‘How about a rope?’
‘Too coarse. I don’t want to deliver a lamb only to put it down because I’ve damaged it.’
‘You think it’s still alive?’
‘I didn’t listen for foetal heartbeat if that’s what you mean,’ she said, exasperated. ‘Dr Reynard, do you want to be some use?’
‘I… Yes.’
‘Then go find a sheet and join me out there.’
When Fergus got back to the paddock, Ginny was lying full length in the mud.
‘Why do ewes never choose a nice soft grassy patch to give birth?’ she muttered as he approached. ‘What is it with the muddiest, hardest, rockiest spot in the paddock? Ow!’
‘Ow?’ he said cautiously, and knelt to watch what she was doing.
She was trying to manipulate…
‘The shoulder’s stuck,’ she said tightly. ‘One foot’s come free and not the other. I need to get it back in and get the two legs out together. If that happens, maybe I can get it’s head down. Only she’s having contractions again.’
She was. Maybe it was their presence, but the ewe had finally decided to come to life again. Her belly was rippling with strong contractions and she was even struggling to rise.
Here was something he could do. He pressed the sheep’s head down with one hand and laid his other hand firmly on her flank.
‘It’s OK, girl,’ he told the ewe softly. ‘Dr Viental’s an emergency specialist. You couldn’t be in better hands.’
Ginny cast him a suspicious glance and kept on working.
She had small hands, he thought, which was just as well. She was using the soap as lubricant, trying to manoeuvre in the birth canal. Which was just a bit tricky when the contractions were designed to push her hand out again.
‘Can you tell her not to push?’ she gasped.
‘Don’t push,’ he told the ewe. ‘Remember your breathing techniques.’
The ewe had obviously forgotten.
Ginny swore again. The force of the contraction would be crushing her fingers. Then: ‘Got it,’ she said, and at the next contraction another tiny hoof appeared.
Two hooves.
‘Tie them,’ she told him, swivelling to soap her hands again. ‘Just tight enough to give you some purchase. It’s almost impossible to pull by hand.’
‘We’re going to pull?’
‘When I get the head in position. Breathe, damn you,’ she told the ewe. ‘If you push now, you’ll risk breaking your baby’s neck.’
Her fingers were already working, using the break in contractions to find purchase.
Fergus was looping the sheet, twisting it so the two little hooves were tied together, with a little of the sheet folded between them so they didn’t crush each other. His fingers were right against Ginny’s. There was so little room.
Another contraction and she grunted in pain.
‘Not yet,’ she muttered. ‘I can’t… I can’t… Yes!’
‘Yes?’ Fergus said, cautious.
‘Head’s down. Next contraction I want you to pull, very gently. I’ll leave my fingers where they are, pushing the head down.’
He looked at how far inside the ewe her hand was. He remembered the strength of the contraction. ‘Your fingers are behind the head. You’ll break something.’
‘I won’t break anything,’ she told him. ‘I’m tough as old boots. But I may just swear.’
‘I won’t listen.’
‘Very wise,’ she muttered, and he didn’t listen-or not very much-and one minute later a feeble excuse for a lamb slithered out into Fergus’s waiting hands.
It was alive.
Some things were instinctive. Newborn lambs weren’t so different from newborn human babies and he’d done his basic med training in obstetrics. Almost as soon as it was out, he was clearing its nose, checking its airways, making sure…
It gave a pathetic, mewing attempt at a bleat and Ginny grinned.
‘We have lift-off, Houston?’
‘Indeed we do,’ Fergus said, wiping the lamb on what was left of Oscar’s bed sheet. This felt good, he thought. More. Somehow in the drama of this day they’d been granted a little happy ending.
Two happy endings, he thought, if they counted the lamb they’d pulled from the cattle grid.
The ewe’s head was turned. She was straining to see, and Fergus lifted the tiny creature round to its mother’s head.
‘Well done, us,’ Ginny whispered, and wiped her face with the back of her hand.
Which maybe wasn’t such a good idea.
‘You look like you’ve just been playing with a chainsaw,’ Fergus told her, and she grinned, knowing he was feeling exactly the same as she was. Deaths while practising medicine were unavoidable. There was nothing like an intervention and a saved life to balance things up.
It didn’t make it better but it helped get things in perspective. A bit.
‘What’s a bit of blood between friends?’ she demanded, and he grinned back at her, enjoying her pleasure.
‘You love your medicine?’
‘I do indeed.’ She rose, tossing soap and scraps of linen into her bucket. ‘It takes me into another place.’
‘As opposed to the place you’re stuck in.’
Her smile faded. ‘Leave it,’ she said. She stood, looking down at ewe and lamb. The lamb was nuzzling the ewe’s flank, already searching for a teat. The ewe was still down but she was starting to move.
There was a warm night in front of them. She’d be safe.
She’d make it.
‘We have another baby to care for now,’ Fergus said gently and she flinched.
‘Madison?’
‘Madison.’
‘I don’t know how to face it,’ she said bluntly, and he nodded.
‘That’s what I’m here for.’
‘So we’re out in the paddock, delivering lambs.’
He smiled, a gentle smile that said he knew how she was feeling. It was a false smile, she thought. How could he know? But somehow it worked.
He was a doctor with an excellent bedside manner, she decided, trying to get a hold on things that were impossible to get a hold on.
Ginny hadn’t been near Cradle Lake since her mother had died. The house had been rented out for years. It had taken a huge amount of effort-and money-to get it to the stage where she could take care of Richard there. And now, standing in the paddocks looking down over the lake, with emotions surging through her that had been in overdrive since the first of her brothers had been diagnosed…
This man wasn’t helping, she thought. She’d fought since she’d been a kid to get some form of emotional independence. Not to break apart when she lost things.
Now, suddenly, she wanted to fall on this guy’s chest and weep-and what use would that be to anybody?
‘You met Tony? Our footballer-cum-nurse?’ Fergus was asking.
‘Yes.’
‘He’s out at your house right now,’ Fergus told her. ‘He’s talking things through with Richard. It seems he and Richard were in the same grade at school here, and Tony says they were friends. Tony reckons he can help.’
‘No one can help and Richard doesn’t want anyone,’ she snapped before she could stop herself, but he
