Shelly's Second Chance (The Wish Granters, Book One) (12 page)

*****

“Well, that was a little
unexpected,” Alanna said it dryly. She and Joe hadn’t de-manifested, but had
merely stepped behind one of the huge columns in the Bellagio lobby to watch this
drama from a distance. Casino employees converged on Shelly, wrapped the banner
that said $250,000 around her shoulders, led her toward the center of the lobby
where the crowd had already gathered, chanting “Winner, winner, winner,” over
and over again in a manner Alanna found slightly menacing.

“Unexpected for us, maybe,”
Joe said. “But not the casino. They set the payout odds and they must have
known this would be the day the $250,000 would pay out. Because look at that
banner and here come the showgirls. They were prepared for this.”

Alanna raised an eyebrow.
“It’s rigged?”

“No, not rigged, exactly,”
Joe said, watching Shelly stumble through an impromptu conga line led by one of
the showgirls. “They knew which machine and the approximate time the payoff
would happen, but they had no way of knowing who would be standing in front of
that machine, who would happen to drop the coin that would set all this in
motion.”

Shelly looked like she was
going to faint as the showgirls bounced her around the lobby where the crowd
was chanting and dancing in place. It was an orchestrated but barely contained
sort of mayhem. Alanna watched the scene with a slight frown on her face. “She
doesn’t look happy.”

“It’ll take a second for it
to really sink in. Right now she’s in shock.”

“So what happens next?”

“They’ll have a big ceremony
in the middle of the casino where they present her the real check. I guess they
chose a machine in the lobby to pay off so they could juice up all the people
just checking in, but they’ll make sure the real money is exchanged in the
casino.”

“No, what I meant was, what
happens next for us? She got what she wanted, the big win. Does that mean we’re
done here?”

Joe shook his head. “Now that,” he said slowly, “I can’t
tell you.”

Chapter Twenty-Two

The check was obscenely
enormous, the size of a sofa and made out to Michelle O’Malley in gigantic
letters that everyone could see no matter how far back from the stage they were
standing. Now that Shelly had gotten used to the idea, she was rather enjoying
herself. In the blink of an eye and the push of a button, she had become a
star. And, yes, it was intoxicating.

As Joe had predicted, they
had led her from the lobby to the casino, and onto a small stage designed just
for this purpose. Most of the crowd from the lobby had followed the procession
and, once they entered the casinos, more people had joined in, actually leaving
their slot machines and poker tables to follow the throng of people to the base
of the stage. There were balloons, streamers, and a band was playing “When The
Saints Go Marching In.”

Shelly took some satisfaction
in noting that Grateful Dead, still in the same grungy T-shirt, and Cowboy,
were both in the crowd. She nodded her chin slightly in their direction, as she
imagined a queen might greet her subjects. If only everybody she’d ever known
was here, she thought, all the people back in high school who’d made fun of her
for wearing her Goodwill clothes, anyone who’d ever laughed at her and put her
down for all the times she’d had to beg off from special activities because her
father said they cost too much. They should all be here; they should all see
this moment. Especially Marcus from GA. Shelly smiled and waved to the crowd.

A man in a tuxedo took Shelly
by the hand and led her to a mic. He tapped it as the music faded and the crowd
hushed.

“The Bellagio Hotel and
Casino is very pleased to announce that you, Michelle O’Malley, have won the
Platinum Jackpot. You join an exclusive club of big winners and we’re so
pleased to have you as our guest. We applaud your success.”

He motioned for Shelly to say
something. She took two steps forward and leaned toward the mesh ball at the
top of a black pole he was holding steady for her. Shelly took a deep breath.
Her heart was thumping again and she felt as if she were right at that moment
in a dream, scared she would awaken and find it was all a big nothing. But then
she heard her own voice piped through the room.

