Wish Upon a Star (15 page)

There we go. So much for my genie’s kinder, gentler side.

“Ready?” he asked, and I nodded. Before I could brace myself, Teel tugged twice at his earlobe.

The world around us sprang back to life. Stone Wall finished tapping her papers into order. The exhausted man sank into his chair. The high school students screamed with laughter at whatever they were viewing on their screen. Teel clicked his tongue, as if he had arrived at some firm diagnosis, and then he strode across the waiting room. I scrambled beside him like an eager puppy.

Stone Wall glared at me. “I’ve told you, miss. No one—”

“This woman is with me, Nurse,” Teel said, modulating his voice into the time-honored placating tones that had served medical professionals from Marcus Welby to McDreamy.

“Oh, I see, Doctor,” the nurse replied. “I’m sorry. I was just—”

“Doing your job.” Teel completed her sentence with a firmness that brooked no argument. “Thank you.” He held the door for me with a suave professionalism. The actor in me wanted to step back to admire a job well done. The sister in me dashed forward, before the opportunity could disappear.

“Amy!”

She turned before the second syllable was out of my mouth. All of a sudden, my arms were full of frantic sobbing sister. She smelled of sweat and dust and something that might have been terror. “Erin! You came!”

“Of course,” I said, hugging her close. Just like I had when we learned the truth about our parents.

Teel stepped up to the doctor Amy had been talking to. He inclined his head and muttered a question. I couldn’t make out precisely what either man said, but I could tell they were using words that belonged in the
Guinness Book of World Records
for “most syllables in an English-language noun.”

I clung to my sister until she loosened her death grip, just a little. “What happened, Amy? How’s Justin?”

She shook her head. “It was only a minute! I only left him for a minute! They say I need to talk to social services, and I haven’t been able to reach Derek, and I can’t get anyone on the base to return my calls. It was only a minute, Erin!”

I reassured her as best I could, catching her biceps between my hands. I ordered her to take a deep breath, another, another. I started asking her specific questions—what had Justin been doing in the front yard? What time had she received the ill-fated phone call that pulled her inside? What did she see when she came back out to the yard?

Gradually, I pieced together the story. Justin had broken his arm, and he might have sprained an ankle. His cape had dug into the flesh of his neck, leaving a nasty laceration. But the major problem was that he had hit his head when he landed. The doctors had done an MRI; they’d identified a huge subdural hematoma. Justin was in emergency surgery; the doctor at Amy’s side had been finishing a complete medical history while one of his colleagues worked to save my nephew’s life.

By the time Amy finished her scattered recitation, Teel was wrapping up talking to the doctor, nodding and murmuring in subdued tones, looking every bit the expert surgeon called in for a consultation. Finding strength in the cool sapphire glance he shot my way, I settled my hand on Amy’s elbow and pulled her forward. “Doctor,” I said, nodding toward the man who had been talking to Amy before my arrival. “What do we do now?”

“Have a seat in the waiting room. Dr. Finley will be out as soon as he’s through with the surgery.”

And so we sat. And waited. And waited some more. I wanted to invent a time machine, a remote-control box that I could use to fast-forward through the stultifying bits of my own life.

Teel held true to his new identity. It wouldn’t make sense for a real doctor to sit with two random family members in the waiting room—even I could see that. Instead, he went about his work, as if he were legitimately on staff at New Brunswick Memorial. I watched him stop by the triage station, browsing through charts that had accumulated on a corner of the desk. An orderly looked up, clearly ready to ask who he was, but Teel merely shot his cuff, pointedly glancing at his watch. The action revealed his flame tattoo—orange-and-black figures that sparkled across the room.

That tattoo was like a Get Out of Jail Free card.

Even I felt myself drawn forward, even though I was fully aware of the magic embedded there. Teel must be using it to blur perception, to change the way that everyone treated him. The orderly nodded respectfully and stepped back. A passing nurse offered Teel a clipboard, waiting patiently for him to initial a few pages. Teel glanced at each sheet before he signed, as if he truly understood whatever medical mumbo jumbo was printed there.

As he passed back the papers, he looked up at me. His gaze was intense, like cobalt lasers focused all the way across the waiting room. Something about his expression made me catch my breath, and then I realized that I’d stopped staring at his eyes, that I was back to studying his tattoo.

