Changes of Heart (21 page)

A long, raspy squeal—a sound that conveyed excruciating pain—stopped each of them. Maggie lurched to her feet, half falling again, and slammed into the sliding door. She jammed her shoulder against the door to break it loose from the ice in its track. In a heartbeat Danny and Ian were beside her, and then Tessa. They heaved against the door, and it begrudgingly began to slide open.

The murky light in the barn presented a spectacle that made Maggie’s heart stop and her mind cease to function. Dusty and Dakota stood with their heads down, eating high-protein sweet feed from a fifty-gallon drum on its side toward the front of the barn. The drum’s safety lid was creased and battered and sitting against a wall. Maggie could see that it had been torn off by the repeated kicks of shod hooves. A couple of bales of hay Maggie had brought down from the second level three days before were scattered about, as if shaken violently by a giant hand. Dakota’s stall door, its center splintered and sagging loosely on its hinges, gaped like an open cave. Happy stood facing Dancer’s stall, her eyes pleading, her muzzle spattered with blood. Turnip’s stall gate was smashed open as well—Maggie gasped as she saw the battered and broken boards, a crushed and twisted grain trough, and grotesque splatters of frozen blood appearing as black as India ink about the stall.

But none of that clutched at Maggie’s heart like the spindly hind leg of a colt protruding through a jagged hole in the stall from which the horrible cry of pain was keening.
The leg was twisted and cut by the splintered wood, and the hoof hung at an impossible angle. Blood dripped steadily from a shard of the cannon bone—the longest bone in the hind leg of a horse—where it had pierced Dancer’s skin.

Danny shoved past Maggie and shouted over his shoulder, “Ian, Tessa, somebody! Get my bag—hurry! Maggie, we don’t have time for you to stand there. Move! Come on, I need your help!”

Maggie broke from her semi-trance like a swimmer emerging from a deep dive, dazed for a second but already in motion.

Danny crouched at Dancer’s stall and tore away the scraps and spearlike projections of broken wood that held the colt’s lower leg trapped. Ian thumped the medical bag down next to Danny. Maggie reached over and opened the latches.

“Ian, see what I’m doing here?” Danny said. “I’m going to move back for a minute, but I want you to keep easing this leg free. Tessa, if there’s room, you slide in next to Ian. And look, folks—no matter what you do, you’re going to hurt Dancer. There’s no way around it. We don’t have much time to play with here. Get that leg free.”

Dancer, still on the other side of the stall gate from the humans, squealed as Ian peeled part of a board from under the damaged leg. Tessa drew in a breath sharply but made no other sound as she slid a jagged sliver out of the young horse’s flesh.

“I’m going to do some suturing, Maggie,” Danny said, his hands filling a large hypodermic, “and I need you to swab and watch for bleeders. The cannon bone is snapped, and
as soon as we get the area clean, we’ll splint it and then I’ll go to my place—I’ve got a Fiberglas casting kit there.”

“Almost clear,” Ian said. “There!”

Tessa climbed over the gate and into the stall and held Dancer’s leg as Ian eased the gate open. Danny was there with his hypodermic, sliding the tip skillfully into a vein. Dancer, eyes ringed in white, chest frothy with frozen sweat, snorted loudly and began to cry out again. Then his head slumped to the hay-littered floor and he was still.

“Oh no!” Tessa shrieked. “Dancer...”

“He isn’t dead,” Danny grunted. “The anesthetic dropped him. He’s out of pain now. You get those horses away from the sweet feed, Tessa. Whack ’em if you have to, but get them away from there. And cross-tie Dusty in a stall. She’s driving me nuts dancing around here.” He met Maggie’s eyes. “Set yourself up next to me, Maggie. Wash your hands with the bottle of alcohol from my bag—it’s the best we can do right now. Leave enough for me.”

