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

by L B Gschwandtner

  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.

  “I’m trying to be helpful. Really I am. His insurance card must be in his wallet. If I could just see him I could get it and then you could finish your forms and let me out of here.”

  The tears seemed to have had an effect, or, maybe it was the woman’s desire to get all the little boxes on her forms checked off, because she put a finger to her lips and motioned Shelly to follow her. They filed out of a door behind the desk. This led to the examining cubicles without passing the waiting room where all the other patients sat in various stages of disrepair, worried, huddled families, children crying or climbing under chairs to fetch dropped toys. Shelly followed the nurse past one, two, three curtains and then came to Ben’s. She pulled the white edge back and there was Ben, lying on his back, eyes only half open, tubes coming from his arm, slim plastic pipes feeding oxygen to his nostrils, feet extended past the sheet covering him, shirt unbuttoned and open down to his waist, little round blobs attached to wires stuck on his chest. At his bedside a machine was printing out an endless page of squiggly lines.

  “What’s that?” she asked the nurse.

  “An EKG of his heart. It’s the first thing they check after a collapse. Heart attacks are so common. Even with young men.”

  When Ben saw Shelly he tried to smile but it was a weak attempt. She rushed to him and placed her hand on his forehead, bent down to kiss his cheek.

  “You won,” Ben said, his voice raspy.

  “You came. I thought you were still mad at me.”

  “I was, but I knew you needed me.”

  She could think of nothing to say to that. “Do you want some water?”

  He nodded. Shelly picked up a cup by the bed and poured some water from a pink plastic pitcher. She tightened the top and brought the straw to Ben’s lips. He took a long drink and let his head sink back onto the pillow. Then he repeated, “You won. I saw you. Then I can’t remember what happened.”

  ”You’re in a hospital.”

  “Shell, I know where I am. So you’re rich, now, huh? Got what you wanted?”

  “I don’t know. I guess so. I went a little crazy when you collapsed like that. What have they told you?”

  “They’re going to cut my head open.”

  “Cut your head open?” Shelly looked at him wildly. “I thought they were checking your heart.”

  Ben tried to shrug but was too tired. “They want to cut my head open,” he repeated, but it came out as a bit of a mumble.

  They’ve sedated him, Shelly thought. That’s why he doesn’t even know if the problem is in his head or his heart. But she figured there wasn’t any point in arguing with him in this condition. Just keep him calm and reassure him. She gave Ben what she hoped was a confident smile.

  “They’re doing the best they can for you. I think someone will be in here soon to tell you what’s happening next. And there are some papers you have to sign. You know, consent forms and stuff like that.”

  “Like what to do if I’m on life support?”

  What did he mean? He’s confused, she thought. Just humor him.

  “They do these operations all the time. It’ll be fine. You’ll see,” she told him.

  “I hope so but in case I don’t get to the other side, I want you to know . . . I mean if what they find is bad . . . don’t let them just keep me going, Shell. You know I don’t want that. Let me go if it comes to that.”

  Ben closed his eyes as if even this much communication had been a huge strain. Shelly stroked his cheek. Let him go?

  “Try to get some rest now,” she whispered. She had read somewhere that this was the most commonly uttered line of dialogue in the history of movies, and it struck her now what an empty sentence it was. Ben looked depleted, unable to move, but that wasn’t the same as resting.

  Then his breathing began to deepen and when she was sure he could no longer hear her, Shelly broke down again. She sobbed for all the times she’d let him down and for now, when she realized how much she needed him, when she finally saw that all she’d ever needed was for the two of them to be together. The big win at the casino was meaningless in the light of all this. What’s wrong with me, Shelly wondered. I had the whole world and threw it away. Something inside her must be deeply flawed. Shelly recognized this, but she was in the same position as Ben. She wasn’t sure if the problem was in her head or her heart.

  Shelly tried to recall the exact expression on Ben’s face as he had stood watching her in the casino. He had seen her win, yes. He had seen her moment of glory. Shelly on the stage. The band, the streamers, the big check with her name on it. And there had been a flicker of pride on his face—she was pretty sure she hadn’t imagined it. Pride mixed with a sort of exasperation. Because the very moment he’d seen her win was also the moment that he’d realized all those nights in GA had meant nothing.

  She thought of all the times that Ben had tried to curb her gambling. All the ways he’d ridden her about it. And she’d never understood how hard it was for him to see her fall again and again into the same old habit. But now things were going to be different. If only he’d be all right. If only. How could she have been so blind to his needs? Or her own? She didn’t really need to gamble. It was just the rush she liked. The moment right before the wheel stopped spinning, when it seemed like anything might be possible. She’d always told herself she was addicted to uncertainty, but now that true uncertainty was hitting her in the face, she saw what a stupid rush it had been. What she really wanted was Ben, a home, a family, security, belonging, a feeling of peace in her life. She didn’t want to waste any more time. She wanted a house, maybe even a garden. Yes, she was going to plant a garden. To see life grow. Maybe have a baby. Yes, a baby for both of them to love.

  After a minute she pulled herself together. She was going to have to be Ben’s rock for a change, that much was clear. She was going to have to keep her head straight and make smart decisions for him. Starting with the insurance. She found his pants folded in a plastic bag on a small table and rummaged through them until she came up with his wallet. She was about to carry it out to the admitting nurse when a doctor bustled in carrying a chart and holding a pen.

  “Well, here we are. I’m doctor Ramirez. And you’re Mr. Albertson’s wife? I know they had you doing paperwork. Are we all set?”

  “I found his insurance card,” Shelly answered, figuring since she was already in here there was no reason to let him know she wasn’t Ben’s wife. She didn’t want a repeat of the shabby treatment she’d received in admitting.

  “Good, good,” the doctor smiled and as he checked the
printout from another machine. “The mass is in his left cortex.”

  Cortex? Wasn’t that the head? Oh my God, Ben must have been right.

  “Left cortex?” she repeated like a robot. “When he collapsed, I thought it was a heart attack,”

  “So did we,” the doctor said, almost cheerfully. Just another day in the ER for him, obviously. “But the EKG was normal in terms of abnormality.”

  “What?” Shelly asked, wishing the guy would at least wipe that dopey grin off his face. What was so funny about a thirty-one year old man not having a heart attack? Or having a brain tumor?

  “The EKG was normal but the EEG showed the mass,” the doctor went on. “So the next step is to take it out and do a biopsy. Try not to worry, Mrs. Albertson. At least until we know what we’re dealing with. There’s a chance the tumor isn’t malignant, and even if it is there’s a good chance the mass is localized.”

  Tumor. Malignant. Horrible words. Horrible thoughts.

  The room swam before Shelly’s eyes. The doctor reached over and patted her hand. “None of his cancer markers came back elevated so that’s very good news, indicating that even if it is cancer it hasn’t metastasized anywhere else. And your husband’s young and strong.”

  “What do you do now?” Shelly asked.

  “We take him into surgery,” the doctor said. He looked at her with sympathy. “And I’m afraid you have the harder job. You wait.”

  Shelly looked down at his hand on her arm. In a little while she would sit in the waiting room with the bloodied, feverish, and lame. Her mind would whir with anxious abandon. Babies would cry. Little children would fidget. A man with taut muscles and skin burnished by the sun would sit with a crudely bandaged arm hugged against his body, obviously the result of working with some cutting implement that had gotten away from him. And Shelly would think about all the ways that humans find to hurt themselves.