Homeless

Chapter Fourteen

The volunteers find Socrates in the weeds behind the boxcar, bleeding heavily and nearly unconscious. Sunita wraps him in a towel and carries him to the van. Mittens isn’t doing much better, and Dr. Mac says she needs an emergency Caesarean to save the kittens.

Mittens rides in a box at Sunita’s feet while Socrates lies in her lap, blood soaking through the towel, his eyes closed.

Dr. Mac drives to the clinic as fast as she can, parks in the driveway, and jumps out. Dr. Gabe lays Socrates on the operating table while Dr. Mac wheels in a portable table for Mittens. There’s no time to waste; both animals need surgery.

Dr. Mac tells Sunita that if she’s staying, she needs to scrub up, and warns they might not make it. Sunita swallows and nods. She needs to help.

Sunita washes and slips an extra-large glove over her bandaged hand, securing it with a rubber band. She once imagined a surgical cap and gown would be exciting to wear, but now she’s too worried to care. Dr. Gabe’s scrubs are already spattered with Socrates’s blood, and Mittens’s heart rate is dangerously high.

Dr. Mac calls Sunita over and briskly scrubs Mittens’s shaved belly with a soapy sponge, rinses it with alcohol, and paints it with iodine. She has Sunita pass her a package holding a slender, curved tube. Then she opens Mittens’s jaw and slips the tube down her throat and into the trachea. The sedative leaves Mittens completely limp.

The anesthesia machine, the size of a microwave covered in dials, connects to the trach tube through a plastic hose. It keeps Mittens in a deep sleep so she feels nothing during the operation.

Meanwhile, Dr. Gabe presses gauze over Socrates’s wound, more serious than Sunita has ever seen him. Dr. Mac lays surgical drapes over Mittens so only the clipped area of her belly shows. Then she clips a wire from her foreleg to a heart monitor. She’s ready for the Caesarean.

Dr. Gabe calls Sunita over to Socrates, lying on a bloody sheet. An I.V. bag keeps his fluids up, but he needs blood, too. The courier the blood bank promised still hasn’t arrived. Dr. Gabe frowns. He thought he had the bleeding under control, but Socrates must be bleeding internally as well.

Sunita calls to ask how much longer, and hears five more minutes. Dr. Gabe says he’ll do everything he can, and asks for another I.V. bag and more gauze.

Sunita lays the supplies at the end of the table. Socrates doesn’t look like himself. He’s lost weight, and cuts and bites cover his body from his fight with the raccoon. He can’t die now, not when he’s just come home. Sunita reaches out to pet his tail, but he doesn’t move. He doesn’t even know she’s there.

Dr. Mac reports that Mittens has stabilized; one of her kittens was blocking the birth canal, but Mittens will be fine. She lifts out the first kitten, black-and-white, and lays it on a towel beside its mother, then delivers the rest one by one, snipping each cord and settling it among its siblings. She asks Sunita to clean them, since Mittens is too sedated to do it herself. As Sunita works, the first kitten stretches and opens its tiny pink mouth.

Sunita glances at Socrates, still limp, while Dr. Gabe keeps working to stop the bleeding. The bell on the front door jangles. The blood is here.