Homeless
Chapter Fifteen
Sunita runs down the hall of the reception room. The other volunteers are waiting there with the courier from the blood bank. Dr. Mac said that only one of them could be in the operating room, and everyone decided it should be Sunita. The courier looks surprised to see an eleven-year-old wearing surgical scrubs. Sunita grabs the small ice chest of blood and runs back to the operating room.
Sunita thrusts the chest into Dr. Gabe’s hands. He takes a bag of dark red blood from the chest and connects the tubing from it to a catheter already inserted into Socrates’ foreleg. In less than a minute, the blood starts flowing from the bag into Socrates.
Sunita asks how they know it’s the right kind of blood. Aren’t there a lot of different blood types? Dr. Gabe answers most cats have type A blood. If Socrates were Persian or Cornish rex, then they’d have to type and match. In that case, he could have type B or AB. He checks the flow of the blood and the tubing. This will buy them some time.
Dr. Mac comes over. Mittens has been stitched up and taken off anesthesia, but she’s still connected to the heart monitor. Sunita is tasked with keeping an eye on Mittens’ vital signs and watching the kittens closely.
Sunita watches the kittens in wonder. She never imagined anything this small could be so alive. Newborn kittens don’t open their eyes for a few days, and their ears are still flat like along their heads. They don’t look a whole lot like kittens, but she’s sure Mittens will think they’re beautiful. Sunita thinks they’re beautiful. They are all snug and warm against their mother.
Suddenly, Sunita’s mother bursts through the door. The vets working on Socrates look up in surprise. Sunita’s Mother says that one of the nurses heard it on the news. Sunita was attacked by a rabid raccoon? Dr. Mac turns her attention back to Socrates, and says that she’ll let Sunita tell her.
Sunita tells her mother to be quiet; they’re operating on a cat. The raccoon got him, not Sunita. Her mother asks if it’s true that Sunita saved two small children. Sunita explains that she had to. They were trapped. But the raccoon was distracted by the cats, so Sunita was able to get the kids to safety.
Sunita glances at the heart monitor, and asks her mother if she would like to see the newborn kittens. The kittens are making quiet mewing sounds as they huddle against their mom. Sunita tells her mother that they were born just a few minutes ago. And the mother is starting to wake up.
Mittens blinks her eyes, looks at each of them, and closes her eyes again. She’s exhausted. The kittens are lined up next to each other along her stomach. Their fur is fluffy. Sunita wishes she could pick one up, but she knows they need to be with their mother.
Dr. Mac walks over, and says Socrates will be fine. He needed two units of blood, and both of them to sew him back together, but he’ll be his old self again in a few weeks. They boosted his rabies vaccine, so they’re predicting total recovery.
Sunita’s heart thumps in her chest. All the emotions of the day and the last week, come crashing down around her. She presses her lips together tightly, but she can’t stop her chin from quivering. Dr. Mac asks her what’s wrong. She shakes her head wordlessly, and turns to her mother. Now that she knows everyone will survive, Sunita can really cry.