Alanna shook her head slowly. “We’ve not been released yet,” she said. “I’m not clear exactly why. Seems you still need our help in some way.”
They stood there, an odd couple, unsure what to do next.
“That family they brought in,” Shelly said, “the little girl who’s so hurt. I’m sure the parents have no insurance or money. If anyone needed a wish fulfilled it’s them. Why was I the one chosen? Why was I the one to get a wish when all these people didn’t?”
“To be honest, I really don’t know. There’s a lot I don’t understand about this wish granting business,” said Alanna.
Shelly looked at her, clearly skeptical.
Morgan or whoever he works for upstairs won’t tell us how it works, Alanna thought, and now she thinks we’re holding out on her.
“Remember back at the hotel,” Alanna went on. “When we told you our fate depends on what happens to you?”
“Sort of. It seems like a long time ago.” Shelly took a couple of steps as if she was going back to the waiting room, then she stopped and turned back to the chapel door. “If you won’t even explain to me what’s going on, then there’s no sense wasting our time, is there?”
“I don’t think we’re wasting our time,” Alanna said softly. “Maybe we should both go in there.” She pointed to the chapel. “I could use some help, too.”
Shelly looked at Alanna as if seeing her for the first time, and wondered what she could possibly need help with, not being alive anymore. What else is there to worry about, once you’ve gone?
“With what?” For the first time Shelly seemed genuinely interested.
Alanna sighed and leaned against the wall also so they were both staring straight ahead at the bland white wall on the other side of the hallway. “For one thing, I can’t remember much of anything. I don’t know who I was. Joe thinks I had money. Maybe he’s right. Maybe I was just a spoiled, rich girl. You thought that. I know you did. But that doesn’t feel like me. I think I did have money. Or at least I was surrounded by it. But I don’t think that’s what I was. You know? I wasn’t just rich.”
Shelly closed her eyes. “Just rich.” She repeated it. “Sounds like you think if you have money that’s all you are.”
With that she turned to the chapel door and held it open for Alanna to enter first. They disappeared into the dark room and the door closed quietly behind them with a soft thud.
*****
It was the first time Joe had actually wanted to go somewhere and talk to Morgan, but he had no idea how to make him appear or get in touch with him. He thought maybe if he stood at the hospital entrance Morgan might pull up driving a taxi. He wandered outside and looked up and down the street.
He tried to imagine what his past life had been like, what he did, why the sight of blood and the scream of an ambulance siren gave him such a jolt. He concentrated on the color red and soon an image crossed his closed eyes—not a pleasant image, as so often happens in retrieving the past. The happy times tend to get overshadowed by the brutal or sad. It takes concentration to remember the good times.
Joe looked up to the sky as if to say “take me up” but he stayed rooted to the little square of sidewalk. As he concentrated, a stronger image came to him. Someone he recognized. A short, stocky man wearing a suit and tie—a loud tie with pictures of monkeys on it. Joe tried to bring the man’s face into focus but all he could see was that stupid tie. And he seemed to know that tie.
The man was waving. Waving, it seemed, at Joe. No, he wasn’t waving. He was gesturing, warning Joe to stay back. Another figure appeared, a man without features or definite form, shrouded in fog with only the outline visible. Arms, legs, head, an arm raised.
Joe struggled to remember more detail but the image faded and, just as he was about to give up, Morgan appeared at the hospital door wearing an aide’s uniform, pushing a wheelchair with a very old woman wearing a hospital gown, looking as if she was napping peacefully.
“Hello, Joe,” Morgan called when the automatic doors opened.
“Am I glad you showed up,” Joe said and slipped inside again. “I have something important to discuss.”
“Yes, I’m aware of your predicament.” Morgan looked around the lobby. “Let’s walk, shall we? Mrs. Mandlebaum here needs an airing.”
Joe fell in on the other side of Mrs. Mandlebaum’s IV stand.
