Part 2
Hannah lowered the rifle and did not reach for a second dart. Boone covered half the distance to the cage in three bounds, then drove his forepaws into the mud; clay sheeted past his shoulders. Behind him, Juniper’s head sagged as the sedative took hold. He turned from the truck and rushed back to her.
“Keep the cage latched,” Hannah told Caleb. Boone paced once around Juniper, huffing over the dart, while Hannah counted the slowing blinks of her eyes. When Juniper’s ear no longer flicked at the rain, Hannah moved back through the cab hatch.
The truck carried a folding steel field screen. From the cabs, Hannah and Caleb eased the vehicles into a shallow V around Juniper. Working only through protected cages, they swung the screen from the ranger’s receiver rail and pinned it to the clinic truck without crossing the steel line. Sheet metal and mesh enclosed a narrow bay, with Boone outside.
He tracked the screen from Juniper’s far side. When its edge reached the mud beside her, his right forepaw eased backward one inch and settled. Hannah waited until the second locking pin held against Caleb’s pull. Only then did she lay the rifle inside the bay, enter through the service gate, and kneel at Juniper’s shoulder.
Her carotid pulse fluttered fast and weak; the gums under Hannah’s thumb were nearly colorless. Caleb passed the monitor through the screened hatch, and Boone followed every inch of the case with his eyes.
Hannah listened to Juniper’s chest, fitted oxygen near her muzzle, and pressed both hands against the taut abdomen. Beneath the spent muscles, one small body shifted. A second movement answered farther back, but low in the pelvis her fingers found an immovable angle where there should have been a smooth line.
Juniper’s temperature was falling despite the damp warmth under her coat. Hannah covered the exposed side with a foil-lined blanket and started a catheter while Caleb hung the fluid bag from a hook on the protected side. Boone watched the clear tubing sway through the mesh, his pupils fixed on every movement near Juniper’s leg.
Caleb read the conclusion in her face. “Blocked?”
“A cub is transverse, or close to it. She’s been pushing against its side.” Hannah checked the pulse again. “Tell Owen we’re coming in hot, but not fast. Her pressure won’t tolerate a rough ride.”
The transport team came down at her signal. Maya backed the big-cat box truck to the mouth of the existing bay, its armored side closing the only open angle. Eli unloaded the low litter and portable oxygen from the protected side. Nobody stepped into open ground; Hannah had written that rule herself.
A second dart was unsafe: Boone moved fully alert beside Juniper, where a partial hit or startled rush could drive him over her. From behind the vehicle, Eli and Caleb coupled the truck’s shift wings to the field screen, extending the protected lane from Juniper to the hydraulic deck.
Boone paced along the far side of the mesh as Hannah and Maya rolled Juniper enough to work the litter beneath her. When Eli reached through a service opening for the head strap, Boone came close and Eli’s fingers stopped on the buckle. Steel remained between them. Hannah felt Juniper swallow and waited until Boone stepped back before she nodded for Eli to finish.
The sedative could not buy them much time. Juniper’s eyelids twitched when the team shifted her weight, and Hannah added only what the transport required, watching the pulse-oximeter struggle through wet fur. Eli tucked the oxygen bottle between the litter rails so nothing loose could roll under a paw.
“Lift on two, not three,” she said. They had practiced that small trick so no one anticipated the count and pulled early. The litter rose level, Juniper’s heavy head supported between rolled blankets, while Boone tracked Maya from beyond the shifting grid of steel.
At the truck, the hydraulic deck complained under the load. Boone crowded the outer wing until his mane pressed through the mesh, but the locked panel held him outside the open doors. Hannah stayed at Juniper’s head on the protected side and guided the litter’s wheels into the track.
Juniper exhaled, a long rough current through the oxygen mask. Boone’s gaze shifted to her; Hannah moved the litter the last foot, and Maya brought the doors together. Only after both latches dropped did Eli fold the wings from behind the truck. Boone reared at the clatter, then followed the rear bumper as the truck began to crawl uphill.
Hannah rode beside Juniper with the IV supplies open at her knee. Caleb took the front passenger seat, and Maya kept the truck in low gear while Eli followed in the pickup. Through the small window in the rear door, Boone appeared and disappeared with each bend, walking in the ruts until the road firmed, then breaking into a lope.
The compound lay less than four miles away. On a dry day, they could cover it in twelve minutes; that morning every culvert carried brown water, and sections of pasture fence lay pressed flat beneath branches. Hannah watched the monitor hunt for a reliable pressure and gave warmed fluid in measured increments, wary of making Juniper’s failing circulation work harder.
Caleb looked back through the cab opening. “He’s still with us.”
“Watch the road,” Hannah said, though she had already checked the rear window. Boone kept to the truck’s left quarter, far enough from the tires and near enough to vanish whenever the cab blocked her view.
Juniper’s belly tightened under the blanket. Sedation softened the contraction but did not stop it, and the monitor tone skipped. Hannah called Owen with the numbers. He asked whether they could be at the surgical door in ten minutes.
Maya answered before Hannah could. “Not anymore.” She eased off the accelerator, and the truck stopped at the bottom of a steep switchback.
Hannah secured the fluid bag and climbed forward. Through the windshield, the low-water crossing had disappeared beneath a moving pane of runoff, thirty feet from bank to bank. It did not foam dramatically; it slid over the road with a steady muscular shove, carrying sticks and fist-sized stones that clicked against the guard posts.
Maya, the sanctuary’s swift-water lead, studied the drowned pavement from the cab. Eli remained in the screened rear bay and spoke over the intercom. “South service loop might still be open.”
“It adds forty minutes,” Maya said. “If the lower gate isn’t jammed.”
From the truck came three close monitor beeps, then a silence too long for Hannah’s liking. She climbed back in and found Juniper’s pulse, thinner now but present.
The sanctuary kept a rescue sled strapped beneath the truck for moving sedated cats over terrain no wheeled litter could cross. The clinic-side recovery vehicle carried a capstan winch, and the crossing had rated anchor posts on both banks. The plan still held danger, but the alternative had a clock Hannah could feel failing beneath her fingertips.
Maya turned the box truck across the road above the water. From its protected controls, Caleb and Eli extended the steel shift wings to the guard posts on both shoulders. The truck body, locked panels, flooded channel, and steep cutbanks closed Boone out of the work pocket; his nearest bypass was the longer high trail around the head of the runoff.
Only after Eli tested both pins did Maya open the water-side hatch. They unloaded the sled inside the screened pocket, along with flotation vests, two independent safety lines, and the waterproof monitor transmitter.
“Call the clinic and send the winch truck to the far bank,” Hannah said. “We’re taking her across on the sled.”
“Nobody walks beside the load,” Maya said. “We cross one at a time on the upstream line. The far truck pulls; Eli keeps a stern belay from this bank. If either safety line loses tension, everything stops.”
Hannah tightened the blanket around Juniper and sealed the monitor in its floating pouch. Beyond the mesh, Boone watched them fit the sled without gaining a path to any person. Across the water, an engine appeared through the rain, and a bright throw bag arced from the far bank just as Juniper’s monitor missed another beat.
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