“An hour ago, my lovely one,” came his reply.
“Damn.Never mind.David is closer.”I promised Ewan an explanation later, and rang Iain’s youngest son (and our next-door neighbor, separated only by forty or so acres of hill and pasture).“David!I don’t suppose you are anywhere near your dad’s side of the farm?No?Well, how soon can you get here?”
“Kathie, I just said I’d take care of this,” Iain said sternly, and tried to grab my phone.I didn’t miss the spasm of pain that followed him reaching for it, so I moved backward a couple of steps, which allowed Sunshine—who had been bopping me on the back with her velvety nose—to shift forward, and resume checking out Iain.
“Is something wrong?”David asked, sounding a bit out of breath.
“Iain fell and smashed his face, and his ribs and knee are bad.He’s got the quad here, but there’s no way he can shift the herd up here.”
“Flock,” David said in my ear at the same time Iain said the same word, shooting me a look that mingled love, annoyance, and, in the end, resignation.
“Do you need help moving him?”David’s breathing increased as if he was running.“I’ll head your way now, but I’m in the south.Should I ring 999?”
“Hang on, your father is going to explode if I don’t let him talk,” I told David, then handed Iain my phone.I made a mental note about lecturing him later about the folly of not calling me to tell me he’d injured himself, and eyed first the quad, then Damsel.
It took two minutes of arguing from both David and me before Iain agreed to take himself back to the house, so we could assess the state of his injuries.
“Would it be easier for you to ride instead of drive?”I asked him as I helped him to his feet.He grunted and swore, grabbing for the seat to steady himself.“Oh, lord, Iain.You can’t drive this way.Let me see.If it was Damsel by himself, I’d leave him in the pasture, but Sunshine—”
“It’s all right, love.I can drive.I just need to get in,” he said.
I really don’t want to think about the four minutes that followed.Iain’s knee had swollen up and refused to bend to the point where he—a tall man—could stuff it into the footwell.We managed to get him relatively comfortable, but I could tell it cost him a lot.
“Drive slowly.I don’t want to think of what you’d look like if you rolled the quad,” I told him when he, with his best sheepdog, Mabel, at his side, turned and headed down the hill.
By the time I got the horses back to their pasture (and promised them a brushing later), Iain was ensconced on the couch, covered in a down blanket, with his daughter-in-law Joanna puttering around.
“Oooh, thank you.It’s colder than I thought it would be up on the hills,” I told her when she handed me a cup of tea.I took a couple of sips of it to warm up, then lifted the edge of Iain’s blanket.“Holy shit!”
“David’s coming as soon as he moves the sheep,” Joanna said, bringing me an ice pack wrapped in a towel.She averted her eyes as she did so, but I said nothing.She had three boys ranging between fifteen and eight, but she was squeamish to the point of passing out if an injury was too gruesome.“He’ll help get Dad into the car.”
“Could you get into my car if I helped you?”I asked Iain, studying the mess that was his knee.I suspected the kneecap was dislocated, but there was definitely some internal injury, since it was bruising a prodigious plum color.I got the ice pack settled before covering his legs again.“It’s lower to the ground and would be easier to get into.”
“I can’t bend my leg,” he said in an apologetic tone.“I’ll be fine here.The ice’ll help my knee.”
“Nothing is going to help that but medical aid.Right.I’m not going to wait for David.We’re going to get you into the car.Joanna?”
“I’ll do whatever I can,” she said, ignoring the baleful look Iain turned on her.
It took a further seven minutes before I put down the back seats of my car, made Iain a nest of blankets and pillows, and, with Joanna’s help propping him up, got him into the back of my car.
“What’s Dad doing?”Clara asked when she emerged from her soap workshop.She was flushed, and smelled of a complex mix of pine, cedar, and citrus.“Why is he in the back?Are you going into town?I need to go to the co-op to pick up some supplies.Can I get a ride?”
“I’ll run you into town quickly, Clara,” Joanna offered.“Your parents are a bit busy right now.”
“I’m fine, love.Just a bad knee,” Iain told her, wincing as he made himself comfortable.He was pressed with his back against the passenger front seat, his long legs angled to fit.“You know how your mum is.”
“Sane?”I asked as I got into the driver’s seat.“Smart?Well aware of how stupidly high your pain threshold is?”
“Worried,” Iain said, but his lips twitched a few times.
“I’ll take you into town later, Clara, or you can go with Joanna if she doesn’t mind hauling your things.”
Joanna, who was now on the phone telling her youngest son that she could see he was playing on the Xbox and not cleaning the chicken coop as he should be doing, nodded quickly at Clara and gestured toward her car.
Six hours, forty-four minutes, and a handful of seconds later, we arrived home, and, with Clara and David’s help, got Iain inside and comfortable on the daybed in the lounge.
“So,” David said, moving over to where a few bottles and glasses sat on a beautiful antique kitchen dresser.Iain had nodded meaningfully at the bottles, a fact I ignored as I consulted the information provided with Iain’s four prescriptions.“I looked up the long Latin terms you sent me, Dad, and other than some extremely gruesome pictures, I reckon it’s a broken knee?”