“The wish did not turn out as you expected, did it?”
“If we had only seen what was going to happen, we would have told Shelly to wait a couple of days. But who knew?”
“Indeed,” came the reply. Morgan sounded almost smug which annoyed Joe. It must have shown on his face.
“What brings you here, besides the chance to chat with me and Mrs. Mandlebaum?”
“Well,” he began, thinking this was his one chance, yet not sure of his best negotiation strategy. “See it’s like this. I’m really confused by this whole deal.” Yes, that was it, play dumb. Let Morgan explain things to him. Get Morgan on his side. Work together. “Do you have any idea what it’s like not to be able to remember who you were and what happened in your life? Besides that I’m supposed to be helping someone else get over a big life hurdle. See what I mean? Now if I had just one more tool in my kit, I think I could make this thing work. I mean I’m getting a handle on it but . . . ”
“What exactly is it you want, Joe?
“To put it simply, a second wish for Shelly.”
“Ah,” Morgan nodded. “And Mrs. Mandlebaum here wants her kidneys to work. But she got one wish a long time ago and that’s it. Has nine grandchildren and three great grandchildren now. Rules are rules you know, and all that. Now you’ll have to make do. I’m sorry, Joe. But I’m sure you’ll find a way to . . .”
But this time Joe was the one to turn and disappear down one hall that led to another. He stopped at a large window that looked out at a small courtyard between the two wings of the hospital. A couple sat on a wooden bench. They talked and gestured. The woman seemed upset. It could have been Joe and Alanna, Joe thought, sitting there discussing their memories. The man stood up suddenly. As he turned, Joe saw his face clearly. He looked straight at Joe.
It was him. Joe was sure of it. Joe’s law partner. And Joe remembered his name—Russell—that was it. Yeah people used to call him Russell Terrier because he was so doggedly determined. Joe raised his hand in an automatic gesture and waved enthusiastically. But Russell did not wave back. He stood there staring as if Joe were invisible. There was no way to get to the little garden from where Joe stood so he frantically gestured to Russell to walk around to the opening and then Joe ran down the hall and around a corner until he came to a glass door. He pushed it hard and ran down the short path to the garden and the bench but when he got there, Russell was gone and the woman seated on the bench was fiddling with her cell phone, texting or something.
“Excuse me,” Joe said. “Where is the man who was out here with you?”
The woman looked at him quizzically. “What man?”
“The man you were talking to just a minute ago. Short, stocky, a little bald. With a beard? Wearing a sports coat and a loud tie?”
“I’ve been out here alone,” the woman said curtly. She went back to her phone, leaving Joe to wonder if he was beginning to lose his mind.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
It was dark and quiet in the non-denominational chapel. No standard religious symbols on the walls, no altar, no stained glass, only the taped sound of a stream running and a large framed photo of a pleasant woodland setting in spring. Instead of pews there were comfortable chairs. Fresh flowers were set in large pots at the corners of the room. The ceiling was fairly high, giving the room less of a hospital feel. Shelly chose a chair in the back and sat down alone without noticing that Alanna simply faded into the silence. She hadn’t been inside a church in years. She’d been brought up Baptist but had lapsed so long ago that it seemed as if she’d never been one of the faithful. She’d never really believed. And w
hen she left home, there didn’t seem any reason to look for a church.
She stared at the flowers and the photo and, feeling exhausted, sank further down in the chair. Exhausted not so much from any physical strain, but from the roller coaster of these last few days. Is this what you’re supposed to do in church these days, she wondered. Think about your life? Don’t you pray to God anymore? Shelly thought it would be silly to ask God for a favor at this point. It would be good to pray for Ben. On his behalf. But she couldn’t seem to get herself into a praying frame of mind.
She was like all those other people in the world who looked to God as a convenience in times of trouble. God must be awfully sick of everyone asking for special favors all the time, she thought. Poor God. So much to do and so many people to watch over.
