Three Wishes Page 5

  Bree wasn’t worried. She hadn’t thought about what would come after, was still trying to figure out what had come before. “I died on the operating table.”

  “No, you didn’t. Your heart stopped for a few beats before they started it up again. That’s not dying.”

  But she wasn’t being put off. Flash was one of her best friends. She needed to tell him what had happened. “I knew when it stopped. I felt things.”

  He looked skeptical. “What kinds of things?”

  “Lightness. Out-of-my-body kinds of things. I went through the ceiling.”

  “So did I when Eliot told me about the accident. I knew I should have driven you all the way home. If I had, you wouldn’t be lying here now. Whoever was driving that truck is in deep shit.”

  He wasn’t listening. Frustrated, Bree closed her eyes. But a greater need forced them open again. “What do you know about near-death experiences?”

  “As much as I want,” he said, with a snort that said he didn’t think they were real. “When we die, we die. I don’t believe in heaven or hell.”

  He didn’t believe in God, either. He had told her that more than once, and while she didn’t agree with him, she respected his feelings. She also respected the fact that he had a graduate degree in art history from Columbia. He wasn’t dumb.

  “What if I said I’d had a look at heaven?” she asked.

  “I’d say it’s the medication talking. They have you on morphine. That’s strong stuff.”

  She gave a tiny head shake. “It’s not the medication.”

  “No? Listen to you. Your words are slurred. It’s the medication.”

  Possibly. Still, she saw that scene and felt that light, felt the benevolence of it. “I don’t usually believe in things like this.”

  “Damn right you don’t,” Flash scolded. “Verity does. Do you want people laughing at you the way they laugh at her?”

  “But I see this so clearly,” she pleaded.

  “I’m telling you, it’s the morphine and, if not that, the anesthesia. It’ll pass.” With more fear than humor, he added, “It better. I need you with your feet on the ground. You’re the sane one, Bree. Don’t flip out on me, huh?”

  Bree wasn’t flipping out. He was right. She was the sane one.

  But each time she closed her eyes, she was back in the operating room, hovering over the table, then rising, rising, and then there was that light. As confused as she was about what was real and what wasn’t, she couldn’t deny the calm that flowed through her each time she thought of that light. And there was more to the experience. She hadn’t told Flash the half of it. More returned with each wakeful stretch, much of it sketchy still, but exciting, baffling, even scary, if what she thought she had heard was true.

  Dusk fell. Bree dreamed about the operating room again, dreamed of hovering above it and looking down. This time she saw a mole on the nape of the neck of one of the nurses.

  She awoke convinced that it wasn’t a dream at all. She had seen a mole in the operating room that night. But how, if she had been unconscious? There was only one way.

  Shaken, she forced her eyes open. The only light in the room was the dim glow of a corner lamp. It was a gentle light, less harsh than the overheads, but reassuring. She wouldn’t have wanted to wake up to total darkness and wonder which world she was in.

  She lay without moving for a while, trying to separate pain from other needs, deciding whether she wanted to act on any and, if so, how. First priority, easiest to meet, was water. Her mouth was still abominably dry.

  She had barely reached for the overhead bar, in an attempt to sit up, when the chair in the corner came alive. Her eyes widened on the man who approached. Uncommon height, tapering body, light-brown hair long grown out of a stylist’s cut—no mistaking his identity.

  He poured fresh water into the cup from the pitcher beside it, flexed the straw so that she could drink more easily, and slipped an arm behind her. “Don’t use your stomach muscles. Let me do the work.”

  She stared at him, wondering why he was there but too dry to ask. And he was right. She felt less pain when she let him take her weight. With her upper body raised just enough, she drank, paused, drank again, then whispered, “Why am I so dry?”

  “It’s from the anesthesia. The IV pumps in fluids, but it doesn’t seem to make a difference.”

  “Actually, it does,” she remarked, because the bathroom was second on her list.

