Wyoming Fierce

She hated the man with a passion. Once, she’d thought of going to the Kirk brothers and asking for help. But they were just starting to get out of the hole. She’d heard that they’d come into a windfall from the sale of several of their prize purebred bulls and that their business was growing by leaps and bounds. That had increased when Mallory had married one of the heirs to the enormous Brannt fortune. Morie Brannt was the daughter of King Brannt, who was one of the richest ranchers in Texas. He’d provided Mallory with two seed bulls rumored to be worth millions. In fact, they were kept under lock and key with a twenty-four-hour guard around them. No way was Mallory risking his prize bulls.

* * *

THE APPOINTMENT WITH the specialist had been set up for the following Monday. It was quick work, the receptionist said, because the specialist was usually booked months in advance. But Rafe Mays’s heart problem was so worrying to the doctor that the specialist had promised to work him in.

Meanwhile, she went to the bank and drew out the rent money. Her small savings were wrecked in the process. She’d have to try to get a part-time job here until school started again. Then there would be more medicines to buy, groceries....

She felt like crying, but she couldn’t let her grandfather see how despondent she was. There was no money. They lived from check to check, with no luxuries, not even a hot dog and fries on occasion from a fast-food joint. Bodie cooked plain fare, the cheapest food she could prepare, and planned one dish to last at least two days.

It was a frugal, painful existence. She frequently felt guilty at going to college at all. But when she graduated, she could at least get a job that paid a professional wage, so the sacrifices now would be worth it. Master’s work might have to wait a bit, though. In June, after graduation, if she got her bachelor’s degree in anthropology, she was going to get a full-time job and see if she could catch up the bills a bit before she went back to school. She might have to do the work/study thing, and work one year and study the next. Plenty of people did that. She could do it, too, if it meant leaving Granddaddy better off and less worried. She knew that their financial situation was as frightening to him as it was to her.

He’d suggested asking the Kirks, but reluctantly. She didn’t mention that Tank had offered to help and she’d turned him down. She couldn’t even ask Tank right now; he was on an extended trip to Europe on ranch business. Mallory and Morie had gone somewhere out of the country, as well.

“You’re friends with Cane, sort of,” he reminded her. “Wouldn’t hurt to just ask him.”

She shifted uncomfortably. “He’s really sensitive about people asking him for money, especially lately.” She didn’t add that Cane had almost been a victim of a woman who wanted it, when she’d tried to pick him up in the bar.

“I guess he is. With his disability, likely he thinks that’s all women see in him now,” he conceded.

Not for worlds would Bodie have mentioned that no woman in her right mind would turn down a man that attractive, disability or not. Cane was so sexy that memories of their brief encounter still left her tossing and turning at night. Her whole body glowed when she thought of him touching her.

She cleared her throat. No reason to go down that road, especially when Cane didn’t even remember what had happened. That was a mercy, for a lot of reasons.

“We’ll get by,” Bodie promised her grandfather.

His eyes narrowed. “Don’t you even think of giving up college,” he instructed firmly. “Worked too hard, too long, to have one person in my family with a degree. I didn’t even finish high school. Had to go to work when my mother got sick. It’s a trap. You think you can go back and finish your schooling, but once you make money, all sorts of things come up that needs it,” he added solemnly. “You leave now, you won’t go back. And that would be a pity, Bodie. A real pity.”

She smiled, went and hugged him tight. “Okay.”

He chuckled and hugged her back.

“You and me against the world,” she said when she drew away, her pale brown eyes were smiling as well as her lips.

“That’s how it goes, I reckon.” He sighed. “Don’t want to go see any specialist,” he said heavily. “I don’t like people I don’t know. Suppose he wants to throw me in a hospital and cut on me?”

“We won’t let him,” she lied.

He seemed to calm down then, as if he thought she could see the future.

“One day at a time, Granddaddy,” she said gently. “Step by step.”

He hesitated. Then he nodded.

* * *

THE SPECIALIST WAS A MAN only a few years younger than Bodie’s grandfather. To the old man’s surprise, he was led into an examination room where he was hooked up to some sort of machine that looked right at his heart through his chest. They called it an echocardiogram, a sonogram of the heart.

“Damndest thing I ever saw,” he told Bodie while they waited for the cardiologist to read the results. “They let me look at the screen. I could see inside my body!”

