Chapter 53
CHAPTER FIFTY-THREE
“This is insane. I’m insane,” Cassie said to herself as she grabbed fistfuls of gauze packets and shoved them into her field bag.
“What else? What else?” She looked frantically around the exam room.
With her bag full and her heart in her throat, she locked the clinic and turned to dash into the parking lot, only to lurch to a halt.
Noah’s truck flew into the parking lot, boxing her in.
He jumped out with the engine still running. “What the hell are you doing, Cassie?”
“I’m responding to an emergency on the coast. Move,” she said firmly.
“Let me take you,” he said.
“No.” She darted around the front of his truck and headed for her driver’s side door. She would back through the planter if she had to.
The last thing she needed in the middle of an emergency was to spend hours trapped in a vehicle with Noah.
“You have a donut on your car. You can’t drive that far. Especially not in a hurricane.”
Cassie hesitated with her hand on the door. Fuck. He was right. Lillian had warned her not to drive more than fifty miles, and Ocean City was definitely farther than that. There was no choice.
She let out a strangled scream and turned back to him. “Fine. Wait, let me get something else.”
She dashed back into the clinic and thumbed through her reference books until she retrieved a dusty book on cetaceans that she hadn’t cracked since her marine mammal rotation. At least with Noah driving, she could brush up on anatomy on the way.
In minutes, they were navigating flooded roadways and gale-force winds. The windshield wipers flailed aimlessly against torrents of rain. But Noah didn’t panic. He was calm and steady at the wheel, dodging debris and occasionally hopping out to move bigger obstacles from the roadway.
At least he stayed quiet. She absorbed as much as she could, refreshing herself on respiratory rates, blood draw sites, vital signs. She should be spaying cats and birthing foals, not triaging fricken stranded dolphins.
“It’s going to be okay,” he said after her millionth stress-y inhale.
“Shut up.”
The weather got worse as they approached the coast. Trees thrashed like flags. Westbound traffic was backed up on the highway, miles of headlights gleaming into the gloom. They were the only ones headed into the storm.
It felt like an apocalypse, not just a hurricane. But she had taken an oath to protect animal health and welfare. And right now, there was a dolphin on the beach who needed her.
Bang. She jumped as an entire trash can blew across the hood of Noah’s truck, but he didn’t flinch.
Finally, they entered the city limits. Water streamed across the coastal highway, and the truck crawled forward. If they got stuck, she’d have to jump out with her field bag and keep going.
He only spoke again to ask which street, and ten minutes later, they were parking on Assawoman Drive. So far, the dunes had held, but she could hear waves crashing even through the closed window.
Cassie scrambled into some weather gear—raincoat, poncho, goggles—and took a deep breath.
“You can do this,” Noah said softly. “Do what you can, get a dolphin scientist on the phone if you have to.”
“A dolphin scientist?” She smiled against her own volition.
“You know what I mean,” he said with a note of irritation in his voice.
“Okay. Let’s do this.” She threw open the door of the truck and made for the dune crossing.
The wind was oppressive, stealing the breath from her and pelting her with sand. She turned to say something to Noah only to find him frozen at the base of the dune, one hand clutching the fence.
Her heart dropped. He probably hadn’t been to the beach since the day he lost Bobby. She jogged back to him.
“Hey. I’m going to be fine. Why don’t you go help those people?” She pointed to an elderly couple who seemed to be struggling to move a dumpster out of the roadway.
He hesitated, then nodded. They parted ways, and Cassie dashed in the direction of the beach.
“Dr. Thompson?” a voice called from somewhere to her left. She turned and spotted a group of people crowded around a long, narrow channel.
She waved and headed in their direction, struggling through the sand.
“I’m so glad you’re here. I’m Remelda. Here, put this on.” Remelda handed her a high-visibility vest. Cassie struggled into it, then turned her attention to the channel.
Four dolphins were stranded. She took a visual assessment first, noting their movements.
“This is the injured one?” she shouted over the crashing waves. She pointed at one dolphin whose tail was thrashing.
“Yes. A male.”
Cassie slogged through the channel with her bag. She put it on the edge of the sand and donned her stethoscope and respirator.
The dolphin was sleek and gray. She knelt beside him, and cold water seeped through her pants. He was responsive and alert—good signs. She lifted the bedsheet covering his skin and brushed a hand over him gently. There was the grit of sand, but she couldn’t feel any lesions.