  “Ah.” He set the water back on the table. “I think, for that, maybe a nurse.”

  “No. They had me up before. If you can just help me across the room.” She moved the covers aside and got her legs over the edge of the bed, though not without the kind of pain that had her taking quick, shallow breaths.

  “Can I carry you?”

  “No,” she gasped. “I need to walk. Not only for the stomach. The rest of me is stiffening up not doing anything.”

  He eyed her swollen cheek. “The rest of you is bruised, too. The only thing that’ll cure it is time and rest.” He looked away, looked right back. “I’m sorry, Bree. If there’d been any way I could have avoided hitting you, I would have.”

  She had known that, from the moment Eliot had told her about the accident. Tom had always struck her as a decent sort. He was respectful at the diner, and he left great tips. Besides, she remembered how the accident had happened and knew that he had been in the Jeep, not the pickup. From the look of his own face—a cruel line of stitches beneath a dilly of a shiner—he hadn’t escaped unscathed. Yet here he was. The Thomas Gates.

  Hard to take in, that little twist. Had she felt better, she might have been awed, but tackling celebrity status wasn’t high on her list just then. Nor was talking books. Prioritywise, her body was calling the shots.

  Holding the mass of bandages that covered her stomach, she inched to the edge of the bed and, with his help, shifted her weight to her feet. It was a long minute of unsteady breaths before she could straighten enough to walk.

  He supported her with one arm, guided the IV pole with the other while she shuffled forward. By the time she was finished in the bathroom, she couldn’t get back to bed fast enough.

  Tom helped her in, got the IV business straight, covered her up. “There’s Jell-O in the kitchen,” he said. “Will you tell me when you want some?”

  She nodded, eyes already closed, and sought memory of the light to ease her pain.

  She must have dozed, because when she opened her eyes again, the wall clock’s small hand had moved from nine to ten. A nurse was checking her bandages, taking her vital signs, adjusting the IV drip, administering pain medication. Bree tried to look for a mole, but the light was too dim, the angle wrong. The woman had barely vanished into the night hush of the hall, when Bree remembered Tom.

  Her eyes flew to the chair in the corner, and there he was. Slouched low, with his head against the back of the chair and his fingers laced over his middle, he looked decidedly unfamous. The book in his lap suggested he planned to stay awhile.

  At first she thought he was sleeping. His eyes were hooded, his body was perfectly still. Then his mouth moved in the touch of a smile.

  She hadn’t seen him smile before. He was usually serious and withdrawn. But his smile was something, even just that touch. It reminded her of those great hands of his, which she now pictured poking at a word processor. That made her think of the kind of life he must have led before coming to Panama, which made her think of the kind of people he must have known, which made her think that she was nothing by comparison, which made her wonder why he was glued to the chair in her room.

  Since she didn’t want to think it was guilt, she didn’t ask. “How’d you get the nurses to let you stay?” she asked instead.

  He stretched. “I convinced them that if I can be a help to you here, there’s less work for them.”

  “Do they know you write books?”

  There was a brief, thick silence, then a wary “I hope not. Who told you? Eliot?”
<
br />   “Yes.”

  “I’d rather you forget it. I didn’t much like the man who wrote those books. I was trying to put distance between him and me.”

  “Was it working?”

  “I don’t know. My life is different here, that’s for sure. Not being known helped.”

  “I won’t tell.”

  “You’re not the problem. Eliot is. One word to Emma, and Dotty will know, and once Dotty knows, the world knows.” He sniffed in a long, loud breath. “But that’s fine.” Setting the book aside, he pushed himself out of the chair. “It had to happen sooner or later. How do you feel?”

  She hurt. But she was also thinking that her mouth felt like sand and that something smooth, cool, and moist would feel good. “Did you mention Jell-O?”

  “I did. Name your wish—strawberry, cherry, or lime.”

  Name your wish. Weird. “Cherry.”

  “Bathroom first?”