“New technology really is amazing,” she agreed. She was sitting nervously on the edge of her chair. She’d had a long talk with the receptionist while her grandfather was having his test, about monthly payments. The bill was going to be staggering. It was a testament to Bodie’s salesmanship that the payment plan had been agreed on. There was no question of further education after this next semester. Then, too, she had to make sure that her grades held up, so that she’d pass all her subjects and be able to graduate. So many worries. She wondered how in the world she was going to manage any of it.

“Don’t chew on them nails like that,” her grandfather instructed. “You’ll have them gnawed off into the quick.”

“Oh.” She drew her finger out of her mouth. “Sorry. I’m just nervous a bit.”

“Yeah. Me, too.”

She got up and found a magazine to read, something about hunting and fishing that she then passed to the old man, who seemed to find it much more interesting than she had.

While they waited, she looked around the waiting room at other people. Some of them had the same worried, drawn expressions that she and her grandfather were wearing. It gave her a sort of comfort, to know that they weren’t the only people here with anxieties.

Time dragged on. She stopped watching the clock. There were so many people in the waiting room. Then, suddenly, time sped up and people started going back into the examination rooms. And finally, the nurse called her grandfather’s name.

Bodie went with him, prepared to fight her way in if she had to. But the nurse only smiled and put them both in the doctor’s office, in front of his desk and padded chair.

Dr. McGillicuddy came in, preoccupied, reading a tablet PC on the way. He glanced at the two worried people facing him.

“We’re not going to recommend operating on you,” he told the old man at once, and this message was received with great sighs of relief and tears from Bodie.

“Not that it isn’t a fairly bad situation,” he said as he sat down and put the tablet aside. He clasped his fingers in front of him. “It is heart failure,” he said.

“Oh, no!” Bodie burst out, horrified.

He held up a hand. “Not what you’re thinking. Not at all. It can be treated with medication and lifestyle changes. It doesn’t mean he’s a candidate for a funeral home.”

Bodie shivered. She’d been so afraid!

Her grandfather smiled at her. “She’s my right arm,” he told the doctor. “Orders me around, takes care of me. Feeds me good, too.”

“No fried foods,” the doctor said. “Everything low fat. Go easy on beef and fatty meats, especially salty meats with preservatives. Lots of vegetables and fish.”

The old man made a face. “I hate fish.”

“You can learn to like it. I did,” the specialist said, glowering. “Anyway, my nurse will get the relevant information from you on the way out. You’ll have three heart medicines to take. I want you back here in two months, sooner if you have any unusual symptoms. We’ll see how the drugs work, first. If they arrest the progress of the disease, we’ll be in good shape. If they don’t, we can make decisions then about how to proceed.”

That sounded ominous, but Bodie didn’t react. She just smiled. “Sounds good.”

“Yes, it does,” her grandfather said heavily. “I hate the thought of hospitals and being cut on. I’m not much keener on some of those tests my regular doctor mentioned.”

“I know, I spoke to him earlier,” the other man replied quietly. “He said you’d fight tooth and nail to prevent me doing a heart catheterization.”

“No, I wouldn’t fight, I’d just go home and take the phone off the hook.” The older man chuckled.

“So I heard. You know, it’s the best way to find out exactly what’s going on. If you have clogged arteries or any other problems…”

“Your technician said my arteries looked fine on that thingabob machine,” he returned.

“They do,” the specialist conceded. “I won’t insist on a catheterization right now. But we did a baseline measurement of your heart in an X-ray and we’ll take others as we go along, to compare. If your blood pressure shoots up unexpectedly, if your heart enlarges, that will mean the road ahead is dangerous and we have to take precautions.”

The old man shifted. “Flying horse.”

The specialist blinked. “Sir?”

“Old story I heard,” he said. “The king was going to execute this guy, and he said wait, if you let me live for another year, I’ll teach your horse to fly. The king was dubious, but he said, well, okay, what have I got to lose? Guy walks out, and his friend says, are you crazy, you can’t teach a horse to fly! The condemned man laughed. He said, in a year, the horse could die, I could die, the king could die…or I might actually teach the horse to fly. Moral of story, time can bring hope.”

“I’ll remember that,” the specialist said with a smile. “Nice story.”

“It was in a series I watched on television, about that King Henry VIII of England, a long time ago. Never forgot it.”

“I can see why.” The specialist stood up and extended his hand. “You go home and take your medicine and call me if you have any problems. Better yet, call my nurses,” he said with a chuckle. “They know more than I do!”

