An Unwilling Patient

In this short story, an 85-year-old Cochiti Pueblo man is dying of cancer, but when his daughter tries to put him into a hospital, he disappears. Sheriff's Deputy Alec Bluestone remembers the old man from his youth. Worried about him, Bluestone goes up into the mountains to look for the old man and make sure he's all right. What he discovers are timeless truths. This story, told with a light touch of humor, won the 2010 Society of Southwestern Authors Writing Contest and was published in the 2010 issue of Story Teller magazine.