Watch The World Spinning Gently Out Of Time
Hospital corridors always smell so strongly of disinfectant, washed sheets, pills...and somewhere underneath all that, the lingering smell of death. It is true that most of the patients that are admitted will get better and emerge healed and repaired...and yet there are those who do not make it. We've been instructed time and again to leave them alone, although we are not forbidden to watch.
I remain quietly in the corner of the room, wings tucked rather uncomfortably under my leather jacket as I stare at the frail little girl in her bed, fast asleep. I do not know her name, although it's written clearly on the clipboard at the foot of her bed. I don't want to know, because I've been assigned to show her the way when the end comes. And when that happens, it's always best not to know their names because you would just end up a wreck. Angels feel a hundred times more joy...but it works the other way as well and we feel a hundred times more sorrow. Best not to become too attached, as Sean told me. Makes it easier for both sides.
She shifts in her sleep, then turns over to face the corner of the room. Her eyes are on me, dull but curious. "Who are you?"
I raise a finger and place it on my lips in a silent signal. The girl's mother, who is reading beside the bed, looks up and says, "Who are you talking to, sweety?" And the girl falls silent, her eyes still on me. Maybe she knows, maybe she doesn't.
She is running out of time.
-----
As I stumble back to the Palace, I can only think of the mountains of machines surrounding her bed, the endless amounts of painkillers she has to imbibe to ease her last days, her haunted eyes and gaunt cheekbones, her flickering aura. I blindly make my way back to my room, slamming the door and staring at the half-painted mural on the wall dumbly.
So much for not becoming too attached.
I remain quietly in the corner of the room, wings tucked rather uncomfortably under my leather jacket as I stare at the frail little girl in her bed, fast asleep. I do not know her name, although it's written clearly on the clipboard at the foot of her bed. I don't want to know, because I've been assigned to show her the way when the end comes. And when that happens, it's always best not to know their names because you would just end up a wreck. Angels feel a hundred times more joy...but it works the other way as well and we feel a hundred times more sorrow. Best not to become too attached, as Sean told me. Makes it easier for both sides.
She shifts in her sleep, then turns over to face the corner of the room. Her eyes are on me, dull but curious. "Who are you?"
I raise a finger and place it on my lips in a silent signal. The girl's mother, who is reading beside the bed, looks up and says, "Who are you talking to, sweety?" And the girl falls silent, her eyes still on me. Maybe she knows, maybe she doesn't.
She is running out of time.
-----
As I stumble back to the Palace, I can only think of the mountains of machines surrounding her bed, the endless amounts of painkillers she has to imbibe to ease her last days, her haunted eyes and gaunt cheekbones, her flickering aura. I blindly make my way back to my room, slamming the door and staring at the half-painted mural on the wall dumbly.
So much for not becoming too attached.