Three Wishes (10 page)

“Every one.”

“What do they say?”

“Much of what you do,” he answered gently. He had his elbows on his thighs. His hands dangled between. “An accident or a medical crisis occurs. The victim is conscious of leaving his body, rising up above it, and looking back down. Sometimes it happens at the scene of the accident, sometimes in an operating room. He sees people working on him, hears their voices. Then there's the light. It's always very bright. It's always benevolent. It conveys a sense of well-being. It speaks without actually talking.”

“It
did,”
Bree breathed, delighted. She hadn't realized how alone she had felt until she suddenly felt less so. “What else?” She put her fingertips together in front of her mouth and tried to contain her excitement.

“There's a lot of the same uncertainty that you feel. The person knows he's had an out-of-body experience, but he's still not sure.”

“Exactly.”

“He knows people don't believe him, but he can't forget what happened. He's afraid to talk about it. Some people hold it in for years—twenty-five, by one account.”

“Oh, my. But I know the fear that person felt.” She reversed her feet, putting the bottom one on top. “Did anyone else mention being promised three wishes?”

Tom gave a quick head shake. “That doesn't mean anything. No two accounts I read were exactly alike. One person said that the air around the being of light was purple. Another passed through a tree during his experience and woke up covered with sap. Another left his body and floated around the city for a while before waking up in the hospital. Another tried to open a door while he was out of his body, but couldn't. Some remember feeling a sense of belonging when they're with this being.”

Bree had, now that she thought of it.

Tom went on. “Lots of people report being sucked out of their bodies and up through a dark tunnel. The bright light is at the end of that tunnel. Some of them report hearing a buzzing or jangling noise. Some say they fought it, fought the noise and the light, fought being sucked up.”

Bree shook her head. She hadn't experienced anything like that. There had been nothing to fight. She had simply been in her body one minute and out of it the next. Once she was with the being of light, she wouldn't have fought anyway. That being had been compelling. If anything, she had been sad to leave it.

“Some people say they were given a choice and made a conscious decision to return to life. Others believe they were returned to life for a reason. Being granted three wishes is a reason.”

“But no one else mentioned getting wishes?” she asked, knowing that the concept would be more credible if it had happened before.

The small lines that furrowed his brow did nothing negative. Black eye and all, he looked great.

“No one else mentioned getting wishes,” he said. “One person mentioned coming back to take care of a sick parent, another coming back to be with a lover, but neither mentioned it as a response to a wish. There were reports from people who said that they had done things wrong and were being given a second chance, and reports from people who said that the being of light showed them what hell looked like, so they were reformed. Some specifically said they'd been to heaven. They wrote about seeing dead relatives and friends.”

“I didn't,” Bree said, and was grateful for it. She might have liked to see her father, but if the dead congregated, he would have been with his parents, and they were dour people. Their presence in a room put a damper on everyone and everything. It would have surely dulled the luster of the being of light. She was glad that had remained unspoiled.

Of course, it was still possible that the being didn't exist. “What do you think?” she asked Tom. “Was it real, what happened to me?”

Again those small creases touched his forehead. He frowned at his palms, let them fall to his thighs, and met her gaze. “I don't know. Your claim is certainly more plausible than some of the others. Take young children having near-death experiences. Kids of three or four, even seven or eight, are imaginative. They're wide open to the power of suggestion. And I have a hard time believing near-death experiences reported by people who acknowledge that they were either stoned or drunk at the time. I also have a hard time believing the stories written by people whose lives were unstable to begin with. They may be prone to hallucinating. Same with a person who suffers a severe head injury.

“Then there are those people who report a cataclysmic awakening. They're walking down the street and—wham—they suddenly see something or know something or feel something that may or may not have to do with God. I wouldn't call that a near-death experience. An epiphany, maybe. Same thing with people who recover from a serious illness and report having seen Saint Peter and the pearly gates. Serious illnesses naturally spawn thoughts of mortality, which naturally spawn thoughts of religion.”

Bree shook her head. “Not in me. My dad was a Congregationalist, but I'm not much of anything.”

Tom smiled and sat straighter. “So then there are people like you. They're well-adjusted adults. They're intelligent. They may or may not be religious, but they're good people. They aren't hopped up or soused, they're in accidents not of their own making, and somewhere along the line their hearts stop. Medical personnel verify it and reverse it. These momentarily dead return to the world of the living with stories that are so much alike that it gives you chills. These people come from all walks of life. They don't know each other. They may or may not have ever read an account of a near-death experience, still the experiences they report have eerie similarities.” He blew out a breath. “Hard not to believe people like that.”

Bree felt suddenly lighthearted. “You're very convincing.”

“When you sum it up, it
is
convincing. The only theory I found at all plausible made the argument that the end of life is like the very beginning, that things come full circle, that there are parallels between the birth process and near-death accounts. The dark tunnel that some people claim they're sucked into at the moment of death is like the birth canal. The bright light is what the delivery room must seem like to the newborn after the dark of the womb. Same with the noise. The implication is that at the moment of death, or just prior to death, the human mind reverts in time to the moment of birth.”

“Then what I saw were memories?” She shook her head again. “Babies aren't given three wishes. Besides, I saw a mole.”

“A mole.”

“On the neck of one of the nurses who was in the operating room that night. She was bending over me, and it was on the back of her neck. How could I have seen it there if I wasn't above her?” Bree held up a hand. “Okay. I know. Maybe she was in the recovery room when I woke up, and I saw it when she turned away from me, and I'm just confusing the two locations. But there was only one nurse in the recovery room—I asked—and she wasn't in the operating room during the time my heart stopped, and besides, she doesn't have a mole. I checked.”