I almost followed him as he headed toward a door marked Surgery. I could feel the pull of those flames, sense them more strongly than I had in any of Teel’s other guises. I forced myself to sit back in my chair. Teel was only playing a role, I reminded myself. Everything about him was just for show. He wasn’t actually a doctor; he only played one to meet my needs.

I turned my attention back to my sister.

At first, I didn’t have to say a word. I just listened to Amy repeating herself, telling me that it had all been an accident, that she couldn’t believe what had happened. Then, I tried to distract her, recounting the day’s rehearsal, my interrupted conversation with Timothy in the hallway outside my apartment. She still wasn’t really listening, but then I had a brainstorm, remembering the raspberries that Timothy had given me.

I extracted the fruit from my tote bag. It was none the worse for wear; each berry glistened as if it had a light within. When I offered up the tart-sweet jewels to Amy, she ate the first one reluctantly, but I saw the instant her taste buds locked in on the delicate flavor. She bolted down a half dozen without stopping. “Timothy?” she finally said, licking her lips. “Didn’t you mention him the other day?”

“Yeah,” I said.

Funny. The entire trip to New Brunswick, I’d pictured his warm brown eyes. I’d replayed how he’d calmly taken command as I stood in the hallway, unable to organize my thoughts after receiving Amy’s call. I thought about his kiss—quick and casual and strangely…inevitable.

But now, I found my thoughts drifting back to Dr. Teel. His eyes were completely different from Timothy’s warm cappuccino. Teel’s gaze was precise. Commanding. Shiver-inducing.

Teel was a
genie
. What the hell was wrong with me?

“Is there something going on between you two?” Amy asked.

“Of course not! We just met an hour ago!”

“What?” Amy asked.

“What?” I countered, brilliantly.

“I was talking about your restaurant guy,” she said. “Timothy.”

I could feel my cheeks heating up. “Sorry,” I said. “I’m just distracted, I guess.” I shook my head. “I don’t think there’s anything there. His life is pretty complicated. He’s probably going to have to close down his restaurant—his landlord is about to triple his rent.”

“Doesn’t he have a lease?”

“It’s up in six weeks. The whole thing is a mess.” I told her about his giving me bus fare for my emergency trip.

Amy wrinkled her nose. “Erin, hard stop that right there,” she said. I supposed that I should be grateful she was relaxing enough to slip back into business school jargon. “You just broke up with Sam. You need to evolve that situation—that’s why you agreed to the Master Plan. You
promised
. You can’t just jump into something new.”

“I’m not jumping anywhere!” I protested.

“Erin!”

“Amy!” I matched her, tone for tone.

“How is that peace lily doing, anyway?” She loaded the question with a lifetime of suspicion.

“It’s fine,” I lied. “It has three new flowers.”

Well, it might. I hadn’t looked at it in a week.

Amy harrumphed. Even though it annoyed me that she was questioning my fitness for the Master Plan, I was grateful for the distraction, for the break from her fear over Justin. What did it matter, if I had to put up with Amy-the-big-sister, Amy-the-business-manager? Anything, to ease her fear about her only child.

An hour went by, and another. My eyes became grainy. Even though it was approaching midnight, I was ready to track down a vending machine, buy some caffeine, hot or cold, whatever I could find. Fishing for my wallet, I dragged myself to my feet. “Hey, Ame,” I said. “Do you want—”

Before I could complete the sentence, my sister clutched my forearm. Her fingers were iron talons, gripping to the bone. I glanced over my shoulder, and I saw what she had seen. A doctor, shuffling toward us, fatigue carved deep on his face. A surgical mask hung from one side of his face, drooping beside gray-tinged lips.

I shook my head. I didn’t want this doctor. I wanted another one. I wanted someone who was youthful and spry. Someone who walked like he didn’t have a care in the world. Someone who was young and confident and handsome.

Teel. I’d take Teel. I’d be happy to have Teel walking toward me…right…now.

“Mrs. Carlson,” the surgeon said, looking at Amy with basset-hound eyes.

“No,” she said, digging even deeper into my arm. She started to shake her head, her hair flinging from left to right.

