Chapter 8: The Best of the Three

Daisy was on the treatment table when I got there, limp and open-mouthed, with her white sock curled against her chest.

Lydia stood beside her in her cream robe and slippers, holding a coat she had thrown on over it.

"I found her on the bathroom floor," she said. "Oh, Maddie, I thought she was dead."

Nobody in the room answered her.

Reuben went to the counter and pulled on gloves.

"Donahue, catheter," he said. "Let's see what she's swallowed."

I tied off the foreleg and felt for the vein.

It rolled under my thumb, a thin line in warm fur, and I knew it.

It was the same vein, the same leg, the same small cat.

I slid the catheter in on the first try.

"Good girl," I whispered to her, and Daisy's eyes slid to me.

The X-ray showed a thin dark loop in her belly.

"Hair tie," Reuben said. He looked at it for a long second. "Again."

"Again?" said Lydia.

"There's a scar on her intestine from a previous one," he said. "That's what the chart says."

Lydia gave a small shaky laugh.

"She just loves them," she said. "I can't stop her."

I ran the fluids.

I held Daisy's head in my hands while Reuben put her under, and watched her breathing settle until her chest was slow and steady.

He took her into the back for the scope.

The door swung shut behind him.

That left me and Lydia in the hallway under the buzzing lights, and a long window behind her that looked out onto the parking lot.

I didn't want to talk to her.

I wanted to see Daisy come back.

"She'll be all right," I said, to the floor. "He's very good."

"I know he is. I know you are, too." Lydia leaned her back against the wall and sighed. "You've saved her twice now. I should thank you."

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