She heard the door open and the sound of muffled crying. In a moment the woman whose daughter had been so badly injured walked by very slowly, a cloth in her hand which she used to wipe her eyes. She sniffled and began to weep again. She went straight to the front of the room where there would have been an altar and knelt on the floor in front of the picture of the stream. She began to speak through sobs. Shelly didn’t understand the Spanish but she heard the word Dios a number of times and got the message. She felt a twinge of envy that this woman seemed to believe so strongly in her prayer that she didn’t care what kind of chapel this was or where. She was as close to God as Shelly was estranged from Him.
Shelly got up and walked to the woman and, without thinking, knelt down next to her, put her arm around the woman and began to pray in English. Prayed for the woman’s little girl. “Dear Lord, help this poor woman’s baby girl. Help her for she truly needs your divine intervention.” Prayed for her to get better, prayed for this mother’s prayer to be answered, prayed for the child whose need was so great.
The woman rested her head on Shelly’s shoulder, relieved of her burden momentarily. She stopped sobbing and held onto Shelly’s hand as if Shelly herself were an angel sent to her aid. They remained kneeling in silence for several minutes until they finally stood, holding each other for support. Shelly kept her arm around the woman and together they walked to the chapel door. It’s an odd thing about faith. No matter how long and how deeply you’ve ignored it, when you need it, it’s there.
Shelly let the woman go with a hug. The woman patted Shelly’s cheek as if Shelly were her own child. “Que Dios té bendiga,” she whispered and slowly walked off down the hall. Shelly didn’t know exactly what it meant but she knew that she had been blessed.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
The doctor bustled along reading a report, his glasses halfway down his nose, and almost ran smack into Shelly as she turned away from the chapel. They both recoiled in surprise and he didn’t seem to recognize Shelly, although he apologized and was about to resume walking.
“Doctor . . .” She had forgotten his name and felt a sudden rush of shame. How could she forget the name of the man who had poked the inside of Ben’s brain? “I’m glad we ran into each other. I mean not glad that we actually ran into . . . what I mean is . . . how’s Ben?”
The doctor glanced at her absentmindedly for another couple of seconds, then smiled in recognition.
“He’s doing fine. That is, the operation is over. But we’ll be keeping him in an induced coma for the next few hours. That’s not uncommon after brain surgery. We don’t want him to move at all.”
Shelly took a deep breath and asked the most important question. “Was it cancer?”
“We’re not sure yet. The lab has the tissue samples. We’ll know in a few hours. You can see him after he’s out of recovery but until then we have him in the CCU.” He paused at her bewildered expression.
“The Critical Care Unit,” he said, a little more kindly. “It will be hours before he wakes up, and you look exhausted. Why don’t you go home, get something to eat?”
“Home?” Shelly asked blankly.
“Back to your hotel,” the doctor amended. “Take a nap, have a meal. Makes some calls if you need to, perhaps run a few errands. There’s nothing you can do here.”
*****
As soon as Shelly and the woman had gone, Alanna moved to the front of the chapel. Within minutes, she’d forgotten that she was only here because of Shelly or that this place was only a room in a hospital.
The quiet whooshing sound of water calmed her mind and soon she began to see pictures of her life as if she were watching a slide show. Herself in a ruffled dress at a birthday part, a fancy cake decorated with dozens of sugary flowers in pastel colors. A gracious lawn and sun drenched table with white linen cloth. Her mother leaning down and cutting pieces for all the little girls, serving staff in stiff white uniforms hovering nearby.
Then a scene that made her feel confined as if she’d been put in a box. Now the servants were sentries and she was a prisoner, trapped in a life where she was expected to behave in a certain way, live a future that had been pre molded for her to fit into, with no more control over her fate than a pampered pet. Alanna realized that she had spent her whole life struggling to become her own person. And something—or someone—had stood in her way.
