A lighter voice sounded in the field. Emma’s call was like tinkling bells, and Shadow ambled away like a soft summer breeze.
I took my chance and hurdled the gate, skidding across the wet grass until I got to Joe. He was moving—thank God—and trying to get up, but his arms wouldn’t hold him. “Easy.” I caught him. “Where are you hurt?”
“Stomach,” Joe gritted out, rigid with pain. “Motherfucker stamped on my guts.”
“Can you walk? I need to get you out of this field.”
“I—” Joe’s eyes rolled back in his head.
“Joe...Joe. Come on, mate. Stay with me.”
He didn’t respond, and as I wiped the dirt from his face, the blue tinge to his lips scared the shit out of me. I wasn’t a doctor, but I knew the human body like the back of my hand, and whatever was going on inside his body was sending him into shock.
I scooped him up and carried him to the gate. Toby was waiting, a phone clutched in his hand. He crouched beside me as I lay Joe on the path.
“Emma called an ambulance,” he said. “Her and George are trying to get Shadow into his stable. Is Joe okay?”
No.
“I don’t know, kiddo.” I took Joe’s pulse. It was strong, but his breathing was raspy, and as I pushed his T-shirt up, the hoof print on his abdomen was horrifying. “Get a blanket. We need to keep him warm.”
Toby darted away and came back with a horse rug. I laid it over Joe and held him against me to keep him off the damp ground. “Where’s the ambulance coming from?”
“There’s an ambulance station in town,” Toby said. “But you won’t hear them coming. They know since Josef died not to come up here with sirens.”
Joe’s grandfather had died three years ago. The likelihood of an ambulance crew remaining constant enough to recall instructions like that struck me impossible, but twelve minutes later, a fast-response car crept up the lane. No sirens.
By then, Joe was shivering, his skin grey, and fading in and out of consciousness. I called his name over and over, but he was too out of it to hold my gaze.
The paramedic took one look at him and called for backup. A second emergency vehicle arrived as silently as the first.
“Blunt force trauma,” the lead paramedic said. “We need to get him to Treliske ASAP.”
It took everything I had to let them lift Joe from my arms, even though I saw shades of my own brother in each of them. Joe’s hand fell limply from mine and I scrambled out of the way, but his agonised groan when they rolled him onto his back cut me to the bone.
Toby trembled beside me. I put my arm around him, hoping my terror wouldn’t seep into him and upset him more. I couldn’t articulate what Joe meant to me—I’d yet to make sense of it—but he was Toby’s hero, the farm’s fearless leader, and Toby’s tears said it all.
The lead paramedic stuck his head out of the ambulance. “We need to go. Who’s coming with him?”
No one was stopping me getting in that ambulance. Later, I’d perhaps reason that Emma had been nowhere to be seen, Sal was away, and Toby too young, but right then—right now—none of that mattered. “Me. I’m coming with him.”
I got in the ambulance and we sped away from the farm. Joe was sick before we hit the main road, and the drive to Truro was one I couldn’t describe. Three times his blood pressure bottomed out, and when we reached the hospital, he’d deteriorated so badly that he was whisked away to Resus.
A nurse directed me to a waiting area. I prowled the plastic rows of seats like a caged animal. Was this how Shadow felt in his stable? I’d watched Joe wrestle him up to the top field more times than I cared to admit and always enjoyed the moment Shadow gained his freedom, galloping away up the hill, his dark mane flying behind him. But as my incarceration stretched on and on with no news, those moments seemed like another world.
Two hours in, I lost my shit. I flagged a nurse down and asked her about Joe. “He was kicked by a horse,” I said when her face showed no recognition.
“Wait here,” she said. “I’ll get someone to talk to you.”
Twenty-minutes later, a doctor who appeared barely out of his teens came to find me.
“Are you a relative?”
Nope.“Yes.”
The doctor nodded, perhaps too busy to care at this point. I knew how hospitals worked. “We’ve done a scan of Joe’s head, and there’s no significant injury there—a mild concussion, perhaps, but we’re more worried about his abdomen at this stage. We’ll be taking him for an ultrasound shortly to check for any ruptures or tears.”
“Internal bleeding?”
