Mr. Morgan looked at Russell, and after a long minute, he heaved a sigh and shuffled down the hall. A moment later the door slammed and his truck started.
I looked at Russell. His face was wet. He turned away from me.
Doc called us from the surgery room. “Russell! Diana, her color is coming back. Time to work.”
We hurried in as Doc turned on the anesthesia machine and held a mask over Waya’s muzzled snout. After a few minutes, he took the muzzle off. Her jaw hung open limply.
“Put your hands under her body and help me roll her over onto her chest.”
Russell and I rolled Waya up on her chest. Stephanie and Nick stood in the doorway and watched.
“I need one of you to open her jaw while I pass a tube into her windpipe. Just spread her jaws wide open.”
Russell didn’t hesitate. He hooked his fingers over the ends of her teeth and opened her mouth wide, revealing her grayish-pink tongue lolling between yellow fangs.
“Good work.” Doc pulled her tongue forward, then slid a clear plastic tube down her windpipe. He hooked the tube to the anesthesia machine.
We helped Doc roll her again, onto her back this time. The green line on the blipping monitor told us Waya’s heart was beating, but she seemed totally lifeless. Doc clipped the fur on her abdomen and around the bullet wound and swabbed the whole area with iodine.
He tossed surgical masks to Russell and me. “Put these on,” he said. He soaped his hands up to the elbows and put on a green surgical cap, mask, and plastic gloves.
With shaking hands, I tied on the mask.
I looked at Russell. Above his mask, the whites of his eyes showed all the way around.
Doc unrolled a couple of surgical packs on a tray, pulled up a stool, and selected a scalpel. Then he cut a long incision right down the middle of Waya’s belly.
Dark blood oozed out. I glanced at Russell. His eyes looked scared above the green of his mask.
Doc inserted a metal retractor into the abdomen to hold the incision apart and suctioned out some blood.
Doc examined Waya’s abdomen. “Looks like the bullet destroyed part of the spleen,” he said. “I’ve got a spurter in here. I need one of you to wash your hands and throw on a pair of surgical gloves.”
“I will,” said Russell. He washed his hands and then got a pair of rubber gloves from the same box Doc used. They snapped as he pulled them on.
“Have a spleen,” Doc said, holding up a purplish-red organ shaped like a big tongue. “Hold it while I tie off the vessels.”
Because Doc was so sure and calm about what he was doing, I felt calm, too. I looked at the spleen with curiosity and fascination.
Doc placed Waya’s spleen in Russell’s outstretched hand and began tying knots around the vessels attached to it. Suddenly Russell swayed.
“Oops,” said Doc. “You’re looking green around the gills, buddy.”
I glanced at Russell’s face, which had gone pale. He dropped the spleen back inside Waya.
“Russell!” barked Doc. “Diana, walk him out into the hall!”
I grabbed Russell’s arms. His weight was starting to sink onto me when I got him into the hallway. I felt strangely detached as I watched Nick and Stephanie help him slide down the wall.
“Get back in here, Diana, I need you!”
I ran back.
“Quick, I’ve got a gusher; wash up and get on a pair of gloves!”
I somehow managed to wash my hands and get the gloves on, but it was like I was outside my body, dimly aware of what I was doing. Then I was standing above Waya, my palms opened, and Doc gave me Waya’s spleen. I watched a pulsing blood vessel attached to the spleen as it pumped blood into the open belly.
Doc quickly clipped a pair of scissors around the bleeder, only it had serrated teeth like a steak knife and clasped instead of cut. “Got it,” he said. “Now I need another pair of hands.”
“Steph!” I yelled. “Doc needs you!”
Stephanie limped up behind me.
“Grab that hemostat!” Doc yelled. “Those angled scissors!”
Her eyes went wide, but she limped over to the operating table and held the hemostat in both hands.
“Just like that. Don’t move until I say so.” Doc used surgical thread to tie knots around the blood vessels leading to the spleen. “I’m tying off the blood vessels so I can remove the spleen and stop the bleeding,” he said. My shoulders were beginning to cramp from holding my hands so still. A spot between my eyes itched, but I dared not move. Stephanie was gripping the hemostat with both hands and blowing upward at stray hairs in the corners of her eyes.
