Meghan: Doctors

“You have to let me work.” I argued quietly with Jasmine as we scrubbed our already raw skin cleaner.
“If the mother dies they’ll all die.” She replied shortly.
“That doesn’t mean—“ I growled under my breath as she backed into the operating room.

“I can’t control this bleed!” Jasmine’s breathing was ragged after six hours of surgery, “You’ll have to do a cesarean.”
“Fine.” I said, sliding a scalpel over the mother’s shaved abdomen. An intern held open the skin as I dipped a finger inside to guide out the last kitten. I rushed it to an oxygen chamber and left Jasmine to try to save the mother. Oxygen gas blew by the kitten’s pitiful blue snout and I pushed gently on its frail chest in the motions of CPR but nothing helped. Meanwhile Jasmine screamed for a defibrillator and the body of the Queen jolted with electricity.

Jasmine’s Aunt waited in the aptly named waiting room, head in her hands. She had rushed her cat in to the hospital at the first pangs of labor, but she worried that even that had been too late. It was the cat’s second birth of the season, and thus more dangerous. Dr. Jasmine strode to Aunt Gloria to tell her the news. Her doctor’s coat billowed behind her and her long blonde hair fluttered in the breeze that seemed to perforate the hospital. She knelt next to Aunt Gloria and looked up at her, tears of sympathy glistening in her eyes.
“One of the kittens had a rare birth defect found only in one in ten thousand births.” She gathered Aunt Gloria’s hands in hers, “Can I preserve the body in one of my specimen jars?”
Dr. Meghan stomped up behind Dr. Jasmine and knocked her unconscious with a patient chart.
“So sorry about that. We try to keep her out of patient contact. So many lawsuits…”
Aunt Gloria blinked, “What? Was she telling the truth?”
Dr. Meghan sighed, “Yes, but the mother and the other three kittens survived.”
Aunt Gloria sobbed into her hands as Dr. Meghan led her into the Baby room where the mother cat was tiredly curled around her kittens.



-M