Part 4
Voss cut away the last muddy bandage while Eliza placed the intravenous line. Warmed fluid disappeared into Willow faster than the pump could display its warning. Across the room, three shallow baskets waited beneath heat lamps, each lined with a different colored towel so no newborn could be counted twice in the confusion.
The monitor sounded an alarm. Voss did not look up from the lioness’s abdomen. “Treat the number, Hart. I’ll treat the cause.”
Eliza adjusted the support, watched Willow’s gums, and listened for the change she needed in the rhythm. The anesthetist called out each pressure. No one repeated it. Repetition could not make it rise.
Mud remained under Eliza’s nails despite two surgical scrubs. She noticed it only when she held up a gloved hand for the first cub.
Voss found the obstruction almost at once. The fetus lay across the lower passage, shoulder wedged where its head should have entered. He freed it through the surgical opening and passed the small, slick body to Eliza.
There was a heartbeat under her thumb but no useful breath.
She cleared the membranes from the face, suctioned the mouth and nose, then rubbed the cub inside a warmed towel while Erin held a small mask in place. The first movement was not dramatic: a tightening at the ribs, a paw curling against the cloth. Then the cub drew air and complained in a rough little rasp.
“Blue basket,” Eliza said.
Erin transferred the newborn beneath the lamp and recorded time, sex, response, and weight. Before she finished, Voss called for another towel.
The second cub arrived hind feet first but untrapped. Mateo, gowned now and stationed at the far neonatal table, received it from Voss’s assistant. He had practiced domestic-kitten resuscitation with Eliza during quiet seasons; nothing in practice had prepared him for a lion cub small enough to fit between his wrists. He dried it until its mouth opened around a thin cry.
The third needed oxygen longer. Its gums shifted from gray to pink while Eliza watched the clock and the rise of its chest. When it finally kicked free of her grip, she placed it in the green-lined basket and looked across the room.
Three cubs moved under the lamps. Willow’s abdomen was smaller. Voss’s hands were still inside the surgical field.
“Is that the litter?” the anesthetist asked.
Voss did not answer. His attention had moved to the monitor. Willow’s pressure dipped again, and the pulse tone stretched farther apart.
Eliza returned to the adult table. She checked the line, reassessed the gum color, and changed the fluid plan with the anesthetist. Voss controlled the bleeding he could see. For several minutes the entire room narrowed to the lioness rather than the newborns behind them.
“Her color is improving,” Eliza said when it was true, not before.
Voss relaxed one shoulder. He began a deliberate final examination before closing. His left hand traveled along one uterine horn, then stopped.
At the same moment, a small ridge moved beneath the skin farther forward on Willow’s abdomen. Eliza saw it pass like a knuckle under a blanket.
“There,” she said.
Voss followed the motion with his hand. “Not bowel.”
The transverse cub had concealed another fetus high behind it, compressed into a position the field monitor had never distinguished. Voss enlarged his access by the smallest amount that would let him free the body without pulling against Willow’s tissue.
What came into his hands looked too still to belong with the three protesting shapes under the lamps.
The fourth cub was markedly smaller. A stripe of nearly white fur began between the closed eyes and continued down the throat to the chest. Fluid covered its muzzle. Its limbs hung without resistance when Voss set it into Eliza’s palms.
“Heart?” he asked.
Eliza pressed two fingers against the tiny chest. A faint beat answered, slow but present. “Yes. Keep working on her.”
She carried the cub to a clear station instead of crowding the other three. Erin brought fresh suction and a dry towel. Mateo moved the oxygen line across without waiting to be asked.
Eliza opened the airway and lowered the head enough to help the fluid drain. She suctioned gently, repositioned, and repeated. Nothing moved except the heartbeat beneath her fingers.
“Mask,” she said.
Erin sealed it over the muzzle. Eliza gave supported breaths and watched for the smallest lift at the ribs. Too much pressure could damage lungs that had never opened; too little would change nothing. Between breaths she rubbed the chest and back with the warm towel until her forearms ached.
At the adult table, Voss issued quiet instructions. A clamp clicked. The monitor tone steadied by degrees. Eliza let that sound remain at the edge of her attention. The cub in front of her had its own clock.
One minute passed. Then another.
Mateo asked, “Do you want me to take over rubbing?”
“Warm a second towel.”
He exchanged the damp cloth without letting the cub touch the cool table. Eliza tried ventilation again. The pale blaze vanished and reappeared beneath her moving hands.
The cub’s throat twitched.
She stopped long enough to see whether the motion would become a breath. It did not. She cleared the airway once more and resumed. On the next pause, the chest lifted without the mask.
No one spoke.
The second breath came unevenly. The third carried a wet click, so Eliza repositioned the head and suctioned again. Then the cub folded one foreleg against her thumb and made a sound no louder than a hinge that needed oil.
Mateo let out the breath he had been holding.
“Record it,” Eliza said. Her own voice shook, and giving him a task steadied it. “Spontaneous respiration. Weak vocal response. Continue oxygen and heat.”
The cub’s mouth opened again. This cry was thin but unmistakably angry.
Across the room, Voss completed the last layer of Willow’s closure. The monitor no longer alarmed. She remained in danger, deeply sedated and depleted, but the direction of the numbers had changed.
Eliza laid the marked cub in a warmed nest beside the other three, separated by rolled towels so they could not cover him. His siblings rooted blindly toward the new warmth and found his sides. For a few seconds the smallest body disappeared among them except for the pale line on his brow.
Voss stripped off his outer gloves. “Four,” he said, looking at the baskets as if the number required proof.
Eliza kept her fingers on the smallest cub’s chest. Each breath still had to be counted. “Four for now.”
To read the rest of the story – CLICK the NEXT button 👇👇👇