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CHAPTER ONE

emma

Friday Afternoon

Willow Creek, Louisiana

What happened to thebeep-beep-beepof the feline heart monitor?

I needed the sound to make the last hour worth it… or… or…

I refused to think about it, to even consider losing the tabby on my table. This veterinary surgical space was my kingdom, and I was the queen. The last hour had gone perfectly.What the hell!

After the last suture, the room had gone deathly quiet. The scent of antiseptic still hung heavily in the air, and a minimal amount of blood streaked the formerly sterile pads beneath my short-haired patient with the kink in his tail.

My frown grew as I snipped the suture, and I glancedat the sensor taped to a shaved spot on Sully-Boy’s front leg, the striped barn cat on my exam table. The circular plastic end held on. So, if it was still attached…

A half second stretched into a slow-motion forever.

“There’s no heartbeat?” I demanded, framing it as a question, not believing a successful surgery was going to end like this. The surgical mask slightly muffled my voice. “No heartbeat?”

Riley, my red-headed surgical nursing assistant, chewed her bottom lip as she checked the lead, the cord, and the monitor. Finally, her gaze jumped from me to the monitor and back to me. “Confirmed.”

No, no, no.Not today. I wouldn’t let it happen.

I began compressions on the small chest while sending a silent prayer into the universe.If anyone’s listening, don’t make me tell her that her fur-buddy didn’t make it.Give him back to her.

The image of Callie, the ten-year-old girl in the waiting room, flashed in my head. Her mother would forgive me, but the girl… The tendon repair surgery on the cat’s rear leg had gone well. I’d reconnected the mangled tendon in the feline leg easily and closed the site. What had sent Sully-Boy into arrest?

“Get the crash cart. Prep the emergency injection.”

“Yes, okay,” Riley said. This was her first time dealing with an actual patient in distress, but we’d trained for this. “Okay, okay, okay.” She started to mutter instructions to herself.

I gritted my teeth. The body didn’t move on its own, no up and down of the tomcat’s chest to put me at ease,and I couldn’t stop the spreading panic in the pit of my stomach. The tiny barn tiger wasn’t responding.

I risked another look at my nursing assistant. Her face was already stricken as she worked, and tears had already formed in the corners of her eyes.

In my brain, I replayed Callie’s handing of Sully-Boy over, her eyes earnest and trusting me to make her best friend well. The cat had gotten tangled in a barbed-wire fence. The rural tomcat always managed to escape his house, and he visited me nearly once every quarter.

I wouldn’t go back to the waiting room with the bad news.

Gently, I pressed up and down on the feline’s chest, waiting for some reactive sign of life. “Wake up, you stubborn-ass cat.”

Riley stepped closer with the adrenaline shot in her hand. “Ready.”

Compressions shifted his body on the surgical table, and time seemed to slow. My movements turned intentional, and my perception heightened. It was as though I could make out every strand of fur on the tomcat’s body, every muscle in the tiny heart, his life force struggling to hold on, clawing to remain.For Callie.

My grimace stretched the bottom half of my face, and a rush of desperate tears threatened to cloud my vision. “Come on, Sully-boy. You know you’re not ready to leave Callie. She loves you too much,” I muttered.

“Get back here, you asshole. You know Callie still needs you,” I growled.

In the corner a small beep resumed, and a tremorrolled through me. The adrenaline dump had probably taken years off my life.

“That was a close one.” I sighed as a deep relief spread through to my bones. “Stubborn old cat only likes to cause a ruckus, even when he’s unconscious.”

All the moisture at the corner of Riley’s eyes had escaped to her cheeks. “That was a close one,” she agreed.

“All in a day’s work.”