I’ve seen families fight over money, jewelry, even cars. But I’d never seen anyone try to take a dying man’s dog — not until the day Rachel Patterson showed up in our ICU with two police officers and a stack of legal papers.
Her father, Marcus “Bull” Patterson, was a biker — a tough old man covered in tattoos and scars, with a Great Dane named Duke who never left his side. Bull was twelve days into recovery from a triple bypass. He’d coded twice, fought pneumonia, and somehow pulled through. Every nurse in the unit agreed on one thing: that dog kept him alive. When Bull first woke after surgery, the only word he managed to say was, “Duke?”