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Cloyd stood a step from the door of the hospital room. His father was in that room. "Are you sure you have to see him in person to deliver those flowers?" the nurse asked.

"They won't pay me unless I deliver them in person."

Cloyd didn't think it would work if he told her who he was. He had run away from the Ute group home in Colorado and hitched all the way to Window Rock, Arizona, to find his father. That's where the Navajos kept the records about everyone in the whole tribe, and there he found out that yes, there was a Leeno Atcitty, and his address was listed as the Indian Health Service Hospital in Window Rock. He was a patient there.

Cloyd wondered how he might get into his father's hospital room to see him. If he told them who he was, there would be trouble because he had run away. Then he had an idea. He used the last of his money to buy some flowers.

For years Cloyd had been asking every Navajo he happened to meet if they knew a man named Leeno Atcitty. "What does he look like?" they'd ask. Cloyd couldn't tell them; he'd never known his father. He'd grown up without him, with only his sister and his grandmother. Cloyd knew just two things about his father-he was a Navajo, and he had disappeared after Cloyd was born. Nobody had seen him since.

When Cloyd was little, he used to talk to his sister about how badly he wanted to find his father, but she didn't seem to need to know him at all, so he had kept his dream inside. In the year since he'd been sent away, the more lonely he became, the stronger his desire grew to find his father. Now here he was with his heart pounding, following the nurse downthe long hallway to his father's room.

The nurse stopped short of the door and said, "Why don't you let me take the flowers in."

Cloyd didn't know if this was going to work. He wasn't a good liar. He said, "I'm supposed to deliver them myself."

"I've never seen you here before. Who did you say you're working for?"

He knew he had to do something quick. Like a rabbit in the sagebrush, Cloyd was into the room.

What he saw terrified him. This wasn't even a human being. It was more like a shriveled-up mummy attached to a bunch of tubes. One went into his nose and one went into his arm. A third came out from asked under the sheet. How could this be his father? Was it even alive? "What's the matter With him?" he asked as evenly as he could.

"Have you ever heard of the expression 'brain dead'? It means his heart and his lungs still work, but his brain is ... well, dead. I tried to tell You, it's not a pretty sight. He won't know about the flowers."

Cloyd had to keep talking, or the nurse would get onto him. He had to put away his terror, not show any emotion on his face. He was good at that. "How did this happen?"

'Car accident," she said. "I don't know any details."How long has he been like this?""Four years.',

"Are you sure he's Leeno Atcitty?"

"Yes, of course."

"Where's he from?"

"I think I heard that once ... Utah, I think. Monunent Valley. I wonder if this could be the man you were looking for. Nobody ever sent him flowers before. "

He knew it was his father. His father came from Monument Valley. Besides, the Navajos listed only one Leeno Atcitty,

Cloyd shrugged. "The people that ordered the flowers said he had a broken leg. Is there another Leeno Atcitty in the hospital?"

lie sneaked one last look at his father. The terror returned full force. How could this ... wrinkled, shrunken shell of a human being be his father? He forgot to wait for her reply. He turned and left without looking back.

"No," she said after him. "I'm sure there isn't.... There must have been some mistake."

He threw the flowers in the trash.