Jon was glad to have a chance to get away from Ali and volunteered. "I'm going in!" he said.
Jon was led in and the nurse was soon replaced by a male doctor, Middle Eastern-looking. "So you're Mrs. Sheik," he said. "I'm Dr. Salim. I hear that Ali made you and your mother both pregnant. You should be really proud that you're giving him a large family. I should wish him congratulations!"
"Wait a minute," said Jon. "He's not your patient. I am."
The doctor seemed to ignore Jon, but then asked, "Now how long have you been pregnant?"
"Oh, a day" he replied.
"What?" asked the doctor. "No doctor can detect a pregnancy that's a day old. Were you lying to Ali?"
"I wasn't lying!" said Jon. "I really think I'm pregnant." He wasn't sure how to get out of this one, and finally said "Us girls have an instinct about such things!"
Meanwhile, Jane was waiting outside, while Karyn was doing her best to get the stone back. She finally slipped her hand into Ali's robe, trying to find the pocket--and she grabbed a hard object. Then Ali slapped her. Surprised, she lost her grip and fell. Ali took out the object himself, and it was indeed the stone. "What do you want with this thing?" he asked.
Thinking quickly, Karyn said "I found it in an old box at Jon's place. I thought it might be valuable."
"It looks like a wishing stone" said Ali.
Karyn choked.
"The kind of round rock," said Ali, "that children throw in the water and make wishes on."
True, children did do such things--but was Ali playing with her or was it all just a coincidence and he didn't really know it was a wishing stone? "May I have it back?" asked Karyn.
"Of course," said Ali. "Perhaps if you made a wish on it, it might even come true. If it was me, I'd ask for Allah's blessings in giving me a large family. Something like 'I wish that Jane and Jon would each give birth before the day is over.'" He chuckled and threw the stone to Karyn, who caught it.
Inside, the wish was coming true. Normally Jon and Jane would think the new reality had always been that way, but the stone couldn't make them think that unless it also made them forget some of the earlier wishes, which it wasn't going to do without more direct orders. So Jon knew very well that his pregnancy was speeding up. His belly expanded to a size that felt impossibly large to him, but then, any late pregnancy would have felt that way. And then the pain of contractions began inside him. He even wondered if he and his mother would have twins, but he decided he was just exaggerating his condition in his own mind.
Karyn let out a sigh of relief. First thing was to get some breathing room. "I wish that me, Jane, and Jon were five miles away without Ali and nobody else remembers that we were here."
Karyn's surroundings changed. She was in a park, sitting on a bench, with Jon and Jane beside her, both massively pregnant. Okay, now she had time to think about the situation.
Her first order of business was to undo Ali's accidental wish. "I wish that although Jon and Jane would give birth before the end of the day, that's a day as measured at the poles where the days are a year long, so they're like they were before Ali's wish."
Nothing happened.
"I wish that Jane and Jon aren't single mothers because they're married separately and to feminists, not married to Ali."
Karyn had at least expected the burkas to disappear, but nothing happened.
"I wish that me, Jane, and Jon were at a hospital."
Nothing.
"Karyn?" said Jon and amid his pain reached for the stone, which she let him have.
"I wish I knew what's wrong" said Jon. Then he said "I know! The 30 minute wish limit. Each of us has to wait 30 minutes between wishes. We have to get Mom to make the wish...."
But Jane had fainted, from a combination of the stress and the sudden pregnancy and the labor pains.
"Yeah," said Karyn. "We have to wake up your Mom soon... either that, or hope that you have more than 30 minutes of labor left. Labor lasts a lot longer than that, you know--if the wish didn't put you at the very end of labor."
"Come on, Mrs. Duncan," said Karyn.... "Wake up and wish away the problem..."
