Bachelor Cure. Marion Lennox

were on their way—sort of. He winced again. Lifting the bucket, he poured soapy water gently over the girl’s elbow as she penetrated the birth canal.

      The girl gave a grunt of what might have been called gratitude. Her arm came out an inch or so to get some more lubrication and she went straight back in. The pig’s body heaved and the girl gave a sob of pain.

      Hell!

      He didn’t need to be told what was happening here. The pig’s belly was so swollen, there had to be more than half a dozen piglets trying to get out. But now… Something was clearly obstructing the birth canal. The girl was trying to clear it and it was no wonder she looked like she was in pain. Every time the sow had a contraction, massive muscles would be squeezing this girl’s arm with power beyond endurance.

      ‘I said stand up,’ Jacob barked behind them, but he was ignored. The police sergeant sighed and lifted Jacob’s rifle so it wasn’t pointing downwards, but the girl didn’t care. She was only intent on one thing. The pig.

      Mike could only admire her singlemindedness.

      Once, when he’d been a junior resident in a large teaching hospital, he’d been watching open heart surgery when the fire alarm had sounded and the smell of smoke had wafted through Theatre. The hospital staff had reacted in well-ordered panic, but the surgeon had kept right on operating.

      ‘Forget the alarm,’ he’d growled. ‘You can have any fire you like, but not until I have this closed!’

      That determination was what he saw again in this girl’s face. She was in pain and Jacob’s threats must have 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—in those stilettos?

      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.’