“I’m going for the cast kit and Sunday,” Ian said. Maggie looked up at him. “But you don’t—”

“I watched every move Danny made from Sarah’s house to here. I can drive the truck. OK, Dan?”

“Go,” the veterinarian said, clattering surgical instruments into a small metal pan and waiting for Maggie to hand him the alcohol bottle. “There are a couple of good flashlights in the mudroom cupboard. Bring those. You can’t miss the casting kit—it’s in the same cupboard and it’s the size of a suitcase and says Equi-Cast on the front of it. I just got it a few days ago—I haven’t even unpacked it.”

“Tess,” Maggie said, “get the flashlight from the shelf by the saddles. This light is awful.”

The growl of Danny’s truck sounded from outside. After a moment of idling, the tires whined and engine racket built up as Ian tickled the accelerator and began rolling—hard and fast. “He’ll make it,” Danny said.

Danny worked quietly, his lips moving silently every so often as he debrided the break and maneuvered the lengths of bone together. Tessa held the light on Dancer’s extended right rear limb as steadily as a beacon.

“Maggie,” Danny said after a long forty-five minutes, “the plastic box with the stainless steel screws in it in my bag—open it and hold it in front of me. It’s the—”

“I’ve got it, Danny. There’s a seal—”

“Yeah. It’s sterile. Pull the tape all the way around the container and—”

“Here, Danny.”

“Good.”

The first screw—the big one—went in easily. As Danny turned the setting tool, the trimmed and prepared lengths of bone drew together as if pulled by a gentle and benign magnet. The second screw—the one to mate the fracture closer to the hoof—began to slip. “Push against what I’m doing for a second, Maggie. All I need is the slightest bit of grab here. Easy, honey—there... good. Real good.”

It was finished.

The tagging of flesh together with sutures was a first-year vet school exercise. Danny fell back from the hunched position he’d held for the last hour and more and blinked
rapidly, his eyes as fatigued as his hands. “Whew,” he grunted.

Maggie leaned over Danny, her hand, now trembling, moving a sweaty hank of hair from his forehead. She kissed him, her lips barely touching his; the sweet contact was almost frightening in its intensity. She moved her mouth a part of an inch from his. “Thank you, Danny,” she breathed. “Thank you for what you’ve done for Dancer and for who you are.”

“Whoa,” Tessa murmured as she led Dakota and Turnip on short lines past Dancer’s stall.

Maggie and Danny blushed instantaneously and in perfect unison said, “Tessa...”

“I know, I know,” the girl said. “I didn’t see a thing, but even if I had, I’d never tell anyone. OK?” She turned the two horses and led them toward the front of the barn.

The reverberation of Danny’s truck and, a moment later, a series of frantic barking broke the moment. Suddenly, Sunday was running full-tilt at Danny, throwing himself at his friend, now whining rather than barking, his tail whipping, his tongue lapping at Danny’s face. Danny hugged the big dog to him like he would a beloved child.

Ian set the casting kit on the floor and lowered a twenty-five-pound bag of Gravy Train dog food next to it. “I didn’t want to take the time to feed Sunday, so I brought his grub with me.” He grinned. “If all those I visit at their homes were as happy to see me as Sunday was, I could help save the entire world.”

Tessa and Ian built a fire in the house as Maggie and
Danny worked at the delicate process of layering strips of fiber tape the length of Dancer’s left hind leg and applying the fixing and setting chemicals to the tape. The vet’s heavy-duty electric lanterns provided harsh but more than adequate light. Happy, Dakota, Turnip, and Dusty looked on from their stalls, where they were haltered and secured with lead ropes. Thus far, none had shown signs of founder or stomach distress. When Tessa righted the breached barrel she found that only a few pounds of the protein-rich feed had been consumed—the animals had gotten to the grain not long before their rescuers arrived. The nicks, scrapes, and cuts were relatively minor; Tessa quite competently treated them with a disinfectant wash and a layer of pasty bovine bag balm, referred to by horsemen as the “universal cure for horsehide.”

