Chapter 1

The tall lean cowboy walked into the hospital with a swagger that spoke of a confidence that he could handle anything that life threw at him. He was wearing tight fitting ‘boot cut’ blue jeans, a blue plaid shirt, a pair of leather harness boots with the dust still on them, and a big belt buckle that had the name of a rodeo competition on it. His straw hat was worn low to the front and had seen better days.

Upon reaching the main lobby, he paused to check his surroundings. There was a man wearing a hospital uniform leaning against a post watching the front door. Confident that he had found someone who belonged there, the cowboy walked over to the man. Touching the brim of his hat, he said, “My name is Donny Daniels. I’m looking for my brother, Sonny Daniels. He’s a patient here. Can you tell me how I can find his room?”

“I’m on break,” the man said dismissively while starting to walk off. It was obvious that he wasn’t headed anywhere in any kind of hurry. He was just putting a little distance between him and what he considered to be an ignorant yahoo from the country.

“I’m not done talking to you,” Donny said grabbing the man by the arm and pulling him back.

Donny recognized rudeness when he saw it, and wasn’t about to let an insult pass without comment. The man tried to tug his arm away, but the grip holding him in place was much too strong.

Offended, he said, “Unhand me.”

Not releasing the man, Donny said, “I’m asking politely. Can you tell me where my brother is, or point me in the direction of someone who can tell me?”

“See the woman at the counter over there,” the man said sullenly. He pointed to a long counter with a couple of elderly women behind it. They were wearing the uniforms of candy stripers.

Donny released the man’s arm and said, “See, that wasn’t so hard. Thank you for your help.”

The man walked off muttering, “Damn cowboy. They shouldn’t allow his type in the hospital. He probably has manure on his boots. He’s a health hazard.”

Donny walked over to the counter and tipped his hat.

“Howdy, Ma’am. My name is Donny Daniels. I’m looking for my brother, Sonny Daniels. He’s a patient here in the hospital. Can you help me?”

After typing some information into a computer, the elderly woman answered, “He’s up in room 412.”

“Thank you, Ma’am.”

Donny turned towards the entrance of the hospital in time to see someone leave. As soon as the door opened, he let loose a whistle that echoed through the room.

The woman said, “Quiet. This is a hospital.”

“Sorry, Ma’am.”

Two men (obviously brothers) dressed in a style similar to Donny’s, entered the hospital. The sun-etched lines on their faces gave ample proof that they had spent years in the outdoors. They were at least twenty years older than Donny, and their shared rugged masculine facial features gave ample proof that they were family. The difference in facial features was just enough to suggest that they were uncles to the younger man.

The two brothers were arguing gently with each other as they walked along; one occasionally dug an elbow into the ribs of the other to make some point. There was no anger in their gestures. It was only the kind of easy teasing common in friendly brotherly relations.

Donny gave a softer whistle, and when the two men turned to him, he said, “He’s in room 412.”

“Well, let’s find out what happened to him, Dan,” the younger of the two men said.

Dan said, “We know what happened to him, Joe. He got shot.”

“There’s getting shot and there’s getting shot,” Joe said. “They shoot him with a nine millimeter and he’ll be lying there in bed getting pissed off. The bullet is too small and moves too fast to cause any real damage. It will just pass through him. The bigger slower moving bullet of a forty five will put him down for a long time.”

“I know, and you tried to teach grandma how to suck eggs, too,” Dan said. He knocked Joe on the arm in a friendly little tap.

“So what? You tried to teach her how to milk ducks,” Joe said. He returned the good-natured blow.

Pointing down the hallway, Donny said, “The elevators are over there.”

While the men strolled towards the elevator, Dan sniffed the air taking in the antiseptic scent. Making a face as if he had bitten into a lemon, he said, “I hate big city hospitals. I was in one like this when that bull gored me back in my rodeo days. They want to dope you up before stitching a little cut closed. If that wound wasn’t on the back of my leg, I would have done it and saved a bunch of money. As it was, I lost money on that trip.”

“I remember that time. I had to drive out to pick you up because they said you couldn’t drive,” Joe said. He knew his brother was exaggerating his ability to deal with the injury a little, but it had cost a lot of money to get the gash stitched.

Dan said, “They were full of it. I drove home just fine.”

“They didn’t know that you can’t drive worth a damn anyway. In case you don’t remember, you only made it out of the parking lot before I had to take over,” Joe said.

