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

by L B Gschwandtner

  Shelly would shift on the hard plastic seat, trying not to look into the faces of the people around her, trying not to absorb their misery. Suddenly she would remember Alanna and Joe. Where had they gone? They’d been walking across the lobby when she got her big hit and later she had seen them in the crowd at the casino. They had been there when she won, in her highest moment. They had been there at her lowest, when Ben collapsed. But where were they now?

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  They lost sight of Shelly and found themselves in a semi dark room where the only sounds were the steady beep of a large screen attached to some machine next to a long table. Alanna reached out a trembling hand to Joe. Her fingers felt brittle and cold like a frost had settled over them. Joe held on to her as they both took in their somber surroundings. On a metal table an amorphous form was covered with a sheet and along one wall they saw a series of short steel doors with heavy handles.

  Joe realized where they’d landed and wanted to tell Alanna but his throat clamped shut and it was all he could do to keep from gasping for air. There was a feeling of lightness, as if his feet weren’t solidly on the floor and, as his eyes adjusted to the pale light, he saw a hospital orderly dressed in green scrubs slowly sweeping the floor outside the door coming ever closer to the dim space. He couldn’t see anything beyond this room except for a long hallway that ended in double doors. With Alanna’s hand in his Joe tried to lead them to the exit door but the orderly blocked his path.

  “Alanna? Are you okay?” Joe finally whispered.

  “I think so. But where are we?”

  “Not a place we want to be. Come on.”

  Before they could leave, the orderly appeared at the doorway and asked, “Where are you going, Joe?”

  When they heard that deep, resonant voice, they knew they must have landed here for some reason.

  “It’s time for you both to see something,” he spoke again. “Look. Up there.” Morgan pointed to the machine next to the table.

  “I’m not going in any further,” Alanna shook her head. “That’s a body on the table, isn’t it?”

  As their hands disengaged Joe and Alanna both felt a sense of loss, although neither realized the other felt the same way and, anyway, it was such a fleeting feeling that it was easy to ignore.

  They looked over to the machine and saw that the screen had a mass of tangled tubes stretched out the back, looking more like tree roots than electrical wires. On the screen, images changed randomly and within a few minutes Joe and Alanna were as transfixed by this display as if they’d been hypnotized.

  “Oh look,” Alanna pointed to an image. “That’s my mother.” She walked forward to see it more closely, forgetting about the body laid out in the cold room on the steel table. “But she’s so young there. Not like I remember her.”

  “When did you last see her?” Joe asked and he, too, walked closer to examine the screen. “Wow, I remember this. It’s my old bike. Look at that. I had it when I was, let’s see, eleven. Yeah. I loved that bike.”

  “She died two years ago.”

  “I’m sorry,” Joe said.

  “I wish I could remember more. But didn’t you remember something back at the casino? When the ambulance came? I thought you did.”

  Joe’s face took on a tortured look. He made a fist with his right hand, clenched his teeth and sucked in air.

  “Yeah I did. The sound of that siren definitely reminded me of something. I still can’t put my finger on it but I had this overwhelming feeling that whatever it was, I should have stopped it from happening.”

  Alanna pointed at Joe’s clenched fist. “Maybe you had to fight something.”

  Joe let his hand relax and smiled a rueful little smile. “I guess that much is obvious.”

  The screens rotated endlessly with new images appearing and then disappearing, fading out like ghosts encased forever somewhere inside the screen. The tubes in the back lit up in places here and there as if they were independently operating as thinking beings, or underwater forms of fluorescent life.

  “Welcome to your memory bank,” said Morgan.

  Joe and Alanna whirled around to see him no longer in green scrubs but now holding a small glass ball, something like one of those globes that you turn over to watch the snow fall. But this one glowed.

  “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 l
east 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?”

  “Do we know for a fact that we can only grant one wish?”

  Alanna shook her head. “I don’t know. I mean, isn’t that what Morgan told us? We didn’t ask really— I just assumed that our powers . . . ”

  “Were limited? That everybody just gets one wish? You know what they say about assume,” Joe said, pushing himself to his feet. “You go help Shelly. I’ve got a question for Morgan. If I can find him.”

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Shelly was standing at the chapel door, as if unsure whether or not to enter. Alanna touched her arm softly, which made Shelly jump.

  “How are you doing?”

  “How am I doing? I don’t even know where to begin,” Shelly said. She put one hand out as if to push the chapel door open, then let it fall to her side and instead leaned against the wall. “I thought you’d be leaving now that you granted my wish.”