while. We’ll leave her here for an hour after she’s standing, then put her in the stable.”
“And is that it?” I asked, vaguely surprised.
“Well, no. We’ll leave in the stomach tube to make sure nothing’s coming back up the wrong way, like it was before—reflux, it’s called—and because we can’t give her anything to eat or drink for at least twelve hours, we’ll continue with the intravenous drip. Also we’ll continue with antibiotics and a painkiller-sedative and we’ll monitor her heart rate, and tonight if everything’s OK we’ll take out the stomach tube and try her with a handful of hay.”
Hay, after all that, seemed like bathos.
“How long will you keep her here?” I asked.
“Probably a week. It knocks them over a bit, you know, a major op like that.”
He spoke with earnest dedication, a doctor who cared. I followed him back into the operating room and through to the vestibule, where he stripped off all the disposable garments and threw them into yet another bin. Scott and I did the same, Ken walking back immediately to take a continuing look at his patient.
“He won’t leave her,” Scott said. “He always wants to see them wake up. How about that coffee?”
He strode off towards the office to return with the Thermoses and all three of us drank the contents, watching the mare until movement began to come back, first into her head and neck, then into her forelegs, until with a sudden heave she was sitting sideways, her forelegs bearing the weight of her neck and head, the hind legs still lying on the padding.
“Good,” Ken said. “Great. Let’s get behind the wall now.” He suited the action to the word and took hold of the steadying rope.
The mare rested in the same position for another ten minutes, and then, as if impelled by instinct, staggered onto all four feet and tottered a step or two, weaved a bit at the end of the rope and looked as if she might fall, but stayed upright. I supposed she might have been feeling sore, disoriented and in her own way puzzled, but she was clearly free of the terrible pain of the colic.
Ken said, “Thanks,” to me and rubbed his eyes. “You gave me confidence, don’t know why.”
He handed Scott the rope and left him watching the mare, jerking his head for me to follow him back into the operating room.
“I want to look at something,” he said. “Do you mind if I show you?”
“Of course not.”
He went over to the table where the dishes still lay with the spent syringes in them: not three dishes now, but four. The fourth contained a large unidentifiable bit of convoluted bloody tissue with flapping ends of wide tube protruding, the whole thing pretty disgusting to my eyes.
“That’s what I took out of the mare,” Ken said.
“That? It’s huge.”
“Mm.”
I stared at it. “What is it?”
“A twisted bit of intestine, but there’s something odd about it. Wait while I get some gloves, and I’ll find out.”
He went and returned with clean gloves, and then with strong movements of fingers and a spatula he slightly loosened the fearsome knot in which one loop of intestine had tightened round another like a noose, throttling the passage of food altogether. Incredibly, there seemed to be a thread wound in among the tissue: pale, strong thread like nylon.
Frowning, Ken spread some of the cut edges apart to look at the contents, astonishment stiffening in his face.
“Just look at this,” he said disbelievingly, and I peered through his hands into the gap he was holding open and saw, with an astonishment beyond his own, a three-inch-diameter semicircular needle, the strong sort used for stitching carpet.
He spread open another few inches and we could both see that the needle was threaded with the nylon. The needle, passing round and round in the intestine, had effectively stitched it into the knot.
“We have this happen from time to time with cats and dogs,” Ken said. “They swallow sewing needles that have
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