Bodie and her grandfather laughed.

* * *

“WELL, THAT WAS A RELIEF,” he told Bodie on the way home. “I was scared stiff he was going to want to operate on me.”

“Me, too,” Bodie confessed. “It’s such a relief!”

* * *

AND IT WAS, UNTIL they got to the drugstore and presented the prescriptions. She asked her grandfather to go and get a can of peaches to take home for supper. While he was diverted, she asked the clerk how much the medicine would be.

She almost passed out at the figure. “You have got to be kidding,” she exclaimed in a horrified tone.

“Sorry, not,” the young man replied sympathetically. “Look,” he said softly, “we can fill the generic version of all three of them. It will still be a lot, but not quite as much.”

He gave her a new figure that was the whole rent amount for the next month. She felt sick all over.

The clerk winced. “It’s hard, I know,” he said. “I have an elderly mother who has a bad heart. We have to buy her medicine. If it wasn’t for my job, and my wife’s, she’d have to go without. Her social security won’t pay for more than a fraction of them, even though she gets them filled at a discount pharmacy and for a small amount of money.”

“People shouldn’t have to choose between heat and food and medicine and gas,” Bodie said in a haunted tone.

“Tell me about it,” the clerk agreed wholeheartedly.

She drew in a breath. She was thinking about those two expensive pieces of jewelry at home and how far the money for them would go toward paying the rent and medicine bills. She couldn’t let her grandfather die for lack of money. She wouldn’t.

She lifted her chin. “Go ahead and fill them,” she said quietly. “I have some heirloom jewelry I can sell. It will more than pay for them.”

“I hate that for you,” he said. “I had to sell my grandmother’s engagement ring to pay for a car repair.” His eyes were sad. “It would have gone to my daughter one day.”

“In the end, they’re just things, though.” She glanced at her grandfather down the aisle and smiled gently. “People are much more important.”

“I can’t argue with that. We’ll have them for you in about a half hour, if that’s okay.”

“That will be fine,” she assured him.

* * *

SHE DROVE HER GRANDFATHER home. Then she dug the necklace and ring out from under her bed, where they’d lived in a photograph box since she moved in. She looked at them lovingly, touched them, then closed the box. Sentiment was far too expensive at the moment. She’d rather have her grandfather than pretty things from a different day and age, even if it was going to wrench her heart to sell them. Her mother had loved them, shown them to her from her childhood…explained the legends that surrounded them. Bodie had grown up loving them, as well, as a connection to a long-ago place somewhere in Spain.

But it was unlikely that she’d have children. She didn’t really want to get married, not for years, and she wasn’t sure about having a child even then. Or so she told herself. It made it easier to take the box into town, to a pawn shop, and talk to the clerk.

* * *

“MISS, ARE YOU SURE you want to do this?” he asked. “These are heirlooms…”

“I have to,” she said gently. “My grandfather is very ill. We can’t afford his medicine.”

The man grimaced. “Damned shame,” he said.

Bodie stared at the jewels, vaguely aware of someone coming into the store behind her. “Yes,” she said. “I know.” She was fighting tears.

“Well, I promise you I won’t sell them to anybody,” he told her. “I’ll lock them up tight until you can afford to get them back. How about that?”

“You would…do that?” she asked, surprised. “But it might be months…”

“So I’ll wait months.” He smiled.

She had to fight to speak, past the lump in her throat. It was so kind! “Thank you,” she managed to say.

“You’re welcome. Hold on to that,” he added, sliding a ticket across to her. “You’ll need it.”

She smiled. “Thank you very much.”

He counted out a number of bills, more than she’d expected to get for the jewelry. “You be careful with that,” he added.

She stuffed it into her pocketbook. “I will.”

“See you in a few months,” he said, and smiled again.

“Okay. That’s a deal.”

She turned, almost colliding with a cowboy. She didn’t look up to see who it was. Plenty of ranches in the area. She didn’t know who worked for most of them.

The cowboy watched her go out of the shop and frowned. “Wasn’t that Bodie?” he asked the clerk, who was his brother-in-law.

“Sure was. Her granddad’s in bad shape. She couldn’t afford his medicine so she pawned her family treasures.” He showed them to the other man. “Hell of a shame.”

“Yes. It is.”

The cowboy opened his cell phone and made a call.

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