Page 47 of The Voices are Back

She wasn’t a big coffee drinker, but I’d seen her enough over the last year that I knew her by name.

She was on the ground with a syringe the size of her arm in one hand, and a needle in the other.

She was staring down at a horse that lay on the ground, and she was working quickly, starting an IV on the horse.

“So since when did Folsom start working here?” Aodhan asked Matilda.

Matilda barely spared him a glance as she tried, and failed, to get the horse’s head up. The horse had a really big head.

He was brown and beautiful, and huge. His belly looked rather large as well. As in, it wasn’t supposed to be that large.

“Since Diana and I were both liquid shitting every time we squatted down, or sneezed, or thought wrong,” Matilda said as she shifted on her knees in the dirt. “Get down here and help me hold this horse’s head up.”

Aodhan didn’t hesitate getting into the dirt, and what might or might not be manure.

He dropped right down until his knees were planted right beside Matilda’s. Then he lifted the horse’s head up so easily that it was quite comical.

Matilda snorted out a laugh, as if his ease at doing what she couldn’t was amusing to her and not offensive like I semi-thought it was.

“Wow, what a bruise,” I heard said beside me.

Diana, also known as Luce, smiled tiredly at me.

“Uh, yeah,” I croaked. “Just a small one.”

Just a large one.

When I’d looked at myself in the mirror it was to see the bruising extending from the lower half of my face all the way down into my collarbone area. Who knew where it’d be tomorrow.

Also, there was a tender spot on my chest where the man had braced his arm—at least that was what the doctor told me. I hadn’t remembered that part.

I was sure by tomorrow, that would match the rest of the bruising for sure.

Folsom, not one to do manure, went down to her haunches and started to listen to the horse’s belly with a stethoscope.

“If we don’t get him up soon, he won’t make it,” I heard Diana say.

It looked like all three vets in attendance were in agreement.

“What’s wrong with him?” I whispered.

I wasn’t sure anyone heard me at first, but eventually Diana, who wasn’t doing a thing, answered.

“He has colic.” She grimaced. “Has had it for a bit now, and it’s starting to affect other systems in his body. Not to mention, there’s the potential for stomach rupture, which’ll be fatal.”

“You’ll do surgery?” I asked.

“We would if we could get him up and moved to a place where we could perform the surgery.” She grimaced again. “We need a tractor or something if we can’t get him up. We’re fairly sure that at this point, there’s a blockage that can’t be reached via the tube.”

I didn’t say anything more as I watched them try to get this horse up, and fail.

But, over the next twenty minutes, more and more of the men from Aodhan’s motorcycle club arrived, giving them manpower. Eventually, they were able to wrestle the horse up to standing, and then get him to the area where they could dose him with some medicine and get him into the surgical suite for equines.

I stayed back in the arena with the other horses, watching and waiting.

It took Aodhan an hour to come back.

By the time he came back, I was so overly exhausted—and had popped one of my pain pills—that I was listing to one side.

---