Together, slowly, we edged toward the door.
The storm slowed, we had a glimpse of a person lying in the yard. The next gust, I could see a horse. By the last gust there were two bodies in the yard, two horses. Dude skittered up to the porch to get out of the last sprinkles of rain. He rushed past us, headed into the kitchen, ‘trilling his head off’ as Lexi would say, looking for his food.
I wasn’t feeding that damn cat, he would need to wait, because Lexi was out lying in the mud.
We rushed from the house, Cooper getting there first.
“Lexi!”
Cooper slid on his knees beside her and checked her pulse.
“Is she alive, oh god, she doesn’t look good!”
He said, “There’s a pulse, but… yeah, she doesn’t look good.”
Torin was beginning to stir.
He was on Lexi’s legs. He raised his head, appearing dazed, looking around. Then he rolled off to the side.
Cooper said, “Torin, wake up! Wake up, Torin, what happened?”
Torin looked over at Lexi, “Did she make it?”
Lexi looked frighteningly pale, not good at all. “She doesn’t look good.”
Torin said, “She is verra ill.”
“Oh no, what happened?”
“The Princess needs a physician.” He lumbered to his feet.
I patted the back of Lexi’s hand, “Wake up, babe, you need to wake up!”
Torin was visibly upset, stacking bags and checking on horses that had shown up with him and Lexi. He repeatedly insisted that Lexi needed to get to a hospital, that we needed to call a physician.
Coop got out his phone. “What’s happened to her?”
“She is beset by flux, a weak and loose belly, I couldna make her well.”
Cooper called the ambulance while I tried to get Lexi to wake up. “How ya doing, Babe? You okay? Torin said you were sick.”
My focus had beenon Lexi, when I realized Torin was returning from the house.
Cooper told him Lexi’s ambulance was coming, but it was dawning on me — was he leaving a horse?
He said something crazy, like it was Lexi’s horse. I was shaking my head, completely unable to explain to Torin that Lexi did not want a horse, had never wanted a horse, and wouldn’t know what to do with a giant beast. He was acting like it was the most normal thing in the world to leave a horse at Lexi’s house.
Torin said something about how Cooper needed to hire security guards for Lexi and warned that more men might be coming, and Cooper looked pissed at being bossed around.
But I was struck at how impatient Torin was to get going and I wondered if we had done something to him, or if Lexi had upset him somehow.
But then he said, “If anything happens tae her… daena let anything happen tae her.” And then he said, “I winna be back, I winna bother ye again.”
And I caught a glimpse of a look — his heart was breaking.
Lexi moaned. Her leg moved.
Cooper said, “Lexi, it’s me, are you okay?”
