A cool breeze blew in from the north, carrying the scent of freshly cut hay, as Frank O’Reilly scanned the field of cattle and nodded approvingly. “They sure seem to be taking to the alfalfa and getting some weight on them.”
Buck nodded. “Yes, sir. We should get a pretty decent price for them come next summer.”
Jasper barked. The dog was pacing back and forth, his eyes never leaving the herd.
“That’s right, boy,” Frank said, “that’s where those yummy scraps come from that we feed you.” He turned to Buck. “How’s the breeding herd doing? Did the inseminations take?”
The freckle-faced ranch hand launched a brown splash of tobacco-laden spit at a nearby rock. “We preg-checked everyone, and almost all of the cows took, same with the heifers. Want me to cull the ones that didn’t take?”
“Nah, let’s give them three tries, and if they’re not taking, then put them in with the beef stock.” Frank squinted at the far end of the pasture, where the cows were gathered against the fence. “Buck, your eyes are better than mine. Look down there. Is one of the posts leaning? Cows have been scratching themselves against the rails.” He pointed, and the pain in his shoulder flared.
Buck raised his hand over his brow to block out the sun. “Yeah, I see it. It’s practically knocked over.”
Frank snatched the two-way radio off of his belt and pushed the call button. “Boys, get over here to pasture four right away. We’ve got a fence that needs mending.”
“Yessir, Mr. O’Reilly. Hank, Johnny and me just about got one of the herds penned off at pasture two. We’ll be there in ten minutes.”
Frank wished he could take care of it himself—or even just take to a horse again. His knees were aching worse than ever. He looked at the end of the pasture once more and growled. “Damn it, some of the cows are taking off through a gap in the fence.”
Without hesitation, Jasper barked as if acknowledging Frank’s comment and took off running toward the broken fence.
“Shit, Mr. O’Reilly, that dog’s going to get himself a hoof in the head if he ain’t careful.” Grabbing the reins of his horse, Buck mounted and rode off after the runaway dog.
Frank gritted his teeth as he watched Jasper barking like an animal possessed, darting around and through the huge animals.
For the most part, the cows gave the brown barking maniac plenty of room. They’d never trained the dog in herding, but he must have had the instinct, because in a moment he was chasing the stray cows back through the gap in the fence. Buck took position there, making sure no more cows would escape before the other boys arrived to mend the fence.
In the distance, Frank noticed a plume of dust as the other ranch hands approached. Within fifteen minutes, the boys had patched up the fence and begun transferring the herd to another pasture.
Frank couldn’t help but laugh as Jasper loped back with his tongue hanging out and with what looked like a big grin on his furry face. “Jasper, you’re one crazy dog, you know that?”
After having witnessed the animal’s keen intellect over the last few months, Frank didn’t even think twice that the dog had watched enough of the ranch hands herding the cattle and had taken it upon himself to just be like one of the men.
He threw a wad of jerky in the dog’s direction, which Jasper snatched out of the air and gulped down within a matter of seconds. But he immediately regretted the throw. A hot pain shot down his shoulder to his elbow, nearly doubling him over.
“Frank, what’s wrong?”
He turned and saw Megan hurrying toward him with a picnic basket.
“Nothing, dear, I’m fine.”
“Horsefeathers. You’re not fine.” She dropped the picnic basket on the ground and rushed over to him as Jasper whined at Frank’s feet. “See, even Jasper knows you’re in pain.” She put her hands on his face, forcing him to look directly at her. “Honey, you need to stop being ornery and learn to admit when you’re not feeling right. Talk to me. I know you’re hurting.”
Frank felt his throat getting thick. “Woman, of course I’m hurting. Truth is, just about everything is aching. My knees, my elbows, shoulders, hips… you name it. It’s called getting old. I’ll just walk it off and it’ll eventually get better.”
She frowned. “You’re not old. You’re just a big stubborn mule of a man.” She pulled him down to her level and gave him a firm kiss on the lips. “That’s it, I’m dragging you to the doctor even if I have to tie you up like a Thanksgiving turkey.”
Frank gave his wife of thirty years a pained smile. “Yes, ma’am.”
###
Frank sat in the doctor’s waiting room with Megan beside him, holding his hand with an iron grip. He knew she was nervous, but he felt resigned to whatever God willed.
It had been two weeks since he’d first let her drag him to the local doctor’s office in Ash Springs, and as far as he was concerned, he felt worse after having gone. On that first visit, they poked, prodded, took blood and urine, and x-rayed him from head to toe. On a second visit a few days later, they even biopsied his shoulder and knee.
And that had only made matters worse. If his joints were aching before, they were in near constant agony after that. He’d been almost entirely confined to his recliner, relying on Buck to keep everything running.
He looked over at his wife. “Megan, you know I don’t trust these country doctors. You should have just let me go to the VA. They’d have patched me right up.”
“Not a chance in hell,” Megan muttered under her breath. “Those fools wouldn’t have seen you for a good three weeks.”
“I could have waited—”
“No.” Megan groused. “I’m not having you wait around when I know you’re in pain.”
