“No,” I confirmed, trying to sound as apologetic as possible. “Everyone is good. No one’s dropping that I’m aware of.”
“Oh, well, fuck, Tuck. It’s, like, four in the morning. I know other operations are up before the crack of dawn, but I’m used to a few more hours of sleep. What’s going on?”
I chewed on the inside of my cheek, knowing once I asked this question, it would be a can of worms I wouldn’t be able to put back. But I guess my hesitating was too long for Marcy.
“Tuck? You’re scaring me. What’s up?”
I let out a slow sigh. “Can our portable ultrasound machine pick up a broken bone?”
There was a long pause on the other end before Marcy responded. “It’s not the preferred method… Who has a broken bone?”
“I do.”
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
JACKSON
Istomped my boots as I entered the main barn, trying to dislodge any mud that clung to them in large chunks. The clouds had opened up, and a consistent drizzle had been coming down since it started sometime in the early morning hours. It was creating little puddles in the pockets of uneven terrain on the dirt paths all around the farm.
Today was a touch warmer than it had been, so while there wasn’t any concern for snow or freezing precipitation, the dampness in the air made the chill feel just as biting as before. The inner sanctum of the barn was warm and dry, which made me grateful I’d be spending the next few hours here mucking out stalls and feeding the horses instead of out in the pastures or doing a perimeter check.
I’d just started loading the first round of grain into buckets when the sound of raised voices came from further down the hall from where the feed room was. Poking my head out, I tried to hone in on them, seeing if I could place who this clearly heated exchange was between. While I couldn’t make out the words, I could tell one of the voices was a woman. The other had a familiar low registry with a twang to its cadence that set off alarm bells in my head.
Steppingout from the room, I followed the sounds to a back stall that Granger had told me didn’t have a permanent occupant but was mainly used for ultrasound checks after live covers to look for signs of pregnancy and for gestational follow-ups. Marcy and Tucker were both inside, and as I approached, Marcy threw her hands up in exasperation.
“It has to come off, Tuck!” she exclaimed, clearly fed up.
“I’m not doing it, Mars,” Tucker responded, his tone ringing with rigid finality.
Marcy made a sound like she was trying to temper herself before continuing. “You realize you run the risk of losing the finger otherwise, right?”
That drew me up short. What the fuck? Lose hisfinger?
“Everything all right?” I asked, making myself known by knocking on the open stall door.
Marcy’s eyes shot to me, frustration blazing bright in them. “Oh, good. Maybe you can talk some sense into him.”
“What’s going on?”
“This idiot”—she gestured toward Tucker as she spoke—“apparentlyslammed his hand in a stall door yesterday. Thankfully, from what I can tell with my limited human anatomy knowledge and the ultrasound machine, it doesn’t look broken, but I told him he should go get it checked out by a human doctor with equipment actually meant to assess those problems just to be sure.”
My gaze shot to Tucker whose whiskey-colored hues were already trained on me. I’d been with Tucker most of the day yesterday, and unless he’d done it in the ten minutes we’d been separated after the fall, I doubted he’d injured himself that way.
Tucker had been raised around horses; it was in his blood, and I couldn’t picture him being so careless as to smash his hand like that. But was this from him protecting my head when we fell or something else? Given the tense set of his jaw and the significant look in his eye, I figured it was the former, but I couldn’t imagine this whole debate revolving around Tucker having to see a doctor.
“And that’s what you’ve been arguing about?” I asked hesitantly, swinging my eyes back to Marcy whose expression turned sheepish almost immediately. Figures there was something more.
“No,” she admitted slowly. “Given how badly the area has already started to swell, I told him it would be best if he took off his wedding ring. Just for a few days so the swelling around it doesn’t end up so bad he can’t get it off.”
“And how likely is that to really happen?” Tucker snapped.
“Probably about as likely as you spacing out and slamming your hand in a door, which is to say, not likely but it could happen,” she retorted back. Clearly, she didn’t believe he’d hurt himself in the way he was claiming, but she wasn’t pressing him for more.
“I’d rather take my chances, then.” His voice was icy.
“What would happen if the swelling got that bad and the ring couldn’t come off?” I asked Marcy, trying to understand how all this resulted in him losing a finger.
“It could cut off circulation. If that were to happen, the hospital would need to break the ring to get the blood flowing again, but if that isn’t possible then it’d require amputation.”