  “Please.”

  He helped her there, then helped her back. He fluffed the pillow and turned it, held the water for her, settled her in. She was grateful to rest while he went for the Jell-O, but drew the line when he offered to feed her. So he cranked up the head of the bed and retreated to the chair while she ate.

  It was slow going. Her hand was shaky, her whole arm ached. She felt weak, despicably weak, and reminding herself of what she’d been through didn’t help. What did help was thinking about the light. It gave her strength.

  She wanted to tell Tom about it, wanted him to say that she hadn’t imagined anything, that near-death experiences did happen, that the light and all the rest was real. But she would be mortified if he was skeptical, too, especially now that she knew who he was.

  So she finished her Jell-O, let him crank down the head of the bed, closed her eyes, and drifted off.

  She awoke slowly, didn’t open her eyes, didn’t move, just thought—about the light first, because she had been dreaming of that, then about the silence of the night, then about her stomach. During one of the doctor’s checks, she’d had a glimpse of what was under the bandages. The incision was huge, actually two crisscrossing cuts. Granted they were a small price to pay for life, but they weren’t pretty.

  She had seen those incisions when they were wide open. They hadn’t been pretty then, either. Hard to believe that that body had been hers.

  So maybe it hadn’t been. Maybe she had conjured the scene from a movie.

  Only those had been strands of her hair escaping the cap on her head, and she had heard the people around her chanting, “Come on, Bree, hang on . . . you can do it, Bree.”

  It had been so real. She wanted it to be real. She had never been in the presence of anyone as cheerful and loving and good as that being in the light. The high of being with him was like nothing she had ever felt smoking Curtis Lamb’s homegrown pot, and Curtis Lamb’s pot was good.

  With a sigh, she opened her eyes. They went first to the clock, which read two, then to the man who sat in the chair, reading. Still there. Amazing.

  Tell him, Bree. He’ll laugh. So what? So he’s Thomas Gates!

  At the silent sound of his name, Tom looked up and saw that she was awake, propped his cheek on a fist, and smiled, and suddenly it didn’t seem fair that he was who he was and that she should care whether he laughed at her or not. It didn’t seem fair that, even banged up, he looked good. It didn’t seem fair that she was out of his league.

  “Aren’t you tired?” she grumbled, more accusation than question.

  “No. I slept most of the day.”

  “You don’t have to stay here. The accident wasn’t your fault.”

  “That’s not why I’m here.”

  “Then why?”

  It was a minute before he said, “Because this beats sitting in the snow waiting for an ambulance, or sitting outside an operating room waiting for the doctors to come out.”

  She forgot her pique. “You were here then?”

  He nodded.

  Cautious now, she asked, “How much did they tell you about the surgery?”

  “Enough,” he said, in a way that said it all, and it was like an invitation, only she couldn’t get herself to accept.

  But why not? she asked herself. Forget who he is. One Panamanian winter, and he’ll be gone. What does it matter if he thinks you’re nuts?

  She closed her eyes and listened for the turning of pages to suggest he had gone back to his book, but there was none. Finally, without opening her eyes, she asked, “Did they tell you my heart stopped?”

  “Oh, yeah.”

  “Scary, huh?”

  “Oh, yeah,” he said, with feeling.

  Then, because in order to write the way he did he had to be worldly, and because something about dying and being reborn told her to take the risk, she opened her eyes and said, “Do you believe in near-death experiences?”

  He was silent for a time, sitting with the book in his lap and his ankle on his knee. “I don’t know.”

  “Do you know anyone who’s had one?”

  “No. But that doesn’t mean anything.” Setting the book aside, he pushed up from the chair—gingerly, she thought, but she promptly forgot it when he approached the bed and asked, “Did you have one?”

  She looked for mockery, saw none. “Maybe. I don’t usually believe in things like that.”

  “Neither do I. But that doesn’t mean anything, either. Sometimes seeing is believing.”