“Have you checked the OR nurses?”

“One. She didn't have a mole. The other has long hair. She only puts it up when she's in the operating room.” Bree tucked her hands inside each other on the folder. “I should just come out and ask her about it, but I feel silly.” At times, she felt silly, period. “Word's already going around town. What if the whole near-death thing is bogus?” She reversed her feet again, rubbing them together to generate heat. Flash had brought her robe, which was fleece, large and warm, but he hadn't thought to bring slippers. The hospital provided foam ones that were barely better than nothing.

Tom slid to the floor, shifted her feet to his lap, and began to chafe them. The warmth of it went all the way to her cheeks.

“You don't have to do that,” she said.

“I want to.”

“You must have better things to do with your time.”

He shook his head, looking pleased.

“You're feeling guilty,” she insisted, “but I told you, the accident wasn't your fault.” And he was a celebrity and movie-star handsome. But did she move her feet out of his grasp? No. “This is embarrassing.”

“Why? You have nice feet. Nice icy feet.”

“They're always that way.”

“My mom used to say that it's a female thing, that women's warmth is concentrated in the region of their hearts, so their extremities suffer.”

Bree laughed, then hugged her middle when the movement hurt.

Tom's hands stopped. Troubled eyes went to her stomach. “I'm sorry.”

“Don't be. It's fine now. But what a nice thought. You say things like that in your books, little gems of wisdom. Is that where you get them, from your mom?”

His reply was snide. “I never thought so. I thought it was all me.”

“Is she still alive?”

Quietly, he said, “She died last year.”

“I'm sorry.”

“Me, too.”

When he resumed his rubbing, it seemed more a massage, a gentle kneading that involved both of his hands and both of her feet, from the tips of her toes to her ankles.

Closing her eyes, she gave herself up to the feeling. It occurred to her that she could easily spend a wish on a permanent foot masseur, if the business of wishes was real.

She wondered if it was. No one else had ever reported being granted three wishes.

So maybe it was just her. Or maybe someone had used all three wishes and died before writing about it.

She wouldn't use the third wish, wouldn't take the risk. Then again, maybe
none
of it was real.

The massage stopped. Tom reached into his bag, pulled out a sweater, and was about to wrap it around her feet, when she said, “I'm getting tired. I'd better go back to bed.”

He returned the sweater to the knapsack, pushed to his feet, and hitched the knapsack to his shoulder. Holding the folder in one hand, he helped her up with the other. He kept one arm around her as they walked.

She had made it to the lounge on her own. Aside from the bend in her middle, she was remarkably steady. Even tired, she could have made it back to her room on her own. But she let Tom help her into bed, let him straighten the covers and pull them up. She watched him put the folder on the table where she could reach it when she was ready, watched him pull a book from the knapsack.

“That thing's full of goodies,” she mused.

His face brightened, rendering him devilishly handsome. She could see why he was called a lady-killer. “As a matter of fact.” He reached in again and produced two take-out containers. “Pudding. One for you, one for me.”

She was touched. He had brought a sweater and a book, which meant that he was staying. And now pudding.

Thinking that he might stay longer if he had
both
puddings, she touched her stomach and said, “That was so sweet of you. But the chicken filled me up. Honestly.”

He set one container on the bedstand and opened the second. “Don't like tapioca?”

He put it down and was reaching for the other, when she said, “I love tapioca, but I'm stuffed. Really. You eat it.”

“This one's Indian pudding.”

She took a quick breath. “Indian pudding?” Indian pudding was her favorite.

He upped the ante. “There's a microwave in the kitchen. I could heat it for you.”

She was sorely tempted.

“Then, once it's hot, I could raid the freezer and add a little vanilla ice cream.”

That did it. “Just a very, very,
very
little.”

He gave her a smile that warmed her all over. Watching him head for the kitchen, she decided that she didn't need three wishes as long as Tom Gates was around.

 

On Monday night, he pulled a pair of wool socks from his knapsack. They were soft, clean, and large, and clearly his, which made them more special than if he had spent a fortune on fancy slippers. They warmed her feet perfectly.

On Tuesday night, just when she was starting to feel hungry, he showed up with a meal from the diner and said, “Flash recommended the Yankee special, but the risotto sounded lighter and too good to pass up. Interested?” Was she ever, and
not
for the Yankee special. The Yankee special was a pot roast reminiscent of the kind her grandmother had made every Thursday without fail, and while Flash's pot roast was light-years better, memory had her avoiding the dish. Risotto, on the other hand, she loved.

On Wednesday night, he brought her a book. It was one of the advance reading copies his agent had sent, a legal thriller that tackled the issue of privacy and had made him think, he said, as many of the others hadn't. He thought she might enjoy it and was interested in her opinion. Would she read it? he asked. Like she would ever say no.

On Thursday night, when the walls of her room were starting to close in, he helped her steal past the nurses' station for a quick trip to the rooftop deck. Her pace was slow, but the freshness of the night justified the effort. She felt that she had never in her life seen so many stars. They seemed to fill the sky in ways that suggested a million worlds beyond.

 

Friday morning, a full week after the accident and an hour before her discharge, she formally met Dr. Simon Meade from St. Johnsbury. He examined her and removed her stitches. Then he drew up a chair and in a kindly voice broke the news that she would never be able to have a child. “When we reconstruct people's insides like we did yours, their bodies develop scar tissue,” he explained. “It gets in the way of conception.”

Bree was startled. “No children? Ever?”

“I can't say the chances are zero, but they're pretty slim. You haven't had any yet, have you?”

She shook her head.

“And you're how old?”

“Thirty-three.”

“You're less fertile now than you were ten years ago. Put that together with scarring, and you have a problem.”