CHAPTER 6
Monday June 23rd, 2014
Otjindawa Nature Reserve, Namibia
Holly Webster is a compact fireball of energy with, according to Annie, hair to match. For some reason she makes Auggie think of his third grade teacher. Perhaps it's the way she herds them all into the game viewing vehicle that is to be their on-site transport for the week – urging them along as if they're so many wayward eight-year olds.
She drives like Annie Walker.
As they hurtle towards the BornWild Center – thankfully, he's told, only a short distance from the lodge - Holly is yelling information over her shoulder at them.
"Most of these cats we're doing this week are our 'rescue' cats," she tells them. "Our main focus is obviously trying to keep the cats in the wild – working with the farmers, education and so on. But sometimes we can't persuade a farmer not to shoot, or can't find somewhere else local to move a cat, and so we bring them here. If they're young enough when they come in we do our best to rehab them – release them onto the large reserve here at Otjindawa – but if we can't, or if they don't do well, they stay here in the big camps at BornWild. We have just over forty cats here at the moment." She swings the vehicle violently around a bend. Auggie tightens his grip on the seat in front of him. "We specialize in cheetahs, but we have a handful of lions, leopards and caracals too."
When they arrive at the clinic she briskly talks them through the process. Two cats will be darted at a time. Once asleep they will be brought back to the clinic on the back of open vehicles, monitored all the time for signs of overheating. On arrival they will be carried quickly to the scale outside the clinic, weighed and then taken immediately to one of two treatment tables. Each cat will be connected by a vet to a gas anesthetic circuit. The vets will then check them over thoroughly, vaccinate them, treat them and will take blood, urine and other samples. The volunteers will assist. They will please listen carefully and do exactly as the vets ask. Once everything has been done, each cat will be given an antidote to the tranquilizer and placed into a crate to wake up. A volunteer must stay at the crate to keep an eye on them, and time their recovery, and once they are steady and standing they will be loaded back onto a vehicle and released back into their camp.
"We want to keep the cats under anesthetic for as short a time as possible." she instructs them, "So I need you guys to pay attention and learn fast." She claps her hands briskly. "Right! Everyone with me?"
Auggie is. Right back in that third grade classroom.
"The vets have already gone out to dart the first two cats. I need two groups of five – one group for each cheetah." She pauses. "That means one of you lovely pairs is going to have to split up…"
Auggie immediately spots the opportunity presenting itself. He feels for Annie's hand and squeezes it. "Laura and I will," he volunteers. Perfect. One of them is guaranteed to be working with Jaco Bouwer all day.
"Are you sure?" It's the first time since he met her Auggie has heard Holly sound unsure. Wasn't expecting that, he thinks wryly.
"Fine with me," Annie backs him up. She gives Auggie's hand a squeeze in return and lets it go. Message communicated.
"All right…" Holly still sounds a little hesitant, but she's getting over it quickly enough. "Michael, you take Owen, Heike, Ernst, Marijke, Eva and show them what's what. They can work at the first station. The rest of you, come with me."
An unexpected image of ducklings lining up behind their mother forms in Auggie's mind. Annie whispers "Good thinking," in his ear and gives his arm a squeeze. She disappears - presumably following the other ducklings.
"Owen?" Michael is next to him in Annie's vacated space. "What's the best way for me to show you around?"
Auggie appreciates the simplicity of that question more than Michael will ever know. Too many people presume – grabbing him, pushing or pulling him wherever they think he needs to go. Too many people are too embarrassed to just ask what he wants, or whether he even wants anything. Too few people do him the courtesy of believing that maybe he knows what he needs better than anyone else.
It still grates, even after all this time.
Auggie's just gotten the outline of the place (kitchen with bottomless pot of coffee - nice; bathrooms; 'museum'; lecture hall; office. And then the clinic: loading area; table with scale just outside the door on the left; double doors into the clinic itself; an immediate left to find their station; examination table with light; cart with anesthetic machine; several other medical carts dotted about with an alarming amount of loose equipment on them) when Michael's radio crackles to life. "First two cats on the way."
The potentially disastrous equipment-cluttered carts make his decision for him.
