The Magic Touch (18 page)

“We could have cured her!”

“No.” Rose looked out across the lake, and her voice sounded very hoarse. “It isn’t what she wanted.”

“Well, no more children are gonna die on my beat,” Ray said, drawing himself up to make the vow. “Hear that, wand?” he instructed the little stick. “We’re going to
make
them better. All of them.”

“Remember about power corrupting,” Rose warned him. “Free will. That’s where we differ from the autocrats. You can’t go against a child’s choice, even if you think you know better. You won’t be living their life for them. Once you’re through that wall, pfft! You’re gone, and what you did is what they have to deal with. Remember you learn from your clients as much as they learn from you. What that little girl just taught you was a hard lesson in how to die with dignity. Her faith told her that her time here was done, and there was something better on the other side, if only peace and freedom from pain.”

“Don’t you
know
?”
Ray asked.

“No. Of course not. We have no special knowledge. All we can do is hope and believe, just like them.” Rose let her hand flutter up toward heaven. Ray felt so angry he had to look away.

“I have to feel I can do better for them than that,” he said. “Otherwise, I’ll hand you this pencil and go home.”

“Then we’ll try,” Rose said softly. She let the need strings draw them back to the hospital.

O O O

Ray spotted a dark-skinned boy sitting in a wheelchair next to a glass-walled office. The child was listening hard to what was going on inside the room. A man and a woman were talking to a woman in a white lab coat. No, the man was shouting, and the woman was weeping. Rose gave Ray an encouraging nod. Steeling his new resolve, Ray walked over and knelt down next to him.

“Hey, man,” he said. “What’s going on with you?” He tilted his head toward the door.

“They think I have bone cancer,” the child said. “It don’t hurt or nothing, but they say I’ll probably die.” He stuck out a thin leg and pointed to a small patch of mottled flesh on his shin that just looked wrong to Ray. He palmed his small training wand and passed his hand above the place the boy pointed to. The spot radiated prickly cold that made Ray feel queasy. He drew his hand away as fast as he could. The boy watched his face carefully.

“You think so, too?” he asked, trying to look like he didn’t care.

“What do you think?” Ray asked.

“Don’t matter what I think,” the boy sighed. “I just want to get out of here and go home.” He looked into the room, where the man had plopped down on the couch against the wall, and the woman was staring out the window. The doctor sat at her desk with her head bent over her folded hands, talking in a low voice.

“What’s your name, kiddo?” Rose asked.

“Victor,” the boy said.

“Well, Victor, what if I told you I could grant a wish so that would go away?” Ray asked him in a soft voice, nodding toward the boy’s leg.

“You think I’m crazy?” the boy asked, giving him a sharp look.

Ray showed him the small wand. “I’m your fairy godfather. I can fix it if you want. Let me help.”

The boy jerked his head toward Rose. “Who’s she?”

“I’m an apprentice. She’s teaching me to do my stuff right.” Obligingly, Rose drew her long wand out of her purse and showed it to the child. He seemed impressed by the sleight of hand but, when there was no magic instantly forthcoming, let his face go blank again.

“I don’t want anybody practicing on me. If you do it, you do it right,” the boy insisted. He still looked like he didn’t believe in the conversation he was having, but no strand of hope was too thin to hang on to. Inside the office next to him, they were arguing about life and death. His life and death. He could only have been about ten years old.

“I will do it right,” Ray promised. He knelt beside the leg, letting the wand in his hand pull toward the hidden tumor of its own accord. Whatever was in there was
big
,
and it felt horrible. In the room behind him they were talking about biopsies, radiation therapy, and amputation.
Give this child health
, he thought, putting into the wish everything he had. He tapped the skinny shinbone with his wand, and felt goodness in the pale blue light that poured out. Somewhere in the middle of the wish the lump stopped feeling hostile and cold. Now it just felt like the rest of the leg. Ray stood up. He’d beaten this one. The child would live and be whole.

The boy looked at him. “That’s all?” he asked. “No lightning bolts?”

“Certainly not,” Rose said, pointing across the hallway to a sign that said “No Smoking—Oxygen In Use.” Victor gave her a grin that showed one and a half adult front teeth.

“We’d better get him down and get a tissue sample,” the doctor said, coming toward the door. The parents followed him. Ray met their eyes and gave them the small smile of a stranger. He casually patted the boy on the shoulder.

“Take it easy, man.” He turned quickly away and strode off. Rose trotted along behind him.

“Who was that?” the mother demanded in a stage whisper as she wheeled her son down the hall.

“My fairy godfather,” the boy said audibly. Ray glanced back over his shoulder, then went on to the next need string.

In the emergency room, a teenaged girl sat on a gurney bed clutching her baby. Both of them were crying. There was something wrong with the way the baby’s left leg was hanging, but every time the emergency room nurse tried to take it to examine, the young mother jerked her child away. The police officer writing in his notebook gave Ray and Rose a warning look as they approached. The fairy godparents backed off enough to listen without being in the line of sight.

