got through to her, but she was concentrating on one thing and one thing only-clearing the birth canal.
There was nothing he could do to help. There certainly wasn’t room in the birth canal for two of them.
‘Talk me through it,’ he said urgently, his face almost touching the girl’s. ‘What’s going wrong?’
‘There’s a piglet stuck…’
She had a voice to match her face. It was exhausted and pain-filled, but it was soft and lilting and…gorgeous!
‘You can feel it?’
A contraction hit. Doris’s body strained in a massive movement of muscle and the girl’s body jerked sideways.
‘You can’t do this,’ he said savagely, and he put his hands on her shoulders to try and draw her out. Hell, she’d break every bone in her arm.
‘No. No! I can feel a hoof. Leave me!’
She shoved herself further forward. ‘More water,’ she gasped. He splashed a bit more water over her arm and then took the bar of soap and ran it around the vaginal entrance. If he had time… He had lubricants in the car…
‘I have it,’ she whispered. ‘One. Two. Three… Don’t muck me up now. I have four hooves. Please, Doris, hold the contractions… I have to push…’
‘What the…?’
‘There’re four hooves coming down at once and the head’s right back,’ she muttered into the pig, and he didn’t know if she was talking to him or to herself. ‘It’s stuck like a cork. I need to get it up. I need to push…’
Another contraction. It jerked Tessa’s arm, hauling her body with it.
She was so slight!
She had to be slight to succeed. No man could get his arm into that canal. Cows maybe, but not pigs.
‘Bring the light over,’ Mike ordered, his eyes not leaving the girl’s face. There was agony written there, but also sheer, bloody-minded determination. ‘Jacob, go and get my bag from the car.’
‘But what’s happening?’ It was taking Jacob a long time to work out he was in on a birth, rather than taking part in a criminal raid. He sounded totally bewildered.
‘We’re having piglets,’ Mike said into the stillness. ‘At least I hope we are.’
His hands came down and held the girl’s shoulders, gripping hard, letting her move as she willed but giving her support when she needed it so the pig’s contractions stopped jerking her sideways.
He was trying to let her feel she wasn’t alone. It was all he could do, and it wasn’t enough. He felt utterly helpless in the face of her pain.
Who on earth was she?
He could feel the effort she was making. Once each contraction had passed, she put everything she had into shoving the piglet forward, upward and higher. During the contraction she concentrated on holding it back and not letting her efforts be wasted. He could feel her whole body straining.
She must know some obstetrics. The only way to get the piglet out if it was firmly wedged was to push it back and turn it.
Was she a vet-
And then he felt the piglet give-a minuscule amount but he felt the girl’s body jerk forward and she gave a gasp of sheer relief.
‘Turn, damn you. Turn,’ she muttered, as her own body changed position. ‘Please…’
Her shoulder twisted and her face screwed up. The crimson lipstick looked almost surrealistic.
And then her shoulder twisted still more. She gave a grunt of surprise and pain. The sow’s body contracted in one huge mass of muscle and the girl’s arm came sliding out.
Her hand was grasping one dead piglet.
The piglet slid limply onto the straw. The girl shoved it away as if it was of no importance-as indeed it wasn’t- and then she shoved her hand into the soapy water and moved again to reinsert it.
It wasn’t needed.
The contraction didn’t ease. It became a rolling crescendo of muscle power, and another piglet slid out onto the straw. This one was alive.
It was followed by another.
It was as if a cork had been pulled from a champagne bottle. Doris’s exhausted body heaved with every ounce of energy she had left, and minutes later the girl was in the middle of a squirming, bloody mass of living piglets.
Five. Six. Seven. Eight live piglets.
Mike was so stunned he could hardly count, but Doris knew. As the last of the piglets was expelled from her body, the massive sow moved her head around to see what she’d finally produced.
The girl looked up into the sow’s face and grinned-heavens, what a grin! She tried to lift one of the piglets around to its mother.
Her arm didn’t work. She gave a whimper of pain and the piglet fell back onto the straw.
Mike gave her a long, searching look and then he took over. At least he could help with this. He lifted each of the piglets in turn to lie under its mother’s eye.
After three piglets, the police sergeant finally came to his senses. He’d been watching in stunned silence, playing the floodlight over the birth. Now he set his searchlight down on a bale of hay and started ferrying piglets.
Which left Mike to concentrate on the girl.
She was exhausted.
No longer needed, she wilted. She lay back on the hay and clutched her arm as if it might fall off. Her face was dead white, her lipstick was smeared and there was the glimmer of tears in those gorgeous eyes.
Jacob came pelting back into the barn with Mike’s bag and the crazy gun still waving.
‘I’ve got it. I’ve got it,’ he told them, and skidded to a halt inches from Mike. Mike put a hand up and took the gun-followed by the bag.
‘That’s great, Jacob,’ he said calmly. He lifted the dead piglet and put it into the big farmer’s hands. ‘Now, go and bury this before Doris figures it’s alive and starts protecting it.’
‘Why the hell…?’ Jacob stared down at the battered little body lying in his hands. ‘We still don’t know what she’s doing here and you want me to bury this? Why?’
‘Because it’s dead, Jacob.’
‘Oh. Yeah.’ Jacob stared down at the body in his hands. ‘Right.’ He looked over at the policeman. ‘You don’t need me any more? For her, I mean?’
‘I think we can handle this,’ the sergeant told him dryly. Then, as Jacob moved to take his rifle back from Mike, the policeman shook his head. ‘No, Jacob. Leave the gun here. It’s not needed.’
‘But…’ Jacob was clearly uneasy about giving up his crook-chasing role. He cast an uncertain glance at the girl. ‘We don’t know who she is. She could be anyone. We dunno.’
‘No,’ the sergeant said. ‘But I think we can assume she’s not here to steal anything. And if she runs…’ He grinned. ‘I reckon we can catch her in those heels.’
The sergeant was right. The girl wasn’t going anywhere.
As Jacob carted the unfortunate piglet towards the door, the girl pushed herself up to a sitting position and gazed about her. She put a bloodied hand up to push back her curls, and left a gory streak down the side of her face.
She looked young and crazily vulnerable.
She looked hurt.
She’d only used one arm to push herself up. Now she brought her good arm over and cradled the other arm against her breast.
‘Let me see,’ Mike said gently, crouching before her and putting a tentative hand on her arm. She winced and pulled back, and the look of pain in her face deepened.
‘No. I need… I need…’
‘She must be on drugs,’ Jacob interrupted knowledgeably, pausing before he walked out the door with the dead piglet. He still wanted the criminal element here. He’d come expecting crooks and he was determined to find some.
