Shelly's Second Chance (The Wish Granters, Book One) (17 page)

But how is he?” she asked. “I
mean did you get it all?”

The doctor nodded to the
nurse who left the room quietly. “He came through the operation just fine. And
we’re very hopeful. But, sorry to say, it was cancer. ”

Shelly sank onto a padded
vinyl recliner that had been placed next to Ben’s bed. She couldn’t speak. The
word kept rattling around in her brain. Cancer. Cancer. Cancer.

“That’s the bad news,” the
doctor continued “But the good news is that we caught it early, it was
encapsulated, and we think this was the primary site.”

“Encapsulated?” she asked
weakly.

“Well, maybe I can explain it
better this way. We have a number of ways we grade cancer. Stage one cancer is
the most likely curable. Stage four is least likely. We’re fairly sure Ben’s
cancer is stage one. We got the whole mass out, it was small and encapsulated,
which means it had not broken out of the original tumor. All good news so far.
We’re just running further tests to confirm this was the primary site. Which
would be more good news because it would mean the cancer hadn’t begun somewhere
else and metastasized.”

They both looked down at Ben
who looked to Shelly pretty pale and pitiful for someone on the receiving end
of so much good news. “You’re lucky,” the doctor said.

Lucky? A bitter laugh formed
in her throat.

“Very lucky,” the doctor
repeated, as he picked up his clipboard to leave. “Things could have been much
worse.”

This was all the time you
could expect from someone so important. Shelly suddenly remembered once Ben
laughing when she asked him for help with the Sunday crossword, holding up his
hands and saying “I’m not a brain surgeon.”

Well, this man was a brain
surgeon and he had places to be. Stories to tell to other people who evidently
weren’t as lucky as her Ben.

“I thought I told you to take
a break,” the doctor said, gazing down at her kindly.

“I did.”

He shook his head. “A real
break. Get out of here, take a shower and a nap, have a good meal. It will be
hours before he wakes up and he’s being well-monitored, I assure you.”

Shelly looked down at her
wrinkled dress and suddenly felt as if she’d come out of a cave. How long had
it been since she’d eaten? Since she’d slept?

“I can’t leave him.”

“There’s nothing you can do
right now, I assure you. Get some rest.” He smiled at her. “Doctor’s orders.
And don’t get downhearted.”

*****

Alanna and Joe had no idea
where Shelly had gotten to but at least they’d found each other.

They had each manifested to
the hospital gift shop. Funny how they put them right as you come in, Joe
thought. Like desserts come first in a cafeteria line. All the temptation right
up front. He didn’t know where Alanna had been for the last hour, but she
seemed a little dazed. She was holding a stuffed bunny, rubbing it against her
cheek. Joe thought about buying it for her, but there was this thing about not
having any money. Another of the mysteries of the Wish Granter almost life-style.
If he took the bunny up to the cash register, would the money for it suddenly
manifest in his hand?

But then Alanna finally put
the bunny down in a bin of other plush toys and he got a glimpse at the price
tag. Forty-two dollars. Jesus. Highway robbery. That was too much to spend on a
little bunny even with non-money.

“What happened to you?” Joe
asked first.

“I was wondering the same
about you. I ended up looking at babies in the preemie nursery.”

“And I thought I saw my law
partner. I was as sure of it as I am that you’re standing here right now.” Or
was he really that sure? For the first time since Joe arrived in Transition, he
doubted whether any of this was really happening or if it was all some dream.
Who knows, any minute he might awaken in his own bed, get up, shower, dress,
and go off to meet the partner who never had been shot, a man who was, at this
moment, waiting for him at their office, wondering why Joe was running late.

“Looks like we both
remembered something.” Alanna broke his train of thought. “It’s almost as if
they’re toying with us. Giving us bits and pieces but not enough to put
together the whole story.”

Just as Joe started to agree,
he spotted Shelly out of the corner of his eye.

“Look,” he said, pointing at
her walking resolutely toward the exit doors.

“Where’s she going?” Alanna
asked.

“I don’t know. But she has a
weird expression on her face. Like she’s about to do something stupid.”

Chapter Thirty-Two

Downhearted, the doctor had
said. What a funny word. It wasn’t your heart that was down but your mind. He
had said to go back and bathe and change clothes and rest, and she had done all
those things. Now, as she stepped into the hall, closing the hotel room door
behind her, she felt that she was thinking clearly again for the first time in twenty-four
hours. Ben was out of danger—at least for now—and the doctor had said it would
take several hours for him to come back to consciousness. There was time for
her to get something to eat—something decent, since she was suddenly aware she
was hungry—before returning to the hospital.

Shelly took the elevator down
to the lobby level and looked around. It was the middle of the afternoon, so
the fancy restaurants were closed and she didn’t want to go to one of those
awful buffets. She seemed to remember there was a little outdoor café beside
the pool, and that might be pleasant, to feel the sun on her shoulders for a
few minutes, to hear music and laughter and the sound of children splashing into
a pool. To return for an hour to the world of the living. Spending a night in a
hospital with that awful artificial light and all the beeping and sirens was
enough to get anyone . . . well, downhearted actually, and that’s before you
even factored in the misery and fear and pain that seemed to hang over the
building like a dense fog. Yeah, the café by the pool. An hour there would get
her in exactly the right frame of mind to return to Ben’s bedside and help him
face whatever was waiting there.

Shelly glanced at the lobby
bar as she walked past. Hard to believe it was just yesterday that she had
dropped a coin in that very slot machine and with the touch of a single button
had changed everything in her life. Now that she thought about it, it seemed
they also had a bar menu, that yesterday she had seen a woman sitting beside her
eating a nice looking Caesar salad. And it would be so hot to sit by the pool,
wouldn’t it? No need to sweat since she’d just had a bath and redone her hair
and makeup. She didn’t want Ben to wake up to a melting Bride of Frankenstein.

