Chapter 1

Brenda Jean Ronson was your garden variety sixteen year old girl in all ways except one. She was of average height, about 64 inches tall, and had average looks, though she didn’t consider herself to look ‘average’. Her skin looked flat to her eyes ... pale and listless. She thought her nose was crooked, though no one else did. She thought her breasts were huge and obvious, though her bras were all sized 34. She absolutely refused to wear a swim suit, because the nipples on those breasts were too well defined, and stuck out, making her feel like everyone was staring at them. She thought her voice sounded nasal, even if the drama teacher asked her to try out for every female lead in every musical. She had a group of ten or fifteen girlfriends, who never said anything bad about her, either to her face, or behind her back. She wasn’t aware that, if you have even two or three friends like that, you’re very lucky.

Brenda Jean Ronson got high “B”s in all her classes, and though boys asked her out on dates frequently, she turned them all down. That was because of the thing that Brenda Jean knew about herself that made her anything but average.

Brenda Jean Ronson had cancer.

It had been found when she was thirteen, during a medical workup that was sought because she sometimes got dizzy for no apparent reason. Her parents, Dave and Linda, had assumed there was some nutritional deficiency that would be found, corrected, and the light of their life would grow up to be a beautiful young woman with her whole life ahead of her.

The prognosis had been anything but that.

The tumor that was found, and which was pressing against something in her brain that sometimes affected her balance, was inoperable.

There had been radiation treatments during her fourteenth year, and chemo therapy most of her fifteenth. She had lost her hair, and her skin had taken on a pasty appearance. She felt like she was a hundred years old at the end of a series of chemo, when she had to miss school and recuperate in bed as the poisons the doctors had pumped into her slowly leached out of her system. Cat scans showed that no progress had been made. If anything, the tumor had grown a bit.

It was no life for a sweet young girl, who never did anything in her life to hurt another human being.

The latest round of treatment had pretty much shot the wad of all the doctors, who were trying to kill the tumor in Brenda Jean Ronson’s head, without killing her too. The waiting period had been endured, and the results from the latest MRI were in hand.

“I’m sorry,” said Doctor MacNiel, a professionally sad look on his face. “We’ve done everything we can. I’m afraid your daughter’s outlook is not good.”

Linda Ronson wept quietly. She’d done a lot of that over the last two years. Brenda was off playing with kids in the cancer ward, who looked like her, with bald heads and pasty features, but who were ten years younger. Those kids loved her, and she loved reading to them, or singing songs with them, but it almost killed her parents to see her with them.

“So what now?” asked Dave. Dave, Brenda’s dad, tried to be strong for all of them.

Doctor MacNiel frowned. This was the part he hated most about his job, but he gave it to them straight.

“This is very hard to predict, but we estimate, based on the rate of growth, that she has four or five months at the most, before the tumor incapacitates her. From there, we don’t know. She could live another six months after that, or maybe even longer, but she won’t be able to do much. The tumor is going to start affecting motor function soon, and she’ll lose control of intentional movement. It will affect her memory too, probably. The symptoms will be similar to Alzheimer’s. I would recommend hospice care be started before she can’t recognize anyone any more.” He looked uncomfortable. “I shouldn’t say this, but, in my opinion, the care she’ll get ... at the end ... will be of higher quality if the staff gets to know her before she ... can’t respond.”

Dave, for the last two years, had been like a rock. He’d believed that modern medicine would give his little girl her life back, and he’d never flagged in that belief, despite the somber warnings of the oncologists. It was all that had kept him going, really. Now, as that was taken away from him, he crumbled, trying to sit, and missing the chair ... ending up on the floor sobbing.

The doctor helped him up, and into the chair. He was fighting tears of his own as he saw the man fall apart.

“I’ll ... I’ll just give you a little time,” said MacNiel softly. “We’ll keep Brenda busy for half an hour or so.”

One would have thought the medical process was over ... that they’d be sent home to watch their daughter die. But there was more that could be offered. They were assigned to a grief counselor, who made an appointment with the parents when they had calmed down enough to be able to speak without bursting into tears every five minutes. She was calm, almost cheery, and it seemed almost horrifying that she could be that way. Her name was Sally.

“I know the last thing you want to see is a smiling face,” said Sally, smiling. “But we have one more thing we can do for Brenda, and It will take all the help you can give me to do it.”

“What are you talking about?” snapped Linda. “She’s going to die! Doctor MacNiel said so.”

“Yes,” agreed Sally, no longer smiling. “But we can try to make what’s left of her life as enjoyable as possible, and we can prepare her ... and you ... for the end.” She looked serious now. “Most people don’t get a chance to prepare for the end of their life. It can make a big difference in the quality of those last few weeks.”

“What do we do?” asked Dave. “How does all this work?”

