Page 59 of Second Act
“You never told me what we’ll be doing with Zora,” he said when the cat yowled in protest at her continued confinement.
“First, I’ll sedate her. Then you’ll help me intubate her for the anesthesia.” She pointed to the package on the table. “You’ll open the surgical packexactlythe way I tell you, so it remains sterile. Then I’ll do whatever is necessary to close up her incision again. You’ll turn off the anesthesia and she’ll wake up good as new.” Her smile turned crooked. “At least, that’s what happens in a perfect world.”
“You mean something could go wrong with this?” Such was his faith in his ex-fiancée’s skill that he hadn’t even considered the possibility of a problem.
“Zora’s a young, healthy cat, and she was fine with the anesthesia yesterday, but there’s always a risk with any kind of surgery.” Jessica shrugged. “The risk is just far greater if you don’t do it.”
“A balancing act,” Hugh said, knowing her shrug covered up a profound concern for the cat’s well-being. “You said that about your clinic before.”
“That was more about managing it. When it comes to my patients’ lives, there’s a whole different level of balance.”
He took a deep breath. “What now?”
“Let me show you how to work the anesthesia machine.” She pulled over a rolling contraption with many dangling tubes and a large green tank attached to it. Lifting one of the tubes, she said, “This is what you’ll attach to Zora’s tube.” She pointed to a large silver dial. “This controls the percentage of isoflurane mixed with the oxygen. I want you to set it on two once we hook up Zora’s tube and adjust it if I ask you to. Atthe end I’ll ask you to turn it to zero to stop the flow of anesthesia but not oxygen.”
Now Hugh was feeling a punch of adrenaline. “Got it.”
“I need you to get Zora out of her case. You can put it up on the counter there. It shouldn’t be hard, since she seems quite eager to exit.”
Zora was now banging her paws against the metal gate at the front of the case. Hugh picked it up and found himself being stared at by a small, black cat with huge green eyes. “She makes a lot of noise for such a little creature,” he said as he set the case down and unlatched the gate. He knew enough to hold the gate closed until he was ready to grab the cat.
However, once she was released from her prison, she calmed down and snuggled into Hugh’s arms. He stroked her glossy fur before turning to bring her to the operating table. “You shouldn’t be so trusting, Zora,” he said before looking at Jessica. “Now I feel guilty about delivering her to you.”
Jessica chuckled. “You have to remember that I’m helping her. Not to mention that she has no idea what’s about to happen to her. That’s the beauty of not having the capacity to anticipate the future. Sometimes I think animals are luckier than humans that way.” Jessica gave Zora a quick scratch under the chin.
Hugh’s guilt about capturing Zora ratcheted up a notch when she began to purr. Then Jessica went into full vet mode, issuing instructions swiftly but allowing him enough time to follow one before she went on to the next.
“Put her down on her stomach. Put one hand on the back of her neck to hold her.” Jessica felt around the top of the cat’s hind leg for a brief moment before she inserted the syringe halfway between her thumb and index finger. Zora barely flinched. “This will relax her enough so she won’t mind the tube.”
Sure enough, he could feel the cat’s muscles soften and go limp under his hands.
“Okay, now is when you earn your pay,” she said with a glinting smile. “Hold her head with your left hand and stick the thumb and forefinger of your right hand behind her canines so you can open her mouth. Stretch her neck a little forward to open up her throat for me.”
Jessica pulled out the cat’s tongue and stuck a long swab down her throat. “This is just lidocaine to suppress her gag reflex.” She picked up a plastic tube, held it against the side of the cat’s head, and adjusted a piece of gauze tied around the tube. Pulling out the cat’s tongue again, she slipped the tube down Zora’s open throat. Hugh felt the urge to gag on Zora’s behalf, but the cat barely twitched.
“Okay, attach the machine and turn on the isoflurane.” She was already tying the gauze around the back of Zora’s head as Hugh fitted the tubes together. He set the dial precisely on the two and turned back to find Jessica doing something with another syringe inserted into a thin tube attached to the larger one. Now that his nerves had settled, his interest was caught, so he asked, “What does that do?”
She removed the syringe. “It inflates the little balloon at the end of the tube, which holds the whole apparatus in place. That way the tube can’t be dislodged before we want it to be. All right, let’s roll her onto her back so I can see what’s going on.”
If the little cat had been relaxed before, now she seemed almost boneless as he moved her. Her stillness gave him a shiver of unease because it mimicked death so closely. Jessica deftly secured the cat’s legs to the table so she was splayed out, the wound on her belly clearly visible. She gave it a quick scan, nodded, and said, “Okay, you monitor her while I go scrub in and get sterile.”
His fragile confidence evaporated. “Wait, you’re leaving me alone with a wounded cat on anesthesia when I have no idea what I’m doing?”
She chuckled. “I’ll be just down the hall. Yell if anything changes.”
His nerves tightened and buzzed in a way they hadn’t in years. He might have a perfectly functional pair of hands, as he’d pointed out, but he didn’t know how to make sure the cat was all right. He spentwhat seemed like an hour flicking his eyes between the gauge on the anesthesia machine and the splayed-out cat. Neither one moved.
Jessica came back into the room with her hands gloved and her surgical mask over the bottom of her face. “See, I was only gone five minutes. And Zora survived.”
“Longest five minutes of my life,” Hugh muttered.
Jessica’s gray eyes held a dancing light of amusement above the mask. “Now you’re going to open the surgical pack. We don’t want to break the sterile field, so I need you to follow my directions to the letter.”
It was like choreographing an action scene. He had to fold back each layer of the cloth in a precise order, never allowing his hands to cross the top of the pack, and move to a new position at the side of the table for the next corner. When he was done, Jessica carefully lifted the sterile inner pack onto a steel tray beside the surgical table and opened it, revealing a gleaming array of scalpels, scissors, and needles.
What blood there was from the wound had dried, so Jessica gently wiped it away. Now he could see the torn and bruised edges of the skin with the ripped-out stitches on one side. “What’s that other set of stitches underneath? They seem fine.”
Jessica had begun cutting away the frayed skin at the edge of the wound, which made Hugh a little queasy. “Those are in the subcutaneous fat. There’s another set below them in the internal body wall.” She glanced up to flash him a dry look. “I have to do a lot of sewing in this job. My mother thinks it’s hilarious, since she offered to teach me when I was a kid and I refused. Now I’m going to flush it with some saline solution to clean it.” She picked up a syringe and squirted out the blood and gunk from the wound. “Now turn the iso down to one, please.”
