, and Louisa lean over the stall’s half wall, watching as Adam runs vitals on the twins and I stitch Cherry up.
“Well, that’s a first for Rosewood Ranch,” Louisa says brightly.
I tie off the last stitch and clean up the site one last time before pushing to my feet. Hudson is still by Cherry’s head, manually feeding her oxygen with the pump. I come to her head and rest a hand over his. He stops the pump.
I wait, making certain Cherry is breathing on her own. When she takes her own breaths, coming out of the anesthesia, I pull the gear away from her and drop a hand to Hudson.
He looks up at me, but his gaze is far away as he stands. “Thank you.”
“Always, Huddy.”
He slips out of the stall and walks out of the barn.
My stomach plummets.
No doubt he is angry I missed the twins. I missed the second foal. It turned out okay in the end, thirteen foals instead of twelve.
Louisa watches him go and then turns back, glancing between Adam and me.
Jesus.
When Adam is done with the foals, he turns back, peeling off the gloves and gown. He pulls off the hat and mask and walks over to shake Harry’s hand, as if he was the one who pulled off thirteen foals in twenty-four hours. Always so cocky. Must go with the hair.
“Adam Hervey. Lovely to meet you.” He smiles at Louisa, and she shakes her head.
“Are you one of Justin’s vets?” She glances to Harry. The old man’s face is pulled tight.
“No, actually, I work at the equine clinic in New York. Only visiting. I’m Addy’s boyfriend.”
Louisa’s shocked face finds mine.
Air lodges in my lungs like a stone.