Darkness pressed over the yard.Frost irritated the skin along his jaw until it burned.Every breath felt like it scraped down his throat.Inside, the shed gave off its usual scent of manure and sweat.Blood sat sharp enough on his tongue that he could taste it with his mouth shut.One bulb hung overhead and threw weak light across stacked bales and empty grain buckets.
He stepped in and hauled the door closed behind him with a hard jerk.It made no difference whether the cold stayed or left.Nobody came out here unless they had no other choice.This job belonged to him.It always had.
He kicked loose straw aside and crossed to the Jersey cow stretched on her side.She dragged air into her lungs in broken pulls.Her brown eyes rimmed white every time another contraction took her.Her belly rose and dropped in uneven surges.Every part of her was thrown into this one fight.
His flashlight skimmed over the bedding and picked out two black hooves already showing.They were slick and wrong.The toes pointed up where they had no business being.His mouth dried out at once.He crouched on the balls of his feet, his jeans biting into his knees.
“Come on, old girl.Give me something.”
The words were low, barely more than a breath.
She bawled, thick and miserable, with froth stringing from the corner of her mouth.Titus set his palm against her hide and moved his fingers along the ridges of her ribs.He had learned her shape by touch before he was tall enough to sling a hay bale.Her skin twitched under his hand.Her flanks shivered.
“It is going to be rough,” he muttered.
He yanked off his coat and shoved his sleeves up.He bared forearms marked by the cold and the scrape a bull calf had left on him the week before.
He dropped lower, one knee sinking into wet straw.The smell in there was more than birth.It was ammonia and copper and dying grass.The place reminded him that preparation did not change the fact that life liked to turn sideways when it could do the most damage.He swallowed and kept his mind on the only things that mattered.He had to get the calf out and save the cow.
“Breach, damn it.”
His fingers moved over the legs already showing to check for movement.They stayed limp.The angle was wrong.He pressed his thumb into the wet joint and cursed.He needed the shoulders and the head, not this.
He rolled his shoulders.He was already sore under the collarbone.He had gone almost thirty-six hours with no real sleep, but the rush in his blood kept his hands moving.He shoved one arm in, then more of himself, reaching through the warmth.He searched for the missing head.
It was not there.
His whole body started to shake.A cramp bit through his muscles.Fatigue clawed at him.He shut his jaw hard and kept it all inside.He did not do it for the cow or the dark outside.He did it because he had to.His thumb found an ear and then a jawbone.The head had bent back.The calf would not come out like that.
Sweat gathered under his arms and cooled too fast in the freezing shed.His breath came out white.Another contraction rolled through the cow.She let out a low sound as the pressure clamped around his arm so hard it wiped out everything except pain.
Titus braced and did not let go.
“Stay with me, girl.Do not quit yet.”
His own voice sounded worn thin.Between that animal and death, there was nothing but his hands and his stubbornness.There was no room for his father or the bunkhouse talk.There was no room for the list of things that had already gone bad.
He pushed deeper and searched again.Jawline.Slack tongue.Eyelid.The head still lay wrong, with the neck trapped back along the spine.Every part of him narrowed to elbows and pressure.
One more contraction shook the cow.Titus felt it move down his own arms.It was the push and drag of living muscle fighting him at every inch.
“Move for me,” he growled.“Come on.”
He looked straight into the cow’s eye as if daring her to stay.Steam lifted off her flanks.Blood smeared into the straw.Mud and damp climbed his jeans.His own heart drove hard inside his chest while the whole shed narrowed to one question.
Then light cut across the barn.
He jerked his head up.Even months later, that was the part he remembered first.It was not the sound of the latch or the rush of cold.
Kyla crossed the last few feet without waiting for permission.Up close, the reality seemed to hit her.She saw the blood and the way the cow’s body strained.She swallowed once, steadying herself, and dropped into a crouch opposite him.
“What do you need?”she asked.She did not pretend she already knew.
Titus did not waste time questioning why she was there.“The head is back.The shoulder is stuck,” he said.His words were clipped by the effort.“I cannot get the angle.”
She nodded and took that in.Her gaze moved from his face to where his arm disappeared inside the cow.For a second, uncertainty showed, but it did not slow her.
“How can I help?”