Maggie hunkered next to Danny as he crouched next to the fractured leg. His hands moved quickly but not hurriedly as he smoothed the cast, applied fixer, and frequently checked the colt’s pulse and breathing. His concentration was as focused as any surgeon working in a fully equipped operating theater, his moves sure, without wasted motion.

The extreme cold seemed to have little effect on the chemical reactions and the bonding of the casting materials.

“His eyelids are fluttering a little,” Maggie said.

“Yeah. I noticed some increase in his pulse too. He’s coming out of the anesthesia. That’s good—we’re almost done here.”

“Is he going to be in much pain?”

Danny hesitated. “Some. Maybe a lot. The screws and this cast need to support weight as soon as he wakes up and we help him to his feet. It’s instinct—he’ll need to stand as soon as he’s conscious. There aren’t many animals that are easier kills for predators than a horse off his feet, and Dancer’s blood will tell him that loud and clear.”

“What’s... what’s the prognosis, Danny? I need to know.”

Danny shook his head. “I honestly don’t know. He’s an extravagantly healthy colt with excellent bone structure and lots of spirit. It’s completely possible the bone will mend perfectly.” After a moment, he added, “And it’s completely possible that it may not too. I think his chances are real good, Maggie, but it’s out of our hands from here on in.”

Maggie nodded. A wave of fatigue rolled over her that made her suddenly, unexpectedly weary. Her balance tottered for a moment, and she put out a hand to maintain her position sitting on her boot heels.

Danny went back to work, smoothing the cast, his fingers probing the edges that were close to flesh for roughness. Maggie watched him work.

I kissed this man who isn’t Richie. That moment wasn’t only gratitude, and it wasn’t merely a gesture. I kissed him as I used to kiss Richie, to show him that I... No
!

She’d never feel about another man as she did about Rich Locke. Never. But was her kissing Danny only gratitude, then? Why did it feel so good and safe and wonderful? And why, when they were kissing, did Ian’s face flash in her mind?

Two hours later a truly miserable colt stood in his stall, leaning slightly against a side wall with the toe of his left rear hoof testing the ground very tentatively. When he shifted weight to the limb he squealed in pain and snatched the hoof up again. Tremors ran through his body every so often, and his eyes were red rimmed.

“The shivers and the red-eye are from the anesthetic wearing off,” Danny said. “He’s doing fine. He’ll put more weight on the leg as he goes along.”

“He doesn’t look fine, though,” Maggie said.

“No,” Danny agreed. “But neither would you if you’d just broken your leg and had surgery in a drafty barn by flashlight in the middle of the storm of the century. I think he’s going to be OK.”

Ian reached over and gently smoothed Dancer’s forelock. “He’s a gutsy little guy, isn’t he? He has to be hurting badly, but he hangs in there. He trusts you, Maggie, and it looks like he’s wondering why you don’t fix him up immediately—make everything better right now.”

Maggie sighed. “I know exactly what you mean. Even with a very young child, a parent can explain that the pain will go away. With a horse...”

The windows along the side of the barn clattered in a gust, and a wooden roof truss groaned.

“All we can do is the best we can do,” Danny said. “I’ve certainly learned that in my practice. I wish I could stop
all the pain and fear of the animals I treat, but that’s not possible. I do the best I can.”

“What I know about horses wouldn’t fill an ant’s hat,” Ian said, “but I know a good doctor when I see one.”

Danny’s face showed quick surprise at the minister’s comment, but then he smiled. “Thanks, Ian.”

“What about Dusty and Happy and Dakota and Turnip, Dan?” Ian asked. “Is that grain they got into going to be a problem?”

Danny grinned. “Nah—they didn’t have enough time with the barrel open to eat themselves sick. As my gastroenterology professor in vet school told me, there’s something you can always count on when it comes to horses eating what they shouldn’t: ‘This too shall pass.’”