High Country Cowgirl

by Joanna Sims

  “Kim.” Bonita got the nurse’s attention. She lowered her voice a bit when she said, “Mom looks like she’s lost some weight.”

  “Swallowing has been a challenge these last couple of days. We’ve been working on the techniques her therapist gave us, and that’s helped a bit.”

  Her mother had been a little on the chubby side when she was first diagnosed but had lost weight in both muscle and fat along the way. They had managed to keep her stable for the last couple of months but decisions regarding a feeding tube were in their near future. So far, Evelyn had refused to even consider the option.

  “Is there anything else I should know about?” she asked the nurse.

  Kim’s expression changed before she caught herself and set her expression back to neutral. “I think you’d better speak to your mom about that.”

  * * *

  Instead of unpacking as she had planned, Bonita headed to her father’s office on the third floor of the house.

  Sitting behind a large, ornately carved executive desk, her father was on the phone. He smiled at her and waved her to sit down in one of the chairs opposite the desk. Instead, she walked to the enormous picture window overlooking the acres of pasture and the Montana mountains off in the distance.

  Her stomach was upset. Her father had been cryptic when she first arrived home and alarm bells were going off in her head. After seeing her mother and speaking briefly with Kim, her sense that something had changed in her short absence had grown stronger.

  “Why don’t you sit down?” George asked in his booming voice. “And tell me about your trip.”

  Her arms crossed in front of her body, Bonita didn’t sit. “Maybe later. I’m worried about Mom. She’s lost weight. And when I asked Kim about it, she said that I should speak to Mom about it.”

  George’s smile dropped. He sighed and rubbed his hands over his face several times before he threaded his fingers together, rested them on the desk and leaned forward.

  Unsmiling, he said in a solemn tone, “There have been some decisions made, mija.”

  Bonita’s stomach churned harder. “Decisions? What decisions?”

  George pushed away from the desk, tucked his hands in his front pockets. “Let’s go see Mom. This is her conversation to have with you.”

  “You are scaring me.” Bonita’s arms tightened around her body.

  George crossed to her, put his arms around her and held her tightly. “I wish I had the words to make all of this go away.”

  But he didn’t. No one did.

  They went down to the first floor where Kim was just finishing her mother’s range of motion exercises.

  “We’re all done here.” Kim seemed to understand that the family needed privacy and left the room.

  “Hello, my darling.” George kissed his wife and took her hand in his.

  “Te amo,” Evelyn said to her husband.

  “And I love you.” He kissed his wife’s hand.

  Evelyn and George had been in love for decades and their love seemed to be stronger now than ever before. It was hard to imagine her father’s life without Evelyn. What would he do? Would he ever be happy again? Bonita didn’t know the answers to those questions.

  “It’s time to tell your daughter,” George said gently to his wife. “I’m right here.”

  Bonita stared at her parents as realization dawned. Her mother didn’t have to say the words—in her heart she already knew what was coming.

  “I don’t want the ventilator.” Her mother fought to get those words out.

  Bonita’s body felt frozen in place; she couldn’t move, her legs felt numb, and she had to remind herself to take in a breath. Every patient with ALS had to make a decision about whether to breathe with the support of a ventilator when the muscles supporting the lungs failed. George and Bonita had both been lobbying for the ventilator because it meant extending Evelyn’s life.

  “I want nature to take its course now.” Her mother paused to catch her breath before she added, “I’m ready.”

  Bonita screamed no in her mind but stuffed it down inside her gut. She knelt down beside her mother’s wheelchair, tears on her cheeks, and took her mother’s free hand in her own.

  “Mom, please.”

  “You have so much to do with your life, mija.”

  “This is what I’m supposed to be doing with my life. Taking care of you!” Bonita looked up at her father. “Dad. Tell her.”

  “I have.” George had a catch in his voice. “Many times. Many, many times.”

