Part 3
Martha called before she could think better of it. Jonah turned his eyes toward her, loosened one paw, and dropped until the water closed over his mouth. Tess said, sharply, “No more,” and Martha went still while he fought for the ledge again.
Naomi watched him recover his hold. He was exhausted, she said, and the strip beneath his claws was the only support he trusted. Martha clutched the binder against her middle. She could feel the cover going soft through her wet coat.
Grant checked the ramp without entering Jonah’s reach. It was steady, its upper surface clear of the water. Tess moved equipment away from the empty room and turned a light that had been shining toward his face. She crouched lower, offering a view of the space he needed to enter, and waited.
Iris called from the upper bay.
This time Martha saw Jonah’s ear turn before his eyes moved.
“Her room’s still dry,” Tess said. “What if we backed her out?”
Martha followed her look. Iris’s own night room stood beside the spare one, separated from it by mesh. Bringing her back through the docked crate connection would put her where Jonah could see and smell her from the opening. It meant reversing the one part of the morning that had gone right.
Martha pictured the time she had written on the form and the line she had crossed out. Iris was waiting inside a crate because they had put her there. The paper could wait.
“We can do it,” she said. “I’ll check the upper bay with you.”
They verified the dry route and the secured boundaries, then opened the return into Iris’s room. She came out without hesitation, slower at the sill where she favored her hip. Martha waited for her to turn toward her sleeping platform. Instead the lioness went to the dividing mesh, lowered her head, and breathed toward the room beyond.
Jonah could see her through the open access. For a few seconds he did nothing, and Martha wondered whether they had undone the loading for no reason. Iris lowered herself beside the partition, arranging one foreleg awkwardly until she found a position she could keep.
Tess held a palm toward her mother. Martha stood without speaking while Jonah’s nose moved and his head began to turn. He tried to bring his shoulders around, lost his footing, and sank nearly to his eyes before catching himself again.
Naomi was speaking quietly into her radio, arranging the help and equipment he might need if he could not get out under his own power. Outside, another vehicle stopped on the ridge. The responders had arrived, but the route Martha could see was still narrow and the lion still had to use it.
Tess watched him for another moment. “We should get out of his sight.”
Martha looked at her. Moving away felt like leaving him, and she had already asked him to make too many moves. Tess indicated the observation window where Naomi could keep the angle she needed.
“Remember his sore pad last spring? When you were having the knee surgery. He wouldn’t cross to treatment with us lined up waiting for him. I finally went around the corner.”
“That wasn’t in the report.”
“No. I just remembered it.”
Martha had read every report from those weeks. She had made corrections in the margins, asked about meals, kept track from the hospital as well as anyone could.
Her daughter had been here finding out things that never became a sentence on a chart.
She moved with Tess to the wall beyond the lion’s view. Naomi stayed at the observation window. Martha pressed the binder against her ribs to stop her hands from doing anything else, and listened to the water moving under the run.
Metal scraped. A heavy splash followed, and she started toward the sound. Tess caught a fold of her raincoat, enough to check her before she stepped back into view.
Through the narrow window Martha could see Jonah’s front legs on the ramp. The rest of him was still in the water. He hauled his chest forward, stopped with his belly against the steel, and lay there breathing while Iris rose beside the partition.
His hind paw found the edge.
He dragged it beneath him, struggled once more, and came over the threshold. He turned toward Iris and went down hard beside the mesh.
“He’s clear,” Tess called. “All of him.”
Grant closed off the flooded passage with the temporary barrier they had ready. He and Tess checked it separately before anyone moved on to the next task. Martha looked down and found the binder upside down in her arms, water spilling from the sleeves onto her boots.
Jonah’s sides were working too fast. His mane drained onto the concrete, and when Iris brought her nose close to his through the mesh, he shifted his head toward her. She held her place.
Martha stepped forward in the keeper aisle, and Naomi asked for room. Martha gave it without offering another task she might perform. Tess joined the veterinarian at the observation point; they needed to assess him and proceed with examination when it could be done safely. Getting him onto dry ground had not settled what the water might have done to him.
The responders helped Grant with the flow outside and carried equipment along the cleared service route. Martha found towels, clean coveralls, and the portable heater for the keeper room. She could still answer when someone needed a shutoff or the second medical cabinet, and for a while answering those questions kept her moving.
By the time the rain eased, she was standing with a towel in her hands and no memory of whom she had fetched it for. Her jeans clung coldly to her legs. Tess came out, stripped off her gloves, and rested her forehead against the wall.
“Tell me,” Martha said.
“Naomi’s staying with him.”
“I’m asking about Jonah.”
Tess turned her face. “His breathing needs watching. There could be trouble with his lungs. We won’t be transporting him today.”
The feed bucket was upside down, and Martha sat on it before trying to answer. She could arrange a supply room from memory but could not settle the question of what her hands should do. Get warm, change clothes, eat: she had said those things often enough to volunteers who insisted they could keep going. Her own wet jeans seemed somebody else’s problem.
A packet landed on her knee. “Grant had sandwiches in the cab,” Tess said. Martha held it up to return it, and Tess closed her hand over her mother’s fingers.
“Just start. You don’t have to eat it all.”
Tuna, Martha discovered when she opened the bread. She and Ben had hardly needed to discuss removing it from the shopping list after they married; he could not stand it, and she had simply stopped buying it. She took a bite and found herself crying with food still in her mouth. The towel was in her lap, inconveniently far from the face she was trying to cover.
Tess brought another bucket and sat beside her. Martha gave her half the sandwich, and Tess began eating it without offering any reassurance about Jonah. They stayed close enough for their shoulders to touch. In the room beyond, Naomi was still working.
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