“Thanks for coming,” he said. “There’s no vet here in town, so you were the closest—”
“It’s no problem,” she assured him.
The sound of her voice got Camilla’s attention. She glanced up at Kris with puffy, bloodshot eyes. It took a moment for her to place Kris’s face, and then recognition washed over her. She let out a long, trembling sigh, her eyes shining with fresh tears.
“Oh God, I’m so glad you’re here,” she said. “Please, you have to help us. You have to do something.”
Beside her, Jesse knelt down and cradled the head of the thing in his arms. It did not seem to know he was there. Its brown eyes bulged behind long tan lashes. Thick lines of saliva ran from its open mouth, its cheeks puffing rapidly in and out with shallow gasps, its brain running its most basic program: stay alive, stay alive, stay alive.
Kris felt her stomach become suddenly awash with acid as dread took hold of her.
Lying on its side in the rain-soaked grass was the quarter horse. Their daughter’s horse. Cap, short for “Cappuccino.” His eyelashes flickered above brown eyes wide with terror. Something had ripped angry red gashes across the adorable pale lightning bolt that cut down the length of his snout. His white mane was stained with blood.
Kris attempted to speak and found that she had no breath to back her words. She swallowed and tried again. “What happened?”
“Must’a been the storm,” Camilla said. Her Texas twang, once so comforting, now clashed mercilessly with the pain in her quavering voice. “Something spooked him and he … he …”
“It wasn’t the storm,” Jesse shot back. He was angry, not with Camilla but with fate, with God, with whatever cruel power had allowed this to happen. Cap nuzzled his wet nose into the crook of Jesse’s elbow, his panicked eyes narrowing slightly as he was allowed the tiniest bit of comfort. Jesse stroked the horse’s forehead, softly shushing the beast, whispering, “It’s okay, it’s okay,” even as his chest hitched with fresh sobs.
Ben planted a boot down onto the second row of barbed wire and pulled up on the line above it, widening the fence just enough for Kris to slip through. “You should see this,” he told her.
Careful to avoid the fence’s barbed tips, Kris stepped through the opening. The wires sang a soft falsetto note as Ben released them and they snapped back into place. Kris was now in the thick of the field, the drooping tallgrass wiping tear streaks across the legs of her jeans. Before her was the horse, its massive body outlined by stalks of arrow-feather and bottlebrush. There was nothing outright troubling about this image. The horse could have simply been resting on its side, its legs stretched lazily out beneath it, had it not been for the tattered drapes of flesh hanging down around the hole in its belly. Wet ropes of intestine twisted out from its shredded hide and curled into the weeds like obscene snakes.
“How did this happen?” Kris asked no one in particular.
Ben turned to face her and spoke in a low tone so that Camilla and Jesse could not hear. “We don’t really know. One minute the horse was in its stable, and the next thing they knew, it had broken out and was trying to … well … it was trying to get free.” He motioned toward a patch of barbed-wire fence a few yards down. The top two wires were bent from the weight of Cap trying to break through. Strips of bloody flesh hung from the barbs. “It was like he was reacting to something Camilla and Jesse didn’t hear.”
“I don’t get it,” Kris said quietly. “A horse doesn’t just gut itself on barbed wire for no reason. He could have hopped that fence if he really wanted to.”
“I don’t think it occurred to him,” Ben said. “I think he was in a panic. He was only thinking about one thing: getting out.”
Camilla must have realized the two of them were having a private conversation, for she suddenly stepped closer, the harsh security light falling across her tear-streaked face. She reached out and took Kris’s hands. Her grasp was icy, as if all of the blood had drained from her fingers.
“Please tell me there’s something you can do.”
There’s nothing, Kris thought.
But she gave Camilla’s hand a reassuring squeeze and said, “Let me take a look.”
Kris moved around to the other side of Jesse and placed a hand on his back in what she hoped felt like support. He swallowed hard, choking back tears, and leaned back to let Kris get a good look.
It wasn’t pretty. In addition to Cap’s eviscerated bowels, the horse’s front legs were shredded from knee to hoof. Most of the flesh had been stripped away from the bone. On the right leg, the femur was clearly fractured, bent unnaturally at the middle so that a shard pointed like a dagger into the darkness. The other leg looked as though the horse were wearing a sock whose elastic had given out; the skin sagged down around its ankle, revealing a thick stretch of severed muscle that dangled freely like a snapped rubber band.
But the wounds were only one thing. As she did with every animal facing a life-threatening injury, she moved around to face Cap head-on, taking his muzzle in her hands. A high-pitched whine twisted through his wheezing breaths. She looked directly into the horse’s eyes.
“What?” Jesse asked, his voice breaking.
Kris sighed.
It just wasn’t there. The will to fight, to put every ounce of energy into surviving this ordeal—there was not even the slightest glimmer in Cap’s terrified stare. Instead, she saw resignation. She saw the desperate plea to end this horror.
Once more, Jesse asked, “What?” And once more, Kris ignored him.
She gripped Ben by the elbow and moved him a few steps away from the scene.
“His injuries are just too severe. Even if we could transport him to a clinic, there’s nothing anyone could do. He’s in pain. All we can do is stop it.”
She glanced to the gun holstered at Ben’s side.
“Will that … Will that be enough?”
It took a few seconds for Ben to make sense of what she was asking. He nodded, but his dark brown eyes searched for any other answer.
“I don’t know if I can do it,” he said.
“You’re a country boy. Surely you’ve put down animals before,” Kris told him. She did not mean this as a slight. She said it simply as a fact.
“This is different,” Ben replied, his eyes locked on hers.
Kris nodded, understanding.
They both felt Camilla take a step in their direction, and their bodies stiffened defensively.
“What’s going on?” she asked.
Neither Kris nor Ben answered. Now it was Ben’s turn to take Kris by the arm and lead her farther into the field.
He said, “You have to understand. This horse … this was their daughter’s. This was Poppy’s horse. It’s all they have.” He said the last three words as if each were the end of a declaration: All. They. Have.
Kris turned back to Camilla and Jesse. She hated this feeling. She was sure there were people out there who were good at delivering bad news, those who had figured out the perfect balance of compassion and professionalism to make the worst outcome a bit more palatable. But she had never been that person. She understood the bond between people and their pets. She knew that the love they felt was not some desperate need for connection by the sad and lonely. That love was real. There was always that moment when the owners’ eyes met hers, and Kris held their world in her hands. It was the same for any doctor. In those moments, the hierarchy dissolved and there existed a kinship in this awful power. They were either the bearers of good news or bad news. There was no in-between.