“Because you had a surfing accident.”
“No. That was later. I was living in Florida and surfing after the miscarriage.” Things seemed to be clearing up fast.
“Good,” Shelly said intently. They had stopped walking and were staring at each other face to face. “It’s coming back. Was your husband with you?”
“It was an engagement ring, not a wedding band.”
“Okay, so you had a fiancé,” Shelly said. “Who was he? What did he look like?”
“I don’t know.”
“Think. Imagine yourself at the hospital. Was he standing by the bed?”
They stood for a moment in silence, people streaming past them. The crowds of the Vegas strip—tourists, bikers, hotel workers, cops.
“No,” Alanna finally said. “He wasn’t at the hospital.”
Shelly frowned. “What sort of fiancé wouldn’t be at the hospital if you’d just lost a baby?”
“A fiancé who never knew I was pregnant.” Alanna shot Shelly a sidelong glance. “Don’t bother asking me why I didn’t tell him, because I don’t have an answer to that one. It doesn’t make any sense. So I’m engaged, and the guy is . . .”
“Rich,” Shelly said promptly.
“What makes you say that?”
“You were used to first class. You didn’t seem impressed with my suite and you seemed to know all about fancy hotels.”
“Yes, I did, didn’t I?” Alanna said. “So I’m engaged to someone who’s rich or maybe I have a job that gives me certain kinds of perks. And I get pregnant but I don’t tell him. When I miscarry I’m all by myself, which is why everyone was being so nice. They felt sorry for me. And the next thing I know I’m surfing in Florida, out alone in waves big enough to drown me. It just doesn’t all fit together.”
“Sure it does,” Shelly said. “He wasn’t the man you were supposed to marry.”
“What are you talking about?”
“That’s why you never told him you were pregnant,” Shelly said with confidence, taking Alanna’s arm as they began to walk again. “Because a baby would have tied you to him forever, and you knew you were engaged to the wrong guy.”
Chapter Thirty-Six
Ben’s eyes fluttered open and then clamped shut. If Shelly hadn’t been standing right by his bed she would have missed it. The first thing he saw was Shelly’s face. He couldn’t smile or talk because of the ventilator tube down his throat and taped across his face and he didn’t yet have control of his muscles. His eyes opened, closed again, and then opened for good.
The nurse watched the monitor and wrote something on his chart. Then she came over and leaned down.
“Welcome back, Mr. Albertson. You’re doing fine and dandy. Everything looks good. Doctor Ramirez will be in shortly to get you off the ventilator.”
Ben blinked. Shelly took his hand. He squeezed her fingers weakly and a tear slid out of his left eye. Shelly reached out and brushed it off.
“It’s okay, Benji. I’m here. You did fine. Really fine,” she said, raising her voice so that he could hear her against the rhythmic whooshing of the ventilator, that sounded not anything like human breathing but mechanical like a ship’s engine deep in the hold.
Ben’s eyebrows lifted in an arc as if he was trying to ask a question. Before Shelly could say anything Dr. Ramirez bustled in with a big smile on his face.
“Well, well, glad to see you awake Ben. How are you feeling?”
It was completely rhetorical, the kind of question doctors asked when they knew perfectly well the patient couldn’t answer, like having a mouth full of cotton rolls and saliva suckers and the dentist asks about your trip to Guatemala.
“Okay so we’re going to remove the intubation tube that’s helping you breathe.” The doctor gloved up and leaned over Ben’s head. He nodded to the nurse, who stood next to him. “Ben, when I say so, I want you to cough for me. Okay, now.”
Ben coughed as well as he could and the doctor pulled the tube out. It was longer than Shelly thought it would be. The machine kept breathing but Ben coughed again and then took a deep breath and was on his own. The nurse gently pulled the tape away from his face and the whole apparatus was out and gone. Just like that, Ben was back among the living.
