Shelly's Second Chance (The Wish Granters, Book One) (14 page)

“I see you’re intrigued by
the memory screen,” he said.

“What does it mean?” Joe
asked.

“Always the one with questions,
Joe.”

“Who wouldn’t have questions?”
Joe asked indignantly. “You bring us down here to the hospital morgue—that’s
where we are, right—to make us watch . . . what?”

Alanna shook her head. “Let
him tell us in his own way.”

“Besides the decision grid,
every life has a memory store. And there is a memory keeper who tends the
screen. Actually there are many screens but sometimes . . . well sometimes the
memories are consolidated, for the convenience of Wish Granters.” Morgan waved his
hand toward the changing images. Joe in a military uniform, a postcard view of
a tropical island, Alanna with ridiculously big hair, evidently on her way to a
long ago prom. Joe standing on the broad gray steps of a government building.
Alanna posing on a beach, beaming into the camera with such joy it was obvious
she liked whoever was taking the picture.

“You’ve been summoned here because
you’re beginning to remember bits and pieces of your past. It’s important, if
you are to ascend, that you deal with what you left behind. As I told you at
our first meeting, I’m here to assist you.”

“Ascend?” Alanna started to
ask a question but Joe broke in first.

“You’ve been playing games
with us since we arrived at Transition. Why can’t you just tell us who we were
and why we had to leave and what we left behind?”

“Ah, Joe, it’s not that easy.
You see I don’t know the answers to any of those questions. No more than a
librarian knows the stories inside every book on the shelves. You’re the one
who keeps your own memories. I don’t know what they are. They’re stored,
locked, forgotten, and only you can retrieve them.”

Morgan moved to the screen.
It had turned bright red. “I believe you were beginning to have a memory at the
casino. When Ben fell ill. Am I correct?”

As Joe nodded, Alanna felt a
wave of cold air. Or no, it wasn’t air exactly. It was a feeling like air but
it was something else and then before she could even identify it, she heard
herself scream. A pain somewhere below her belly gripped her and she doubled
over.

“What is it?” Joe put his arm
around her and tried to help her stand straight again but it was no use. Alanna
groaned and, once more, grabbed his hand and held on tight.

“Alanna, what is it?” he
managed to call out again but Alanna had closed her eyes. She didn’t want to
see this dark place, refused to witness it again. But even with her eyes closed
she still saw the screen, saw vague images forming, rotating, rolling, a tiny
shape not quite formed. She wanted to cry out but she couldn’t, wanted to speak
to Joe but she had no voice to say what she felt. Relax, she tried to tell
herself. It’s just another memory tunnel and if your time in Transition has
taught you anything, it’s that all tunnels eventually end. As she finally began
to emerge from the memory, Alanna raised the hand Joe still held and put it to
her lips. Just at the moment her lips were about to make contact with his hand,
she and Joe were pulled apart.

They were at the emergency
room once more, with another ambulance barreling toward the hospital, siren
squealing, about to offload a small, wounded body.

Chapter Twenty-Five

“Miss,” This new doctor
wasn’t smiling. In fact he was looking at her with the expression of a high
school principal, a traffic cop, her GA sponsor after one of her many lapses.
“I’m not really sure of your name, but I’m actually here speaking to you as a
courtesy. Apparently you told the Admitting Office you were his fiancé and Dr.
Ramirez in ER that you were his wife. But his insurance shows Mr. Albertson to
be single.” He sighed, the world-weary sound of a man who had seen too much. “We
get a lot of cases like this in Vegas. People on vacation, far away from family
and spouses, perhaps even with someone they shouldn’t be with. We understand.
We get it. Happens every day. But then something goes wrong, somebody gets sick
or hurt. I’m sure if you think about it, you’ll understand why we need to
observe a certain protocol. And so I must ask you to return to the waiting
room.”

“But he’s my . . .” Shelly
was suddenly acutely aware that she wasn’t even wearing an engagement ring and
she looked at the doctor helplessly.

“I love him,” she said. “If I
had one wish, it would be that he was . . . ”

She stopped. If she had one
wish. But she’d had a wish, hadn’t she, and she had wasted it on a cup of
quarters, a pile of chips, an oversized fake check that was lying on the floor
of a casino. A pain was growing in her own head and she wondered what this
thing was inside Ben’s skull and how long it had been there. He’d never
complained of a headache but then Ben hadn’t complained of anything. He’d
always been kind, dependable, honest, hard working, a rock. And she had ruined
it. Ruined it all.

*****

Stunned by the swiftness of
their journey, Alanna sank into one of the bright orange plastic chairs just as
a gurney flanked by paramedics smeared with blood came crashing through the
door. The lump on the gurney appeared to be a small child, its head swathed in
bandages. An EMT pressed rhythmically on its chest. The cop who was following them
went straight to the admitting desk, barking out something about a crash on Tropicana Boulevard.

“We don’t have to journey to
another level,” Alanna said to Joe, who was perched anxiously on the edge of
the seat beside her. “We’re in hell right here.”

But Joe didn’t answer. He was
staring at the blood-splattered floor. “All that blood,” he said.

“Were you in an accident?”
Alanna watched him closely, trying to jog his memory. “Do you think that’s how
you died?”

“I was, but this is not a
memory about me,” Joe said, his face pale and his voice hollow. “It’s about
someone I let down once. Someone close to me. Someone I should have protected.”

Just then they saw Shelly
emerge from the hallway, walking slowly. Alanna and Joe both sprang to their
feet and walked towards her, their arms out, and she fell into them.

“He’s having surgery,” she
said. “There’s a mass in his brain and they don’t know if it’s cancer and
they’ve sent me out here to wait. Thank God you’ve come. You can fix it, can’t
you? You can fix it all. Because . . .” and she lifted her pale face toward
them. “I wished for the wrong thing.”