The man again. Still holding a suitcase and standing at a door with his hand on the knob. He turned and looked back and his face was familiar, handsome, but the expression was angry. He was saying something but she couldn’t make out the words. Then he turned the knob and walked out the door, leaving it open behind him. But who was he? And why was he leaving? The memories began to recede as quickly as they’d come.
Alanna pushed herself to her feet and left the chapel. Still a little dazed with the flood of memories which had swept her up in the chapel, Alanna fell in behind a family on its way to the post delivery maternity wing. At least they were laughing and smiling, their arms filled with flowers and balloons. They seemed to be the only people in the hospital who were happy.
They pressed the big red button to be allowed in and a nurse at the station buzzed back. The doors swung open and Alanna followed close behind them. When they went left, she turned right and found herself at the window of the neonatal nursery where the preemie babies were hooked up to monitors and feeding tubes in their little plastic hospital cribs. They all had caps on heads and some of them were naked except for a tiny diaper. Each was enclosed in an incubator for temperature control—plastic-domed hospital beds designed just for them. Alanna gazed through the window. Did these newborns have memories? Did they miss their time in the womb? Did they resent being pushed out of that life too early, just as she and Joe were struggling to learn why they had been torn away from the safety of their time on earth? I’m a preemie, too, Alanna thought, forced into a world I’m not prepared to inhabit.
Alanna stood and stared at them all, from baby to baby, each so small she felt she could reach in and lift any of them with one hand. How tenacious life was, she thought. These babies wanted their chance. Everyone wants that. It’s born into each human, as hardwired as the need to breathe. Alanna felt an overwhelming urge to enter this room and hold each one of these tiny, helpless infants in her arms, cuddle and coo to them, assure them Earth wasn’t so bad, that life would be good to them later on, after they’d struggled so hard to meet it halfway.
Alanna pressed her palms to the glass of the window. The world was still swimming around her, and she was still very close to the swirling vortex of memories.
Her thoughts kept going back to an image of a table stretched before her, a table filled with beautiful jewelry. Some of it was made from shells and bits of found objects, the sort of things most people might overlook. The sort of things Alanna used to pick up from her favorite beach in Florida. And some of the jewelry was heavy and gold, encrusted with gemstones, the sort of things her mother had worn. Her mother and all the other ladies from the country club.
Alanna saw herself pouring molten gold into a small mold, setting gemstones into the gold, cutting shells into partial pieces, combining these elements into the jewelry that covere
d the table. She saw herself struggling to release a piece of jewelry from its mold and, in the process, the whole thing broke into many pieces and she saw herself weep.
It’s not easy to break out of the role you’re born into, she thought, and she wished she had been able to explain to Shelly what being born rich really meant. It meant either pouring your life into a mold or accepting that if you rejected the mold you risked having your whole life come apart in your hands.
She should have told Shelly that. She should have told Joe. Being born rich wasn’t just about jewels and designer clothes and flying first class. It was also about fitting in or not fitting in, and for the first time Alanna had a clear idea of what she was running away from, why she wasn’t more eager to return to earthly life.
She was running away from the mold. And the handsome, angry man, who had tried to keep her inside it.
Chapter Thirty
Shelly slid her cashier’s check across the bank officer’s desk.
“She told me at the window over there,” Shelly turned and pointed to one of the tellers, “that you had to approve this before she could do anything with it. Because of the amount, she said.”
“Wow, that is a nice little pay out, isn’t it? But we get a lot of these casino checks. It’s not the biggest one I’ve ever seen.” The gray-haired woman who looked decidedly un-Vegas opened the top drawer of her desk and pulled out a form, which she handed to Shelly. She tilted her chin down to look over her reading glasses and pointed to a place at the top of the paper. “You sign here and fill out everything where there’s a line. I’ll need to see a photo ID. Usually the casino gives you a name of someone we can call to verify that this is your check.”
Shelly's Second Chance (The Wish Granters, Book One) Page 11