He’d been gone a while. I didn’t know how long it usually took for a calf to be born, but he’d already taken a lot longer than the last time.
I walked out into reception, expecting to be plunged into darkness at any second, but the headlights stayed on. I opened the front door, lifting my hand to shield my eyes, and stepped out onto the patio.
The truck was idling in the driveway.
I went down the steps. The concrete of the driveway was cold against the soles of my feet, but I barely noticed. Once I wasout of the glare of the headlights, I could see Mason sitting in the driver’s seat, staring out the windshield. One hand was still holding the steering wheel. He wasn’t moving.
I cracked the door open. “Mason? Are you okay?”
He had a lot of blood on him. It smelled like a thousand childhood memories that threatened to overwhelm me in a roaring wave. I narrowed my focus onto Mason, fighting back the impending dizzy rush of panic. Fuck it. This was about Mason, not me, and whatever was going on here, one of us needed to keep it together. And it was pretty obvious it couldn’t be Mason.
He blinked but didn’t turn his head. “Cash?”
“Yeah.” I reached out and put my hand on his shoulder, my throat already aching because something had gone badly wrong. “What happened?”
He turned his face toward me at last. “I fucked up.” His voice hitched. “I fucked everything up, and Trent Lee’s gonna sue me, and the practice, and even if thatdoesn’tbankrupt me, how can I ever work in this town again?”
“No,” I said, my brain seizing only on that last part. “What happened?”
Mason shook his head wearily and turned off the ignition. The truck died with a splutter, and the headlights finally went out. Mason unclipped his seatbelt. He got out of the truck, hefting his bag with him like it weighed a thousand pounds. I helped him with it, grabbing the other end of the strap to stop the bag dragging on the ground.
When we got inside, Mason tried to take the bag toward the surgery suite, but I pulled it away from him and put it on the floor.
“You need a shower,” I said. “There’s blood all over you.”
He didn’t answer, just headed for the stairs.
I set the bag down on the floor in the hallway and followed him up, all the way into the bathroom.
When we were kids, I used to look after Chase when he’d gotten into it with our dad. Mostly because he’d usually done it to divert our dad’s attention from me; Dad loved a weaker target. Helping Mason peel his bloody clothes off felt a lot like that. I realized I was even checking him for injuries as I did, even though I knew the blood wasn’t his. Old habits were hard to break.
“I’m gonna put these in the washer,” I said. “Will you be okay?”
He didn’t answer, just stepped under the warm spray of the shower.
I hurried downstairs to the laundry room, but I didn’t put the clothes in the washer. I filled the tub with cold water instead and shoved them in there to soak. Hot water set bloodstains. Just ask Chase and his favorite Falcons shirt he had when he was thirteen.
When I got back upstairs, Dog had taken up my position in the bathroom. He was sitting with his chin on the edge of the tub and staring intently at Mason, his whiskers twitching as spray from the shower hit his face. Mason was sitting on the floor of the tub, his head bowed. He hadn’t bothered to pull the shower curtain closed. The floor was already wet.
I pulled my towel off the rack and dropped it on the floor. I reached into the shower to grab the soap that Mason wasn’t using and took a washcloth from the drawer under the sink. Then I knelt on the towel, lathered up the washcloth, and reached out to rub it gently down Mason’s back.
He flinched at the first touch, then relaxed. I couldn’t see his face because his hair was shielding it, but I rubbed the cloth down his back a second time, and he didn’t try to move away.
“I felt really good going out there,” he said at last. “The last time went so well. And the cow was already in the crush when I got there, so I wasn’t even worried about getting stepped on. And then Trent Lee tells me she’s been going for almost six hours, but he can feel movement.”
I slid the cloth back up his spine, watching the suds slide down his skin.
“It was a mess,” he said, his voice cracking. “I thought I could just do a manipulation, turn the calf the right way. I felt inside, and it was definitely transverse and the head was facing downward. I tried for about twenty minutes, but it wouldn’t budge, and the cow’s getting fussier each second. So I go to a C-section, and meanwhile Trent’s in the background saying the whole time that Alan Springer wouldn’t be taking this long, and did I even know what the hell I was doing.”
My eyes got hot, tears already locked and loaded for the bad ending I knew was coming.
“I had to extend the incision in the uterus three times because the calf was too big,” he said, his voice sounding hollow. “By the time I pulled it out, it was dead. And then I had to stitch the cow up, with Trent yelling at me about how that calf was alive when I started, and how the semen straws cost ten thousand dollars, and how he’s going to sue me and the clinic into oblivion.”
“Can he do that, though?” I asked, trying not to think of the poor dead calf and its poor hurt mom.
“Yeah. I mean, there’s insurance, but if he wins, the company might put their premiums up so much that it effectively means we can’t operate.” A shudder ran through him. “I was supposed to look after the place while Uncle Jim was on vacation, not burn it to the ground for him.”
I didn’t know what to say to him. I didn’t know if he’d done anything wrong or not. I didn’t know how serious beingthreatened with being sued was. If someone sued me, they’d be lucky to get five dollars, and that was mostly in quarters. But I knew what it was like to have something big and scary looming over you. I knew what it was to feel so afraid that everything inside you went cold first, then numb. So I said what I always used to say to Chase when he was hurt.
