Forever Finley

by Holly Schindler

  He’d seemed to understand, though, that this time was different—that this time, he needed to be the rock. He was awkward about it, but still. Tim being awkward and sweet was better than no Tim and a stranger in her avalanche-cold room.

  She just needed some noise. A distraction from what was about to happen.

  June began to squeeze the blood pressure cuff tighter and tighter against Patricia’s arm. But she stopped suddenly to lift her head toward the window. June didn’t appear to be merely glancing, though. The only time Patricia had seen a look like that was on the faces in the pews around her in church. Faces silently begging for some sign to appear, showing them which decision to make, which road to travel, which action to choose.

  What kind of sign could June possibly need? That kind of thing was reserved for people in Patricia’s position. June was a beautiful, healthy young woman.

  Still, though—June just looked so serious at that moment. Patricia kept quiet, waiting to see what would happen next.

  ∞ ∞ ∞

  Jessica stood outside the hospital entrance, pacing the same three feet of sidewalk she’d been traveling for the past fifteen minutes. Now that she was here, she wasn’t sure it was a good idea. This was her mother’s private, personal situation, after all—there was never anything more personal than your own body, your health. Wasn’t that why going to the doctor was always so nerve-wracking? There you were, letting a perfect stranger muck around in your body in a way your closest friend—or the person you loved most—would never dare. That was your one true space in the universe. And suddenly, there it was, being reduced to something a bunch of white coats could poke through, like you were nothing more than a bunch of junk in a cardboard box in a flea market. Anything here worth keeping, guys?

  Was Jessica only going to be another intrusion in what was already an intrusion? She didn’t want to make it worse for her mother. There was still her father, though. He would be here. And he would be feeling awful. Terrified. His was the home that could possibly change forever. Jessica could comfort him. Or was worry ever something that could be shared? Did it only multiply—the same way being around other nervous students right before the curtain had risen on the fifth grade school play had made Jessica run to throw up in the girls’ bathroom?

  She wasn’t sure anymore. Part of her screamed that she needed to get in the car and leave. The other part retaliated, Don’t you dare.

  A man paced near her. Jessica hadn’t noticed him at first. But he had a long black braid. He looked as though he’d come from a construction site. He wore insulated jeans and a red and black checkered jacket. Smears of dried mud had been caked to his knees and all over the toes of his work boots.

  “You sick?” he asked her.

  Jessica stopped pacing. It seemed oddly direct. Borderline curt.

  “I’m here to see someone,” she said.

  “Me, too.”

  Jessica returned to pacing.

  “You early?”

  Jessica stopped. “No. I think maybe I should leave.”

  She raised her eyes toward him, as if asking what he thought. He shook his head at her, like he disapproved. Why would he, though? She wanted to ask him. But something stopped her.

  He glanced up the side of the building, toward a distant window on an upper floor. And waved.

  Jessica followed, looking up in time to catch sight of a girl in a pink shirt, with yellow blond hair. She thought she saw the girl wave back—make some kind of motion with her hand, anyway—before turning away.

  “Take yourself out of it,” the man told Jessica. “When you stop thinking of yourself, you find the true way.” And slipped through the entrance.

  She stood quietly in the lingering heat. He was right—she had been thinking only of her own potential embarrassment. Afraid of butting in where she wasn’t wanted and feeling like a fool. But this wasn’t about her.

  She threw open the hospital door. She wanted to thank him. Sometimes, it took a stranger to look at things objectively. But he was nowhere.

  Time to find her dad.

  ∞ ∞ ∞

  On the opposite side of the hospital, Mark was opening another door—of course he was on the wrong end of the hospital, being frowned at by staff, pointed down one hall, then another. Where else would he be? The constant bumbler. That was Mark. Too preoccupied to read all the signs or realize his shoelace was untied.

  He wasn’t just turned around, though, not today. He wasn’t just preoccupied. He was angry. And anger led to a person making all sorts of mistakes, coming in wrong doors, stomping about too noisily. He was furious at everyone in Finley; angry that not a single soul had responded to his Amos e-mails. That his notebook did not have so much as a single line in it about whispers he’d overheard on the town square—people asking each other what they could do for the Steeles while Patricia was in the hospital.