“You’re going to have a sore throat. We’ll give you something for that. And it will be hard to talk for a bit, like you’ve had a bad case of laryngitis. But nothing permanent. Right now I’d like for you to drink some water.” He motioned to the nurse who held a cup with a straw for Ben. He sucked at it once, winced, and then stopped. The nurse put it back on the bedside table.
Shelly held Ben’s hand, their fingers intertwined. A week ago she never would have expected to feel so protective of him. It was odd, this wish granting. Odd that she had simultaneously received exactly what she’d wished for and things she never would have chosen. And yet, what she would never have chosen had brought her a feeling of purpose, and getting what she’d wished for had left her feeling sad. Ben looked at her and raised his eyebrows again and then tried to talk. His voice came out like sandpaper.
“Was it . . .” his raspy voice faded. Even two words was too enormous an effort to sustain.
Dr. Ramirez adjusted the stethoscope draped around his neck like some double-tailed snake, folded his arms, and told Ben almost word for word what he had explained to Shelly earlier. There were other words, however, and Shelly clung to each one. Contained. Radiation. Chemotherapy. Rehabilitation. Curable.
But of all the words in the world, that was the only one that really mattered.
At the word “cancer,” Ben turned his head away and closed his eyes and it was impossible to tell if he heard anything else. He released Shelly’s hand and his arm went limp on the bed. There was nothing else to say. It would take time.
*****
They said it was perfectly normal for Ben to nod off again. They were still giving him some mild drugs to bring him around slowly. Shelly waited until his breathing became deeper and more regular, thinking how the sounds of normal sleep were so sweetly different from the awful mechanical rasp of that machine. The doctor had said Ben had a long way to go but that he was optimistic for an eventual full recovery and that they should be, too. “Eventual” he had said meaningfully, nodding toward Shelly as he said that particular word, and she had understood his meaning. Ben would need her help for a long, long time.
The visiting time was over. The nurses would be monitoring Ben minute by minute and until the next visiting window, Shelly knew what she had to do. She pushed up from the chair, kissed Ben’s forehead and slipped out the door and marched straight to the chapel where she’d knelt only a few hours before with the distraught woman, praying for her child.
But Shelly had noticed something in the chapel among all the flowers and pictures of streams and oceans. A donation box. Donation boxes were all over Vegas. She had seen them in the casino, in restaurants, even at the airport. They were like the wishing wells you see in a mall, where people throw in their pennies and workers rake them out every week, giving the spare change to charity. The Vegas donation boxes took money, of course, but they also took chips. So that a gambler with a big win could tithe a little right on the spot. Someone who found a few final chips in a pocket or purse before boarding the flight home could give a little something back to the city of Vegas.
Shelly knew all about charity and collection boxes. Her mother never missed a Sunday and had always, even though their own family had always been struggling, managed to find a few dollars to give to the church. This particular box in the chapel had read simply FOR PATIENTS IN NEED.
Patients in need. There were so many. People who didn’t have Wish Granters.
Shelly stopped at the door and took a deep breath, then pushed it open. The chapel was empty, dim, and quiet. Everything exactly as she remembered it. Shelly stood before the box and said a prayer, speaking the words out loud like she hadn’t done since she was a child. The prayer was short, but perhaps the most
heartfelt she’d ever made.
Thank you for saving Ben. Please let the little girl be okay, too. Help this money find its way to her. She needs it most.
Shelly opened her purse. Ever since her cell phone had been shut off for lack of payment, she’d started carrying around a little note pad. She ripped out a piece of paper and wrote in all caps: PLEASE DONATE THESE $10,000 CHIPS TO THE FAMILY WITH THE LITTLE GIRL WHO WAS IN A CAR ACCIDENT ON 4/22
She tore the paper off the pad and rummaged around for an envelope. She’d been carrying her credit card bill around for three weeks and still hadn’t opened it. She slit the top open carefully without tearing it and took out the invoice and replaced it with the note.
