Carolyn McSparren - Safe At Home

She felt the gentlest caress on the top of her head as though someone had picked up a hank of hair between thumb and index finger. She blinked her eyes and yawned. The two men still worked halfway across the big room.

There it was again. A fairy’s breath that ruffled her hair slightly. She rubbed her hand over her head and felt the bars behind her. Imagination. Too little sleep. Too much excitement. She relaxed again, and a moment later felt a tug on her hair. She reached behind her and felt…

She stifled a scream, jumped up and spun around. An elephant’s trunk extended through the bars behind her. She froze. It slid gently over her face, down her cheek, then patted her shoulder, almost as though consoling her.

She gulped, moved slowly back four paces, and realized that she was looking into the faces of three large gray lumps clustered on the other side of the bars. There were six concerned eyes, not two.

The elephants stood shoulder to shoulder, swinging their trunks gently back and forth. She hadn’t heard them approach—not a single footfall or shuffle on the concrete floor of what must be their cage. Where had they come from? Dark as it was, she could swear they hadn’t been there earlier when she sat down.

She felt a sough of wind against her face. Around the corner of the enclosure in deep darkness she saw some kind of heavy plastic sway slightly. It looked like the barrier at a car wash. She fought down a giggle. She’d seen dog doors and cat doors, but never an elephant door.

The center elephant, by far the largest, with skin as heavily wrinkled as a hundred-year-old crone, reached out to her again. This time Tala put her palm up so that she could feel its soft breath on her fingertips. She reached out her other hand and stroked the long gray nose tentatively.

She felt her eyes begin to well with tears.

“Got the blasted thing!” Pete Jacobi shouted. Tala jumped, the elephants snuffled and swung away. The moment was over.

She turned to the light. Pete held up a round object in a pair of steel forceps. “Looks heavy—.357 Magnum at a guess. Came from a fair distance, otherwise there’d be more damage and one hell of an exit wound. Good thing it wasn’t a rifle. What nut would go after a lion with a handgun?”

“For that matter,” Mace answered, his head bent, his gloved hands busy with the wound, “who’d have a lion around here to go after in the first place?”

Pete turned to look at Tala and smiled. She felt her heart turn over. His eyes really did crinkle at the corners, and he had a nice, wide mouth. She started to smile back when she realized he was looking past her.

“Hello, girls,” he said. “Not real thrilled at the sleet?”

She heard an answering snuffle and stomp. “Let me get this wound closed and I’ll introduce you,” he said. Whether he planned to introduce her to the elephants or the elephants to her, she wasn’t entirely certain. She suspected his priorities were elephants first, human beings second.

Tala knew no more than anyone in Hollendale knew about the two veterinarians. She’d seen Mace buying groceries at the Food Farm, but she’d never actually met him, although Irene liked him.

Apparently the younger one seldom went outside the sanctuary, and when he did, he pointedly ignored any effort to make friends. A real sourpuss, her mother-in-law had called him.

But watching his fingers as he worked over the big cat, Tala knew she’d been right to stop here, instead of driving the lion into town to Dr. Wiskowski’s clinic. The way this vet smiled at his girls proved he wasn’t a sourpuss with animals.

“Have you thought what we’re going to do with her?” Mace asked his son. “We’re certainly not set up for big cats, and she’s got to be under constant supervision.”

“One thing at a time, Dad.” Pete’s hands made gestures over the cat’s shoulder. “While I’m closing, better give her a massive shot of antibiotics,” he said.

“Right.” Mace went to a drug cabinet along the wall, pulled a small key off a hook beside it, opened the cabinet and rooted among the bottles and jars. He held one up and squinted at it over the tops of his bifocals. “This ought to do.” Then he pulled a large syringe from a drawer under the cabinet and filled it with milky liquid from the bottle. He returned the remaining medication, carefully locked the cabinet again and hung the key beside it.

Mace held up a small piece of the lioness’s fur and slid the needle sideways into her neck. She didn’t stir.

“Shouldn’t she be waking up?” Tala asked.

“Bite your tongue,” Mace said.

“The longer she’s out of it, the safer for everybody,” Pete added. “I’d prefer not to give her anything to put her under again if I can help it. Her heartbeat’s a little weak. Big cats can lose a fair amount of blood without too much danger, but we have no way of knowing how much she bled before you found her, and it’s not as though we’ve got a handy donor to give her a transfusion.”

Mace peered down at the animal. “Neat. Couldn’t have done better myself. Okay, now what?”

“I’ve still got that old dog kennel you used for the beagles,” Pete said. “Won’t hold her if she decides to climb out over the top, but with that shoulder, I don’t think she’ll feel much like moving for a couple of days. We can hook it together in a few minutes, put down some blankets and a water dish and close up the room.”

“And pray she doesn’t wake up and destroy the place.”

Pete glanced at Tala. “You have any idea what you were getting into?”

“No. But I probably would have done it anyway,” she said. “Only I don’t know how I’ll pay you…”

“Don’t sweat it,” Mace said, smiling at her over the tops of his glasses. “Don’t often get a chance these days to work on a big cat. Kind of miss it.”

“We’ll work something out,” Pete said.

Mace turned to his son. “Come on, boy, let’s find those kennel panels.”

“Can I help?” Tala asked.

“Nope. Climb into your truck and shut the doors in case she wakes up before we get back. Leave the windows up.”

“She wouldn’t hurt me.”

“Yeah. Right,” Pete said, and looked down at the cat. “Let’s get her on the ground before we leave. Don’t want her coming to and falling off the table onto the concrete.”

“Get a blanket. We can lay her on that and then slide her onto it when we get the cage set up,” Mace said.

Thirty minutes later all three of them grabbed the blanket and slid the cat into the kennel. It was six feet high and built of sturdy steel cyclone fencing, but it had no cover, nor was it anchored to the concrete. One good bash by a large furry body could send it crashing to the floor.

At the moment, however, the cat slept. Pete filled a plastic bucket with water, set it in the corner of the pen and securely fastened the door to the enclosure behind him. “Keep your fingers crossed,” he said.

“You better get on home,” Mace told Tala kindly. “It’s nearly four in the morning. Your folks’ll be worried about you. Want to call them before you leave?”

“No one will miss me,” she said, and realized how pitiful she sounded. “I mean, I live alone at the moment.” She fought a yawn. She was suddenly desperately tired, so tired her knees started to give way.

She felt a sinewy arm around her waist, and grasped Pete’s shoulder.

“Hey! Don’t pass out now!” he snapped.

“She’s out on her feet,” Mace said. “No way can you drive home, my dear. Not along the Hollow road.” He turned to his son. “She’d better bed down here for a few hours.”

“Here?”

She pulled away from him. “I’ll be fine.”

“No, Dad’s right. You’re punchy. You’ve got no business driving as far as the gate.” Pete walked off toward the door at the front of the room. “Come on. You can have the sofa. I’d give you the bed, but I’ve messed it up already, and you fit on the sofa better than I would.”