After the broken Leg

Well I called Nina a couple of times already. She had been crying for two weeks. Hadn't got out of bed much. Sobbed when the vet just got out the shot. Fell into his arm. The old Vet, Dr. Groussard, who is cranky and never says much. It was the hind leg. And she begged him to at least try to save her. He just shook his head. It was compound and the bone was piercing out of the skin because the filly wouldn't quit trying to run away from the pain. She was so full of life. Beautiful beyond belief. Golden Chestnut. A flash of red fire streaking by so fast, so fast.
"Nina, I'm so so sorry. It's not your fault, you did everything."
And so we talked away the day, wasting all of our cell phone minutes because neither one of us had the unlimited plan. We talked about partnering with Lani. We could buy a stud colt together and run him on Lani's 29,000 acres, breed Aura again. It could work, she had a few years left. True founder had almost killed the mare, and all the vets said put her down, that she would die, that no way could she be pregnant, no way could she carry a foal to term, but Nina never gave up, quit her job as a nurse to nurse Aura, soak her hooves, wrap them in bandages, and when Aura couldn't get up for days, she cradled the mare's head in her lap and hand fed her. And then the foal came, in the dead of night while Nina slept, Aura emerged with her vagina torn and bleeding, and the impossibly feminine filly, an angel, trotting by her side. Just what Nina had prayed and prayed for. We were jubilant together, exclaming into our cell phones about the miracle, how all the Vets were all wrong.
She lived six months and 10 days. Somehow when Nina turned her back for ten minutes she had snapped her hind leg, her exquisite long golden red leg, just below the hock. Somehow the physics were wrong, and the torque or something, maybe the leg was caught in the guava roots bulging and tangled above ground. Maybe twisted and pulled, caught in the roots, and then . . . . and then she was dangling that useless hind leg, shaking her head when she tried to nurse her mother because it hurt too much and the old Vet just shook his head brought out the needle and she went down collapsing into the sun warmed spring grass with blossoms fragrant and the birds trilling because it was early Spring.
And so Nina buried her, streams of tears coming down her face.
Good-bye Deja. What I wouldn't give to kiss your little nostrils, and feel your breath warm and alive, again.