I hope Ben agrees that this was the right thing to do, she thought. I hope I never feel like gambling on anything again in my life. I hope they can save this little girl so she can walk again. I hope Alanna and Joe get to wherever it is they want to go.
Then Shelly unlaced the little blue silk bag they’d given her back at the casino and looked down at the platinum chips within. She slid the envelope into the box and then slowly, methodically, dropped each chip through the slot. Each one made a gentle little clink as it dropped until finally Shelly was left with nothing but the empty blue bag.
She would keep it. As a souvenir. As a reminder. As a lucky charm. Someday it would be filled with other treasures. Perhaps a child’s tooth waiting for the tooth fairy to visit. Shelly smiled at the thought. She would never touch this little blue bag without being moved by its magic. If she lived to be an old woman she would always remember the way it had helped her learn how to bet on life.
Chapter Thirty-Seven
“Amazing,” Alanna said, stepping out from behind a large urn of flowers in a far corner of the chapel. “If you had told me three days ago that this woman was capable of making such a selfless, generous gesture . . .”
Joe nodded, a little confused by the size of the lump in his throat.
“She’s had a real awakening,” Alanna said, still shaking her head, “and it sounds like, despite everything, Ben is going to be okay. What have you been up to, anyway?”
“Trying to figure out my life. You?”
“Oh come on,” she said, leaning forward. So close that for a dizzying moment he thought she was going to kiss him. “It’s not like you to be so modest. You go to plead her case and boom, she gets her second wish. Are you telling me that’s accidental?”
“I’d love to take credit,” Joe said, wondering what it would be like to really kiss her, to kiss her and more. Alanna’s respect and gratitude would be wonderful things to have, but he knew he was going to have to earn them. Earn them the right way.
“I’d love to take credit,” he said again, leading Alanna to a pew. “But I’m telling you the truth. Shelly granted this wish for herself.”
“So what happens now?” Alanna asked, slumping a little against his shoulder
“I’m not sure.”
As they sat down, Alanna realized she felt sad, as if she was about to lose something and that something might be Joe. She recognized the feeling as breakup heart and she wanted to turn and kiss Joe for real but before she could say anything, he stood.
“What I’ve remembered makes me more certain than ever that I have to return to the world of living,” he said. “Really return to it, in human form. There are things I have to do here. Mistakes I have to rectify. Mysteries I have to solve.”
Alanna felt a tug at her heart. In front of her was Joe, the risk taker, ready to go back to what might be a dangerous situation for him. Up there was . . . what? Another wish to grant to someone new? A different partner? Maybe something else. They couldn’t know what would decide their fate. But if Joe was allowed to go back, and she stayed . . .
“What about you?”
Alanna shook her head. “The exact opposite. My memories have made me all the more sure that I want to leave the earthly plane and move on. I think I was trying to do that anyway and that’s why I was surfing alone that morning. It’s how I wound up here.”
Joe frowned. “Are you saying you think you tried to commit suicide?”
Alanna sighed. “Nothing that deliberate, but the memories seem to be showing that I put myself in risky situations, almost like I was tempting fate to make the decision for me. Whatever I was or whatever I had in my life on earth, I was evidently prepared to leave it.” She looked him straight in the eye. “So where does this leave us?”
“I don’t know.” Her directness surprised him but she had said precisely what he’d been thinking. They had been linked together by Morgan for some purpose, a purpose he was pretty sure didn’t end with the story of Shelly and Ben. And throughout this partnership they had begun to have feelings for each other. Feelings that the old, earthbound, commitment-phobic Joe would have denied but that his new sort-of-dead and sort-of-alive Joe realized he’d been craving and needing for a very long time.
But he wanted to go back and she wanted to go forward. This was not the sort of decision he could see a way to compromise. It put a whole new spin on the question of “Your place or mine?”
“It’s hopeless,” Alanna said. “We’re like puzzle pieces from two different boxes. No matter how much we want it to work or how hard we try, this is a picture that we’re never going to bring together.”