Frank leaned toward the only love he’d ever known, kissed the top of her head, and whispered, “That’s why I didn’t want to tell you.” It was also why, even now, he hadn’t told her everything. Like that he was losing circulation in his fingers, and they’d been feeling number with cold even when he was in the house.
A nurse poked her head in. “Mr. and Mrs. O’Reilly? The doctor will see you now.”
Frank grimaced as he levered himself up out of the chair, ignoring the helping hand Megan offered. She frowned, but he wouldn’t let her treat him like a cripple.
Dr. Montgomery was an older gentleman wearing a white lab coat with a stethoscope hanging out of one of the pockets. He shook hands with them both as they entered his office, then pulled his chair out from behind his desk and rolled it over beside the visitors’ chairs. His expression was serious, and Frank prepared himself for the worst.
The doctor grabbed a thick file from his desk and settled down with it on his lap.
Frank felt Megan grip his upper arm as she asked, “Dr. Montgomery, what did the results come back with? What’s wrong with Frank?”
Dr. Montgomery pressed his lips together, forming a thin line, and turned to Frank. “Mr. O’Reilly,” he said, “do you remember what we discussed about your x-rays when you were last here?”
“Of course. You said that the x-rays showed something abnormal on some of my bones. That’s why you had me do those biopsies.”
“That’s right. The x-rays showed what’s known as Codman’s Triangle. There was a swelling under your periosteum, a sheath that normally envelops your bones. And you’ll recall—”
“Come on Doc, out with it. Is it cancer?” Frank blurted. He didn’t need the long version, just the verdict.
The doctor nodded. “I’m afraid it is.”
Megan’s fingers dug into Frank’s arm. “Oh Frank…”
But Frank felt an odd sense of peace. “So, how long do I have?”
“Woah.” Dr. Montgomery held up a hand. “Let’s not get ahead of ourselves. Just because we’ve detected a malignancy in two of the biopsies, that doesn’t mean anything yet.” The old man spoke with a soothing tone. He glanced at Megan and then focused on Frank. “I’m sure this isn’t what you wanted to hear, but we only have a partial diagnosis, and in order to fully understand what we’re dealing with, we need to get some PET scans. We don’t have the necessary equipment here, but I’ve arranged with the Cancer Center in Summerlin Hospital to take you as soon as you can get yourself over there. Their head cancer specialist is named Dr. Charles Liu. He’s the best in the business. He’ll take great care of you. Just let me know when you’re ready to go—”
“Where is this cancer center?” Megan asked.
“It’s in Las Vegas, about an hour and thirty minutes driving time.”
“We can head there right now,” Megan said.
Frank started to object, but his wife gave him a death stare that froze him in place.
“Well, that’s great,” said Dr. Montgomery. “But before you set off on a ninety-minute drive, let me call and make sure they can take you today. Did you have any questions before I call Dr. Liu’s office?”
Frank and Megan both shook their heads.
The doctor patted Frank lightly on the shoulder as he left the room.
Megan began talking soothingly to him about how everything was going to be fine and they’d kick the cancer together, no matter what.
Frank sat quietly, wrestling with the revelation that he had cancer. Mostly his concerns were for Kathy and Megan. He had a lot to do to make sure they were both taken care of after he was gone.
He turned to his wife. “Megan, I’m only going to ask one favor of you on this, and you’re not going to like it. Whatever’s going on with me, don’t breathe a word of it to Kathy. She’s got enough on her shoulders at school. You understand?”
Megan’s chin quivered, and her eyes glistened with unshed tears. But she nodded.
Frank leaned back in the uncomfortable chair and patted her on the thigh. “I love you.”
“I love you too.”
###
Dave Butler lay back on his hospital bed as one of the VA nurses checked his vitals. Despite the high dose of pain medication he’d been given, the ache of the cancer was punching through the drugs with a vengeance. After nearly seventy years on this Earth, the last thing he’d wanted was to leave it under a haze of narcotics, but the pain had been excruciating. He thought he’d be strong enough to deal with it.
He wasn’t.
Back in ’68, he’d taken a sniper round through his leg, and ever since then he’d believed that he knew the worst pain imaginable. Well, cancer had beaten that sniper round by a good measure. Metastatic osteosarcoma, they called it. Bone cancer. He’d never even known bones could ache. He now knew differently.
He’d been given only a few weeks to live when he agreed to be part of a new clinical trial at the VA. There were risks, of course, but he didn’t even care what they were. What the hell did he have to lose?
The doctor had said it was an allogenic stem cell transplant, and it would bootstrap his immune system, educating it so it could better attack the foreign cells.
Dave didn’t understand the details. He just knew the trial was supposed to somehow use his body’s own defenses to fight the cancer.
A nurse poked her head in and saw him shivering. “Did you need some warming blankets, Mr. Butler?”
“If it wouldn’t be too much trouble?”
“Not at all.” She disappeared, then returned moments later with a thick blanket that she lay over his legs and chest. “Fresh from the warmer. We want you comfortable for the procedure. It’ll also help with your circulation.”