“Don’t look at the baby,” Rose whispered. “Look at the mother.”

Ray concentrated, his fingers wrapped around the wand. Rose was right. The need string came from her.

“Look, Miss DuShen,” said the harried-looking woman on the other side of the bed. “Child Welfare only wants to do what’s best for your baby.”

“You can’t take him away!” the girl cried. She was besieged from both sides. “I didn’t hurt him. He fell down the stairs. I told you. He just got past me. The baby gate is broken. He crawled around the mattress I had blocking the door.”

“Put in the fix for her,” Rose said, urgently. “She needs it.”

“I want cases that will make a difference,” Ray said, disappointed in what looked like a losing argument to him.

“This will,” Rose promised him. “Go on. She just needs a chance.”

The nurse had moved in, and with gentle purpose, removed the baby from the girl’s arms. He felt the left leg with practiced fingers. The caseworker from Child Welfare shook her head and made notes on her clipboard. Full of doubt, Ray waved the little wand in the direction of the girl.

“Miss DuShen,” the caseworker began, severely, raising her eyes from her documents. Her face suddenly changed. “… Miss DuShen, you really need to get another baby gate. This could have been a devastating accident.”

“I’ll be more careful,” the girl said, turning pleading eyes from one authority figure to the other. “I swear.”

“Nice job,” Rose said, softly. Ray shrugged. He felt the need string shrink in diameter and vanish. He took a deep breath and sensed around for the next one. Jerking his head for Rose to follow him, he strode out of emergency, heading for the elevators.

Chapter 17

“This handwriting is worse than my daughter’s,” Rose said, reading a chart on the end of an incubator containing a baby girl named Leah. “Her heart is weak. She’s not getting enough oxygen. Her condition is critical.”

Ray could have told her that without checking the chart. The baby’s hands and feet were enclosed in puffy pads to keep the circulation going, and a tube ran into her nose. “What’s she need?”

“All kinds of things, but first, a transplant. Her doctor is a”—Rose put her nose close to the chart and squinted—“a Dr. Marsh. She needs help soon. There’s a telephone number, an internal line. This Dr. Marsh must be a resident here.”

“What can we do?” Ray asked. “I refuse to be responsible for the death of another kid so that another will get its heart.”

“The magic copes, Ray,” Rose said impatiently. “We can see where this child is in the list for transplants.”

O O O

“Too busy,” Rose said, looking over the appointment ledger on the desk outside the sanctum sanctorum that bore the nameplate “Dr. E. Marsh.” She tapped the uppermost page, dated tomorrow. “There’s not a single spot open on this for weeks. He’s run off his feet. This person needs a fairy godmother himself. No, he needs a genetic scientist, to clone him. Ah. Leah’s number two on this list. There’s a heart coming in tonight, but it’s slated for a boy called Raheed. Another couple of days could be too late for her.”

A noise behind them alerted Ray to the approach of a nurse-receptionist. She smiled at them with the cool cordial air that said she would be nice, but not easy to mess with. Her mere aura drove Ray two steps back from the desk as she sat down.

“Can I help you?” she asked.

“We wanted to see if the doctor was in,” Rose said, smiling back, but vaguely, like someone’s grandmother meeting a grandchild’s new friend.

The nurse glanced down at her book as if to remind herself, then shook her head a little wearily.

“I’m so sorry. He’s gone home for the night. He’s in the operating room in the morning.” She gave them a smile set in concrete, and waited for them to go away.

“Well, thank you,” Rose said. She pulled Ray down the hall a dozen feet and around into the next doorway. As the telephone on the nurse’s desk rang, Rose peered back. The nurse picked up the phone and spoke into it, taking her arms off the ledger. “Do it,” she whispered.

Ray pictured that tiny child in the incubator, then made his mind zoom in to her heart, concentrating on a healthy organ beating in its place. Maybe the magic would make her real heart better. “Okay, wand, do your stuff,” he said.

Around the corner, the nurse finished her call, and straightened a few papers. The telephone rang again. She picked it up.

“Hello? Oh, I see. Um-hmm,” she said. She reached into a leather-covered can for a pencil. Turning it upside down, she erased a name from the page uppermost, Raheed’s name. “Um-hmm.”

Ray was horrified. All his adrenaline poured out through his feet, followed by his blood. He swayed.

“What did I do?” he asked. “I killed a child! What did I do?” He leaned against the wall, feeling devastated. Rose shook him and held her finger to her lips.

“Shh. Nothing. Listen.”

“… We’re very happy to hear that,” the nurse receptionist said, nodding and smiling. She brushed a curl of hair back behind her ear. “Really. Doctor will be very glad to hear that. Remarkable. Yes, of course. I’ll send the records tomorrow. No. Not at all. Good-bye.”

