The storm hit right in the middle of calving season. Visibility dropped to zero in minutes, the wind screaming at sixty miles an hour, driving snow so hard it felt like shattered glass.
"We have four heifers out in the west pasture!" Cole yelled, bursting into the kitchen, covered in snow. "They’re dropping calves tonight. If we don’t get them into the barn, they’ll freeze to death before morning."
Elena didn't hesitate. She grabbed her coat, her boots, and a heavy flashlight.
They fought their way through the whiteout, the wind actively trying to push them to the ground. They found the first three heifers huddled in a copse of frozen cottonwood trees. The calves had just dropped. Cole and Elena had to carry the shivering, slick newborns in their arms, trudging back to the barn through knee-deep drifts while the frantic mothers followed.
By the time they went back for the fourth, the temperature had plummeted to twenty below zero. They found the heifer lying in the snow, distressed.
"The calf is breached!" Cole shouted over the roaring wind, dropping to his knees in the snow. "She can't push it out!"
Elena knelt beside him, stripping off her heavy outer mittens. "We have to pull it, Cole! Now, or they both die!"
"Your hands will freeze, Elena!"
"Do it!" she screamed back.
Working together in the blinding snow, their hands numb and covered in blood and afterbirth, they managed to attach the calving chains. Cole pulled with all his strength while Elena guided the calf's head. With a sickening slurp and a final, agonizing push from the mother, the calf slid out onto the snow. It wasn't breathing.
Elena scrambled forward, clearing the mucus from the calf's nose and mouth with her bare fingers. She rubbed its ribcage violently with a handful of dry straw, ignoring the biting cold. "Breathe!" she commanded, her voice cracking. "Breathe!"
The calf gave a sudden, ragged gasp, shaking its head.
Cole grabbed the newborn, hauling it over his shoulders, and helped Elena to her feet. They practically dragged the exhausted mother back to the barn. Once inside, the heavy wooden doors shut out the screaming wind. The barn was warm, smelling of hay and animal heat.
Cole dropped the calf in a clean stall, collapsing against the wooden slats, his chest heaving. He looked over at Elena. She was leaning against a support beam, breathing hard, her hands covered in blood, her hair plastered to her face with snow and sweat.
He crawled over to her, pulling off his gloves, and took her freezing, blood-stained hands in his. He rubbed them vigorously to get the circulation going.
"You're crazy," he breathed, staring at her wide, dark eyes. "You could have gotten frostbite."