The muscles underneath are twitching and rigid.
“Hey, girl. I know. I know it hurts.” Low. Steady. The voice I use for every scared, hurting animal on this ranch. The voice I can’t use for myself. “We’re gonna get you up. Come on.”
I get the halter on. Brace my weight. Pull.
She resists—the ground feels safer when you’re in pain, even when the ground is the most dangerous place to be.
I pull again.
Talk to her.
Insist without forcing. She lurches up—front legs first, then the heave of the hindquarters—and stands swaying, head low, trembling.
I clip the lead and start walking. Up and down the barn aisle. Slow, steady laps.
Grace works behind us—the nasogastric tube, the mineral oil, the IV catheter for fluids.
Shadow assists, holding what she needs held, steady and silent and useful in the way big men often are during crises.
Grace directs them both with the calm authority of a woman who has done this a hundred times and knows that panic kills more horses than colic does.
Passage walks. Reluctant, painful, each step an effort.
I keep my hand on her neck, keep the rhythm steady, keep talking in that low, constant murmur that means nothing in words and everything in tone.
You’re not alone. I’m here. Keep moving.
Bex arrives sometime after that.
I hear her truck. Her boots. The barn door opening. I don’t turn around because I’m walking the mare and the mare needs consistency and because turning around to look at Bex is a thing I’m not allowing myself to do.
She appears beside me without a word.
Falls into step.
Reads the situation in three seconds—the tube, the IV, Grace’s face, the mare’s pain level—and doesn’t ask questions she already knows the answers to. She just walks.
Her shoulder is six inches from mine.
I can smell the night air on her—cold and cedar and underneath it the permanent base note of iron and leather and warm skin.
She drove here fast.
Her braid is messy, thrown together in the truck.
She’s wearing a flannel over a tank top and the flannel is misbuttoned by one hole and I notice this because I notice everything about her now and it’s driving me out of my mind.
We walk the mare.
Grace checks vitals every thirty minutes.
The first hour is bad—pulse stays elevated, gut sounds absent, and the mare stops twice to kick at her belly. I have to talk her through it, hand on her face, voice low, don’t roll, don’t go down, stay with me.
Bex takes the other side during the worst moments, one hand on the halter, one on the mare’s shoulder, and we hold her between us like two pillars bracing a wall that wants to collapse.
Shadow makes coffee at midnight.
Brings it to the barn in two mugs.