“See?” Rose asked. “You made a miracle for two children. The boy on the other end of the phone doesn’t need the doctor. He’s cured. The baby will get that open appointment, and that available heart, which, they will find, is of exactly the right tissue type.”

Ray opened and closed his mouth. His hands shook, and he clutched the wand to keep from dropping it. “I thought I’d killed a child.”

“Good magic can only result in good,” Rose said. “Come on. It’s late. We’d better go.”

“But there are more cases! More kids need us,” Ray protested, swinging the small wand across the corridor. It wasn’t the texture of the air making his hand quiver, and he knew it. He was tired, but he had to go on. They hurt, and he cared. “There’s another need string.”

“
Enough
already,” Rose said, drawing him along. “You’ve had it for today. Look at you. You’re trembling.” She put her arm through his, and locked her other arm across her wrist so he had to walk with her. Ray went along, like a bull led by the nose, but he still protested. Another need string manifested itself, and tried to draw Ray along it. He strained at Rose’s grip, seeking to follow the plea.

“There’s another! I’ve
got
to help them!”

“If you don’t get some rest, you’ll be of no help to anyone at all,” Rose said. She took the wand out of his hand and tucked it back into his pocket. He started to take it out again, but she slapped his hand lightly. “Enough. You got the most urgent cases. I told you, there are other fairy godmothers around. The ones who need help the most will get it. Look what you’ve done already!”

Loud voices attracted Ray’s attention as they turned into the corridor of offices once again. The man and woman, parents of Victor, the bone cancer patient, were standing with the doctor, all looking down at the boy with expressions of amazement.

“… Never seen anything like it,” the doctor was saying, shaking her head. “I saw that mass on X-ray
this morning.
”

“I told you,” Victor said, as if all three adults were stupid and deaf. “It was my fairy godfather. He fixed it. Hey, there he is!” The boy sat up in his wheelchair and waved furiously to Ray. “I’m okay! Thanks, man!”

“No charge, little brother,” Ray said, giving the boy a thumbs-up. The adults stared at him, bewildered. They only saw the same stranger who had stopped before to talk to their son.

“He’s just a man, sweetheart,” the mother said, very patiently.

“No, he’s not,” the boy insisted. “He did magic for me. You saw. He’s my fairy godfather.”

The doctor just shook her head again.

“There! See what good you’ve done already?” Rose asked, as they walked toward the elevator. “So many people happy. You did right by them.”

“I ought to be doing more,” Ray said. He started to reach for the wand once again and caught Rose’s warning eye on him. He let his hand drop. “I’ve got only so much time. I can’t be wasting it.”

“You’re driving yourself,” Rose said. “Don’t go too far. Too much effort is worse than none at all. Look! You were a doctor tonight. Better than a doctor. How about that?” She punched the “down” button.

The smooth metal doors opened. Ray hesitated. There were more kids here who needed help. Didn’t Rose understand that? But she continued to guide him toward the door.

“I ought to stay,” he said.

“No,” Rose said, very calmly but firmly. “We’re leaving now.”

When they were outside, the lower light level let his pupils dilate. For some reason, that slight physiological change made him feel all the exhaustion he had been staving off for hours. The warm night enveloped him like a down quilt, offering him ease. His shoulders slumped, and he shook his head.

“I’ve been a raving maniac all evening, haven’t I?” he asked, turning a sheepish eye toward Rose. “The avenging angel with the cure, huh?”

“Maybe you went off the deep end a little bit,” Rose said. She was silent for a long time. While they walked, Ray’s mind kept going back to each of the children he’d seen and helped. He even found himself smiling. People passing by gave him strange looks, but he didn’t care.

“You would be wasted as a botanist,” Rose said at last. “You would be a wonderful doctor.” He glanced over at her. She was studying him, her dark brows drawn together in a concentrated
V
.

“A little too late for that now,” Ray said. He looked away. He didn’t want Rose to see what was in his eyes. He was a little afraid himself.

“Maybe,” Rose said. “Maybe not. Ray, I want you to take a few days off.”

“Why?” Ray stopped short, and Rose overshot a few steps. She backed up, and put her arm through his. He tried to shake her off, but she hung on like ivy.

“Because you’re tired. You pushed yourself too hard. I watched you all evening, and I’m seeing you now. I know I told you I’d give you every opportunity I can, but we’re not going out again until you regain some proportion in what you’re supposed to be doing.”

Ray was aghast. “I know what I’m doing! I’m helping children. That’s what a fairy godmother does, right?”

“This is heavy stuff for a young person like you,” Rose said. She stopped just before setting one foot off a curb, pulling Ray back out of the path of a taxi he hadn’t even seen. “Not every wish is supposed to be about life and death. You aren’t meant to be trying to save the world, much as I know you want to. If you always go looking for these cases, you’ll burn out, and I will not let that happen. You’re full of promise. I want you to have a long, happy career, and you won’t if you turn yourself into a supernova on your first hard call!”