So she turned and walked up
the three marble steps into the bar and slid onto one of the high seats. But
before she could even get settled the bartender was in front of her with a
broad grin on his face.

“You’re the one, aren’t you?”

“I beg your pardon?”

“You’re the lady who won the
jackpot in here yesterday, right? Man, we usually don’t see that kind of action
in the lobby. Here you go . . .” He poured as he spoke and pushed a glass of
champagne toward her. “Compliments of the house, of course.”

Shelly looked down at it
numbly and the bartender laughed. “Didn’t mean to make you queasy. Spent last
night celebrating, huh? I know I would have.”

Shelly gave him a quick,
automatic smile and picked up the champagne. He was a young guy and he meant
well. But now everyone at the bar was looking at her. Instinctively, she put
her hand in her purse and felt around for the envelope there, the one that held
the cashier’s check from the bank. Just a simple piece of paper and yet it had
the power to change her life. In fact, it already seemed to be changing it.
People were offering her free stuff. And looking her way with admiration. Life
sure was weird.

She ordered a chicken salad
sandwich. In the middle of all this, she wanted something plain and solid, the
sort of thing she might have eaten for lunch back home in Virginia. The
bartender insisted that it too was on the house—apparently once people knew you
had money, you no longer needed to actually spend that money—and after taking
just a few bites, she began to feel better.

“Excuse me, miss?”

Shelly looked up. An older
woman was standing beside her, dressed in the sort of polyester pantsuit Shelly
hadn’t seen in twenty years. It reminded her of something her grandmother used
to wear, as did the woman’s neat round cap of curly hair and the oversized
handbag she clutched with both hands. Shelly nodded and wiped her mouth with a
napkin.

“Do you mind if we take a
picture of you? I want to take it back to the girls in my garden club. They say
no one ever really wins in Vegas and I want to prove them wrong.” The woman’s
husband was already on his feet with the camera in his hands and a hopeful
smile on his face.

“We can take a picture here,
can’t we?” he asked the bartender.

“Sure thing,” said the
bartender. “You can’t use a camera in the casino, but technically we’re still
in the lobby.”

“Can we get her over by the
machine where she won?”

“Well we aren’t supposed to
allow pictures of actual gambling but . . .” the bartender took a quick,
conspiratorial glance around the nearly-empty bar. “I suppose since this is the
lobby it’ll be all right.”

“Do you mind?” asked the
woman. “It would mean a lot to me to have my picture taken with a big winner.”

Shelly nodded and slid off
the barstool. She and the woman posed before the slot machine and, at the man’s
instruction, Shelly put her finger on the button that had changed her life
while the woman stood behind her smiling broadly and holding two thumbs up.

“How long have you been
married?” she asked the woman.

“Forty-two years,” the woman
said promptly. “Are you married, honey?”

“I’m engaged,” Shelly said ,
hoping this wouldn’t lead to the typical request to see the ring.

“I bet your fiancé was
thrilled,” the woman said. “Well, look at you. Lucky in love and lucky with
money, too.”

The couple said goodbye and
Shelly waved a thank you to the bartender and started off, too. She glanced at
her watch as she walked across the lobby. According to the doctor, they
wouldn’t even try to bring Ben out of the coma for another two hours. She had
just enough time to . . .

*****

“There she is,” Joe said.
“Jesus, I can’t believe it.”

Joe and Alanna were back at
their usual post, behind one of the gigantic marble pillars in the Bellagio
casino, watching Shelly waiting in line at the cashier’s window.

“We can’t stop her,” Alanna
said. “I don’t think that’s part of our job.”

“But look at her. She’s going
right down the tubes, right in front of our eyes. We’ve got to save her from
herself.”

“Are you sure? She’s already
gotten her wish. If she chooses to lose it all there’s nothing we can do to
stop her.”

Joe was so rigid with tension
that it was as if he’d turned into one of the stone statues all around them.

“What she does affects us,
you know,” he snapped. His tone of voice made Alanna draw back a bit. “What if
her wish goes completely south? Then we’ve wasted all this effort to come back
with a big fat zero. Who knows if this case will even count, if it will move us
along in the process, help us get back to the world of the living.”

“And you’re still so sure
that’s what you want?”

Joe looked at her sharply,
his eyes as dark blue as the ocean. “Don’t you?”

“When I look around here at
all these people I’m not sure this is such a great life. What if being a wish
granter is a better way to live?”

Joe frowned. “How can you
even think that? Look at us. All we do is watch and wait. We can’t really
affect anything. We have little say in their lives or even our own. I’d rather
have one day of misery that at least I controlled than spend eternity being
pushed around by Morgan.”

“But that’s just the point.
Everything he’s told us implies that we do have control over our destiny. If
only we can remember.”

“Yeah. Right. They say it’s
up to us but then we can’t remember clearly so in the end we’re stuck. I’d
rather get back to real life no matter what was wrong with it.”

“You were the one who was so
happy with the situation in the beginning.”

“That was before I saw my
other
partner,” Joe muttered under his breath. She was right, he’d done a one-eighty.
Being a Wish Granter had seemed like a vacation at first—all about drinks, and
manifesting, and hanging out with a pretty girl. Now it seemed like a series of
tests he wasn’t sure he would pass.

The two of them watched
Shelly slide the check across the counter to the cashier. She bent her head low
as if answering a question, then the woman slid a small stack of chips back
towards her, then another. Alanna exhaled with relief. “Look,” she said. “She
didn’t cash it all in. She’s only got a short stack.”