  Mark was here. Even if the rest of the town wasn’t. He wouldn’t be the disappointment. Maybe he and Tim weren’t as close as they could be. Maybe seeing his face would be a shock to Tim. But that didn’t matter. Mark was here for him.

  After a certain point, though, Mark stopped hearing his own footsteps. And not because his footsteps had grown less forceful.

  Because the sound had been eclipsed.

  By voices.

  When he glanced into the waiting area, they were there. All of them. Jo and Norma and Gary. Annie and Justin. And more—Ruthie the waitress at the Corner Diner, Michael the barista at the best coffee shop in town (and his parents and his wife), Cody the owner of the construction company that had been helping the Steeles flip houses (and every last one of his employees). And more still—the current high school track and field coach, and Damien, who was saying Patricia had been the one who made him want to be a teacher in the first place, and even Hargrove High’s quarterback, because Patricia had been his freshman English teacher. The one who had kept him after school and taught him how to study—the only teacher in his life who’d taken the time to tutor him in a way that benefited all his classes, not just the one they were taking together.

  As Mark’s eyes swooped about the room, he realized the entire varsity team had come. And the cheerleaders, dressed in their short skirts, shaking their pom-poms because they’d written Patricia a get-well cheer they intended to perform in her room.

  And the librarian—who had always taken Patricia’s book recommendations to heart. And Kelly, the town’s most popular wedding planner, who was saying she’d always felt safe writing anything for Patricia’s class—the kind of safe that had given her confidence. The kind of confidence she needed to rely on every single day, in her business.

  They were all there. Waiting. Talking. Telling Patricia stories.

  Mark laughed. Held his stomach as the laughter intensified. Not that anyone could hear him over their shouts and chatter. He should have had more faith in Finley.

  Jo slithered up to his side. “You must have gotten the e-mail, too,” she shouted into his ear, and winked knowingly. “I tried to call you earlier today, but there was no answer. You must have forgotten to recharge your phone—again.”

  “I didn’t think—how—”

  “The e-mails were forwarded,” Jo shouted. “Until everyone in town got one.”

  Mark ran a hand through his wild hair. “I never thought—”

  “This isn’t the only room,” Jo shouted. “People are all over the hospital. They’re still coming. Carloads of them. Staff has no idea where to put them all. They’re afraid we’ll break all the fire codes.”

  “But—how—is it possible—Because—she’s—?”

  “She’s a teacher. They have a big impact, don’t they?” Jo shouted. “At least, they should.”

  Mark’s eyes watered as Jessica entered the room—then staggered backward a few paces in shock.

  “Hey,” the quarterback shouted at Tim. “She hasn’t gone in yet, has she?”

  Tim stood looking bewildered, a cup of ice slowly melting in his
hand. “N—no—I—”

  “Then let’s go in and say hi before instead of after,” he shouted. And before Tim could figure out a way to say no, to tell them maybe Patricia would find it off-putting, and he wanted this procedure to go smoothly—before he could suggest that maybe it would upset her to be seen stripped bare, in a disposable gown, looking sickly, as everyone did in a hospital setting—the kids were all barreling forward, as kids always had a tendency to do. They were heading for the hallway. And the rest of Finley was following.

  ∞ ∞ ∞

  Patricia had seen June nod and wave to someone outside the window—someone on the parking lot, Patricia’d thought. Maybe someone was waiting for her. Maybe Patricia was some crummy chore June needed to get out of the way—like pumping gas or returning her library books—so she could get back to real life.

  She started to raise the neckline of her gown, to replace the material that had slipped from her shoulder.

  But June lunged forward, grabbing the material first. “I’ll get that,” she said.

  Instead of raising the fabric, June touched Patricia’s tattoo. Funny how she was so obsessed with it, Patricia caught herself thinking. Just some old tattoo, no bigger than the size of a postage stamp—didn’t everyone have one these days?