“One spleen,” said Doc, taking the spleen from me.
“She doesn’t need it?” I asked, letting my shoulders relax.
“She can live without it.” Doc examined the injured organ. “Well, good news and bad news. The good news is the hemorrhaging has stopped. The bad news is I can’t find the bullet. It’s still somewhere inside.”
“Oh, no,” I said, feeling panic rising again.
Doc placed the damaged spleen on a tray and gently, patiently searched inside Waya for what seemed like an endless period of time. My chest started to hurt. I realized I’d been holding my breath. I let it out slowly, watching Waya’s heartbeat on the monitor.
“If I can’t find it, we’ll have to take an X-ray,” whispered Doc under his breath. More seconds ticked by, then he sharply inhaled. “Got it!” Doc held up a mangled gold pellet. “Hey, it’s scrunched. It was underneath the kidney, right up against her aorta. She is one lucky wolf. Waya, you put a hurting on this bullet, didn’t you, girl?”
I stared at the squashed bullet. I could not believe that such a small thing had done such horrible damage to Waya’s insides.
“We can close,” said Doc. His voice sounded almost happy. “It’s still very much touch and go, but you’ve done a good job, Diana. You, too, Stephanie.”
I breathed while Doc sutured the bullet hole and incision and then bandaged Waya, and Stephanie and I followed his instructions to get a cage ready. He turned off the gas machine and removed the tube from the wolf’s windpipe. Waya started to whimper.
I passed Russell and Nick in the hall, my arms full of clean towels. Russell stood up, looking embarrassed. “Is she gonna live?” he asked.
His voice had lost some of its harsh tone, and I felt my chest loosen a tiny bit more. “Doc says it’s touch and go,” I said. “Do you want to go back in?”
“Nah,” Russell said. “Not right now.”
But Nick went into the operating room and helped carry Waya to the recovery room. He gently laid her on the folded towels. Doc attached her IV bag to the metal door of the cage. He stood looking at Waya through the kennel walls.
“Doc,” Nick said in a low, questioning voice. “Uh, Stephanie stepped into a trap. Could you take a look?”
“Sure,” Doc said. “We might need to go down the mountain to the emergency room.”
While Doc looked at Stephanie’s leg, I stroked Waya’s head as gently as I could, with only the backs of my fingertips, and talked softly to her. I had wanted freedom for Waya. Instead I landed her in this cage, barely able to move.
“You’re lucky,” Doc said while holding Stephanie’s foot. “You’re able to put weight on it, so I’m pretty sure it’s just a bad bruise. Definitely have it checked out, though.” He lowered her foot and reached into his pocket. “By the way, Diana,” he added. “Here’s a souvenir for you.” He placed the small, misshapen bullet into my waiting palm.
22
STEPHANIE
“What were you thinking?” Daddy yelled.
I scooted closer to Diana on the couch. Now that it was us against Daddy and Lynn, all of a sudden all those things we’d said to each other earlier tonight didn’t seem so important.
It was way past midnight. Diana and I had mud caked around the calves of our jeans, leaves in our hair, and blood smeared all over our Tshirts.
Dad’s ears were
as red as a neon Bojangles sign. Lynn’s lips were a thin line and her arms were crossed tightly across her chest, almost as if she had to hold them there.
“You know,” said Lynn in a measured tone, “I can understand your humanitarian interest in freeing the wolves. I can see how you’d truly be thinking you were doing a good thing. But lying about it for three days!”
“Out there wandering around the woods in the dead of night! Do you have any idea how dangerous that was?” Daddy yelled. “One or both of you could’ve fallen halfway down the mountain and been seriously injured! Stephanie, what if that trap had been a different kind?”
“Norm, you’re yelling,” Lynn said.
“Of course I’m yelling!” Daddy yelled. “That’s what people do when they get angry!” But then he took a deep, slow breath and walked in a circle around the room with his hands in his pockets.
“It was my fault,” Diana said in a quiet, even voice. “It was my idea, and Stephanie followed me. So you can blame me.”
