Manatee Blues Read Free Page B

minute right now, her heart beating once a second. Let me know if it changes.”
    “I thought manatees breathed slowly, like once every fifteen minutes,” I say as I fumble with the stethoscope.
    “That’s when they’re sleeping. When they’re swimming in the water, they breathe once every three minutes. Her heartbeat and respiratory rate are faster than normal right now because of the stress she’s feeling,” Carlos says.
    I listen carefully.
Lub-dub … lub-dub … lub-dub.
Her heart beats like waves rolling up onto the beach. Her lung whooshes with a giant exhale, then quickly fills with air again.
    Violet’s eyes roll back to look at me. They’re small, not much bigger than a pair of dimes, dark, wet, and soft like a deer’s.
    What is she thinking? Does she know we’re trying to help her? Does she recognize Carlos from the last time he treated her?
    “Can’t we drive faster?” I ask.
    Carlos shakes his head. “These are manatee waters,” he says. “It doesn’t do us any good if we hit another manatee while we’re rescuing this one.”
    “But can’t you do something? I mean, isn’t she in pain?” When an injured animal comes into the clinic, Dr. Mac and Dr. Gabe treat it right away.
    “Transporting her like this puts a lot of stress on her,” Carlos explains to me. “If we started to poke and prod her now, that would make things worse. We have to get her back to the center before we start any treatment.”
    “Is she going to make it?” I ask.
    Carlos glances down at the water before answering. “We’re going to try our best, Brenna.”
    Violet closes her eyes and sighs.
Lub-dub … lub-dub … lub-dub.
    Hang in there, Violet. Don’t die!

Chapter Four

    W hen we finally get back to the rescue center, we dock the boats. Gretchen hops into a forklift with a small crane built onto the front end, and drives it to the edge of the dock. We sure don’t have any equipment like that at Dr. Mac’s Place!
    Carlos and his staff slide Violet into the water, then onto a sling. They hook the sling up to the crane. Gretchen maneuvers the crane and carefully hoists Violet into the air. With Carlos walking next to Violet, the crane and its load slowly make their way through the open doors of the rescue center’s manatee wing. The rest of us are close behind.
    The manatee wing has two tanks, a large one with a glass wall that you can see through from the center’s exhibition area, and a smaller behind-the-scenes tank that is connected to the larger one by a chute. Gretchen rolls the crane to the edge of the chute and waits while Carlos and the others climb down into it. At his signal, she lowers the sling until Violet rests on the floor of the dry chute. Gretchen grabs a red plastic equipment box and climbs down to join her patient. An assistant is already listening to Violet’s heart and lung with a stethoscope.
    “I suppose you want to watch the examination,” Dr. Mac says knowingly.
    I look at my friends. We’re all thinking the same thing.
    “You’d better believe it,” I say.
    We sit cross-legged on the cement floor above the chute and watch what’s going on below us. Gretchen takes a clipboard out of the equipment box and hands it to one of the assistants, who starts writing.
    “She weighs nine hundred pounds,” Gretchen says.
    “How does she know that?” I ask Dr. Mac.
    “The crane has a scale built into it,” she replies.
    Gretchen and Carlos stretch a measuring tape from the tip of Violet’s snout to the end of her ragged tail. “Two hundred seventy-two centimeters long,” Carlos reads. They measure around Violet’s tail, too. “Peduncle girth, one hundred seven centimeters.”
    “What’s a peduncle?” I ask Gretchen.
    She points to where Violet’s body meets her tail. “The peduncle is the narrower area between the body and the tail paddle. It’s the closest thing the manatee has to a rump. That’s where we usually give injections.” She moves up to Violet’s head and