Saving this baby might be as close as she would ever get to something she didn’t actually deserve to get a second chance at – being a mother.
‘I’ve got some things we’ll need in my clinic,’ Christophe said. ‘Like clean straw and medications. But for the specialist milk replacement for equines, we’ll go to another clinic where a friend of mine works. Martine has a passion for horses and works in a clinic that specialises in work with big animals.’
Martine was a tall, blonde woman who had blue eyes and a gorgeous smile that blossomed the moment she opened the door and saw Christophe. She was more than happy to supply everything he needed – bottles, teats, a big sack of replacement milk powder. She came out to the car to greet Fi and coo over the tiny foal before they left, and then she hugged Christophe after he opened the driver’s door. A hug that was tight enough and long enough to make Fi’s heart sink like a stone.
She didn’t want to ask the question but it wouldn’t budge when she tried to push it off her tongue. ‘Martine’s a good friend?’
Christophe’s gaze met hers via the rear-view mirror so swiftly she knew that he’d picked up on what she was thinking. Had it been the tight note in her voice, despite her best effort to keep it casual?
‘We’ve known each other for many years,’ he said. ‘And we… went out a couple of times. A very long time ago.’
‘She seems very nice,’ Fi said, relieved that the need to watch the road meant that the eye contact had been broken. They were past the jumble of ancient buildings of the old walled city of St Paul de Vence and heading up the hill with forest on either side of them, on their way home now.
‘She thought the baby donkey wastellement mignonne– super cute,’ Christophe added. ‘She offered to help care for her.’
Fi swallowed hard. ‘What did you say back?’
His gaze met hers again in the mirror. ‘I said that I had everything I need,’ he said. She couldn’t see his mouth but she could hear the smile in his voice. ‘Including you.’
Fi ducked her head, letting her nose brush the foal’s muzzle, hiding her own smile.
* * *
Back at La Maisonette, Fi put the foal, wrapped in a blanket, onto the couch while they made a nest of clean straw in the corner of the living room, after shifting the confit pots.
Christophe checked his watch. ‘It’s time to feed her again. Martine said we need to get all the colostrum into her within the first twelve hours. That’s when the most antibodies are absorbed.’
Fi nodded. ‘I’ll get some hot water to put a bottle in and warm it up to body temperature.’
‘I’ll check the instructions that Martine said are easy to find online, but she said she needs to be fed in a ratio of one hundred mils per kilogram. She’s about ten kilos now, so that means a litre a day, divided into at least ten feeds. If she can’t take that much at a time we need to feed more often.’ He held out the water bottle full of Mary’s milk. ‘We’ve got more than half a litre of colostrum here.’
Fi took the bottle. ‘I’ve helped bottle raise a foal once, after its mother rejected him. I remember a lot of things.’
Like how to try and persuade the foal to drink from a bottle. After several futile attempts, she put her index finger in and rubbed the roof of its mouth and waited patiently to feel the foal sucking. Then, very slowly, she removed her finger, replacing it with the teat. Christophe was holding the foal in a standing position, one arm supporting her body and his other hand cupping her head, because that was the most natural way for any foal to be feeding.
They’d put just fifty mils into the bottle for this first attempt, partly because they didn’t know how successful they would be and didn’t want to waste a drop of the precious colostrum. They exchanged a look of what felt like almost triumph when the bottle was empty. Christophe settled the baby onto the straw.
‘I’ll check her over again,’ he said, ‘in case I missed anything in the forest.’
Fi took the bottle into the kitchen to sterilise it ready for the next feed. By the time she came back, Christophe was draping his stethoscope around his neck.
‘She seems healthy,’ he said. ‘A little weak but her heart sounds strong and her breathing is clear. I don’t think she’s premature, which is a good thing. It gives her a much better chance to survive.’
Fi let her breath out in a sigh of relief and covered the fact that she had to blink back tears by touching a tiny hoof with the odd rubbery growths that she’d seen before on newborn horse foals. They were there to protect the mother during pregnancy and the birth.
‘Fairy fingers, we call these,’ she told Christophe. ‘Or horse feathers.’
His huff of breath was amused. ‘They will fall off very soon, yes?’
‘As soon as she’s standing up. Within a day or two. They look creepy, don’t they?’
‘Creepy?’ Christophe was frowning. He didn’t know the word.
‘Strange. Weird. What is that in French?’
‘Bizarre.’ Christophe nodded. ‘Oui. C’est ça.’
‘And the rest of her is so…perfect. Look at those ears…’