My heart went crazy and I got this big old lump in my throat. Diana was taking the blame!
“Don’t worry, young lady!” Lynn said. “I’ve lived with you for fourteen years. This little scheme has Diana written all over it! And I even covered for you without knowing it!”
There was no way I was going to let Diana do this.
“I made my own choice to go,” I said. I cut my eyes over to Diana. “And we did our best to fix what we’d done.”
There was a dark sort of silence, since nobody had seen hide nor hair of Oginali since the wolves had been let go. We all took a minute to think about where Oginali might be now. Maybe lying injured somewhere. Maybe dead.
“What were you thinking?” Daddy said again, but a little bit more quietly this time. He sat down in an easy chair and stared first at me, then at Diana. “I guess I can give you credit for trying to make things right once you realized that what you did was wrong,” he said. “There are lots of consequences to this. When I talked to Mr. Morgan, he said you had agreed to pay for Waya’s surgery. I can’t argue with him. You are responsible. Mr. Morgan will most likely want to be compensated for the loss of that other wolf. How do you girls plan to come up with that money?” He exchanged a look with Lynn.
“I have two hundred dollars saved,” said Diana. “The money I was going to use to buy a horse.”
“I have a hundred,” I said. I’d planned on buying art supplies and speakers for my room, but it looked like that would have to wait.
“If it’s more, we could pay Doc from our allowance,” Diana suggested. “Until it’s paid.”
“All right then.” Daddy let out a long exhale. “On our way out of town Saturday, we’ll stop by Doc’s office, and you two can talk to him about paying for the surgery.” He took another deep breath and slapped his knees like he just realized something. He turned to Lynn and asked, “What exactly did you mean when you said you covered for Diana?”
Lynn didn’t look so good. I felt real sorry for her. She had been trying to help Diana. I held my breath. Would she tell Daddy about the lie she told?
“I lied to you, Norm. About Diana. She’d gone riding the morning after you grounded her from the barn. I knew it, and I didn’t tell you.”
Dad’s face was suddenly sad. “You lied to me? How can you yell at the kids for lying when you lied to me?”
“Listen, I know it was wrong. I know Diana was disrespectful. She was. But you were out of line, too, disciplining her like that without talking to me first.” Lynn watched her own hands as she twisted her new wedding ring around her finger. “I love you, Norm, but Diana is my only child. No one will ever, ever take her place.”
I felt movement beside me and saw Diana duck her head and scrub tears from her cheeks with the end of her sweatshirt. I felt so emotional. I wanted to give her a big old hug, and I knew she didn’t like hugging all that much, but I decided to anyway. But then she leaned toward me and grabbed my shoulders with this really tight grip that surprised tears into my eyes. And then we all started bawling like little babies.
“Well,” said Lynn, blowing her nose. “I guess we’re really a family now, since we’re all crying!”
The next morning I put on my crummiest clothes and went down to the barn by myself. I found Maggie there in the office and I said, “I feel really bad for what we did. Can I help out in the barn, like you said?”
Maggie looked at me with flat-looking eyes, and at first I thought she was going to send me away. But then she led me to the tack room. She handed me a pair of heavy gloves and a shovel and put me to work mucking stalls. Honestly, it was disgusting. It got all over my clothes, it smelled awful, and flies crawled on me and buzzed around my ears. My leg was killing me. After about an hour of scooping poop, the morning trail ride came in and Maggie handed me a curry brush and introduced me to Sam. I spent another hour currying Sam and cleaning his hooves. At first my hands shook, my leg ached, and my heart was just pounding. But the minutes went by, and Sam’s tail swished in a real contented rhythm, like the metronome when I practiced my piano. I got more used to Sam, and Sam got more used to me, and bit by bit I calmed down.
I was determined not to quit the barn chores until Maggie said I was done. By late afternoon I pretty much thought I would be sleeping in the barn that night, but Maggie finally appeared.
“Hey, Sam, Stephanie’s got you looking pretty good, hasn’t she?” Maggie smacked Sam’s butt and smoothed her hand over his neck. “Miss Stephanie, you done good. I happen to know a lot of wolf stories. I told Diana one. How would you like to hear one about a maiden who went out into the woods and met a wolf with his leg in a trap?”
