Pets in Prospect - Malcolm D. Welshman [28]
Liberally smearing my right arm with lubricating jelly, I began a gentle examination of the mare’s inside. Clementine gave a little grunt, raised her head and crossed and uncrossed her fetlocks. ‘There … there …’ I said. ‘Steady on.’ The words were as much for my benefit as they were for hers, but they seemed to steady her as she sank back with a sigh.
I gingerly probed deeper. The relief was enormous when I felt first one tiny fetlock, then another. My hand slid past them, waiting any minute to feel the foal’s head in its natural position between the feet. Instead, I felt two more hooves slip through my fingers. I checked. Yes. Two more hooves. A wave of panic flooded me.
‘Damn,’ I said.
‘Problem?’ whispered Lucy.
‘’Fraid so.’
‘Everything OK?’ George was back, leaning over the door, his wife’s ghostly pale face alongside.
I cautiously slid my arm out and stood up, my guts churning and pinging, my legs shaking. ‘Well, actually there is a problem.’
‘Problem?’ exclaimed Hilary, her mouth dropping open.
‘What do you mean … problem?’ added George, his salami cheeks blanching, his shoulders going into free fall. ‘The foal’s not dead is it?’
‘No … no … it’s not that bad.’ I hesitated before saying the word. ‘But it is a breech.’ The word hung momentarily silent in the air between us before its meaning imploded on the Richardsons with predictable consequences.
‘Oh my God,’ screamed Hilary. She wrenched open the door, rushed in and pushing Lucy aside, flung herself down to cradle the mare’s head in her lap. ‘My poor, poor Clementine,’ she moaned, tears streaming down her face. The mare was now beginning to strain more frequently; her flanks were black, darkly drenched with sweat; she groaned, clearly in pain.
George had followed Hilary in and was now standing right next to her all of a quiver, bristling with agitation. ‘So what are you going to do about it? Call in an expert?’
Fighting to control my own jumpiness and keep my voice from sounding like an untuned banjo, I answered, ‘I’m going to give Clementine a sedative and then try a spinal anaesthetic.’ Too late I realised I’d used the wrong words.
George pounced on them. ‘Try? What do you mean try?’ The wings on his eyebrows seemed to arch even higher as he spoke. ‘I would assume you’ve done this sort of thing before.’ He swung round to Lucy, eyes blazing. ‘Well, hasn’t he?’
She squared up to him as best she could. ‘He’ll be doing his best for Clementine. I assure you.’
I tried to put on a brave face but my confidence was oozing out of my boots as fast as the fluids that were now seeping from the mare’s hindquarters as a result of the water bag having burst. I had administered a spinal anaesthetic before – once, and only once. And then that was under the watchful eye of our Professor of Surgery at Veterinary School. Here, with Clementine, I had no choice but to try. She had a foal facing the wrong way. That foal had to be turned round inside her womb before it could be delivered. And I couldn’t turn the foal round with her straining. That had to be stopped; and the only way possible was by anaesthetising the lower part of Clementine’s body – blocking off the nerves to that area by giving an epidural.
By the look in Lucy’s eyes, I realised she knew exactly how I felt. Petrified. It was pointless trying to persuade the Richardsons to leave me to it. They were far too concerned, to the extent they were almost shell-shocked. Numbed. It at least allowed Lucy to shunt them into one corner without any objections being made while we got on with it.
‘Lucy. You hold on to Clementine’s head, please. Make sure she doesn’t move,’ I instructed.
With the sedative given and time allowed for it to take effect, I drew up a syringeful of anaesthetic. Now came the task of locating the exact spot where I had to inject it. Under the hawk-eyed gaze of the Richardsons, I began pumping Clementine’s tail up and down like I was attempting to draw water from a well. I felt her vertebra crack beneath my probing fingers. In my mind’s eye, I