“I can handle it,” Ray said sullenly. “I thought you were pushing me, from what you said in the bar a couple of weeks ago.”

Rose shook her head. “I
was
pushing you. Now
you’re
pushing you, too much. You need a break. You’re on furlough. This is an order.”

“You can’t stop me,” Ray said.

Rose sighed. “Certainly I can, if I have to. I’m your mentor, remember? I could make it an order, but I’m hoping your natural common sense will kick in by itself as soon as you’ve had a good night’s sleep. Take a couple of days off. I don’t want you coming back until you can grant a child a lifetime supply of jelly beans or a gold-plated bicycle without considering the implications. No more miracle cures for a while.”

This time Ray did yank his arm back. Rose didn’t look surprised, and he hated her for her mind reading, and her know-it-all calm.

“Maybe I’m never coming back,” Ray said, snatching the wand out of his pocket. He made to throw it down, but the little blue stick hung on to his hand like glue.

“That is your choice,” Rose said. She stopped walking. Ray halted, too, puzzled as to why, until he realized they were standing under a bus route sign. “This is my stop for home. Yours, too. Can we at least travel together amiably? You don’t have to talk to me.”

Ray stuffed the wand back into his pocket. “All right, because I’m not.”

Rose bowed her head, but didn’t smile. That would have been the last straw of condescension. He stood beside her, not looking. He studied the tall buildings around him, and counted the cars. A couple of tired-looking nurses in white pantsuits gravitated toward the sign. They chatted in low voices. Ray glanced at them, wondering if any of them had taken care of his clients that evening. One looked up and smiled at him. It wasn’t an expression of recognition, but one of flirtation. Ray grinned back. She was rather pretty.

The bus came. It was so crowded he would either have to sit with Rose or stand.
What was the harm?
he thought, swinging into the aisle seat beside her. She wasn’t meeting his eyes. She was leaving him alone with his own thoughts. As the bus progressed on its route northward, more and more people got off, leaving plenty of seats open, but he didn’t move. When their section was empty around them, Rose spoke.

“Did you hear about all those mysterious break-ins?” she asked. “I want you to take care of yourself, Ray. I haven’t yet taught you how to shield yourself. You need to know that.”

“Next time,” Ray said. He forced the words out, and they sounded half-strangled. The weariness was even affecting his throat.

“Next time,” Rose wiggled out from the window seat as the bus lurched to a halt. She gave him a warm smile. “You watch out for yourself, sweetheart.” She patted his knee and slipped out the door.

As the bus covered the last few blocks to his street Ray remembered that he had forgotten to tell her about the Riverside Jackals joining the DDEG. It’d have to wait until next time. Until he learned to back it off. But how could you stop caring? When did you walk away from the next child who needed you? How did you know? He slammed his hands on the rail of the seat in front of him, causing the last two remaining passengers on the bus to gaze at him with alarm. Ray put his hands in his lap and tried to look benign.

He had wanted to talk about the Jackal situation, but it never had seemed the right time that evening. He’d start to open his mouth, but Rose would go gassing on about her granddaughter’s piano recital. What could she say, except too bad? Your friend fell in with a bad crowd, but you’re with us? Small comfort. He supposed he could call her up, as she had invited him to do, but he was certain he couldn’t make her understand about Hakeem unless he told her in person—and she had just told him to go away for a while. His pride hurt. He’d been doing his job well, and she made him stop.

But the very combination of the Jackals and the Djinn bothered him. He wanted to know why the DDEG would let gangbangers join in the first place. Weren’t they trying to appear as respectable as possible so they could merge with the FGU? Why take a chance on known criminals and drug dealers? Did the guild think they could reform them? The DDEG must have no judgment or common sense at all. Ray finally agreed with Morry Garner. Kids would get lost in the shuffle for good, and so would the Fairy Godmothers themselves. The whole thing would turn into a magical autocracy with Mario Lewis and his friends at the top of the pyramid. He didn’t want this merger. The gangs would take over, snuffing out the best thing he’d ever seen in this city.

O O O

The bus nuzzled the curb, and the doors creaked open with a deafening hydraulic hiss. Ray swung up, unable to sit still any longer, and jumped down the three steps to the pavement. It was quiet on the main street. By now everything was closed but the bars. The big Friday night crowd from the suburbs had gone away, leaving only the locals and the hard-core partiers between the sodium vapor lights and the garbage. Ray stumped past the Jazz Club on the corner, hearing a blast of trombone music as if the man behind the horn was just warming up instead of cooling down. Ray jogged a few steps to the beat, until the sound faded away. Only a couple more blocks, then he could fall into bed. What a welcome concept
that
was.