Re:Life (Yellowstone)

Dakota was feeling stressed that day. That was why she said what she did to the old man.

In hindsight, it was perhaps the wisest thing she'd ever said in her life.

She picked him up at a retirement home not far from the Rez; a withered, emaciated ninety-year-old. His race was indeterminable, he was so withered by time, but his name on the paperwork the con-home staff had given her identified him as Henry Standing Bear, which, she was reasonably sure, made him Native American. He was suffering from cancer, not just to one particular body part but throughout his entire body.

Dakota took one look at him and knew he wasn't long for this world. His breathing was ragged and irregular, his skin pale and feverish. His body probably weighed about 75 pounds if he was lucky. There was absolutely no muscle on his bones and his flesh hung loosely from every limb.

Despite all of this, he was mentally quite aware of his surroundings, something else she recognized almost immediately.

"How are you doing, Mr. Standing Bear?" Dakota asked him, bending over his form on the hospital bed.

"Can't..." he puffed softly, "... breathe."

Dakota nodded, taking the stethoscope out of the leg pocket of her jumpsuit and putting it in her ears. She listened to his lungs, hearing nothing but bad news. He was barely moving any air at all. Dakota had only been a paramedic for three years, but even a newbie could have seen that Mr. Standing Bear's survival on the trip to the hospital was in question. He needed a breathing tube placed in his lungs to help him.

The nurse (and Dakota used that term very loosely) was the text-book definition of white trash. Bleach blonde, sixty or so pounds overweight, and chewing a large wad of bubble gum as she watched them from the doorway. She'd placed a facemask on him but had only turned the flow to two liters per minute. The effect of this was to give him less oxygen than was available in the atmosphere, since the mask was a closed system. Business as usual in a place like this.

Dakota's partner, without being asked, switched the supply tubing to their portable tank and cranked it up to fifteen liters per minute. This helped Mr. Standing Bear a little, but not much.

"He needs to be intubated," Dakota said to no one in particular, referring to the placement of a breathing tube.

"No, no, no!" the nurse yelled, startling her. "He's a DNR! You can't put a tube in!"

Mr. Standing Bear gave her a contemptuous glance and Else grabbed her arm and pulled her out into the hall. DNR stood for 'Do not resuscitate', a physician order, commonly given to people like Mr. Standing Bear, ordering paramedics and hospital personnel not to use advanced life support measures to save their life.

After all, what would be the point of bringing Mr. Standing Bear back from the dead only so he could continue to die of cancer? But she could have found a more tactful way of informing Dakota of this fact.

"Do you have a copy of the DNR?" Dakota asked her pointedly.

The nurse dug through the file she had for a moment and then produced the form. Dakota looked at it, making sure it was legal. Patient's name, the words DNR or NO CODE, and the doctor's signature were all present.

"Okay," she said, handing it back. "You might consider working on your tact a little in the future," she advised. "Mr. Standing Bear can hear everything you say."

The nurse scoffed at this, giving Dakota a condescending look. "He's a gork," she told her, using medical slang for an unresponsive person, or vegetable. "And an Indian on top of that. What's the big deal?"

Dakota turned away from her in disgust. As jaded as she'd become doing this job, it never failed to amaze her how crass, incompetent, and tactless con home nurses could be. It was one of those situations where you had to figure that if they were any good at what they did, they wouldn't be working there.

She returned to her patient and looked at him. His breathing, temporarily relieved by the oxygen increase was now worsening once again. "Mr. Standing Bear?" she asked him, speaking loudly in case he was hard of hearing. "I have a doctor's order not to assist your breathing mechanically. Do you understand?"

Looking in her eyes, he nodded his understanding.

"Is that your wish, sir?" she asked him. "For me not to do anything?"

He smiled slightly. "Yes," he panted. "It's..." A pause to breathe, "... my time."

"As you wish," she told him.

They loaded him onto their gurney and wheeled him out to the ambulance. Once in the back Dakota hooked him up to her EKG machine in order to allow her to watch his heart rate. She put her pulse oximeter on his finger, looking at the display for a reading. The pulse ox registered the amount of oxygen saturation in a person's blood. A normal reading for a person breathing room air was around 99%. Mr. Standing Bear was breathing one hundred percent oxygen and his reading was 74%. Yes, he was dying fast.

"Mr. Standing Bear?" she addressed him. His eyes creaked open to look at her.

"I'm going to start an IV on you," she told him. "Maybe they can give you something at the hospital to… you know… help you with the pain and the discomfort."

He smiled, nodding at her.

Dakota went to work, setting up a bag of saline and hanging it from a hook on the ceiling of the ambulance. His veins were so fragile she was forced to use the smallest needle they carried, the kind that is meant to be used on infants, in order to establish the line. She threaded it in slowly, feeling terrible about the fact that advancing it at this rate was probably painful for him.

"I'm sorry, Mr. Standing Bear," she told him when she finally secured the line. "I don't like to do it that slow, but your veins are not in the best shape. It's better to do it that way than to miss it and have to try again."