She pressed a stethoscope behind the flipper and listened intently to his heart. It was difficult to hear over the storm surf, but it sounded a little fast.
She moved the stethoscope up to his lungs and looked at her watch, monitoring the respiratory rate. It was fast—way too fast for what she had just read about dolphins—and shallow. Alarm bells went off in her head.
She ran to another dolphin and listened to her breath sounds just in case. They sounded a little fast too, but much deeper. She checked the other two, which solidified her suspicions.
“I don’t like the injured one’s breathing. Do you have oxygen tanks?”
“Yes. Brandy, get a tank,” Remelda called over her shoulder.
She went back to the injured dolphin and listened again, just to be sure. Vastly different from the other two. “This one definitely needs to be transported,” Cassie said. “Do you have access to a CT machine?”
Remelda shook her head. “We could transport him to the marine mammal hospital in Jersey, but we don’t know what the roads are like between here and there. It’s at least three and a half hours on a good day.”
Cassie shook her head. Transporting a distressed dolphin that far was not a good idea.
“Based on the breath sounds, my instinct is that it’s some kind of preexisting respiratory infection.
It was probably exacerbated by the stress of the stranding, but I need the visual to be sure,” she called over the wind.
“I’ll see what I can get with my portable ultrasound.
Let’s take a blowhole swab and blood samples first, and I’ll check on the others while you load him up.
You have a holding tank at your center?”
“Yes. We’ll take care of it.”
Cassie glanced at the fishing line wrapped around his tail. It must’ve been on there for quite some time. It needed to come off, but it wasn’t an immediate threat. She could take care of that when he was out of harm’s way.
She pulled blood draw equipment from her field bag and looked hopelessly at the sleek dolphin. Sure, he was technically a mammal. But she was used to fur and skin, not epidermis and blubber.
She had assisted on a handful of blood draws for dolphins at the aquarium—ten years ago. But those dolphins had operant conditioning to accept medical treatment. And they also weren’t located on a sandy beach while being buffeted by hurricane-force winds.
It doesn’t have to be perfect.
“I’m going to try the dorsal first,” she said to the team. They nodded and held the dolphin in place.
She scrubbed the site and squinted through the pelting rain. Her education had not prepared her for this.
“Shit.” That wasn’t enough blood for a sample, and she had probably just compromised the vein.
Stress flared.
“I’m going to try the fluke instead.”
One of the volunteers moved down to the tail, and she knelt in the deep channel, frigid water numbing her lower half.
Of course the vein had to be on the bottom of the tail. She took a calming breath, then went back to work. It was the worst angle, in the worst conditions, but she managed to draw enough tubes for a sample.
“Nice job,” Remelda shouted through the storm.
Thank god.
While the stranding team prepared the injured dolphin, Cassie examined the others more closely. Thankfully, the other three were agitated but uninjured.
“Okay, this channel isn’t safe for the rest of them. Do you think it’s safe to move them back to the ocean?”
She eyed the coastline, where a massive wave crashed and sent a spray of foam into the air.
Remelda nodded. “They stand a better chance in there than they do out here. We have volunteers monitoring the coast for strandings. The healthy ones should be strong enough to get out to deeper waters.”
“Rough day to be a dolphin,” she muttered as she surveyed the coast.
“The male is loaded up,” one of the volunteers reported. “These guys are heavy. It’ll be all hands on deck to get them back in the water so we can leave.”
Cassie jumped up and dusted off her knees. “Happy to help.”
Cassie, Remelda, and two other volunteers slid the first dolphin onto a special stretcher. She grabbed the nearest carry strap.
Good god, it was heavy. They struggled toward the surf, half carrying and half dragging the first dolphin. Squeals and clicks came from the dolphin.
“I know, buddy,” she said to him.
They struggled into the water, bracing against crashing waves and strong currents. Deeper and deeper they went, until they were almost up to their chests.
Finally, the first dolphin thrashed out of the carry tarp and disappeared into the gray water. Back they went for the next. Finally, one dolphin remained.
He was the biggest one by far—an easy four hundred pounds, if she had to guess. She had the position by the tail, but she needed both hands for the strap. Hopefully he wouldn’t thrash too much.
They waded into the surf, and her mind wandered. They were almost done, and then she could get a better examination of the last dolphin. Plenty of time to make it back to Aster Hollow before the clinic opened in the morning. Did the vet clinic have a generator? She hadn’t thought to ask Noah.