Shelly's Second Chance (The Wish Granters, Book One) (13 page)

“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.

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.