"Thank..." A pause for another breath, "... you."

"No problem."

While she adjusted the drip rate, Dakota noticed him staring at her, a strange smile on his face. He took a few deep breaths, as if he was storing up oxygen, and then started to speak.

"You're a... good woman," he said, panting. "You treat me... with... respect... where... others don't."

"I'm just doing my job," Dakota told him, returning his smile.

He shook his head. "Been taken... before," he said. "Not all... like you. Not at... all."

"Well," Dakota shrugged, "I try."

"What..." he asked, "is your... greatest... wish?"

"My greatest wish?" she asked, raising her eyebrows. He nodded.

Dakota laughed, thinking of her life. She was a twenty-five-year-old paramedic who had been doing a job she didn't want for too long. In short, she was in a rut she saw no way out of and had been dwelling on that, as she was prone to doing, that shift.

For that reason, she answered Mr. Standing Bear the way she did.

"I'd like to be a kid again," she told him truthfully, "knowing what I know now. How about you, Mr. Standing Bear?"

He smiled, not answering her question. He simply said, "not bad," and then his eyes closed.

His breathing became rapid for a moment and then ceased entirely. Dakota looked at him in alarm, knowing she could do something about it but was being railroaded by a doctor's order. She'd encountered this situation before in her career, but it was never easy.

Dakota watched the heart monitor after Mr. Standing Bear's breathing stopped. His heart rate accelerated to more than 160 for a few moments and then began to slow down. It slowed to less than twenty and then ceased entirely, leaving a squiggly line tracing across her EKG machine. The squiggles soon turned to a flat line.

Mr. Standing Bear was dead.

Dakota finished out her shift, not thinking too much about Mr. Standing Bear once she'd dropped him off at the hospital. She ran a few more calls, ate dinner from a greasy fast-food joint, and then went home to her cheap apartment where she fell asleep on her couch.

.

.

.

When she woke up the next morning, everything felt… off.

Instead of the ceiling of her apartment, Dakota found herself surrounded by walls decorated with posters she hadn't seen since she was a kid. Nostalgia mixed with confusion, creating a peculiar brew of emotions. It wasn't just the posters on the wall, she felt smaller somehow. Her legs were straight but her toes weren't touching the edge of her mattress.

"What is going on?" she muttered and was startled by the child-sized voice that filled the room.

She sat up, looking around and asked, "Who is that?"

The realization only hit her when she saw there was no one else in the room: it was her voice that was childlike.

Dakota looked down at her hands. They were half the size they were when she went to sleep. She looked around the room, this time focusing on it rather than looking for another person and recognized it instantly—her childhood bedroom at her Pop-Pops house.

Sliding out of bed, she had to drop a few inches for the first time in years before her feet touched the ground. Staring back at her was the face of her…she didn't know the exact age but she didn't even look like a teenager and certainly not the grown woman she was just last night.

"What's going on?" she mumbled, the words barely audible. The posters, the small bookshelf—everything was from a happier time in her past.

Was this a dream? Dakota was half expecting the room to dissolve around, revealing her familiar adult apartment as she woke up.

"Dakota? Are you alright?"

That voice…it was a voice she hadn't heard in years. She slowly turned her head, and to her shock, saw her Pop-Pop standing in the doorway with a worried expression on his weathered face.

Dakota's heart skipped a beat. Without a word, she ran across the room, closing the distance between them. Her Pop-Pop must have seen the distress on her face and wrapped her up in a tight hug that felt horribly real.

"Pop-Pop?" Dakota croaked out, a mixture of disbelief and longing in her voice, breathing in the familiar scent of her grandfather—a complex blend of leather, hay, and sun-warmed earth.

He studied her carefully, his deep-set eyes filled with worry. "You screamed. Did you have a nightmare?" The familiar timber of his voice—a sound she hadn't heard in years—was both comforting and surreal.

Dakota struggled to find words. "I... I don't know. This is... it's impossible," she managed to say, her hands gesturing to the room around them.

Pop-Pop's brow furrowed. "Must have been some nightmare," he said softly, his voice gentle despite his typically gruff demeanor. "You've always had quite the imagination."

Dakota didn't know what to say. How to explain what was going on. She nodded slowly, the weight of her situation hanging heavily in the air.

"It was just a nightmare," Pop-Pop smiled gently, his fingers brushing away a strand of hair from her forehead. "Come on, go to your bed. Everything will make more sense after a good night's sleep."

Dakota wanted to believe him and accept this comforting explanation. The room, her Pop-Pop, all seemed so real. She glanced back at the mirror, catching another glimpse of her younger self as her Pop-Pop guided her back to the bed. He tucked her in with the same care he had when Dakota was a child. She was still confused and freaked out, but the softness of the familiar sheets, the comforting background of her childhood room, and the presence of her Pop-Pop lulled her into a sense of security.

Before she knew it, she was asleep again.

