Thanks everyone for the prayers. My family is doing better, but we are all still very sad. For those of you who asked, my cousin died of injuries from a rodeo accident.

Here is the story:

Chapter 7: Meeting Gabrielle

Later in that week, Stephanie had progressively gotten worse. The doctor told Steph that she couldn't get out of bed because they still hadn't fixed her broken rib. He didn't want to perform surgery because he was afraid that there would be major complications since she was still in a very serious state. But Stephanie defied the doctor's orders and carefully got out of bed and wheeled herself to the kid's playroom.

When she got there, she saw another girl about her age. The girl had long brown hair that looked like it was thinning. She looked very pale. Stephanie thought that she looked sad, so she wheeled herself over there to see if she could cheer her up.

"Hi, I'm Stephanie," she told the girl.

The girl looked up at her hauntingly. Stephanie saw the girls light brown eyes grow huge as the girl looked up at her from her painting.

The girl then spoke hesitantly, "I'm G-Gabrielle."

Steph gave her a huge smile and looked at her large, but tidy painting. She saw a nice red brick house with a porch swing. Stephanie then looked closer and saw a petite brunette with a tiny kitten in her arms. Steph realized that it was Gabrielle.

"Is that your house?" she softly asked Gabrielle.

"Y-Yes," she said shakily. She then pointed to the small, white kitten and said, "That's my cat, Marshmallow."

Stephanie smiled at Gabrielle, "You are really good at drawing. I'm not too good at it."

Gabrielle looked up at Steph and gave her the first real smile that Stephanie had seen.

"I could teach you if you'd like," she said trying to hide her excitement. Steph had a feeling that this was the first real excitement that Gabrielle had had in a while.

"Thanks! That would be great Gabrielle."

"You can call me Gabby if you'd like," she said softly as she tore the paper off her easel and replaced it with a brand new sheet of paper.

Gabby then gave Stephanie a small brush and gave her a RoseArt paint set.

They then proceeded to work on a new painting for Stephanie.

I know, this is short, but I wanted to have a whole chapter devoted to this. Once again, thanks for all the reviews. They mean a lot.

-Katie