He squeezed her hand. “You give up too soon,” he said. “This was just our first assignment and it changed us a lot, didn’t it? I have a feeling they’re going to give us many more cases before I get the chance to go back or you get the chance to move forward. We’ve got time. Hell, that’s about all we have . . . but we have plenty of it. And there are so many people out there, so many wishes to grant.”
“So that’s all there is to do here now that the case of Shelly and her second chance is concluded?”
“Just one more thing. We have to say goodbye.”
“To each other?”
“Not yet,” Joe whispered. “Not just yet.” And with that he leaned in to kiss her and when she moved toward him, he pressed forward but after a moment pulled back.
“What’s the matter?” Alanna asked and Joe realized he was as surprised as she that he was the one to resist. “Don’t you want to?”
“Hell yes I want to. But I also know that this isn’t real. It’s like a shipboard romance and we don’t even know when we’re going back to port. This may all evaporate and leave us stranded.”
“Can’t we be happy with what we do have?” she whispered.
“Sounds like you’ve said that before.”
Alanna realized that she had said it before, somewhere, to someone. But Joe was still talking.
“I don’t want to be the ghost of past relationships you’ve had,” Joe said. “Or walked out on. I grant you I can’t remember everything about my life but I’m sure of one thing. There was not one special woman in it. Because I’m sure if there was I couldn’t feel this way about you. And you never meet the same person twice and never get the same chance twice. You may get another chance. But not the same one. And I don’t want to screw up this particular chance up.”
He had told her everything he wanted to say but she greeted his words with a faraway look.
“Alanna,” he said softly. “What’s wrong?”
The image of the man with the briefcase had come back to her and this time it was not a still image but a full on motion picture with sounds and emotions.
*****
He was angry. The man with the briefcase. The kind of anger you can’t talk away with reasoned argument.
“When were you going to tell me?” he was asking. “I mean you could have said something before.”
“I don’t know. It all happened so fast.”
“Oh come on, Alanna, a three-month pregnancy is not something that just crops up overnight. You knew.”
It was true. She had known, had felt it right from the start. But she hadn’t wanted to know for sure and couldn’t figure out why not. All right, they we
ren’t married. But he had asked. She had worn the ring. The big square-cut diamond he’d presented at the club, complete with a champagne toast down on his knee. She’d been embarrassed, asked him to get up, blushed and wanted to run to the ladies room. There had been clapping, the whole country club excited by his public proposal, their crowd happy to see two of its members uniting. Her parents beaming. His parents raising their glasses in a toast. It was good to keep the wall intact around the group. But Alanna would have preferred a private moment of their own. Now here he was, demanding an explanation and she had none to offer.
“I’m sorry,” she said as she had so many times before.
“No you’re not. You’re a stubborn bitch sometimes, you know.” He picked up his briefcase. It was expensive, sleek black leather with a gold clasp. The phone in his pocket buzzed but he ignored it for the moment. “You just keep stringing me along and one of these days I won’t be there anymore. This is your last chance. I need to make this move to Chicago. I’ve bought this company and now I need to put a team together to integrate it into the others. I can only do that from there and I want you to move north with me. I thought you wanted the same things I want. Well this is it. My shot. And yours, too.”
“You know that’s not what I want. I want to stay here. I love it here. I can’t live in Chicago in the cold. I can’t give this up. I’ve told you that and you just won’t accept it.”
“But when this takeover works, we can afford a place there and a place here. A better place than what we have. You can have a mansion on the ocean for all I care. I’ve been working on this deal for three years now and soon I’ll be able to sell the whole thing. Can’t you see that?”
She could see it, had lived it all for years. Always taking second chair to his mistress, the business. She didn’t really believe he’d sell it out. She had a feeling he’d keep on buying other businesses and building it until it was so huge he’d never have any time for her or anything else. Certainly not for a baby.
Shelly's Second Chance (The Wish Granters, Book One) Page 14