Part 2
Owen lowered the plywood into place before opening the service panel. He braced it against the frame with his shoulder, leaving a narrow passage at floor level for the cutters. His hands and body stayed on the cabin side.
“The chain behind the trap,” he told Tessa. “That’s all I’m taking.”
“Keep the jaws away from the leg. If she comes around, abandon the tool.”
He fed the steel head through the opening. The link he needed lay beyond the bobcat’s rear paw, clear of her body but close enough that the handles trembled in his grip.
The female saw the movement. Her ears vanished against her skull, and she struck the plywood with both front feet. The board slammed Owen’s shoulder into the jamb.
He kept the cutters on the link and leaned into the handles.
For a moment, nothing gave. Then the metal parted. Owen released the cutters into the shed and hauled the service panel closed as a paw struck the space they had occupied.
The bobcat swung toward her kitten.
Her teeth opened the sac. She worked over the newborn with quick strokes of her tongue, turning it against the floor, working harder when it failed to respond. Owen pressed his palm against the edge of the shelf.
“Breathe,” he said, too quietly for anyone but the phone to catch.
Tessa stayed on the line.
The female severed the cord and drew the kitten closer. Its mouth opened. A faint, high complaint reached the glass.
Owen bent his head. When he looked again, the kitten was moving beneath its mother’s muzzle. She folded herself around it, keeping the trapped foot extended away from its body.
“She’s got it breathing.”
“Now give her room,” Tessa said.
He carried the phone to the opposite wall and sat on an empty bucket. From there he could see only the upper curve of the bobcat’s back. When another contraction came, he wrote the time on the back of an old supply envelope.
Twenty-two minutes later, she delivered a second kitten. This one moved almost at once. She cleaned it, pulled it against her belly beside the first, and growled when Owen’s boot scraped the floor.
He lifted the boot and set it down without a sound.
The windows were beginning to pale when an engine climbed the last stretch of road. A sled scraped across the snow outside. Owen went to the equipment entrance and let the team in.
Erin carried her helmet under one arm. Micah Keene followed with a covered carrier and enough folded barriers to fill the narrow hall. Tessa ducked through last, shrugged off her medical pack, and went straight to the mudroom window.
“Tell me what’s happened since the second one.”
“No more contractions for about forty minutes. Both are moving. I think they’ve nursed.”
Tessa watched without speaking. Meltwater gathered beneath her boots. Her dark hair was pinned up carelessly, and the crease above her nose was the same one Nora had worn when someone tried to skip the difficult part of a conversation.
Her eyes went to the cutters on the shed floor.
“You had that tool out before we’d agreed on a way to use it.”
“The kitten was running out of time.”
“I wasn’t asking you to waste time.”
He turned toward her, ready with an answer that would have been louder than it needed to be.
Erin stepped between them to set down her pack.
“Let’s finish with the patient who can bite through our gloves.”
Micah fitted a second barrier into the doorway. Tessa waited until both kittens had finished nursing, then delivered the sedative from behind cover. The female struck at the pole and scrambled against the stacked wood before her movements began to slow.
Owen took an involuntary step back. Tessa remained where she was, watching the angle of the cat’s head, calling out observations for Micah to record on tape wrapped around his forearm.
Only after she had checked that the bobcat was fully immobilized did they enter. They covered her eyes and set up the monitoring equipment. A portable ultrasound showed no kittens remaining inside her.
Erin moved the newborns into a warmed box. Their eyes were sealed, their bellies full enough to round the skin. One pushed blindly against her glove.
Tessa examined the trap without touching the foot.
“Old offset model. Untagged. No cushioning.” She looked along the swollen limb. “This hasn’t been on her just since tonight.”
“How long?” Owen asked.
“A couple of days, at least.”
Micah compressed the springs while Tessa supported the leg. Once the jaws opened, she paused, then asked for more saline in a different voice.
The foot was badly swollen. Wet fur had concealed two deep pressure wounds. Tessa washed carefully, checked the toes, and asked Erin for a small splint.
Owen stood where he wouldn’t block anyone’s hands.
Erin photographed the trap before bagging it. When she turned the swivel toward the light, he saw the copper washer again. A scrap of orange electrical tape clung beside it.
He bent to move an empty equipment case out of the way.
Tessa bandaged the leg. They lifted the female into the reinforced carrier, keeping her supported, and placed the kittens where they could be warmed and monitored. As the sedative began to reverse, Tessa moved their box into a protected section of the carrier, close enough for the mother to hear and smell them without being able to roll onto them during the trip.
Owen remembered holding a robin while twelve-year-old Tessa improvised a splint from a thin wooden slat and tape. She’d checked his face after every step. Now Micah adjusted his grip whenever she moved a finger.
Outside, Erin and Micah began loading the sled. Tessa came back for her empty pack and stripped off her gloves.
“I’m glad you answered,” Owen said.
“The center’s on the emergency rotation.”
“I called you.”
She rolled one glove inside the other. “You had a patient.”
Deke scratched once from the bedroom. Tessa glanced down the hall, and for a moment Owen thought she would open the door. Instead she tucked the gloves away.
“The kittens?” he asked.
“Warm. Responsive. We need her to take them back when she’s fully awake.”
“And the foot?”
“I can’t give you an outcome from a shed. I don’t feel a break. That doesn’t tell me whether the tissue will survive or the tendons will work.”
He watched her close the buckles on her pack.
“If it doesn’t?”
Tessa faced him squarely.
“Without that foot working, release is off the table…”
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