  “This...” Evelyn’s breaths were shallow and her words came out in a whisper “...is my life. Respect my decision.”

  Bonita sat back on her heels with fresh tears on her face. She felt numb inside.

  “What about the feeding tube?” she asked dully. “Are you going to refuse that as well?”

  “I’m in God’s hands,” Evelyn told her, with a look of love and devotion, as always, for her Lord in her eyes.

  * * *

  The week following her return to the ranch had been a week of trials for Bonita. In order to keep her mother at home, they needed an around-the-clock crew of nurses to transfer her from bed to wheelchair, handle bathroom duties and help with feeding and dressing and exercising.

  Bonita threw herself back into the management of the staff, the management of the ranch and trying to get Val settled in his new home. Whenever thoughts of her mother’s end-of-life decisions rose to the surface of her mind, she swiped them away. There wasn’t any use in dwelling on it. Evelyn had the right to decide and now it was up to Bonita to do her best to support her decision, no matter how much she disagreed.

  “Good morning!” Her father startled her when he walked up to her.

  She stopped brushing Val for a moment and hugged her dad. “Hi.”

  “How’s he doing for you?”

  Bonita shook her head in frustration. “He fights me every step of the way. He doesn’t want to be brushed, he doesn’t want to get his hooves picked, he doesn’t want to be ridden. He tried to buck me off when I mounted yesterday. I called Candace and she’s stunned. As far as she knows, they didn’t have any trouble with him.”

  “Just give him some time. This is a big change for him.” George rubbed the horse’s neck.

  “I know.” She went back to brushing the tall horse. “I just wish that you’d listened to me about waiting to buy a show horse. I’m too busy with mom to train right now.”

  “That’s exactly why this is the right time,” her father argued. “You need to do something other than focus on your mother. No one doubts your devotion to her, but it’s not healthy to never take a break. You need to take some time for yourself. When you hover, it upsets your mother. We were both happy to see you take some time for yourself and take a trip. It’s healthy for you to get away. You know if your mother had it her way, you’d be back East in medical school.”

  Bonita dropped the brush in the bucket and grabbed a mane and tail comb. “I’m not leaving.” She started to brush the tangles from Val’s thick gray-and-white tail.

  “You are your mother’s daughter.”

  “That’s true.”

  There were a couple of minutes of silence between them before her father broached a new subject. “Speaking of getting away. Your mother and I have decided that it’s time for me to re-involve myself with the business.”

  Bonita stopped combing Val’s tail and looked up at her father. “What does that mean?”

  Her father’s hands were in his front pockets. “Some traveling.”

  She straightened, tossed the comb in the bucket, and hands on hips, she shook her head in disbelief. “You’re going to start traveling? Now?”

  “You have everything under control here. I’m just staring at the walls with nothing to do. I’m not ready to be a retired person.”

  “M
om is dying.” Bonita nearly choked on the words. “Every day there’s a change for the worse. How can you leave her?”

  There was a flash of anger mixed with sorrow in her father’s brown eyes. He turned his face away from her, and when he looked back, she could see that his eyes were wet with unshed tears. She had never seen her father close to crying—not even when her mother was diagnosed.

  “She is your mother, but she...” her father pointed toward the house “...is the love of my life. And I am losing her. Day by goddamn day, I’m losing her. And there’s nothing I can do to stop it.”

  George sucked in a breath and blew it out. “This is torture. My Evelyn understands why I need to do something to occupy my time.”

  Wordlessly, Bonita crossed to her father and hugged him tightly. Maybe she would have been less understanding if she hadn’t gone on that four-day trip with Gabe. That break had given her a boost of energy and a renewed perspective. Why should she begrudge her father the same time of respite from the stark reality of their lives?

  “I’m sorry, Dad.”

  “No.” George kissed her on the top of her head. “I’m sorry.”