“I want to thank the hotel
and all the staff. I’m so excited I don’t know what . . . ”

But before she could finish
the thought or say another word, she saw him, standing close to the stage. His
arms waving to her, yes . . . yes it was him. Ben. He’d come all the way from Virginia. Now he would see she was not what he thought. Not an addict. But a winner. And
she would not be in debt anymore. And she could buy back her ring from that
pawn shop. And . . .

“Ben, Ben, Ben,” she
screeched. “I did it. I won. See? See that check? It’s for me.”

What happened next seemed as
if it was not Shelly herself witnessing it, but a ghost Shelly, looking down on
herself from somewhere far above the casino. It was so fast and at the same
time so slow as if time had been stretched taut, pulled like taffy until it
sagged.

Ben’s arms were waving.
Shelly was at the mic squealing to him as if they were alone in this big
theatre. Then Ben’s arms fell. Both of them at the same time. Fell to his sides
like a bird’s wings folding in. Fell, it seemed to Shelly, in a kind of
implosion like air escaping a balloon. His head wobbled a little. Shelly saw it
but didn’t see it, too. She was so excited. The excitement felt as if it would
last forever. Like she was floating on it and in it. Excitement surrounded her
and yet the crowd had grown silent. Or had it? Was the music still playing? Was
she still the big winner? Her mind was rattling a little song of its own. Ben is
here. I showed Ben. Ben came to see me. Ben is here. Ben is here.

But something was going wrong
with Ben. Her Ben. The Ben she wanted to trust her, to embrace her, to be by
her side always.

“Ben,” she called out. But
Ben had collapsed by then. Fallen in a heap to the floor. His arms twisted at
an odd angle, one elbow sticking out from his body. Ben was on the floor and
the music had stopped and the people weren’t calling her winner anymore. Ben
was not moving. Ben was . . .

“Ben,” Shelly called again and
this time her voice had alarm in it. Fear and confusion. “Ben,” she heard her
own raspy voice again but it was futile. Ben was on the floor and now Shelly
seemed to snap out of her fog. There was running. People and noise and Shelly
bending over, taking Ben’s hand in hers, trying to get him to talk to her. To
say anything.

And then, in a wail of pain
and anguish, “Help. Please help. Somebody call a doctor.” Shelly knelt down
next to Ben. She took his face in her hands and kissed him on the cheek and
said over and over, “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. Please wake up. Just please wake
up. It’s all my fault. Why did you come out here? Oh, Benji. Wake up.”

*****

“Oh God,” Alanna said.
“Nobody told me this was part of the deal. So . . . we grant her wish and what,
she loses her fiancé? Does getting what you want mean you have to pay some sort
of horrible price?”

Alanna and Joe watched from a
corner of the casino as the crowd that had been witness to Shelly’s big moment
split to allow the paramedics through. They seemed to have arrived in a
nanosecond as if they, like the showgirls, were on constant standby. The casino
had gone eerily silent, except for the occasional lone clank of a slot machine
and the sound of Shelly’s sobs.

“I don’t know,” Joe said.
“Ben showing up and collapsing might not be part of the wish, but just a random
coincidence.” Ben was strapped to the stretcher headed toward one of the exits
and the man in the tuxedo had his arm around Shelly’s shoulders, steering her
through the crowd that had transformed from ecstatic to somber in mere seconds.
Her face was so stricken that Joe couldn’t bear to look at her. Instead he
stared at the stage where the oversized cardboard check lay abandoned and he
felt as if he’d been kicked in the ribs.

“Exactly what kind of mission
are we on?” Alanna asked, and when Joe glanced back at her he saw the tears she
was struggling to suppress running slowly down her cheeks.

“You heard the boss. We’re on
a need-to-know basis.”

“Well, damn it,” Alanna said,
wiping tears from her face, “I need to know now. Because it feels more like
we’re punishing this girl than helping her.”

“Come on,” Joe said, holding
out his hand to her. “All we can do is follow them to the hospital and wait.
That way, at least we’ll be there if she needs us.”

