Chapter 12
CHAPTER TWELVE
DARBY
It was one of the worst nights of my career so far, and I know I haven’t been doing this long, but I’ve already seen a lot of gross, sad, crazy things.
I can’t say it was the worst of my whole life because, well .
. . I’ve had nights when I was a kid that I’ll never get out of my head.
But on the scale of shitty ways to spend a night, this one rates about a ten.
Maybe a twenty.
I stare at the mare who’s lying on her side, struggling to catch her breath, her whole body convulsing with contractions that have racked her poor body all night long.
She’s whining, and scared, and I fucking hate this for her.
I wish we could take it all away. She shouldn’t have to struggle like this to birth a baby.
“She’s not going to make it,” I murmur to Dr. Fisher, and he shakes his head grimly, also dirty and tired, beside me. “She’s just being tortured at this point.”
“I know,” he says with a deep sigh as we squat next to the mare trying to give birth. “Breech deliveries are tough and don’t usually end well. I thought we had the foal turned, but it keeps moving on us. It’s so damn frustrating.”
It’s heartbreaking. Because this horse is young, this is her first foal, and it just feels like such a fucking waste.
We can’t get the foal to stay turned. We’ve tried everything, including having our arms up her until we’re shoulders deep, and it’s not working. It’s trying to come out back first, and it’s ripping the poor mare in two.
“We have to put her down,” Dr. Fisher says. The owner told us to do whatever we have to do, that he understands that he’ll likely lose the horse.
“Can we save the foal?”
“If we hurry.”
With grim determination, we first euthanize the horse, and when that’s finished, and she’s finally out of pain, we work fast to cut the horse open and deliver the foal. We have to tear the membranes around its face and make sure it’s breathing, but we do manage to deliver a live horse.
“Oh, she’s beautiful,” I murmur, wiping her down with a towel. The mother would usually lick all the afterbirth away, but this little one is an orphan. She’s brown, with a white patch right between her eyes and white socks on her feet. “You caused a lot of drama, little one.”
“We need formula.”
“We need a nurse mare,” I counter, raising an eyebrow. “Because as much as I love her, I can’t stay and feed her every two hours until the end of time.”
“Well, shit.” The ranch owner, Caleb Kincaid, strides over and sighs when he sees the mother horse. “Damn, she was a sweetheart.”
“I’m so sorry,” I tell him softly and have to swallow down the tears that want to come. “There was nothing we could do, and we tried everything.”
“I know,” Caleb replies and drags his hand down his face and smiles softly at the baby. “The foal made it.”
“She did. She’s going to need a nurse mare, if we can find her one.”
A nurse mare is a female who has recently given birth but may have lost the baby. We can give her hormones and work with her to get her to take to the baby, adopting her as her own.
“I have another horse who just gave birth two days ago,” Caleb says, thinking it over. “The baby’s with her, but maybe she could take a second and it would be like twins?”
Dr. Fisher and I share a look.
“It’s possible,” Dr. Fisher says slowly. “But you’d need to make sure her nutrition is impeccable, and we’d want to keep a close eye on her.”
“I have no issue with that,” Caleb responds. “The baby would be happier with a mama rather than having one of us come out with a bottle every two hours.”
He’s right.
“We need more clean towels,” I tell Caleb. “I’ll wipe up the other mare’s sweat and cover the foal with it.”
I turn to Dr. Fisher.
“Do you think she’ll need hormones if she just had a baby two days ago?”
“Only one way to find out,” he says. “Let’s try. The sooner the better.”
For the next hour, the three of us work to get the foal ready to introduce to the mare, and we end up spending all day with her, with the babies.
Anything could go wrong, and we want to be on hand, just in case. I absolutely don’t want the mare to hurt this foal, after we all worked so hard to get it here safely.
The foal keeps trying to feed on the mare, but she moves away from the baby, so I’ve bottle-fed her throughout the day.
I’m exhausted.
I’m dirty.
I want to go home, and I want to see Tucker.
But it doesn’t look like I’ll be going anywhere anytime soon.
“Let’s start a round of hormones,” Dr. Fisher says. “Maybe that’ll get her interested. We keep feeding that baby until the mare decides for sure if she’ll adopt her.”
“Got it.”