The Probable Future

“They got that patient to Mass General in time,” he told her as she dried the dishes. “You were right. Laceration of the liver. He lost a huge amount of blood, but the prognosis is excellent. They’re very hopeful. Good call.”

Stella tried to keep her excitement in check. If she had seen a death and it had been reversed, then wasn’t she only seeing a possibility rather than certain fate? Could it be that the deaths she had seen were uncertain, easy enough to change if given the right circumstances?

“I’d been looking through some anatomy texts in the library,” she told the doctor. “I just put the symptoms together. It was a lucky guess.”

“It was more than lucky, it was smart.”

Stella was so thrilled by the compliment she didn’t trust herself to speak.

“I go down to the clinic every Saturday.” The doctor was casual, so as to avoid any pressure. He’d already done that, with Hap and with his son, David, and it hadn’t worked out. “I make rounds at the nursing home out on the highway, too, if you’re ever interested. You’ve got a feel for medicine.”

“Sure.” Stella had liked being in the clinic; she’d felt completely at home there. Why, she hadn’t even noticed there were little drops of blood on her boots. “Thank you. I’d like that.”

She was so pleased by the turn of events—the young man with an excellent prognosis, the potential for a person’s fate to change until his last moment—that she threw her arms around the doctor before she headed for the back door. “I’d better get home. Tell Hap I’ll see him in school.”

Stella went down the driveway, stopping when she reached the field. She felt an odd sort of joy within her, as though all of a sudden she mattered. Giddy, she waved her arms at Sooner, but the horse only stared back at her, peacefully eating grass in the fading April light. Some horses panicked at wind or passing clouds, they spooked when birds took flight, when field mice skittered through the grass, but not Sooner. He’d seen too much to be startled; he’d lived too long to be alarmed.

“I wish you would die,” Stella told the horse. “Go on,” she urged. She raised her arms to the sky as though magicking away the future she’d seen for Hap, thrown from a horse with no one around to ease his fall. “Die,” she commanded the old swayback.

Sooner stayed where he was, chewing. But there was someone else around; Jimmy Elliot had come up the driveway, and he’d heard every word. He was wearing jeans and a black shirt which allowed him to fade into the shadows as the light shifted. Now he came to stand beside Stella.

“That can be arranged,” he said.

“Please.” Stella laughed. She should have been surprised to see him, but she wasn’t. “What are you going to do? Shoot him? Or maybe you’ll just throw an onion at him. That can be pretty scary.”

“Hah. Very funny.” Jimmy had actually saved that onion, it was in the back of his closet in a zip-lock plastic bag. “What’s wrong with this horse? Why would you want him dead? He looks harmless. Kind of pathetic, actually. Like your good buddy, Hap.”

The truth was, Jimmy didn’t know what he was doing there. He’d seen Stella and Hap driving through town with the doctor one minute and the next thing he knew he was walking down the Stewarts’ driveway, stopping to hang on the fence, looking at some old mule.

“He’s a menace.” Stella thought about what Hap’s father had said, how her mother had driven all the boys crazy, how Stella was nothing like her. She looked over at Jimmy and noticed his puzzled expression. It seemed that Mr. Stewart was wrong. “Just like you.”

“And you can tell that by looking at me?” Jimmy laughed, and when he did, he didn’t even sound like himself anymore. When he coughed to clear his throat, he felt his heart hit against his ribs.

“I told you before. I’m a good judge of character.” Stella leaped away from the fence and took off running. “Race you to the road.”

But Jimmy stayed where he was, watching her, although she was disappearing fast. For some reason he couldn’t take his eyes off Stella, even if that meant letting her win.

“I don’t think so,” Jimmy Elliot called after her. He grinned when she reached the road. Just as he’d hoped: once she had won, she didn’t ignore him. Instead, she turned back to wave. “You’re still talking to me.”

III.

THERE WAS NO ONE to tell Will when to wake up; he had no job to go to, no wife to complain about his lazy and slovenly ways. Therefore, he rose at noon. No one was around to tell him to clear his dishes away, so they piled up in the sink until they reached a monumental height, a free-form of forks and spoons and chili-encrusted bowls and congealed spaghetti, all of it balanced upon Jenny’s favorite teacups, which were cracking beneath the weight of pots and pans. The other tenants in the building had given up expecting their complaints would force Will to toe the line. Why, he no longer even bothered to carry his overflowing bags of garbage into the stairwell, let alone hoist the bags into the trash chute. Instead, he let it pile up in the hall, and although Mrs. Ehrland had consulted her nephew, an attorney with the housing authority, there was no way to get rid of Will Avery, not even when people began to complain of mice in the hall.