Dave sighed contentedly as the warmth of the blankets seeped into his body.
He must have fallen asleep, because the next thing he knew was he was in an operating room, hooked up to an IV, surrounded by doctors or techs setting up equipment.
One of the people noticed he’d opened his eyes and came over. “Ah, Mr. Butler,” he said. He spoke in a thick German accent. “It looks like you’ve woken up just in time for us to sedate you.” He smiled.
“I thought I wouldn’t have to be knocked out,” Dave said.
“Don’t worry—it’ll only make you groggy. You’ll be awake through the procedure, and I’ll keep you apprised of what’s happening.”
“Dr. Müller,” said a voice behind Dave. “We’re ready with the infusion.”
The doctor nodded, and Dave watched a pair of hands inject a milky white substance into his IV port. As the drug wended its way down the tube into his vein, he felt his arm grow warm.
“Like I said, this should make you a bit groggy,” said Dr. Müller. “As we discussed earlier, this infusion will have a rather aggressive effect on the cancer-causing cells in your body, and we want to minimize your discomfort. You’ll be able to stay awake, but this is a four-hour procedure, so if you’d like to doze off… well, we won’t stop you.” He winked.
Dave blinked as he tried to focus on the doctor. The warmth from his arm spread across his chest and up his neck.
Unable to keep his eyes open, Dave felt as though he were floating in space while occasional voices penetrated the haze.
“Make sure you’re monitoring the video off the FLIR. We’ll need to keep track of any localized spikes in temperature. Frankly, I don’t expect we’ll see any immediate systemic temperature changes.”
Through the haze, Dave felt as if needles of hot pain were poking at him. Random voices spoke, and he had trouble following what they were saying as time elapsed.
“Did you see how for the first two hours, nothing happened and then suddenly we’re seeing the cancer sites glow with heat?”
“The virus is working. The immune system is reacting to the Darwin protocol. It’s being reprogrammed. It’s actually rather fantastic if you think about it. If this works, this man will have the immune system we’ll all eventually have evolved tens of thousands of years from now. Look at the monitor—the tumors are all glowing yellow under the immune system’s attack. And as more of the T-cells recognize the enemy, we should see those effects increase.”
Dave couldn’t move a muscle, the pain he was experiencing was unimaginable. Every square inch of his body felt as if it were being pierced with burning needles. If he could have spoken, he would have asked for more sedative. Just knock me out, he thought.
“Mr. Butler, we are three hours into the procedure and you’re doing fantastic. I can see in the thermal camera that even your lymph nodes are now being affected.”
The words held no meaning to Dave. There was a war raging in his body, and all he wanted was to find a way to surrender.
“Doctor, the core temperature has risen to 101.2.”
“His body is reacting to the systemic attack. Let’s push more saline through the IV. That should normalize his—”
“Heart rate is rising rapidly. He’s gone into V-tach!”
The cardiac monitor, which had been beeping regularly throughout the procedure, suddenly turned into a single non-stop tone.
“The patient is arresting!”
Dave sighed with relief as his pain, and all the chaos surrounding him, faded away.
###
The auditorium was full of students taking their midterm exams. Kathy was feeling pretty good about her test so far, and she was down to the last of her essay questions.
“What is the difference between an autotroph and a heterotroph? Cite an example of each.”
Kathy wrote: An autotroph is any organism that can make its own food from inorganic substances like light or chemical energy. Some examples of autotrophs are algae (through photosynthesis) and some bacteria (through chemosynthesis). By contrast, heterotrophs cannot create their own nutrition and therefore depend on other organisms for their sustenance. Humans are one example. We consume other plant and animal material. Another example is mistletoe, which is a parasitic plant living off of a host plant.
Kathy sat back and glanced at the clock on the auditorium wall. With ten minutes left, she spent the remainder of her testing time re-checking her answers and making sure everything was legible.
When the buzzer rang on the professor’s lectern, she placed her test packet on the table at the front, feeling very confident about her answers.
As she filed out of the auditorium with the other students, she turned her phone back on. During the exam she’d received a text from her mom. Call home.
Kathy found a quiet spot outside the building and dialed her home number.
“Hi, Mom. You wanted me to call?”
“Honey, I was wondering when you’d be finished with all your midterms.”
Kathy’s heart beat faster as she sensed the tension in her mom’s voice. “I just finished my last one. What’s wrong?”
The line was silent for a second, and for the first time Kathy could remember, Mom’s voice cracked. “Oh honey, it’s your father. He’s really sick and he’s refusing treatment. I was hoping you could come home and see if you could talk some sense into him.”
Tears sprang to Kathy’s eyes. Dad? Really sick?
“Of course, Mom. I’ll call the airline right away and see if I can take an earlier flight. Mom…” Kathy gulped, trying to clear the lump that had suddenly formed in her throat. “What’s wrong with him?”
Mom sniffed and cleared her throat, and for a few seconds, there was silence on the line. And then she just blurted it out. “It’s cancer. Oh, Kathy, I’m afraid it’s really bad.”
Kathy sprinted toward the dorms. “I’ll be there tonight.”