Chapter Twenty-Six

Joe had charmed the admitting
nurse into taking them back into the family waiting room.

While a little less crowded
and noisy than the big waiting room, there were still plenty of upset people
milling about, including a young Hispanic woman who was pacing back and forth
while a man, evidently her husband, tried to coax her into sitting down.
Pausing in a corner, she folded her hands and moved them back and forth in
front of her chest, exactly level with her heart.

“What’s she saying?” Shelly
asked Alanna. The woman looked stricken, her face contorted with terror and
Shelly suspected her own face had a similar expression.

“She’s praying,” Alanna said.
Another clue. She could understand Spanish. “Praying for her little girl, who
was hurt in a car crash.”

Evidently this terrified
young couple were the parents of the child they’d seen on the gurney. Shelly
nodded slowly and sipped at a Coke she’d gotten out of a nearby machine. Alanna
watched her drink and seemed to remember the sweet taste with a slight sting of
soda water. She wished she had a not-drink in her hand right now.

The man was telling the woman
that everything would be all right, that the doctors were smart, that they
would find a way to save the child, who was named Selina. When a nurse appeared
with a clipboard, he sprang to his feet but she was just another person from
admitting. There with questions about insurance, which this young family almost
certainly did not have.

Alanna leaned back in her
seat, overwhelmed by the tragedy around her. We brought this girl to Vegas, she
thought, and we granted her wish. And now the man she loves is in surgery,
possibly dying from brain cancer. I can’t remember much about my life except
that my mother is dead, I lived in Florida which probably explains why I speak
Spanish, and something about the sight of an engagement ring on my hand
terrifies me. Joe panics when he hears the sound of an ambulance siren or sees
blood and he knows that he let someone down once, maybe that he failed to
protect a friend. But what does all this add up to? Morgan told us we might
advance, but advance to where? And does that advancement pull us out of this Transition
forever?

Alanna was not especially
eager to let go of life but she was not eager to return either. This puzzled
her. She did remember some things—the cool buoyancy of ocean water, the
sensation of flickering sunlight, wine on her tongue, a man’s arms around her
waist. How does one voluntarily let go of all this, turn your back on the world
of the senses? And yet, looking around this crowded waiting room, this whirlwind
of despair, part of her wondered if the next stage would be easier. It seemed
it would almost have to be.

“A lot of the people here are
Mexican aren’t they?” Shelly said, cutting into her thoughts. “Or Central
American or something. If I’m confused by this place, I wonder how they feel.
And if nobody will tell me anything, I wonder how much worse it is for them.”

“I know,” Alanna said.
“Nothing’s fair.”

“Having your child hurt,”
Shelly went on, taking another sip of her drink and staring straight ahead. “I would
think that would have to be the worst thing that could happen.” Now that she
wanted a marriage and home and a baby, the reality of that commitment came
clear and she wondered if she was up to it, if she could withstand the weight
of all that love.

Alanna nodded and a little
flicker of an image—what was it—just the outline of a jelly-like mass, came to
her and instantly disappeared again.

Shelly tipped her head back
and let out a soft, low moan of anguish. “I can’t stand it,” she said. “Ben has
to live through this, or I’ll never forgive myself.” She pushed herself to her
feet, a little unsteadily, and tossed the empty can into a nearby trash bin.

“None of us ever knows what
we had until we’ve lost it,” Alanna said quietly. “That’s the curse of being human,
I think, that we can’t appreciate life until it’s gone.”

Shelly looked down at her. “I
passed a chapel on the way down the hall,” she said. “I’m going to go in there
for a few minutes.”

“Do you want me to come with
you?”

Shelly shook her head. “No.
I’m glad you and Joe are here but I need a few minutes alone.” With a final
glance at the young parents seated across from them, Shelly turned and headed
out the door. Alanna leaned back in the seat and closed her eyes. It was
strange how you could be dead, or almost dead, or whatever she was, and still
feel so damn tired.

*****

“How long does it take to
remove a tumor anyway?” Joe asked. He’d caught Alanna in the chair with her
eyes closed and plopped down beside her. “He’s been back there several hours.”

“I don’t know. The fact it’s
been this long is a little scary, like maybe it wasn’t benign and they’re
having to do more, you know?”

“Let’s try not to assume the
worst,” Joe gave her hand a little squeeze. “There’s a ton of people here, so
maybe they were late getting started with the surgery.”

“I know. A ton of people
here, and all of them have wishes that desperately need to be granted.”

“Where did Shelly go?”

“The hospital chapel. She’s
scared, Joe. I think she’s starting to see that her life was great but didn’t
realize it, that she squandered her big opportunity and I don’t know . . . it
all seems to be hitting close to home for me. I don’t know how much more I can
face. Have we done her any favor at all by granting her wish?”

Joe nodded. “At least you’ve
got the guts to sit in here. The reason I disappeared on that search for food
is that something about this place is triggering the hell out of me. Pieces are
coming back that don’t make any sense. Like I’m covered in blood, but it isn’t
my blood.” He shook his head, as if trying to clear a fog inside his brain.
“Regret,” he finally said.

“What about regret?”

“It’s the hardest thing to
live with,”

“Apparently it’s the hardest
thing to die with, too.”

Joe and Alanna’s eyes met
and, for a second, they both burst out laughing, a sound so unusual for this
room that people turned to stare and they quickly shushed.

“Here’s what breaks my
heart,” Alanna said. “We granted her wish but it was the wrong wish. And she
only gets one.”

Joe looked at her again, slowly,
biting his lower lip.

“Do we know that for a fact?”
he asked.

“What?”