Page 5 of Second Act
Chapter 2
“Your last cat spay just face-planted!” Caleb, one of Jessica’s vet techs, yelled through the operating room door. “She was up and aware one second, then collapsed. Gums are white. Breathing slow and shallow. Heart rate down to ninety beats. She’s on oxygen, but she’s not waking up.” Then he was gone again.
“Oh, hell!” Jessica muttered into her mask as she dropped the scalpel back on the tray. She’d been about to make the first incision for a neuter. “Keep him sleeping,” she said to Tiana, the vet tech handling the anesthesia. “I’ll be back.”
She raced down the hall to the recovery room, where Caleb was massaging the limp cat wrapped in a towel. The cat’s small black-and-white face was covered with an oxygen mask, and she lay on top of a heating pad.
“How long has she been on oxygen?” Jessica asked, removing the little mask so she could press the cat’s gums to check the capillary refill time. Not good.
“About three minutes. No response.”
“Get a pulse ox on her.” Jessica unwrapped the towel and pressed her stethoscope to the cat’s chest while Caleb clipped the heart and oxygen monitor between the cat’s toes. “Heart rate is still depressed.” She felt the cat’s ears and paws. “Cold extremities.”
The monitor began its monotonous beeping, but far too slowly.
“Oxygen saturation is rising,” Caleb said, reading the monitor. “But nothing else is.”
“It might be a bad reaction to the anesthesia,” Jessica said. “I’m going to administer atipamezole to try to reverse the effects. What’s the cat’s weight?”
Caleb checked the chart. “Two point seven kilograms.”
Jessica did a fast mental calculation as she unlocked the medicine cabinet and grabbed the bottle of atipamezole. Ripping a syringe out of its sterile packet and shoving a needle on it, she drew in the liquid and ran back to the recovery table. Caleb had already positioned the cat’s hind leg, so Jessica felt for the muscle and jabbed the needle into it.
Caleb covered the cat with the towel again and resumed his massage to stimulate the cat’s system. Jessica replaced the oxygen mask over the little creature’s face.
“What’s her name again?” Jessica asked. She’d done so many surgeries that day that they’d all blurred together.
“Boots,” Caleb said. “Mrs. Lopez just adopted her.”
“Come on, Boots,” Jessica said in an urgent voice as she checked the monitor. “Come back to us, baby.”
Slowly but steadily, the beeping of the pulse ox sped up. A few minutes later, the cat blinked open her golden eyes.
Jessica and Caleb grinned at each other over the cat’s swaddled body.
“You did it, Doc,” the vet tech said. “You brought her back.”
“Webrought her back. You did a great job, Caleb,” Jessica said. She methodically checked all of Boots’s vital signs and breathed out a sigh of relief. The cat was stable.
“I have to get back to surgery,” she said. “Keep a close watch on her until you’re sure she’s on solid ground.”
“You got it, Doc.”
Jessica scrubbed in again and bolted back to the OR, where the male cat still slept tranquilly on his back, his hind legs splayed out and anchored to the table.
“Okay, time to give up the family jewels, buddy,” she said, picking up her scalpel. A few incisions and knots, and the job was finished. Her assistant gently wrapped the limp cat in a towel and carried him out of the operating room.
Carla Watkins, the clinic’s receptionist and office manager, strolled into the surgery. “Honey, you got company in your office.”
“And I’ve got six more surgeries to do. Who is it?” Jessica stripped off her surgical gloves and mask. Carla was usually a tigress about fending off drug reps without appointments, so it must be someone she felt Jessica would want to see. Which could only mean her brother.
Aidan had arrived at her house unannounced yesterday, dropping his duffel bag in her front hall and giving her his trademark “forgive me because I’m your brother and you love me” smile. But she hadn’t felt forgiving, especially because he had a noticeable tan and his shoulder-length brown hair showed sun-bleached streaks of blond. Considering the gray, skin-numbing, postholiday dismalness outside her window, that meant Aidan had been traveling somewhere warm and tropical. She hadn’t had a vacation in three years, so the thought didn’t improve her reception of her brother.
She’d forced herself to hug him, but then she’d had to leave before she said something she’d regret. That’s why she had been so focused on capturing the starving dog. The animal’s plight kept her mind off her sibling’s lack of responsibility.
Her brother had been gone—although his clothes were still strewn around her sparsely furnished guest room—when she got home from her encounter with Hugh. Aidan’s absence had provoked a mixture of relief and annoyance, especially when his return had been heralded by the slam of the front door at one in the morning, waking her up. Admittedly, her sleep had been fitful. Seeing her ex-fiancé had set off atrain of memories that had whipsawed her between nostalgic joy and soul-searing agony.
“Is it Aidan?” Jessica asked as she washed her hands.
