Yes, there was a 20 mph speed limit. But the old lady in front of him was going less than 10 miles an hour, and it was a no-pass zone. James didn't have any excuses for the officer. His white knuckles gripped the steering wheel as he listened to the scritch of the officer's pen on paper. He stared stolidly ahead at the children flocking to the nearby elementary school, and knew that he would never make it to the hospital in time.

Twenty minutes later, $250 poorer, with a traffic court appointment scheduled for next Tuesday, he pulled into the hospital parking lot. The early-morning South Texas sun was already shining down on the asphalt and creating shimmering waves of heat. Good thing the old man didn't ask him to bring him an ice cream bar. He had to shield his eyes from the sun as he approached the gleaming windows of the front facade of Harlington General Hospital.

Barney was supposed to be on the 4th floor. Room 423. He was scheduled for surgery at 8:30 AM, and it was now 8:32 AM by James's watch. He had told Barney that he would be there, as soon as he could. He even left home an hour before he normally would, but traffic had still snarled up the freeway.

Finally, at 8:37 AM James's elevator arrived on the 4th floor. He read the signs that directed him to the nurses' station. Inquiring about Barney, he was told that he had not gone to surgery yet.

"Honey, don't you know? Surgeons are always late." The pretty pink-faced nurse smiled at him and then returned to her charting. "Go on in there. I'm sure he'll be happy to see you. Just don't give him any cookies. He's been asking for them all morning. And he can't eat anything before surgery, you know."

As James walked into the room, he was blinded by the light coming in from the windows. Everything was white. The walls, the floor, the bedsheets. And even Barney. Barney was lost among the sheets. He was a pale shadow of the man that James used to know. Even so, as James approached the bed, Barney saw him and smiled, and his smile was yellowish brown -- the color of decades of tobacco chewin'.

"Jimmy. I thought you wouldn't show," he whispered, smiling.

"You know I keep my promises." James reached for Barney's hand and squeezed it, too scared to shake it, else he might break a bone in Barney's frail hands.

"I know." Barney sighed. "I'm glad you came, Jimmy." He became quiet. Looking out of the windows at the mesquite fields and blue sky, he gave a weak sigh, like the sound of a souffle that's been pulled out of the oven too soon.

"What's wrong, Barney."

Barney turned to look at him. His eyes had changed from the gleaming black beads that James knew, to sunken grey pearls -- recessed from months of fighting illness, and frosted over from the cataracts that were the result of old age.

"Jimmy. They told me that I'm going to die."

James was stunned. He was silent for a moment. "What?"

"Don't make me repeat it," Barney sighed again. "I'm going to surgery today, but they told me, they won't be able to resect it all. This is just a surgery to help me eat again."

James still didn't understand. "But. . . "

"They're going to take out most of my stomach. And then they're going to reconnect me, but well, the surgeon told me it's going to be bad. And actually, I'm not even sure I want to go through with the surgery, if it's not going to cure me, anyway. But the surgeon wants to try."

Barney kept talking, but James wasn't hearing any more of it. He felt a strange dryness in his throat. He wanted to swallow, but he was afraid to swallow because he knew that if he couldn't get that strange feeling out of his throat, he was going to either vomit or cry or both.

He had known Barney all his life. Barney was his father's best friend. He was there for James when his dad died. He was the one who was there for him at his college graduate ceremony. He was James's surrogate father at his wedding.

And he was dying.

"And I miss sailing, but I just haven't had the time nor energy, you know? Everything tires me out. People tire me out." Barney had changed the subject while James had been lost in thought. "I want you to have her, Jimmy."

"Huh?" James was confused.

"My sailboat. I want you to have her."

"But, Barney, I don't know how to sail."

"I knew I wanted you to have her. So I put it in my will. That's one thing that Sarah did right before our divorce. She got me to write up my will. You know, before you and Elizabeth split up for good, you'd better write up your will, too. Divorces are nasty business, I tell ya."

"Barney, we're not splitting up. She's just gone a lot."

Barney winced, and moved his arm. "This IV is killing me." He sighed again, and rummaged around the sheets for the call button. "She's parked in Salalah, Oman. I was going to hire someone to sail her back to Corpus Christi, but I just didn't have time. And the doctors have kind of sucked me dry. Even if I had the energy to find a skipper for her, I couldn't afford to hire anyone."

James was only partially listening. He was still reeling from Barney's open admission that the doctors had told him he was going to die.

"I always planned to sail her around the world, you know." Barney chuckled, and then grimaced as his abdominal muscles spasmed. "Ah, it even hurts to laugh, Jimmy. Promise me you'll die before something like this happens to you."

James found it hard to see Barney through the haze that was threatening to blur his vision. "I promise, Barney."

At that moment, Barney's IV pump began a shrill beeping like that of a cheap keyboard synthesizer. A nurse walked in.

"Time for surgery?" James asked.

"No, dear. The procedure scheduled before Mr. Groswell's is taking a bit longer than expected. We've had to reschedule Mr. Groswell's resection for tomorrow at 7:00 AM. Now hold still, dear, I think your IV has infiltrated."

As the nurse quickly set about placing a new line in another of Barney's extremities, James -- who was queasy enough in ninth grade biology when he became famous for fainting at the first cut into their anatomy frog -- bid a quick farewell to Barney, and slipped out.

As he headed down the hallway, another beeping noise began emanating from Barney's room. "Can we please shut that dang thing off?"

"Mr. Groswell, it's just your pulse oximeter. Now hold still, please," was the last thing he heard as the elevator door closed.

James realized he was still holding the paper bag of cookies he'd brought Barney at his request.