  “Oh, I saw,” Bree drawled, emboldened by his encouragement. She felt suddenly heady, but her tongue was dry again.

  Tom slid her up, held the straw to her lips. After turning her pillow, he lowered her to its fresh, cooler side. Then he sat down on the spare patch of bed by her hip. “Tell me what you saw.” He seemed genuinely curious.

  Buoyed by that, she said, “First, I heard. I heard them say they’d lost a pulse, and I heard their fear. Then it was like something sucked me out of my body and up, and I was looking down on what was happening. They did CPR. There were two of them working on that, and one monitoring my signs, and another shooting me with adrenaline, only my blood pressure kept falling, and I wouldn’t breathe on my own. They were getting really scared; I could hear it in them. Only I wasn’t scared”—and she felt a wave of calm now—“because I was with this . . . thing, and it was so nice.” She didn’t know where she found the strength to talk, but the words kept coming. “It didn’t have arms I could see, but its arms were open in welcome. It was strong but gentle. And powerful. It could do whatever it wanted—miracles, I swear. Maybe what happened to me was a miracle. I don’t know. I only know that I was with this very bright being. It was visually bright and smart bright, and pure and kind and sweet, and it loved me.”

  She closed her mouth on the rush of words, afraid that she had gone too far.

  But Tom looked intrigued. “What happened then?”

  “Do you think I’m losing it?”

  “No.”

  “This is pretty bizarre.”

  “Tell me what happened next.”

  “They applied electric shocks. They had to do it twice. Each time, it jolted my whole body. It really is like you see on TV, only it’s not so much fun when it’s your own body down there. It was awful to watch, awful to feel.”

  “You felt it he asked.

  “Only the last time. Before that, I was with this person, this being, and I was happy and peaceful and relieved,”

  “Relieved. Why?”

  She wasn’t sure. The word had just popped out. “Relieved to be there, I guess. Maybe relieved to know that there existed. Was it heaven?”

  “I don’t know. Did you see anything beyond this being?”

  Shaking her head, she reached for water.

  He held the cup and put the straw to her mouth. “What did it look like?”

  After several sips, she let the straw fall away. “Light. It was nothing but light. It didn’t have a face, but it smiled and was beautiful, and it spoke.” She frowned. “There wasn’t any voice. I just
. . . felt its thoughts.”

  “What was it thinking?”

  “I’m not sure I can find the words,” she said, holding back for the first time. This was the newest part of her recollection, potentially the silliest. Self-consciousness kept her from risking sounding like a fool to this virtual stranger, who was a handsome one at that. She may have nearly died, but she had a little pride, after all.

  He returned the cup to the bed tray.

  Whispering, she asked, “Are you leaving now?”

  He shook his head. “I’ll stay awhile.”

  “You don’t have to. I’ll be going back to sleep. I won’t need anything until morning.”

  “Then I’ll just read.” He left the bed and crossed to the chair. Easing into it, he stretched out and crossed his ankles.

  He was wearing running shoes. That was the last thing she noticed about him before she closed her eyes, but it wasn’t the last thing she thought. The last thing she thought was that she didn’t care if he was driven by guilt: no one had ever spent the night sitting by her bedside before.

  It was the pain that did it. After sleeping for nearly two hours, she woke up feeling awful. Tom was beside her in an instant, ringing for the nurse, then running to get her when she didn’t come fast enough.

  The morphine brought instant relief. It also enveloped Bree in a dull haze that lowered her inhibitions. Alone with Tom again, with him sitting on the side of the bed like he was her very best friend, she said in a molasses-thick voice, “There’s more to the story of the being of light.”

  “More?”

  “More bizarre. I keep hearing something he said. Thought. Whatever.”

  “What was it?”

  “Three wishes. I have three wishes.” Her voice was slurred, but the words came anyway. “I died. Only it wasn’t my time. So I was sent back with a gift. Three wishes before I die again. Like a reward.”