The phone rang at four in the morning, and Brent already knew the answer would be no. He sat up in the cold apartment above his clinic, stethoscope still around his neck from the calving he'd finished at midnight. The rancher's voice cracked through the receiver. Her prize mare was down, breech birth, and the road across town was buried under three feet of snow. Brent looked at the window. The glass rattled. He could not see the streetlight ten paces off. He pulled on his coat without buttoning it and ran downstairs. The clinic was the only building he owned, and barely that. A drafty flat above two exam rooms, a cracked awning, a sign that still said OPEN because he'd never bothered to flip it. He wanted more. He wanted a real hospital, one that took every animal in town, cows to canaries. Tonight he couldn't even reach a horse. His truck sat under a white mound in the alley. He dug at the driver's door with his bare hands until his fingers burned. The engine turned over, coughed, died. Turned over, died. He hit the wheel and swore at the dashboard. Headlights swung into the alley. A yellow blade pushed a wave of snow against the fence. His brother Andy leaned out the window of the plow cab, orange vest bright against the dark, beard already crusted with ice. "Heard the scanner," Andy said. "Get your bag. I'll break the road." Brent stared at him. They hadn't spoken in six weeks, not since Andy told him the clinic was going to bury him. "You don't have to." "I know." Andy jerked his thumb at the passenger door. "Move." Brent grabbed his kit from the back seat of the dead truck. Inside the cab it smelled like diesel and old coffee. Andy dropped the blade and they pushed forward at ten miles an hour. Snow flew sideways in the headlights. Neither of them talked. The plow scraped, groaned, climbed a drift, and kept going. They reached the ranch in forty minutes. The rancher met them at the barn door with a lantern. Brent went in fast. The mare was flat on her side, sweating, eyes wide. He scrubbed to the elbow, reached in, found a folded leg, turned it. He worked for an hour. The foal came out slick and still. He cleared the nose, rubbed the ribs, breathed into the small mouth. The foal kicked. Brent sat back on the straw, shaking. The rancher was crying. She pressed a folded check into his coat pocket and would not let him refuse it. Outside, Andy was leaning on the plow, smoking. In the barn behind them, something else was wrong. The rancher's dog had started barking at a crate in the corner. Inside the crate, wrapped in a horse blanket, something small and pale lifted its head and looked at Brent with wet black eyes.