I scowled at my watch before slipping my phone from my pocket and re-reading it on the screen. I knew Arabella was back to work today, checking up on animals on other ranches, but this meeting was literally the entire point of our marriage. I tapped out a fast response.
Spencer:
Might be able to postpone. Where is she?
There were some dancing dots, and then the assistant shared the location.
With a sigh of resignation, I pulled away from the streetside parking and headed for the location. It was closer to her ranch than the city, but I pulled up the lawyer’s number and asked their office if they might be able to postpone the meeting for another hour. If I could get Arabella out of there on time, we might get this done before Christmas. Which was two days away.
The GPS took me away from the main city, and with the towering mountains behind me, I found my way to a recreational stable that, according to their signs, offered riding lessons, trail rides, and stables for horses. Not that I knew anything about horses or ranches, but it seemed like a nice place. A large, log-style building took up a manicured space to the right, and to the left barns and paddocks held healthy-looking horses. I texted the assistant, asking where Arabella could be found, and she said the “small brown barn at the back.”
It took me a good ten minutes of slow driving down dirt paths to find what I figured was the right location, and I parked off to the side and out of the way. As I exited, sharp, frigid air stung my cheeks, and I zipped up my coat, tucking my chin into it and shoving my hands in my pockets. If I found Arabella popping a pig cyst or something, I was out. Please, God, let it be something minor.
My rational brain argued that if she was tangled up in an “emergency,” then it probably wasn’t something small like a… sprained horsey ankle. Or something. I really knew nothing about animals.
As I approached the wide, open door to the barn, I was struck by how bone-deep cold it was, and a little spark of irritation stabbed my temple at the idea of Arabella workingin these temperatures for more than twenty minutes at a time. Cold exasperated inflamed alveoli, and with the severity of her pneumonia, it was all too easy for her to relapse.
All thoughts of Arabella’s lungs fled when I found her kneeling on a stall floor with her arms elbow-deep in the open wound of an unconscious horse that lay on the grond. “What—?” I strangled out.
Arabella paid me no mind. There were two people in the stall with her, one, a young woman, had a stethoscope against the horse’s wide, barrel chest, and the other was a grizzled older man dressed in dirty jeans and a beat-up, brown canvas jacket. The gray-bearded man looked a little green around the gills.
“Wendy, are you ready for a resuscitation attempt?” Arabella asked, her arms literally coated in blood and tugging hard at a catastrophically enormous wound on the horse’s side. I realized that she was pulling something out of the wound, and it had slick, downy fur.
“Are you giving a horse a C-section?” I asked incredulously. “In a barn?”
Arabella didn’t even offer me a glance over her shoulder, but her features twitched with a moment of amusement and then she was focused on her work again. She maneuvered the foal out of the incision, and with a slippery pop, the creature slithered into her arms and then onto a waiting towel.
The assistant jumped into action, wrapping up the foal and taking it off to the side where a litany of medical supplies waited in something that looked like an oversized fishing tackle box. Arabella worked fast, her bloody, gloved hands immediately beginning a rapid closing procedure that—despite the fact that this was a horse—I recognized.
The assistant began to panic. “She’s not breathing.”
“They take a little while sometimes,” Arabella replied calmly, her needle drivers clicking as she adjusted and made smooth,precise sutures with lightning speed. I watched in awe. Perfectly spaced. Smoothly tied. Fast as a whip. Beautiful. “Clear her airways out all the way—you won’t hurt her.”
“I’m trying,” the assistant said, her voice shaking as she scooped gunk out of the foal’s nose and airway.
“Rub her down,” Arabella instructed calmly. She had moved on to the subcutaneous layers, flying through her stitches with Olympic-level precision and speed.
The older man rubbed his beard nervously, exchanging a look with me. “Never had one sideways.”
“Happens to humans, too,” I sympathized. “You can trust Dr. Rook, though. The list of awards she won in school weighs more than the horse.”
Amusement pulled at the man’s features. “So we’ve noticed. Girl is a force of nature.”
“That she is,” I agreed softly, returning my focus to Arabella’s record-setting work. Had she timed herself? Surely, we should contact Guinness or something.
The assistant was vigorously rubbing the foal, and suddenly, I was in the operating room with Rook. The machines were flatlining. The baby’s lips were blue, wires protruding from every direction, and her little chest was pumping with forced air. And she wasn’t moving. The baby wasn’t moving. Her heart wouldn’t start, her body slowly dying from oxygen deprivation and miniature systems shutting down before they could even start.
My world tilted on its axis, and I found myself frozen, rooted to the spot while a familiar tragedy played out like a farcical allusion. I gripped the rough, wooden stall, willing my body not to follow my brain down the dark rabbit hole.
Arabella didn’t skip a beat. “Tell me what you do next, Wendy.”
The assistant, who I now had to assume was a student, pushed a lock of wheat hair away from her face with her shoulderand thought for a second. “Breaths. Cover one nostril and blow gently but firmly in the other.”
Arabella nodded, whipping through her stitches like a fucking rockstar. “Do it. I’m almost done.”
Wendy stretched the foal into the correct position, tilting its head back, and then administered a breath in one nostril. The foal’s chest rose once, and then it kicked, jerking violently back to its side. The student let out a gust of relief, pressing her stethoscope to the foal’s chest. “Steady rhythm. She’s breathing.”
Ara nodded like she hadn’t expected any other outcome, finishing up her superficial sutures. “Keep rubbing her and get her dry. The heater is helping, but it’s bitter today.”