"Michael, I'm gonna wait this part out. Where will I be out of the traffic?"
"Are you sure? I'm really happy for you to stick with me if you want."
"I'm sure. Get these first guys in without worrying about me getting run over. Or running over something. I'll figure things out quickly enough. Hang with you for the next round?"
"I'll hold you to that." His smile is apparent in his voice. "Just so you know."
"I've been warned." Auggie grins at him. "Now direct me."
"You're good where you are, actually." They're standing between the examination table and the clinic wall. "Maybe just back up against the wall until they've got the cat settled? Then you'll be in the clear. I'm going to head back outside, OK?"
"Fine." Auggie leans back against the wall, folds up his cane, crosses his arms and waits.
He can hear the first vehicle arriving and being backed up into the loading area. Michael, enthusiastic as ever, is yelling directions. "Come…more…OK, stop." The sound of a hand banging the side of a vehicle accompanies the last injunction. The engine is cut and there are sounds of feet landing as people jump down.
Holly's "Quick! Get her on the scale!" is followed by a "1-2-3-lift" count by (he thinks) Jaco Bouwer.
"Mind! Mind! Out the way!" Teacher Holly. Auggie congratulates himself on already being out of the way.
A woman's voice - British accent - calls "Thirty-two point two." The cheetah is on the scale.
Grunting and rapid scuffling footsteps are coming into the clinic, towards him. This is their cheetah. He is going to be the one closest to Jaco Bouwer today. Mentally he pumps a fist. Sorry, Annie.
The arrival of the second vehicle coincides with the settling of the cheetah on the table in front of him. Jaco Bouwer's measured, precise, accented tones demarcate the activities.
"There. The tube is in. Could you connect her up please, Julie?" So the British accent belongs to the veterinary nurse - the two volunteer vets must be supervising the process on Annie's cat.
"She has a lot of flies on her," the vet notes. She's shared one with Auggie. He brushes it out of his hair. It's persistent. "Ernst, would you please put some of that fly powder onto her. A little more here? Yes, that's good. Thank you. Now rub it in like this. Yes. Good. These are called 'louse flies'. They're becoming an increasing problem here, we think because of higher rainfall in recent years."
The man is a fount of information.
"What is her temperature?" he asks.
"Thirty-nine point two." Julie-the-nurse again.
"That's fine. The anesthetic level looks stable. Let's get to work, then. Julie, could you demonstrate how we take the temperature so that someone can monitor that? Readings every two minutes please and note them on the chart. Also, how to take the body length measurements for the BMI? Let's get someone going with those. Thank you."
He speaks the very correct, non-idiomatic English of a non-native speaker. He is polite to a fault.
Just as Auggie's wondering how safe it is to make his way forward, Jaco Bouwer speaks quietly over his shoulder to him.
"It's all clear now, Owen. You can come and meet her if you like." Touching Auggie lightly under the elbow, he ushers him forward. Auggie finds the edge of the table with his folded cane. "She's lying on her right side, back to you, head to your right. She's intubated so there's a tube coming from her mouth connecting her to the anesthetic machine. She has an intravenous catheter in her front foreleg in case we need to administer any drugs quickly. That's all you will need to be careful of."
"I can touch her?"
"Of course. Please."
Auggie lays the cane on the table and then slides his hands, fingertips down, carefully forwards until the back of his fingers make contact with the cheetah's back. He measures the length of her spine with them, left and right, feeling bony ridges. Tracing his fingertips up and over her back he finds her side and then, palms down, gauges the dimensions of her chest and abdomen. She's slender - chest deep from spine to sternum, but narrow from side to side. He can feel her ribs.
Her coat surprises him. It's coarse – rough under his fingertips. He can feel dirt, matted fur. His fingers find a grass burr. He pulls it free.
"Many people are surprised at how dirty they are." Jaco Bouwer must be watching him. For the first time Auggie can hear a slight smile in the vet's voice. "They're not like other cats when it comes to grooming. We'll comb her out nicely before we wake her up."
Auggie tracks carefully to the right along her body, reaching her neck. "What's this?" He has found some sort of bandage running across her neck - tied around the back of her head.