In her sleep, Dakota found herself in a vast, misty space. The ground beneath her feet felt solid but looked like swirling clouds. Through the haze, she could make out a figure approaching – Henry Standing Bear, but not as she had last seen him. He stood tall and strong, his body restored to what must have been his prime.

"Choose," his voice echoed through the mist. "If you are to return, you must choose a gift to take with you."

Before her, images began to form in the mist – a person flying through clouds, another moving objects with their mind, someone becoming invisible.

"Any power?" Dakota asked,

Henry nodded. "Any power you can imagine."

Dakota thought carefully. She'd seen enough movies and read enough comics to know that flashy powers weren't always the most useful. What she wanted was something that would let her help her Pop-Pop but wouldn't be so obvious that it got the attention of the government.

"I choose the power of the Tovenaar," she said finally.

Henry's eyebrows raised slightly. "The Tovenaar?"

Dakota nodded. Then she went on to explain who they were. Most people probably didn't know since they weren't really mainstream; "They're from the show Dwight in Shining Armor. They can take someone's skills by consuming their blood, saliva, and tears. They don't steal the skills – they copy them. The original person keeps everything they know, but the Tovenaar gains that knowledge too."

Henry studied her for a long moment, then smiled. "Not bad," he said, echoing his final words from the ambulance. "Not bad at all."

He reached out and touched her forehead. Dakota felt a warm sensation spread through her body, like honey flowing through her veins. Then the mist began to thicken, swirling around her until she could see nothing at all...

.

.

.

When Dakota woke up again, she was expecting to be back in her apartment, and for everything that happened last night to be a horrible dream. But she was still in her old room. It was a surreal feeling to realize that last night wasn't a dream.

"This is not a dream. I'm a kid again, and Pop-Pop's alive," she muttered to herself. She had a chance to rewrite the direction of her life; she could spend more time with Pop-Pop. But a small part of her brain whispered that this might still be an incredibly vivid dream. Dakota pushed the thought away and swung her legs over the side of the bed.

Her bare feet touched the cool wooden floor. The familiar layout of her childhood home surrounded her—posters she remembered, a bookshelf crammed with old books, and the slight crack in the wall near the door that she knew so well.

Dakota stepped out of her room to start the day. The wonderful smell of breakfast filled the air. She recognized the smell of her Pop-Pop's hotcakes. It was a smell she thought she had lost forever.

In the kitchen, her mother moved between the stove and the counter, humming softly. Pancake batter sizzled in the pan, creating a golden-brown landscape of breakfast. The scene was so normal, so perfectly ordinary, that for a moment Dakota couldn't breathe.

"Good morning," her Pop-Pop said, turning with a smile. "Did you sleep well after that nightmare?"

Dakota nodded, her throat tight with emotions she couldn't fully explain. "Yeah," she managed to say, trying to shake off the strangeness of the situation. "I'm okay."

Under the table, she pinched her arm hard. The sharp pain made her wince, but nothing changed. The kitchen didn't dissolve. Pop-Pop didn't vanish. She'd read somewhere that you couldn't feel pain in dreams, and even if you could, realizing you were dreaming was supposed to wake you up.

"You're awful quiet this morning," Pop-Pop said, cutting into his breakfast. "Still thinking about that nightmare?"

Dakota shook her head, forcing herself to take a bite of her breakfast. The taste was exactly as she remembered—slightly crispy on the edges, fluffy in the middle. Her adult self had tried for years to recreate these pancakes, but they never tasted quite right.

"I'm okay," she said, still marveling at her high-pitched voice. "Just... thinking."

"Thinking about what?" Pop-Pop asked, his weathered face creasing with that familiar smile she'd missed so much.

Dakota looked at him – really looked at him. His hair was still more pepper than salt, his hands still steady as they held his fork and knife. How many more breakfasts like this did they have together? How many moments had she taken for granted?

"About how much I love you," she said, the words tumbling out before she could stop them. Her child's voice made the declaration sound innocent, but she felt the full weight of adult emotions behind it.

Pop-Pop's fork paused halfway to his mouth. He set it down and reached across the table to pat her hand. "I love you too, kiddo. But what brought this on?"

Dakota shrugged, trying to act more like the child she appeared to be. "Just wanted you to know."

She could feel tears threatening to form in her eyes, but she blinked them back. This was real. Somehow, impossibly, she had been given a second chance. She could do everything differently this time. She could spend more time with Pop-Pop, and really listen to his stories instead of rolling her eyes like she did as a kid. She could be there when he...

"Pop-Pop?" she asked, cutting another piece of pancake. "Can we go fishing today? Like we used to?"

His face lit up. In her first life, she'd stopped wanting to go fishing around this age, too busy with her friends. She remembered how his invitations had gradually stopped coming.

"Of course we can," he said, his smile warming her heart. "After chores, I'll dig up some worms."

Dakota nodded, fighting back another wave of emotion. She had a chance to rewrite all her regrets, to fix the mistakes she hadn't even made yet. The weight of that responsibility was enormous, but so was the joy of having this opportunity.