“I’m sorry. Justin had a very serious injury—”

“No!” Amy screamed.

The blood drained out of my head. A wave of ice crashed over me, as if I were a coach drenched in a Gatorade shower. But this was no victory celebration. This was no success. This was the worst news I’d ever received.

I was going to be sick. I was going to cry. I was going to raise my voice in a keening wail, match my sister note for note.

But I did none of those things. Instead, I tugged my arm free from Amy’s death grip. I pinched together my thumb and my forefinger. I raised my chin, looked at the defeated surgeon and I clearly pronounced, “Teel.”

Once again, the world froze around me. I suppose there was a jangle of electricity, a wash of energy, but my body was too numb to feel its effect. I blinked hard, trying to close myself off from Amy’s raging grief, from Dr. Finley’s stolid explanation.

And when I opened my eyes, Teel was standing in front of me.

“This isn’t right,” I said, without preamble. I was certain that he knew what had happened. His eyes looked darker than they had before, heavier. Shadowed.

“I’m sorry.” The silver in his hair glinted as he inclined his head. I wondered if real doctors took classes in medical school—bedside manner for the delivery of bad news.

“You have to change this,” I said. “You have to save Justin.”

An eager gleam flashed across his face. “Is that a wish?”

“Yes!” I shouted. “It’s a wish! You’re that much closer to your goddamned Garden!”

He nodded, as if I were a distraught patient agreeing to some highly unpleasant medical procedure. “Go ahead, then.”

I met his eyes belligerently. I was determined to get this one right, to say exactly what I wanted, without any possible room for misunderstanding. This wasn’t about an audition, a Broadway role. This was about a little boy.

“I wish that Justin was fully recovered from his fall. That he had no head injury or broken arm or sprained ankle, or anything else wrong with him. I wish that he was as healthy as he was before he decided to play up there on the roof.”

Teel blinked those impossible eyelashes, pulling me into his gaze. Looking at him, I knew that he could do precisely as I asked, he could rearrange the past, he could guide us through the future.

He raised his hand to ear. His fingernails were very short, perfectly trimmed. His hands were hard, strong, as if he practiced Swedish massage when he wasn’t saving lives in the emergency room. He captured his earlobe and said, “As you wish.”

Two pulls. An electric shock that made me wonder why hospitals bothered with resuscitation paddles—they should just keep genies on hand to do all the dirty work.

I gasped and lurched forward, moving as much from the pain as from the sudden sensation that the world around me was functioning again. Amy was sobbing next to me, clutching my arm, but this time she was only trying to steady herself, to catch her balance. She wasn’t trying to rip out the bitter roots of grief.

Dr. Finley was shaking his head, running a hand over his balding head. “I have to say, Mrs. Carlson, I’ve never seen anything like it. We rechecked the MRI three times—that initial reading had to be some sort of mistake. I cannot tell you how sorry I am to have put you through that sort of fear.”

“But Justin’s okay?” Amy said.

“He’s fine,” the surgeon said. “We’ll keep him overnight just to be certain, but he’s already telling the floor nurse that you always let him have ice cream for a midnight snack.” Amy’s laughter was mixed with a relieved sob. The surgeon graced her with an avuncular smile. “He’ll probably be a bit sore tomorrow—you’ll want to give him some children’s Tylenol. But he’s a very lucky young man.”

Amy thanked the surgeon, pumping his hand up and down, hanging on as if she were afraid the good news would disappear if she let go. Dr. Finley patted her on the arm understandingly and muttered more reassuring things.

I looked at Teel.
Thank you,
I mouthed, my back turned to my sister. He nodded with the perfect aplomb of a doctor who saved lives every day.

Amy’s hysterical laughter was interrupted by the ring of her cell phone. She dug it out of her pocket awkwardly, still reluctant to let go of poor Dr. Finley. “Derek!” she exclaimed as soon as she glanced at the screen. She spun around, dropping the surgeon’s arm in her haste to reassure her husband, halfway around the world.

I added my own thanks, and then the bemused doctor went on his way. Amy edged across the waiting room, putting her finger in her free ear to block out ambient noise. Her voice had dropped, and I knew she was sharing her terror with Derek, letting him know that all was well, absorbing all the reassurance that a loving husband could offer from such a distance.