"You're going to need a goat. For milk," I said to Duffy. "Maybe two or three of them."

"Not a problem," he said. He would have acquired nursing elephants if I'd told him to. He just wanted his little girl to smile again. I then asked both of them to please get out of the exam room and let me work. What I was about to do was a bloody, difficult, and ugly operation.

Excerpted from When the Wind Blows, excerpted with permission of the publisher.  Published by Little, Brown & Co. Copyright 1998 by James Patterson