Page 10 of The Wish
‘Something like that.’
‘Imagine how I feel.’
‘Oh, I didn’t mean—’
‘It’s OK, I’m messing with you. Follow me, I know the perfect place.’
Jesse slides off the bed, slips her feet into a pair of sandals.
From a drawer in her bedside table, she takes out a large sketch book and a pencil case.
With practised ease, she wraps her right arm around the pole with a hook at the top, where the bag of liquid that’s connected to the IV in her arm is hanging.
The trolley and pole become part of her as she walks to the pinboard where she removes several of the photos, a drawing and the poem.
Tucking them into the sketch book she walks towards the door.
Alex quickly follows her. As Jesse steps into the doorway, Amy, Ryan and Luke scurry away.
Looking back, Ryan and Luke throw a thumbs-up to Jesse, while Amy blows her a kiss.
Alex and Jesse take the lift to the ground floor.
Jesse pushes open the glass doors that lead out to the garden he and Kelly stood looking out on earlier.
An elderly man sits on a nearby bench, a woman who Alex presumes to be his partner, in a wheelchair beside him.
They hold hands, their faces turned to the warmth of the sun; only they can know the thoughts, the memories they each embrace in silence.
Alex follows Jesse to a far corner of the garden, hidden from view and set away from passersby. A picnic table with benches either side is tucked away between the bushes. Sitting on one side, Jesse indicates for Alex to sit opposite her.
‘My office,’ Jesse says with a grin. ‘This is where the dream team hang out when we want some peace and quiet.’
Alex is struck by the realisation that Jesse has spent so much of her short life here, in hospital, and of how hard she and her friends have worked to make it fun and normal.
He feels small in the face of their courage and determination.
He thinks of how he tried to wriggle out of helping her and feels ashamed.
Opening the sketch book, Jesse carefully places the photos, drawing and poem on the table.
The drawing is one of Sam’s beach scenes.
Turning the sketch book to face Alex, she shows him illustrations of places, their names painstakingly written beneath each one.
Playgrounds with meticulously sketched play equipment, a boy on the beach making sandcastles.
The drawings are beautiful. Most of them are Jesse’s family out of doors, many, like Sam’s, scenes of sand and surf.
‘Your family really love the beach, huh?’
‘Yeah, we’re really lucky we live right on it, we just walk from our backyard onto the sand. It’s been my playground since I was a baby.’
‘Is that where you want your wish to be set?’
‘Of course, but not the only place. I don’t have room on my board for photos of everywhere I’d like the wish to explore.
These are the special places my family and I have visited, where we share awesome memories.
I want you to make those memories come back to life so they can be relived forever,’ she tells Alex, stumbling over her words in a rush of emotion.
Alex flicks quickly through the book. ‘Are all these nearby?’
‘Yes, we’ve not gone far since I was diagnosed. My grandparents and cousins all live hours away so they come to us. One of my grandparents has a farm and I used to love going there, it’s so different from the city. You will be able to go to all of these places and film them, won’t you?’
‘Ah, sure. I presume you have other photos taken at these places?’
‘Yes, and I can get them to you.’
Alex points to a sketch of a park with a rotunda in the middle. ‘Tell me about this.’
Jesse’s face lights up. ‘We went there one day, played in the park, then had a picnic lunch in the rotunda. It was winter and the flowers that should have covered the rotunda were dead, but the bare branches were entwined all over it. I remember Mum saying how beautiful this would look in summer covered in flowers, but I quite liked it all stark with no colour. I heard her whisper to Dad that she could imagine me getting married in such a place.’
‘Married? But you’re just a kid.’
‘Yeah, I know. She was looking to the future. A future she’s now not going to get unless you and I can give it to her. Do you see what I’m talking about?’
Despite the warmth of the sun, Alex’s body chills, he feels numb. His mind races. What has he agreed to? What are the implications if he can’t give this mother and daughter the imagined future that she’s so desperate to create?
Placing his hands on the sketch as if to draw strength from the scene, he stares deeply into Jesse’s eyes.
‘I understand what you want, Jesse. I just don’t know if it can be done.
You need to know that usually when we do this, it’s not just me, there’s a whole team of colleagues I work with, and we each have our own expertise.
There are digital artists, environmental artists, terrain artists, effects artists just to name a few.
I would need to involve others and I’m not sure I can, it might be right at the limits of our abilities.
I’ve been working on a simplified version of the software, something that can be made available to anyone wanting to make a 3D CGI story, but I haven’t perfected it yet. ’
‘You can do it; I believe in you.’
Alex is stunned. No one has ever told him they believed in him.
He knows he’s useful to Ian, but only in a purely transactional way.
Max needs him and loves him, of course, but he’s a dog.
Alex struggles to think of a human who has placed their trust in him.
He takes a deep breath. He’s going to give this his best shot.
It’s all he can do. Jesse, it seems, is going to help him through sheer force of will.
If he can pull this off, maybe he’ll finally have something to show for himself.
‘OK, let’s give it a go. Can I use one of these blank pages to make notes? You’ll have to help me; tell me which scenes are the most important to video in case I can’t do them all; I don’t want to be the one to make that decision. Deal?’
Their eyes meet. Jesse pauses then holds out her hand. ‘Deal.’
They shake on it. The tension breaks. They’re a team now, and there’s a lot of work to be done.
Alex still has no idea if he can give Jesse what she wants, but he’s prepared to do everything he can to make it happen.
He’s not thinking about TriOptics or Ian or even his job now; he wants to do this for Jesse.
There’s just one thing he doesn’t know and is afraid to ask: how long does he have?