Лори Касс: Tailing A Tabby

Both of us running, we returned to the bookmobile. I had the door shut and the vehicle in drive faster than I should have, but not fast enough, not nearly fast enough. “How far?”

The woman was banging her thighs with clenched fists. “A little farther,” she whispered, looking out the front window. “One more driveway… there!”

“Got it.” I made a hard right and stomped on the gas pedal.

The narrow gravel driveway was tree-lined and not made for a vehicle the size of the bookmobile. Tree branches scraped our sides and the roof. I spared a single thought for the damage the mysterious equipment that lived up there could be sustaining, another for what the chances of insurance coverage might be, then stopped thinking about it.

“It’s such a long driveway,” the woman murmured. “We’re so far away from everyone… How could we be so stupid?” She pounded her thighs again. “Can’t you go any faster?”

I didn’t reply. Couldn’t, really, because it was taking all my concentration to fly us through the winding curves that were taking us inexorably downhill to the shores of a small lake, visible now through the trees.

“Faster,” she breathed. “Please…”

I pressed the gas pedal down a little farther. We rounded a sharp corner where the drive turned from gravel to asphalt, hurtled down a last small hill, and burst into a clearing with a large Mission-style house on the far side and a blessedly large turnaround area.

Eddie sat on the porch, licking one paw and looking as if he’d been there for half an hour.

The woman was up out of her seat while we were still moving. She thumped the door with her fist, but its safety feature wouldn’t let the lock release until we came to a stop. When I could finally unlock it, she shoved it open and ran. “This way,” she shouted over her shoulder. “He’s in his office.”

I hurried after her, fixing Eddie with a steely glare. “Don’t you go anywhere,” I told him as I ran past.

The woman had left the front door, a heavy wooden thing held together with wrought iron, wide open. Not a simple rectangle, the door had a curved top, something that had to be expensive. This fact had barely registered when I was through the entrance, into the house, and into a low-ceilinged, oak-floored foyer that led to hallways and doorways and a switchback stairway. I stopped, trying to figure out which way to go.

Eddie streaked past. “Mrr,” he called, and I followed him.

I don’t know if it was a cat-born instinct or some keen sense of hearing that he’d never bothered to demonstrate before, but Eddie arrowed straight through the rough-plastered entrance to a hallway lined with framed paintings of moonlit water. Real paintings, painted with real paint, and they looked vaguely familiar. I put the assumption in my head that they were from a local artist and hurried past.

“In here!” the woman called.

At the end of the hall were three doorways that led in three different directions. Through one I saw a black-and-white tile floor and white porcelain bathroom fixtures. Through another I saw shelves and shelves of books. Eddie trotted through the third, and if cats had heels, I was right on his.

The woman was kneeling on the thick carpet, her back to a stone fireplace. A man lay sprawled on the floor, his entire left side limp and lifeless. The woman held her husband’s good hand to her cheek. “Honey, I brought help. We’ll get you to a hospital in no time.” She looked up to me, her eyes asking the question.

I nodded. “We can take him in the bookmobile. It’ll be easiest.” Although how we were going to get him into it, I wasn’t quite sure. The man, who looked to be in his mid-fifties, also looked to be heavy. And big. Or at least a lot bigger than five-foot-nothing Minnie. His wife had a few inches on me, but the two of us dragging this ill man through the hallway, down the front steps, and into the bookmobile was going to be imposs—

No. There had to be a way. All I had to do was find it. “Think, Minnie, think,” I muttered. What was the good of taking all those first aid classes last winter in preparation for bookmobile emergencies if I couldn’t remember what to do when an emergency happened? There must have been something I’d learned about transporting an injured person.

I unclenched my fists. Yes. There had been. “We need a heavy blanket. Or a rug.”

The woman nodded across the room. “The sofa.”

I looked over and saw Eddie sitting on the back of a brass-studded leather couch. “Move it, pal,” I said, and he did as I crossed the room and snatched the blanket. A pure wool Hudson Bay blanket imported from England, if I was any judge.

“We need to get him on his side.” I dropped to my knees and tried to remember the techniques I’d been taught. Using care not to hurt the man, but with speed enough to move things along, I moved his right arm straight above his head, arranged his left across his body, laid his right leg straight, propped his left leg up, gently put my hands on his left hip and knee, and pushed. With almost no effort on my part, the man rolled onto his side.

“Hot dog,” I murmured. “It worked.”

“What’s that?” the woman asked.

“Hold him in place while I get the blanket set, okay?” In seconds, I’d laid one end of the blanket on the floor just south of his hips and flopped the far end past his head. “Okay, let him down.”

The woman gently rolled her husband onto the blanket. “We’re going to move you, honey, okay? We’ll be as gentle as we can.”

He made a guttural noise that I took for assent. I stood and stooped to pick up the loose end of the blanket. “I can try to move him by myself, but—”

She was already on her feet. “I’ll take one corner.”

We walked backward, grunting with the effort of pulling the stricken man out of the study, down the hall, into the foyer, and over the small bump of the threshold with Eddie on solemn parade near the man’s feet.

I looked at the front steps. “Do you have a piece of plywood in your garage? I don’t want him to get hurt.” Wooden steps I might have risked, but these were hard slate. “Something for a ramp.”

The woman’s gaze darted to the detached garage. “No, no plywood.” She made a small, panicked-animal noise. “No wood scraps, nothing like—”

She stopped, laid the corner of the blanket on the floor, and ran back into the house. I dragged the man closer to the steps and was almost there when she returned carrying a wide plank about eighteen inches wide and five feet long. A table leaf. Perfect.

She dropped it onto the steps where it instantly became a sturdy ramp, and we eased her husband down it, across the drive, and next to the back end of the bookmobile.

“How… ?” The woman looked up at the tall rear door, her face pale.

“Hang on.” I hurried into the bookmobile and quickly had the electric-powered handicap ramp moving toward the ground. I ran outside, flipped the metal base unit down, and the two of us slid the woman’s husband onto the ramp. “Keep him in position, okay? I’ll get him at the top.”

No words had been necessary; she was already doing what needed to be done. I ran back inside, followed by Eddie, and powered the ramp back upstairs. Moments later, the woman and I got him safely onto the bookmobile’s floor.

I shut the doors and hurried to the driver’s seat. When I buckled my seat belt, I looked back. The woman was lying next to her husband, caressing his face, and murmuring, “It won’t be long now, sweetheart. Not long at all.”

There was no way I was going to insist that she follow standard operating procedure and buckle up, so I started the engine. Eddie jumped onto the passenger’s seat and sat, looking straight ahead. Since I didn’t want to take the time to shove a reluctant cat into the carrier, I murmured a short prayer for a safe trip and dropped the transmission into gear.