They got to the exit as the
ambulance doors slammed shut. As the siren began its woo-ooo woo-ooo wail, Joe
stood as stock still as one of the phony Greek statues inside. His shoulders
set and his eyes took on a wild white stare. Alanna had no idea what to do or
say and, as the siren wail faded, Joe came back to himself but there was a look
on his face that frightened Alanna. Gently she touched his arm and he spun
toward her, fist raised as if he would strike her down. At the last second he
realized who she was and where he was and his hand dropped to his side and his
shoulders slumped.

“What was it?” Alanna asked.

“A memory,” was all he could manage
to say.

Chapter Twenty-Three

Sirens. That’s what Shelly
would remember about the trip to the emergency room. Sirens screaming in her
ears. So loud she couldn’t think. Someone driving her in a limo careening
behind the ambulance through the streets of Las Vegas. The other Las Vegas. The city where real people lived and worked and sent their children to school.
Not the glitzy, glittery, noisy, casino Vegas. Not the Vegas where people came
to be invisible and do naughty things.

Later she would realize it
was a hotel limo. But while it was happening, she was in a stupor of fear. The
siren wailed and she wailed and when they pulled up at the hospital, it became
all about business. The business of saving a life. Bam, they opened the back
doors of the ambulance. Bam, they slid the gurney out the back. Bam, they
extended the legs so it set down on the ground. Bam. Bam. They pushed it
through the automatic doors past the reception area, past all the others
waiting their turns, straight to a team of doctors who’d been alerted to
prepare for their arrival.

“Can you give me a history on
your fiancé?” the admitting nurse was asking Shelly. Behind the wafting
curtain, Ben lay on a hospital bed. The kind that had wheels. So they could
quickly shunt him off to another room where another team of doctors could
examine him, poke, prod, stab at him. But here Shelly sat across a desk from a
middle-aged woman with reams of lists in front of her. She spoke as she checked
off items.

Asthma? No.

Angina? No.

Arrhythmia? No.

And then, “Allergies?”

“What?” Shelly asked. What
did this woman need from her? Shelly wanted to run to Ben. “Can’t I see him?”

“You’re not his wife,” the
nurse told her. “You have no status.”

“What do you mean?” This
mystified Shelly, this term “status.”

“Legally. At the hospital.
You have no legal status. I’m sorry. We can’t let you into his room.”

“He’s not in a room. He’s
behind a damned curtain,”

“Let’s just finish the list.
Does he have any allergies? To drugs?” The nurse looked at Shelly’s blank face.
“You know, like aspirin.”

Aspirin? No. At least she
didn’t think so. Allergies were hardly the sort of thing you discussed on dates
but Shelly didn’t want to tell the nurse she had no real idea what, if
anything, Ben might be allergic to. Evidently they called them admitting nurses
because you had to admit to them you had no idea what you were doing. That you
were just a long-term fiancé and not a wife. That maybe you didn’t really know
each other all that well.

Penicillin? No.

Sulfa? No.

The list went on and on
until, finally, the nurse slipped all the paperwork into a folder and said to
Shelly, “Sign this.”

“What is it?”

“Just a form that attests
you’ve gone through and answered all the questions required by the insurance
company.”

“Oh.” Shelly signed.

“Does your fiancé have
insurance?”

“Yes. I’m sure he does. He
has a good job. Makes gobs of money. But I thought I just signed for the
insurance.”

“You signed the hospital’s
insurance. That’s to protect the hospital. But your fiancé will have to sign
this as well, for his personal insurance. What company covers him?”

Shelly wanted to scream. What
did she know about insurance? When it had been time to opt in at her job she
couldn’t afford the fifteen percent of the premium her company required
employees to pay so she’d never gotten any.

“What’s wrong with him? Can’t
I at least see him or talk to one of the doctors?” Tears started to well up in
her eyes and she couldn’t contain them. They came streaming down her face in
small rivers of salty wet and she rummaged in her purse for a tissue but
couldn’t find any. She snuffled and blubbered and the nurse handed her a box of
tissues. She pulled a few out and blew her nose.