“Well, most of it will just be talking about things, at first. There are all kinds of issues to work through, both for you and for her. I know you don’t feel this way right now, but there will come a time when all of you just want it to end. You’ll feel like her life isn’t worth living, and you may even want to end it prematurely. That’s just honesty, and you all need to confront that so you don’t feel guilty about it.” She looked less severe. “And, there are some programs available to give her the opportunity to do something fun and exciting, before she’s too sick to do that kind of thing any more. It can give her happy memories at a time when unhappy things are being endured.”

Brenda took it pretty well, herself. She took it better than her parents, which isn’t so hard to understand. They’d been around long enough to be able to envision her possible future, while, for her, High School, and cancer, of course, had seemed like her whole life. She had a lot of support. There was another girl who had about the same life expectancy, and they planned their funerals together, like they were planning a sleepover or something, choosing the music they liked, and telling their parents what kind of casket to get, and how they wanted to be dressed.

Sally took them through the grieving process, in an attempt to get the ugly phases of grief out of their systems, so that her last months could be as free of negative emotions as possible. It worked too, and all of them accepted that, fair or not, life was short, and some lives were shorter than others. There came a time when Brenda said she wasn’t mad any more, and just wanted to enjoy the time she had left.

That was when Sally talked about the Foundation. It was a philanthropic organization that tried to grant last wishes to kids like Brenda. If she had a dream ... something she’d always wanted to do, but couldn’t, for whatever reason, and if they could make it happen, they would. Donations and the investment of those donations had let the Foundation grant wishes of some two thousand young people before they died. And Brenda was eligible for the program.

“Is there anything you’ve always wanted to do, but never got the chance?” asked Sally.

“What kind of thing?” asked Brenda. There were hundreds of things she’d thought about doing, but hadn’t had the time or opportunity to do.

“Well, we took one boy sky-diving, for instance,” said Sally. “Several kids have wanted to meet a particular movie star. Sometimes they want to go on a trip somewhere, or see a particular place. Things like that.”

What popped into Brenda’s mind was a picture she had seen the night before. She had been leafing through the family picture album. Her parents couldn’t do that - couldn’t deal with it yet - but she enjoyed remembering the happy times, most of which were documented in the album.

In one photo, she was sitting on a horse, her smile wide, wearing a cowboy hat that was too big and was sitting on top of her ears.

It was from a trip the family had taken the summer after she’d had radiation treatments. They had gone to a place in New Mexico that was half tourist trap, and hosted family reunions or just families that wanted to be in the mountains for a while. It wasn’t really a resort, but there was a place you could rent go carts, and a video game arcade. What Brenda had wanted to do was take a trail ride. That’s when that picture was taken.

But, it had been something of a letdown for her. The ride was only forty-five minutes long, and she sat on a horse that was more interested in stopping to crop grass than actually go anywhere. It hadn’t seemed like she was actually riding a live animal, except that her horse farted a lot. It had been a big disappointment for her. She had expected to canter, and gallop and feel the wind in her face. Her horse never went for more than ten steps without stopping, no matter how hard she kicked its ribs.

“I want to go on a real trail ride.” she said suddenly. “A trail ride on a horse that will run. I want it to last a whole day, or maybe even go out overnight, and ride where nobody else goes, instead of a trail that a thousand people have ridden along. I want to eat cowboy food at a campfire, and see mountains up close.” She looked at Sally nervously. “Could I do something like that?”

“I’m not so sure that riding horses would be such a good idea for a girl who gets dizzy sometimes,” said her mother.

“They could tie me on or something. Oh, please, Mom? That would be so much fun. And to see the mountains up close, and drink from a spring and herd a cow or something. I’d love to do that.”

Sally held up her hand.

“Tell you what. I’ll drop that in the lap of some very talented people at the Foundation. They make amazing things happen. There are all kinds of companies and people tied into the Foundation. If it’s possible to do that safely, they’ll find a way. In the mean time, if you think of anything else, just let me know. You still have a month or two, so you don’t have to rush it.”

Brenda Jean Ronson went home that night with visions of Black Beauty in her mind, with her sitting on top, hair flying in the wind, whooping and hollering as cattle scattered before her. Her dream would have curdled the milk of any cowboy who happened to tune into it, but it was harmless enough as a dream.

Brad Collins, whose nickname was “Wishbringer”, was good at his job. He worked for the Last Wish Foundation, and the challenge of making things happen made him eager to come to work every day. Most of the things he made happen were things that a lot of people might want to do, but only the select few would ever actually be involved in. People would do things for the Foundation that they wouldn’t do for the average Joe.

He looked at his latest assignment. Trail ride, multiple days, campout, campfire food. Should be do-able. He knew that the average places that were in the trail ride business weren’t going to be able to handle a request like this. What he needed was a Dude ranch. He hit the internet.

Hmmmm. Lots and lots and lots of entries. It was going to take a while to sift through them, pick four or five, and then get on the phone and work his magic. His stomach growled, and he got up to go to the vending machine. On his way, he saw the entrance to Sherry’s cubicle, and instantly remembered the picture he had spent many moments staring at ... It was a photograph of a young blond woman, in a bikini, sitting on a horse, wearing a cowboy hat. To be honest, it was the bikini that caught his eye the first time he saw it. She was a babe. He was single. He never asked Sherry who it was. That way he could dream, which is why he looked at it so often. Sherry was leaned back in her chair, feet up on the desk, talking on the phone. He stopped, and admired the photograph again.