  June said confidently, “You won’t need this anymore. Some silly good luck charm.”

  June’s warm touch coursed through Patricia’s body in a welcome way, but slightly a painful one, too. It felt a bit like holding her own hands—chilled to the point of nearly suffering frostbite—under a stream of hot tap water. Patricia’s blood sizzled inside her. Like it could have melted an entire glacier. But before she could let out a yelp, a new sense of comfort eclipsed her fear.

  When June lifted her hand, Patricia felt a hardness leave her body. All at once. Like she had been carrying a tower of concrete blocks for days on end, and had finally been given permission to put them all down.

  She exhaled with relief.

  “All better now,” June said, waved, and started for the door.

  “But—wait—your cuff,” Patricia said. She undid the Velcro and tried to hand it to her, but June was gone.

  She shook her head. June really was in a hurry to get down to whoever that was outside. A boyfriend, maybe. Her fellow.

  Patricia began to cover her shoulder with her gown—but stopped short yet again. Her tattoo was gone. Her shoulder was bare.

  “What?” she hissed. What had June just done to her? Had she zapped her with something? Some little laser? Was that why her touch had been warm? Was she anti-tattoo?

  Patricia retrieved a small mirror from the pocket of the light jacket she’d draped across the nearby chair. She’d hastily slipped it there before leaving home—just in case she might feel brave enough to peek at what had been done to her. But she found no sign of the tattoo ever having been there—no mark that it had just been removed. No scar, no faint blue faded tattoo markings.

  Nothing.

  Frightened, Patricia started running her hands down her arms, across her thighs. Her chest.

  And stopped.

  It, too, was gone. That hard little lump—like a piece of raw carrot—at the side of her armpit.

  “What in the world?” She searched, her fingers poking into her flesh.

  And something else—that noise she had been craving. It was all around her now, thundering, coming closer.

  She pulled the sheet on her bed all the way up to her neck just as a crowd barreled into her room. An enormous crowd—the likes of which she had usually only seen at the Hargrove High homecoming game. Wearing letterman jackets and waving pom-poms and screaming her name. And Jo was there, and Tim, and Norma, and Natalie and Damien, the couple who was depending on the Steeles to get their house in working order in time for their wedding. And Jessie. That one made her throw her arms out. Jessie was there, too, already laughing into her ear as they hugged.

  They just kept streaming in—and Patricia laughed louder the longer they continued to arrive. See? June’s voice called out to her. Had she come back? Oh, Patricia didn’t care. Not now. Not after finding the lump gone. After being party to what—a miracle?

  Patricia would be fine. Somehow, she knew it with absolute certainty. A tear escaped the corner of her eye, trickled down her cheek.

  You’ve been growin’ something all along, June’s voice echoed through Patricia’s head. Inspiration. Just look at all these people who came. People you touched. Inspiration. It’s been growin’ wild, like vines.

  ∞ ∞ ∞

  Mark had not made it past the hallway. Somehow, the stampede had gotten the better of him. They’d nearly trampled him as they’d all raced in the direction of Patricia’s room.

  One of the girls was running the wrong way—away from Patricia’s room rather than toward it. Mark laughed, even louder now than he had in the waiting room. Being the lone person heading in the opposite direction was usually his role.

  He reached out, scrambling to help her; he understood what it was to be the salmon swimming upstream. “Wait, wait,” he shouted at her. “This way.”

  She was wearing scrubs, he realized—pink ones. A nurse. Had he done something wrong yet again—was she really not trying to get to Patricia, like the rest of them? Had she instead been heading to another patient’s room?

  As he started to apologize, though, shock hit him with the force of a bucket of ice water.

  He knew that face. He’d seen it once before—last August. A girl with moon seeds wearing stolen overalls.

  “It’s you! Really you. You’re Finley,” he murmured. “Finley Powell.”

  She screwed her face into a grimace, shot out a whispery, “You hush, now!”

  “What—what’re—”

  “Don’t you know that if you want something miraculous to happen to you, you have to make the miraculous happen to others?”

