Page 77 of Tiger Queen

Rachel and Anthony came jogging up the path and joined me in the enclosure. I quickly told her what I had noticed about him.

“Probably just a stomach ache…”

“It’s not a fucking stomach ache!” I snapped. “Something’s wrong.”

“Okay, okay,” she said soothingly. “Let me check him out.” She ran her hands over him, pausing on his belly. She pressed inward with her fingers, and Caesar snarled at her the way he had done with me.

Rachel took her hand away and calmly said, “I need you to go get the Mule. Make sure the jab stick and the box of Telazol are with it.”

Anthony jumped up and ran off.

“What is it?” I asked. “What did you feel?”

“I’m not sure yet.” She sounded like a doctor telling a patient’s family bad news. “We need to sedate him so I can give him a proper examination. Then we’ll take him to the medical office.”

“This isn’t like him,” I insisted. “Caesar’s never snarled at me in my life.”

“I know. That’s why we’re going to take care of him.” She put her hand on my chest, and her touch was enough to make me relax. She was a veterinarian and she was going to fix this.

Anthony returned with the mule. The gate to enter the enclosure wasn’t big enough for the Mule to fit; when I had built the fence dividing the enclosure in half for Caesar, I had left the utility gate on the other side with the two remaining females. Rachel prepared a syringe on the end of the jab stick, then gently pressed it into his hind leg next to his tail.

Rachel counted out thirty seconds—thirty long, dragging seconds—and then bent to the tiger again. This time he didn’t respond when she touched him. His huge, hulking form rose and fell gently as he breathed peacefully.

“I’m pretty sure it’s distended,” Rachel said after a few minutes of poking.

“What’s that mean?”

“It means we need to get him back to my office. Now.”

We had to call David to come help us. I was ready to bite his head off if he took his sweet time, but he jogged down the road, treating it like the emergency it was. We placed the animal stretcher on the ground, then tried to drag Caesar onto it. It was like trying to move extremely heavy dough. Once he was on the stretcher, moving him was another difficulty. He was the biggest animal in the park, and carrying the stretcher over a hundred feet was tough as shit.

I berated myself for not installing a utility gate. Rachel was right: I shouldn’t have done things on my own without asking for help.

We got him on the Mule and then drove to the medical office. Then we carried him inside and, at Rachel’s direction, placed him on the x-ray table. The rest of us stood around helplessly as she tried to get the machine to work.

“Piece of junk,” she cursed while pressing buttons. “Knew I should have done a more thorough test than just making sure it powered on.”

“Do you need it?” Anthony asked.

“I don’t need it. But it would be nice to get a peek of what’s going on inside before I cut him open.”

I just about tripped over my own feet. “Cut him open!”

“He requires surgery,” she said in her doctor’s voice again. “There is no other option.”

“Forgive me for how this question is going to sound,” David said. “But how many surgeries have you performed on a tiger?”

“I have assisted in four big cat surgeries.”

“Assisted? No way. That’s not good enough,” I said. “Caesar’s not the time to lose your surgery virginity.”

She gave up on the X-ray machine and faced me. “The nearest place that can operate on an animal his size is the North Carolina Zoo up by Greensboro.”

“Okay, good, then let’s do that,” I said. “That’s less than three hours away.”

She held my gaze intensely. “I don’t think Caesar will live that long. I need to cut him open now.”

David put a hand on my shoulder. “She’s the vet. This is her job. We should trust her.”

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