When she hung up, he pointed at it and said “Tell me about that picture.”

Sherry grinned. “That’s my sister, Tammy. And yes, she’s married.”

“No,” said Brad. “I mean where was it taken?”

“Oh!” She looked at the picture. “She went to this dude ranch, and the picture was taken there. She and her husband, Tom, went. Why?”

“I’m doing research,” said Brad. “What’s her number?”

“You’re going to call her?” Sherry asked, surprised.

“Yeah. Maybe she can give me some pointers on what to look for, for this case I have.”

Sherry wrote down her sister’s number on a post-it note and handed it to Brad.

“She told me she got to build a barbed wire fence. Can you imagine that? She said she had a blast!”

Brad took one more look at the blond in the picture.

“I have to ask. What’s the bikini all about?”

Sherry laughed. “Tom bought it for her before they went. He dared her to wear it. Actually, they had a bet. He bet she wouldn’t wear it, and she bet she would. It’s kind of skimpy, huh?”

“Looks mighty good on her as far as I’m concerned,” said Brad.

“I guess all the cowboys thought so too,” said Sherry. “She wants to go back again, but he won’t let her. He says it’s too expensive, but she says he had blisters for weeks afterwards, and was jealous of the way the men looked at her.”

“They have a pool there?” asked Brad, still staring at the bumps on the tips of the bikini bra in the photograph.

Sherry laughed again. “No. That’s the really funny part. I guess Tom thought the place was some kind of resort or something. I guess they did have a hot tub, or something like that, but the only place you could swim was where they water cattle. Can you imagine that?”

When Brad called Tammy, and explained that he worked with Sherry, and wanted to ask some questions about the dude ranch she had visited, she was happy to talk about it with him.

After she described her experience in glowing terms, she asked how he found out she’d been there.

“I saw your picture on Sherry’s desk.”

There was a long pause. “You mean the one in the bikini?”

“That’s the one,” he replied.

“Ooooo, I’ll kill that girl,” said the voice on the phone, though she didn’t actually sound angry. “She didn’t tell me she was going to put it in a public place!”

“It’s a good picture,” said Brad. “I’m just surprised that a place like you just described would ... um ... cater to a request like that.”

“Oh, it’s not what you think. It’s a real working ranch, but they try to make the guests feel like they’re part of the whole thing, and they like to have fun too. They have dances and all kinds of things.”

“You think they could put something together for one of our clients?”

Tammy was fully aware of what her sister did for a living. She got excited immediately. “It would be perfect!” she squealed. “The woman who runs the place is just a doll. I know she’d be excited about doing something like that. I don’t know why I didn’t think of that before!”

“You know anybody up there?” he asked.

“Sure, hang on a minute.” He heard the phone being put down, and a couple of minutes later she came back.

“It’s called the Lazy N working guest ranch, according to the brochure I have, and the person to talk to is named Dannie.” She read off a number.

“Can you FAX me that brochure?” asked Brad.

“Sure. I can scan it into the computer and you’ll have it in ten minutes.”

Seven minutes later, Brad was reading over the FAX he had just received. He picked up the phone and punched numbers.

He never made it to the vending machine.

Bob Nivens woke before dawn, like he usually did. His first thoughts were of Dannie and Kyle, like they usually were. He felt pain, which was also routine. Ranger, his horse, snuffled in the dark, which wasn’t unusual at all. Ranger seemed to know when he was awake and asleep. They were a good partnership, all things considered. The horse, like its rider, had an independent streak, and liked life outside of the barn a lot more than it did inside.

Bob felt the absence of his other traveling companion, who usually slept curled up against Bob, but was likely out hunting now. That companion was a mongrel dog. She had turned up on the ranch one night in a blizzard, shaking like a leaf, dumped on the highway when she was only a couple of months old. Another dog Bob had had at the time had whined at the door, hearing the puppy outside, and Bob had gone out to see what was bothering her. He hadn’t thought the puppy would survive, but Dannie had filled an empty two liter soda bottle with hot water and wrapped a towel around it. Then the puppy and the bottle had gone into an old ten gallon aquarium put near the wood stove. Kyle had sat beside the tank, talking to the puppy, which finally stopped whining and lay still. In the morning it was still alive, and it took milk, and then little pieces of Spam, and finally regular canned dog food. Kyle had loved it, even if the five-year-old had been a little tough on a spindly puppy. One time Bob had tried to get the dog to come to him, saying “C’mere, dammit!” Kyle had called it “Dammit” after that, and the name had stuck. It had kept on living, too, surviving when other dogs on the ranch didn’t. The guests liked the dog, because she was friendly and happy, almost as if she knew she had beat the odds, and was living on borrowed time. The guests always laughed when the dog was called by name, and came, wagging her happy tail.

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The Last Wish Blues

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