  * * *

  Gabe had another transport job after he delivered Val and when he returned to Bozeman the following week, the first order of business was going to see Bonita. He had received a distressed text from her while he was out of town and when he returned her call, he could tell that she needed him. So he rearranged his schedule a bit and made sure he could spend some extra time at the ranch with her.

  “Gabe!” Bonita smiled at him in greeting and reached out to shake his hand. “Thank you for squeezing us in. I know you have a busy schedule.”

  There it was, the face that had been on his mind for the last week. He couldn’t seem to get Bonita out of his head. He had missed her on his last transport gig, which was a huge surprise. He always loved traveling alone. Yet after one trip with Bonita, traveling alone had lost some of its shine.

  He accepted her hand, liking the way her slender fingers felt in his hand. Her hair was pulled back into one thick braid down her back and she still had that faint, sweet scent of lavender that tickled his senses. He did notice that even though her makeup was done, she had dark circles under puffy eyes, as if she hadn’t been sleeping well or she’d been crying.

  Like most owners with a problem horse, Bonita skipped the pleasantries and started to unload all of the issues she’d been having with the Oldenburg.

  “I honestly thought that you were only going to be working with Jasmine, but Val has been much more than I bargained for.”

  “I’ll work with him.” He felt like he wanted to give her a hug—she looked like she might need one.

  “Where should we start?”

  “Let’s work with your mom’s horse first. You said something about this situation being time sensitive?”

  * * *

  Time sensitive was an understatement. Time was running out. The one gift Bonita could give her mom was time with Jasmine.

  Jasmine had been six months old when Evelyn bought her; she’d trained her and then showed Jasmine for many years, and the Thoroughbred was one of the great loves of her life. Not being able to spend time with Jasmine was a constant source of sadness for Evelyn.

  So much had changed from the first time Bonita had met Gabe. In the beginning, she had dismissed him as a backwoods cowboy. Now, she felt relieved to see his truck pull up next to the barn. He had a gift with horses and even though she had been riding since she was a kid, she’d never had any sort of horsemanship training. Val needed to learn how to respect humans when they were on the ground and on his back; the horse needed to have specific training to accept her as the head of his herd, and that was the kind of skill that a horseman like Gabe possessed. She needed him and she knew it now.

  “This is Jasmine.” Bonita crossed to the other side of the aisle to the Thoroughbred’s stall. “She’s twenty-two. My mom has had her since she was a baby, but she hasn’t been able to spend any time with her lately because Jasmine is petrified of the electric wheelchair.”

  “Tell me what you’ve tried so far.”

  “We’ve tried several times with Mom in the wheelchair. I’ve tried just working with Jasmine and the wheelchair without Mom. For a while, we were using the manual chair, but it became too much for Mom. Transferring from the electric wheelchair to the manual just for a short visit with Jasmine was hard on Mom. And really, Mom wants to see Jasmine when she wants to see her, not when it takes an army of people to get her there.”

  Bonita had thought long and hard about introducing Gabe to her mother. Some people could be awkward around people in wheelchairs and were uncomfortable with her mother’s speech. But it made sense that if Gabe was going to help them with Jasmine that he would need to get the entire picture.

  “I was thinking that you could meet my mom, get a look at her wheelchair.”

  “All right.”

  Bonita walked with Gabe to the front door of the house. She paused before opening it. “My mom can be difficult to understand. I’ll translate for her.”

  If Gabe was surprised by her comment, it didn’t show on his face as he took off his hat and smoothed his hair back from his forehead with his hand. It was endearing to see him make an attempt to look nice for her mom.

  Evelyn was spending the morning in the great room, her favorite room in the house, and she was using her computer that she could control with her eyes. Danielle, the morning nurse, was sitting at the other end of the room, giving her mom some space but still within striking distance if help was needed.

  “Mom.” Bonita suddenly had a weird knot in her stomach at the thought of introducing Gabe to her mother. “This is Gabe Brand, the horse trainer I was telling you about. Gabe, this is my mom, Evelyn.”