“That’s it. Complain about my driving some more and you can stay here,” Dan said.

Donny asked, “Don’t you two ever stop bickering? You’re worse than two women fighting over the last wedding gown in a bridal store.”

The three men reached the elevator. Donny pushed the up button to summon the elevator. The three men stood there; each with their left leg supporting themselves. Their right leg was kind of cocked, and their thumbs stuck in their front pockets. The fingers of their hands were slightly curled and generally pointed towards their crotches.

The elevator door opened. After checking that it was headed in the right direction, they entered.

A very frail looking woman was seated in a wheelchair looking sick to her stomach. Her most obvious feature was that she had lost most of her hair. Her skin had a pale almost transparent sheen to it. A catheter for injecting drugs was inserted into the back of her left hand. Dan looked at her taking in her general state of poor health while the doors closed. Holding his hat over his heart, he said, “Ma’am. Why are you in the hospital?”

The woman looked up at Dan incredulous that anyone would ask a question like that straight out in an elevator. The little black woman who was pushing the wheelchair stared at Dan without changing her expression. With a little anger boiling up within her, the woman in the wheelchair answered, “Cancer.”

“That’s horrible,” Dan said as he reached in his shirt pocket and pulled out a business card. Handing it to her, he said, “When you get out of here, why don’t you give me a call. You need a bunch of fresh air and sunshine to heal up proper like. A hospital is not a place to get healthy. I’ve got a small trailer out back of the house that you and yours can use while you’re out there.”

“He’s got a view from his place that God must have blessed when he created the Earth. There’s open land surrounded by trees with mountains in the distance. Come autumn time, those trees turn a thousand different colors. It makes you realize that there is a God, and he is good. It’s real peaceful, Ma’am,” Joe said.

Nodding his head in agreement, Donny said, “It’s a good place to heal both physically and spiritually.”

“That trailer of mine is in pretty good shape. There’s room for four people in it. Me and the misses used it while we were rebuilding our house after a fire took part of it,” Dan said.

The woman glanced down at the card seeing that it advertised rodeo bulls for sale with an address in Montana. Not quite sure what to make of the offer, she mumbled, “Thanks.”

“Don’t think anything of it, Ma’am,” Dan said.

“You get better now, you hear?” Joe said.

“This is our floor,” Donny said when the elevator came to a stop. He took off his hat and said, “It was a pleasure to meet you, Ma’am. I hope to see you up at Uncle Dan’s place real soon.”

The three men ambled off the elevator and followed the signs towards room 412. They entered with Donny leading the way. There were two beds in the room with Sonny lying in the one nearest the door. The other bed held an old man who was asleep. Sonny was wearing a hospital gown and only partially covered with a thin blanket. The sheets under him were pulled out suggesting that he had been moving around a lot rather than just lying there.

Donny stopped at the end of the bed and looked at the man lying there. Shaking his head, he said, “You look like something that fell out the south end of a north bound cow.”

“At least it took getting shot to look this way. You always look like something that fell out the north end of a south bound cow,” Sonny said struggling to sit up in the bed. His voice was weak and there was a wheeze when he breathed.

“Donny, don’t go getting your brother riled up,” Joe said. He looked around and spotted two chairs. He nudged Dan with an elbow and pointed at the chairs. Both men took a seat and grinned up at Donny who was still standing at the foot of the bed looking around for a place to sit.

Slapping his thigh with one hand to get everyone’s attention, Dan said, “We’re here to find out what happened to you.”

“Don’t say a word until I get a chair,” Donny said. He looked around for a chair and didn’t find one. He stepped out in the hall and found a stack of chairs. He grabbed one chair off of the stack and carried it back to the room. Putting it so that the back was to Sonny, he sat astride it facing the seat’s back. He said, “Tell us what happened to you.”

“I was working at the store...”

“What in the hell were you doing working at a store? You’re here to go to school,” Dan said interrupting Sonny before he had even managed to get once sentence into the story.

“It’s expensive out here. It isn’t like at home where the food comes out of the garden and doesn’t cost anything except sweat. I was working there to earn a little extra money,” Sonny answered.

“All you needed to do was ask us. We would have sent you some more,” Joe said. “We could have sold off a cow or two. I got a rodeo bull that would fetch a real good price.”

Pointing at Sonny with his forefinger, Dan said, “You’re the first one smart enough in this family to go to college. We want you to do well and we’ll do whatever it takes to make it happen.”