Part 4
Laurel carried the cub only as far as the treatment station on the other side of the recovery wall.
He was wrapped in a warmed towel and placed beneath supplemental heat while she prepared a measured feeding. His swallowing reflex was weak but present, so she used a small feeding tube rather than spend the energy he had left on an unsuccessful bottle.
Nora watched through the open doorway. “How long are you keeping him out?”
“Until his temperature and glucose hold.”
“Tansy’s searching for him.”
The lioness had raised herself onto one elbow. Her nose moved through the three cubs at her belly, then toward the sealed transfer sleeve. Each time the smallest cub made a sound, her tail struck the pad.
“She’s also recovering from major surgery,” Laurel said. “Agitation can pull the incision.”
“So can taking away the cub she’s trying to find.”
“I’m not taking him away. I’m stabilizing him.”
Nora’s face closed. She turned back to the chart without answering.
Laurel delivered the feeding slowly and checked the cub’s abdomen, breathing, and color. He accepted the nutrition without regurgitating. Within half an hour, his temperature began to rise.
The numbers said he was safer under the warmer.
Across the panel, Tansy stood.
Her legs shook beneath her. She should not have been able to rise so soon, and Laurel reached for the door controls in case the lioness fell against the barrier. Tansy took one unsteady step, leaving the other cubs behind, and pressed her nose to the clear panel opposite the treatment table.
Nora put down the chart. “That’s what I was telling you.”
“You told me she was searching.”
“I told you what she was doing. You decided what it meant before you looked.”
The words landed cleanly because Nora did not raise her voice.
Laurel looked at Tansy’s trembling rear legs, the tight line of her abdomen, and the cub shifting weakly inside the towel. Fear had reduced the problem to temperature and glucose. Those mattered, but they were not the only forces acting on either patient.
“Set up the nursing cradle,” Laurel said. “We’ll supplement him beside her.”
Nora did not move. “Is that an order until the next number scares you?”
It was the most openly angry Laurel had ever seen her.
Yesterday, Nora had described a lioness preparing to labor. Laurel had answered with an ultrasound performed two days earlier and the memory of Tansy bloodying her paws against a closed stall. She had treated old information as more reliable because it supported the decision she preferred.
“At four-twenty, you told me she’d stopped circling and was staring at the north shift gate,” Laurel said. “I answered with Tuesday’s scan. You were there, and I used something already out of date to overrule you.”
Nora’s mouth tightened. “Yes.”
“I can’t change that call. I can change this one.”
“That isn’t the same as trusting me next time.”
“No.” Laurel glanced toward the lower recovery wall. “But he needs us to start somewhere.”
Nora considered her for another second, then pulled on fresh gloves.
The nursing cradle was a shallow grated bay built into the bottom of the recovery wall. Tansy could lie with her belly against its animal side, but a rigid shield kept her head and forelegs away from the keeper station. The cub could reach her through a rounded lower opening too small for an adult paw or muzzle; the staff’s hands never crossed the inner barrier.
Tansy settled against the cradle voluntarily. Laurel supported the cub’s chest from the keeper side while Nora steadied his head. The lioness adjusted her flank against the grate, rumbling low enough to make the stainless-steel frame vibrate.
The cub latched.
He held on for six seconds, rested, then tried again. Tansy stayed pressed against the cradle until the feeding ended.
For the next two days, survival was built from intervals. Warm him, weigh him, supplement him, return him. Let him nurse while he could. Remove him before exhaustion undid the calories he had gained.
Nora wrote every feeding on the whiteboard but refused to describe a single good result as a trend. Laurel stopped asking whether the cub was “better” and began asking what Nora had observed since the previous check.
The answer changed almost every time.
“He stayed latched longer.”
“He tired sooner.”
“He crawled back after the female shoved him off.”
“He slept through the last rooting period.”
At night, Laurel rested in a chair outside recovery with her shoes on. Nora took the cot in the keeper room. Neither apologized for waking the other whenever the cub made an unfamiliar sound.
The staff began calling him Wick because of the cream-colored line down his face. Laurel resisted the name for half a day, arguing that a medical chart needed an unambiguous identifier. Then she wrote WICK — MALE 3 beneath his weight and discovered everyone had already done the same.
Tansy recovered without fever or significant bleeding. On the third morning, she stood long enough to drink. On the fourth, she crossed the suite to the shift door and returned to her cubs without losing her balance.
Wick gained less than his siblings but stopped losing ground.
Once the power was stable and every section had been inspected, Nora moved Rook through the roofed transfer runs seeded along the refuge’s inner perimeter. She shifted him one locked compartment at a time until he entered the outdoor holding yard beside the recovery wing.
There was no direct contact. Two locked gates and a wall of welded mesh remained between him and Tansy.
Rook entered the yard at dusk. He inspected each corner, smelled the transport litter left beyond the inner barrier, and walked to the mesh closest to recovery.
Tansy was asleep when his first contact call passed through the building.
Her head rose before the sound ended.
She left the cubs on the heated pad and moved to the divider, one slow step at a time. Rook stood on the other side, his mane brushing the wire. They could not touch through the secondary panel, but they remained there with less than two feet between their faces.
Rook called again. This time Tansy answered…
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