Wyoming Fierce

“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.

* * *