My calf flinched just at the mention of a trap. “Sure,” I said, pushing my hair out of my eyes with the back of my hand.
“The wolf said to the maiden, ‘Please let me go.’
And she said, ‘If I release you, how do I know you won’t kill me?’
And the wolf said, ‘You’ll just have to trust me.’
So the maiden released the wolf.
Afterward, he said, ‘Thank you, kind maiden.’ He plucked a lash from his eye, gave it to her, and He said, ‘Use this, and be wise. From now on you will look through my eyes, and you will see clearly.”’
On the way back to the lodge I thought about what the story meant. Nick was playing basketball by himself at the half-court across from the lodge.
“Hey,” he said. He wiped his forehead with his shirttail. His T-shirt was drenched with sweat. He stepped closer, arms open. “Want a hug?” he asked.
I laughed and opened my arms. “Sure. I’ve been at the barn mucking stalls.”
Nick stepped away. “Maybe we can hug … after respective showers, if you know what I mean. How’s the leg?”
“Just bruised. Doc and Lynn both looked at it and said nothing’s broken or sprained. I should be okay in a few days.”
“That’s a relief.” He picked up the basketball, bounced it twice, then looked away. “Hey, last night was pretty wild, huh? I can’t say I ever expected to be watching surgery in the middle of the night. It was cool.”
“Yeah. I was surprised myself.” Surprised at myself, I thought.
“I have your number so we can text. And this fall when we play you guys in soccer, maybe you could come over to my side of the field and say hey.”
“Sounds good to me.” I smiled. “Hey, let’s hug now. I can handle it if you can.”
And so we did. He felt warm and kind of damp, and my ear was right against his heart and it was beating really hard. So was mine.
I pulled myself up onto the top rung of the barn fence beside Diana. I waved at Nick, who was leaning against the fence a few feet down. He looked cute. His hair was slicked back, and he was wearing brand new cowboy boots. I could have told him that old grubby ones were better.
The sun was coming up, chasing away the puffs of morning fog hugging the mountain slopes around us. Inside the barn, a horse whinnied in what I now knew was a frie
ndly way.
“You lost another rhinestone,” Diana said, pointing to my jeans.
“Oh well.” I watched the barn hands bring out the horses. “Are you ridin’ Copper in the rodeo?”
“I better be.” But Diana grinned when she said it.
“I’m riding Sam.”
“He’s a good horse for you. He’s big but very gentle.” Diana pulled something out of her pocket and held it out for me. “Here. Give this to Sam and he’ll love you forever.”
I held out my palm, and Diana gave me a sugar cube.
“Thanks,” I said.
“How’s your leg?” Diana asked.
“It hurts, but not as much as yesterday. What about yours?”
“It hurts, but not as much as yesterday.”
We both kind of laughed. I blinked and scanned the mountain ridge behind the barn. “Wonder where Oginali is right now,” I said. “I wish we could have found her.”
“She must be so scared,” said Diana. “I feel so sorry for her.”
“Me, too.” I looked at Diana and realized that the wolves were almost like people to her.
“I heard Russell went out looking for her again last night, back around where we found Waya.” Diana picked at a splinter on top of the rail fence and wouldn’t meet my eyes. “You know, when I first saw the wolves, I thought I was more like Waya, and I hated Oginali.”
“Hated her?”
“I thought she was weak. But I don’t know. She may not be as brave as Waya, but she’s so loyal it really touches me.”
To me, they were just two wild animals. But it felt good that Diana was talking to me like this.
“Listen,” I said. “I’m real sorry about what I said about your dad. I shouldn’t have said that.”
Diana watched the horses for a minute. “It’s okay.”
“But your dad should write or call you back.”
“My brain knows that. My heart is having a little more trouble with it. But at least I’ll always have Mom.”
Daddy and Lynn came and leaned against the fence beside us. Lynn climbed up on the fence, giving Diana’s neck a squeeze. Diana leaned close to her.
“Hey, Steph, since you hurt your leg, don’t worry about riding,” Daddy said.
Summer of the Wolves Page 13