Studying Robo, he processed the information. Frozen chest was a good description of this dog’s condition, which meant that either a different drug had been used, or Robo had been given an overdose. Which is it?
“What can we do to help him?”
Riley was apparently growing impatient with doing nothing, but Cole wasn’t ready to inject another drug into Robo’s bloodstream just yet. He scrolled down to the section that talked about reversal of the drug. “I’ve got to do a little bit more research. Hang in there, kiddo.”
BAM could be reversed with two different drugs, one of which Cole kept in his drug inventory for reversing horse sedation for surgery, but he didn’t have the other drug on hand.
He took out his cell phone and dialed Ed Lovejoy. Using his shoulder to hold the phone to his ear, he began typing in more reference words, searching for opioid sedation for animals. No answer from Ed. Instead of leaving a message, Cole disconnected and redialed. A list of websites popped onto the screen, and he clicked a link to one of them.
“Come on,” he muttered as he listened to the phone ring. No answer. He redialed.
He found an article that talked about an opioid called thiafentanil oxalate, a drug he’d never used. He skimmed through the list of websites again and found one with the drug insert information; he clicked on it.
“What?” Ed Lovejoy’s angry voice boomed from the receiver.
“Ed, this is Cole Walker. I’ve got an emergency and need your help.”
“Gosh darn it. What time is it, Doc?”
He wasn’t calling to deliver a time update. “Do you have any BAM kits on hand?”
“No. I thought you were supposed to order those.”
“They’re not in yet. You don’t have any left over from another project?”
“No. If there are any left over, the state supervisor keeps those secured in his office.”
Tucker York, Cole thought. At the same time, he scanned the drug insert that was displayed on his computer screen. “Have you ever used thiafentanil oxalate, Ed, brand name Thianil?”
“Not on anything I’ve worked on. You have to keep that stuff out of the human food chain.”
“What do you know about it?” Cole had swept down to the “warnings” part of the insert. The drug could cause slow breathing and cyanosis, which accounted for Robo’s blanched gums.
“It’s dangerous stuff,” Ed was saying. “You have to be trained to use that shit. And wear gloves and a mask when you do.”
“And to reverse it?”
“I don’t know. I hear that without reversal, coming out of that stuff can be ugly.”
Cole became aware that Tess had arrived when the front door opened and banged shut. At the sudden noise, Robo’s whole body jerked on the table, making Riley flinch and her eyes widen.
The Thianil insert label warned that the sedated animal might react to sudden noise. Bingo! This has to be the drug!
Robo’s paws began to paddle against his restraints, in what looked like the onset of a seizure. Cole’s window of time was closing. He had to make a decision. “Gotta go, Ed,” he said before tapping the end button and plunking his phone down on the desk.
Tess came into the room, took one look at the situation, grabbed a stethoscope from the countertop, and placed its resonator on Robo’s chest to monitor his heartbeat. Looking relieved that someone else could take over, Riley stepped back against the wall, hugging herself.
Cole skimmed to the “antidote” section—naltrexone hydrochloride. The drug he had in stock for equine surgeries. Now, the dosage—ten milligrams for each milligram of Thianil. He had no idea how much tranquilizer had been injected into Robo.
He hurried to the locked cabinet where he stored sedatives while he ran through a mental calculation, converting the amount used for an animal weighing as much as a horse to a lower dose suitable for this one-hundred-pound dog.
Tess called out Robo’s heart rate. Too fast. He was going into tachycardia.
Cole drew the dosage into a syringe. “Intravenous,” he said to Tess.
She grabbed one of Robo’s front legs, holding it still. Cole grasped the foreleg and applied pressure to occlude the vein, relieved when he saw it plump up beneath the dog’s short leg hair. He inserted the needle and pulled back on the plunger to make sure he was in the vein. Blood flowed into the syringe cylinder, and he injected half the dosage into Robo’s bloodstream.
Holding his breath, he secured the syringe to Robo’s leg with strips of medical tape in case he needed to inject more of the medicine into the vein. Now it was white-knuckle time—all he could do was wait and see if the antidote helped or made Robo’s condition worse.
In the first quiet seconds of waiting, a nervous flutter began to ripple his gut. There’d been no time to take in the fact that Mattie had gone missing and what that might mean. But he knew her well enough to know one thing for certain—she only would have separated from this dog at gunpoint.
TWENTY-SIX
Awareness crept into Mattie’s consciousness, fading in and out. She floated, unable to see. Darkness. Swaying. She was dangling, head down. She struggled to lift her face so that she could see, but the messages sent by her brain failed to reach her muscles.
Nausea penetrated the inky oblivion. She was going to be sick. She struggled to right herself, but couldn’t budge. She smelled horse—the deep, musky scent of hay and grain. Leather creaked. A shod hoof struck against a rock.
Gradually, it dawned on her that she was draped over a saddle on top of a horse. Its rolling gait made her gag. Robo! Is he okay? But her mind slipped away, back into the safety of not knowing.
Robo’s paddling motions had quieted. Cole kept one eye on him while he dialed Sheriff McCoy. “Let’s get a heart rate,” he murmured to Tess.
McCoy answered. “What is it, Cole?”
“Have you located Mattie yet?”
“We haven’t. We’re searching for her. How is Robo?”
“I’m trying an antidote, but he’s still unresponsive. Will you call me as soon as you know anything about Mattie?”
“I’ll keep in touch to the extent that I can.”
A wave of frustration hit him. “Keep me in the loop, Sheriff. Mattie’s like family to us.”
McCoy paused and then said he would call back later. Cole ended the call with a promise to do the same when he had news about changes in Robo.
As soon as he disconnected, Tess gave him details on Robo’s heart rate and oxygen level. Oxygen was normal—the respirator was doing its job. Heart rate had slowed, a positive response. Cole tapped Robo’s eyelid and was rewarded with a blink reflex, sluggish but better than nothing.
He pushed half of what was left of the dosage into Robo’s vein.
“What’s this about Mattie?” Tess asked, her face creased with concern.
Keeping watch over Robo, he filled her in on what he knew, which was precious little.
“Oh, dear,” she murmured. “Mattie would never leave this dog alone like that.”
Cole glanced at Riley. She sagged against the wall, shivering. He wondered how she’d come to be at Mattie’s house and decided he would question her later.
He tapped Robo’s eyelid again and got a healthy blink reflex. Robo began to gag and chew at the intubation tube, sending Cole into overdrive.
“He’s coming around,” he said to Tess, at the same time pushing the last of the antidote into Robo’s vein. He grasped the syringe, jerked off the small piece of medical tape he’d used to secure it, and withdrew the needle from the vein.