"That's the tie holding the endotracheal tube in place – the tube that feeds the anesthetic gas into her lungs."
Two round ears. Thumbs over a broad forehead. He traces the side of her face with the backs of two fingers. Shorter fur. Turns his hand over. Fingers the side of her muzzle carefully. He'd wondered about the characteristic 'tear tracks' - whether he'd be able to distinguish them. He can't. All of the fur feels the same.
"Does she have a name?"
"Yes. They all do. She's called Marge. The other cheetah here is Lisa."
"The Simpsons?" Auggie quirks an eyebrow, amused.
"Yeah. Bart and Homer will be the next two," Julie's voice comes from the other end of the table. "Holly's not into obvious names. And she likes themes."
"TV shows?"
"All sorts. You'll see."
"Owen?" It's Jaco Bouwer's quiet voice from in front of him again. "Would you be able to extend her neck for me so I can draw blood?"
"Sure. Show me what to do." He lifts his hands away from the cat.
Jaco comes around the table to stand next to him.
"Put your right hand on the side of her face, like this. Can you feel how I'm doing it?" Auggie reaches out. The vet's hand is over the side of the cat's face, fingers under the jaw pulling the head back.
"Yeah."
"All right. My left hand is on her shoulder." Auggie finds it. "You'll need to put your thumb in here for me. In this groove between the bone and her wind pipe. Can you feel that?"
Yeah. Got it."
"That closes her jugular off at the base so I can find it easily up here on the side of the neck. That's where I collect the blood. You can feel the groove where it runs up the side of her neck." Auggie traces it up. Holly Webster may have the schoolmarm demeanor, but it's Jaco Bouwer who is the real teacher here.
"Could you pull her head back for me then, please? I'm going to clean the area with some disinfectant." Auggie can smell it. "All right, now close off the jugular for me, please." Auggie does.
Around him the other volunteers are busy too: calling out body length measurements and temperatures; commenting on clusters of grass seeds in the fur (they must be grooming Marge to within an inch of her life). There are complaints about the flies.
"Anyone wanna volunteer to swat the guy crawling up the back of my neck?" Auggie interjects, looking up with a grin. "My hands are kinda full right now, and it's driving me crazy." He exaggerates a pained look.
There is laughter. A hand brushes the fly away. "There you go. It's gone. They're awful, aren't they?" It's Eva, the Dutch daughter.
He has broken through the barrier of awkwardness that all too often stands between him and people who don't know him. The general chatter expands to include him.
And he hadn't even needed a blind joke.
Never in his wildest dreams could he have imagined himself doing anything like this. It's far enough removed from his normal context to be surreal.
He realizes to his surprise that he is actually enjoying himself. He'd almost forgotten that feeling.
Distracted for a moment by the laughter from the other table Annie looks up from where she is taking a shoulder to foot measurement on Lisa.
Auggie is holding the other cheetah in position for Jaco Bouwer while the vet draws a blood sample. She watches as the Dutch teenager brushes a fly off the back of his neck. He is talking, laughing with the others at the table – confident, self-assured. Quintessential Auggie.
Her heart contracts.
Jaco Bouwer looks up, says something to him. He smiles; lets the cheetah's head go; says something to the vet, who puts down the blood tubes and then bends the cat's foreleg for Auggie, guiding his left hand down it. Auggie has to lean over in order to assess the full length of the leg. He fingers the cheetah's paw as the vet earnestly explains something to him. He is so obviously engaged with what the man is saying – giving him his full focus.
That too is Auggie. He's never half with you. She has always thought that's why he has so many friends. He makes people feel like they matter to him.
He makes her feel like she matters to him. He always has.
He won't tell her that any more, though. Because she has asked him not to. And Auggie, being Auggie, respects that.
For the first time in a very long time she wishes he didn't.
She pushes the wish back down. Each of them has made terrible choices. They seem unable to help themselves. They keep poisoning the beautiful thing between them, over and over again. And she can't live with the constant tension, the guilt, the hurt, any more. She needs some kind of peace, emotional safety.
This place is making that too easy to forget.