  Bonita was very focused on Gabe’s face as he extended his hand to her mother. Evelyn lifted her arm as much as she could so Gabe could take her hand. He didn’t look uncomfortable around her mom at all, and it made Bonita like him even more.

  “It’s a pleasure to meet you, Evelyn,” Gabe said in that country drawl of his that Bonita had begun to appreciate and even miss over the last week.

  Bonita also introduced Gabe to the nurse and then she wanted to focus on the purpose of the trainer’s visit. This was a working day for him and they needed to accomplish as much as possible on the first day.

  “Do you think Jasmine will be able to get used to my chair?” Evelyn asked, the look in her eyes hopeful.

  Gabe looked to Bonita for a translation and once he understood the question, he nodded. “Yes, ma’am. She’ll get used to it. I’ve seen plenty of horses work with people in wheelchairs. We just have to figure out how to teach Jasmine her job. What do you want her to do?”

  “I want to visit her while she’s in her stall,” Evelyn said. “And I want her to come up to me when I go to the fence. She used to always run up to see me when she was in the pasture.”

  “I believe we can get her there pretty quick,” Gabe said and his confidence gave Bonita hope.

  “Thank you,” Evelyn struggled to say, her breath labored.

  “It’s my pleasure.” Gabe put his hat back on his head and tipped the brim toward Evelyn. “I’d better get to it now.”

  Bonita gave her mom a quick hug and a kiss and Evelyn touched her hand.

  “Mija,” her mother said with a renewed hope in her eyes. “I like him.”

  Chapter Eight

  Gabe first took Jasmine into the round pen and worked with her, asking her to back up, move her front feet and then move her hind feet on command. Next, he stood in the center of the pen and asked her to trot and then canter on command.

  In all her years working with horses, Bonita had never seen anyone train a horse without a lunge line attached to the halter. All Gabe had was a training tool with a flag on the end and he rarely
used his voice. It was like watching a dance—Jasmine would toss her head, pin back her ears as a sign of acting disrespectful, and Gabe snapped the flag sending the mare forward. If Jasmine slowed down, Gabe would lift the flag to ask her to speed up her pace. Sometimes he only moved toward the horse’s hindquarter to put pressure on her and she increased her speed. Watching Gabe train a horse was mesmerizing—she never tired of it.

  “Now that’s not something you see every day.” Bonita’s father joined her at the round pen.

  “It’s amazing what Gabe can do with a horse,” she told her father. “I’ve never seen anything like it. Just look at Jasmine—she’s never been this attentive during training.”

  “Does he work miracles?” George asked gruffly. “Your mom is more excited about Gabe being here than I’ve seen her in a long time.”

  Bonita heard the worry in her father’s voice. Neither one of them wanted Evelyn to experience another disappointment with Jasmine if Gabe didn’t succeed.

  “I honestly believe that if anyone can get Jasmine to accept the electric wheelchair, it’s Gabe.”

  “I trust you, mija. If you say he can do it, then I believe he can.”

  Her father hugged her before he left the ranch to run into town to pick up some of Evelyn’s medicine. Her mother took a regular round of anxiety and pain medicines to keep her as comfortable as possible.

  Gabe was standing in the center of the pen with a winded Jasmine standing beside him.

  “You see, she’s decided that it’s better to stand in here with me instead of out there on the track working,” Gabe explained. “Doing this with Val a couple of times a week would go a long way. Remember—whoever moves the feet wins. So when you move a horse’s feet, you’re becoming the leader of the herd. That’s how it works. You have to be the lead mare.”

  Gabe asked Bonita to get her mom’s spare electric wheelchair and bring it out to the pen. It was an older model, but they had kept it just in case the newer version needed to be repaired.

  Bonita brought the wheelchair down the ramp but left it out of sight. Usually, Jasmine tried to bolt in the opposite direction when she saw the wheelchair.