“The only vet around here that I’d trust with this mare is speaking at a conference in Albuquerque today. And I don’t care what it costs.”
“Very well, then,” she said briskly, “it’s you and me. Let’s get this foal on the ground.”
She untied the mare and unsnapped the lead rope.
Immediately, Tara went to the middle of the stall, circled and started to go down.
“Don’t you need to unhook that fluid line?”
“No, it won’t tangle,” Darcy said, moving past him toward the mare with the same quiet efficiency she’d used before. “This coiled type doesn’t.”
Tara lay down, rolled from side to side, then struggled to her feet. She stood for only a short time, then went down again. This time, after two halfhearted tries, she lay there on her side.
Darcy went onto her knees to examine her.
“It’s an almost undetectable stream,” she said, “but her water has broken. She’s in second stage labor now.”
Tara groaned and tried to push.
“She heard what you said and she’s acting the part.”
Darcy looked at Tara.
“Let’s hope her acting gets results.”
A sharp fear stung him.
“You think she’s too weak?”
“We may have to help her.”
That wasn’t a direct answer, but he didn’t press for one. What did he want—assurance that the mare couldn’t live through this because he’d waited too long to take her away from Blake Collier?
He set his jaw. Maybe he had made yet another of his famous mistakes in judgment, but this was one time he was going to win.
“What do you want me to do?”
Darcy glanced at him, then sat back on her heels and stared at Tara. Her face plainly showed that she was worried, yet there was a calmness about her that hadn’t been there out on the road when she was insisting on treating the mare.
“Go get a bunch of towels,” she said. “This baby may be sick, too, and we’ll have to keep it warm. Blankets.”
“Should I boil any water?” he said dryly. “Sterilize the scissors? Tear the sheets into strips?”
That made her look at him, and he realized, with a little shock, that that had been his intention all along. She smiled, and he felt positively triumphant.
“No,” she said. “My stuff is in sterile surgical packets. But if there’s anything else, I’ll let you know.”
Then she set her attention on the mare again, and Jackson felt lost. He turned and left the barn for the house, trying not to think about the deep green of Darcy’s eyes.
It took him a few minutes to ransack the cabinets—he just threw his towels in the washer and used the same ones over and over without ever looking to see what supplies were in the house. His grandfather had been the last person to live there before him, and he’d probably done the same.
In a cupboard in the bathroom he found stacks of towels his mother must’ve brought over—recently or in Old Clint’s time he had no idea. He grabbed one batch of them and two blankets from the old armoire in the bedroom, then hurried to the barn. Sometimes he’d give the ranch to be able to run across the yard again.
But at least he was alive, as his mother was fond of reminding him whenever she dropped by on one of her infrequent visits. Maybe someday he’d be glad of that.
He heard Tara’s groans before he entered the barn, and they made him forget all about himself. The tortured sound was so dreadful that it hardened his will even more. Tara—and her baby—would live if he had to send the ranch plane to fly Dr. Ward Lincoln back from Albuquerque.
Even as he had the thought, he knew it was as foolish as a desperate child’s. This would all be decided in the next thirty minutes, and this woman horse doctor was the only veterinarian of any kind, much less an equine one, in fifty miles.
And there she was, at her truck, getting something from her vet box.
“She’s getting nowhere,” she said, when she saw Jackson. “It’s uterine inertia.”
Jackson’s heart thudded painfully.
“What can we do?”
“Add calcium supplements to the IV fluids. She’s so weak we’ll probably have to get hold of that foal.”
She turned to the barn with her hands full of supplies.
“Let me put these things down and I’ll help you,” Jackson said.
“Not necessary,” Darcy said. “Let’s go.”
By the time he’d piled the blankets and towels in the corner of the stall, she was standing still, watching Tara thoughtfully.
“Let’s wait a little longer,” she said. “Maybe she’ll get a second wind and deliver on her own.”
Thirty minutes later, after three more valiant tries on the mare’s part accomplished nothing, Darcy spoke.
“She can’t take much more of this, and neither can I.”
She began pulling on a long, plastic sleeve. “Here,” she said, tossing one to him. “Put it on just in case I need you.”
For a second, his anger flared. He couldn’t fit his glove inside the plastic sleeve, and he wasn’t going to try.
“Don’t do it all yourself,” he said sarcastically.
“I’m not,” she snapped, flashing him a surprised look. “You’ll get your chance to be a hero.”
“That’s not what I meant, and you know it.”
There was a trace of hurt in her voice. Guilt nagged at him. She had no way of knowing what his hands looked like or why he wouldn’t take off his gloves.
Tara groaned again and strained terribly, but there was no visible sign that the baby moved.
“It’s always better not to pull a foal,” Darcy said. “But we don’t want to let her get too weak.”
She went down on her knees behind the mare and gently inserted her plastic-sheathed arm.
Jackson waited, watching her face, but it told him nothing.
“There’s a front leg,” she said, at last. “Now, where’s the other one?”
Finally, after an eternity, she nodded, and Jackson let out a breath he hadn’t realized he was holding.
“All right,” she said, “there it is, and there’s the nose—and, thank goodness, the sucking motion that says it’s alive. Let me get that muzzle tucked in between those little legs and out you come, baby.”
She worked for a bit, then pulled gently. Once. Twice.
“We’re getting him out, Miss Tara,” she said. “Come on, can you help me, girl?”
Tara groaned and tried again to respond, but she was clearly getting weaker.
Jackson awkwardly lowered himself to a half-sitting, half-kneeling position beside the veterinarian.
“Why don’t you let me help?”
“Because you would keep on saying women aren’t strong enough for this job,” she said, through clenched teeth.
She gave the foal another pull.
Sweat stood on her forehead.
“No,