  “What’re you talking…?”

  “The world doesn’t just grant wishes because you wish them. It has to be even-steven, don’t you see? I haven’t had a chance; I’ve been away so long. He’s had plenty of time.”

  “Who?”

  “Amos. Of course. He’s had—well—I don’t know how long, really. But long. I had to do something big. Huge. To catch up. I had to.”

  “Are you—are you talking about Patricia?”

  She sighed as still more visitors continued to stream around them. Patricia was being attacked by well-wishers—at least, that was how it sounded to Mark.

  But he was being attacked, too—besieged by joy. His August sighting had been validated.

  “She needed you all as much as she needed me. She needed to see proof of the good she’d done. But you know that, don’t you?” Finley asked. “When my world and yours collides—well. That’s the stuff of miracles, isn’t it?”

  Astounded, Mark watched Finely sliding away, off down the hallway.

  Patricia would be okay—Mark knew that. Finley’s words had made him believe it.

  Finley was real; he knew that, too. There was no letting doubt creep in, never again.

  The Steeles’ disaster had officially been averted.

  Mark laughed. “Beautiful!” he shouted, because that was exactly how the world seemed right then. More beautiful, even, than the tropical flowers that grew where they never should have been able to take root—beneath his tree house, along the river.

  He skipped down the remaining stretch of hallway. “A beautiful planet of unknowns,” he chanted.

  But even in the midst of the joyous celebration, a new sound hit Mark’s ears. He was not the only one chanting.

  He raced through the closest exit, away from the shouts and the songs and the laughter of Patricia’s visitors. He burst out of the hospital, into the parking lot. The chant was louder here. A single voice. It sounded so rhythmic—and Mark was so happy, he couldn’t help himself. He began to dance, jumping on one foot, then the other. Not caring that he looked like a fool.

  Mark was so bu
sy rejoicing, listening to the beat of the unseen voice and dancing, he did not think to look at the sky. He did not notice that on the distant horizon, the storm clouds were only just beginning to form…

  December Bells

  Believe in the possibility!

  Winds of change touch both the past and the future of a town called Finley.

  The smell of pine invaded the Finley town square, right on schedule. The first of December had been bringing the scent with such regularity, it seemed to those who had called Finley their lifelong home that it, too, was an integral part of the winter season. Every bit as much as colder weather. The fragrant smell of fresh-cut wreaths on streetlights and welcome signs curled through the air like a scented holiday ribbon. Every year, without fail.

  This year, in addition to the perfume of pine branches, the air clanged with the joyful sound of bells. They seemed the go-to ornaments everyone had chosen to festoon their storefronts: Norma had hung a dented but still ringing antique brass bell under her “Happy Holidays!” sign on the entrance of Relics while silver bells danced in the breeze across the trellis in front of Jo March Books: Depository for the New & Used. Tiny sleigh bells announced when a Finley-ite brimming with Christmas spirit had opened the public mail drop to slide in a handful of Christmas cards. They jingled from car radio antennas and grilles, from the sidewalk newspaper dispenser. They tinkled melodically with every step Natalie took, now that she had taken to adding them to a small charm ankle bracelet. Rings on her fingers and bells on her toes, a few of the Finley women recited, just before exchanging knowing smiles, all of them recalling vividly the terrified joy that had fluttered through their own chests as they had closed in on their wedding days.

  Bells were also being shaken by various Finley residents as they walked the town square in red suits and fake beards, shouting, “Ho, ho, ho!” Well—bells and red stockings filled with spare change being collected to help pay for Founders Park decorations and treats for the yearly Christmas pageant. Nearly all Finley men (and more than half the women) had stepped up to play the role; so many of them, they had to coordinate their movements so as not to allow two Santas to show up at the same time, throwing doubt into still-believing children’s hearts. They often showed up at the school playground or even Founders Park, where they would wave to anyone on the swings or the teeter-totters, insisting they whisper into Santa’s ear the name of the treasure their little hearts were aching for. What they were dreaming of each night.