It was almost midnight when Sam, Dean, and Pamela pulled up to the hospital. "So, what exactly is going on here?" Pamela asked as Sam helped her out of the car.

"Frequent unnatural recoveries," Dean answered.

"And that's a bad thing because. . .?"

"Because in our experience, miracles always come with a hefty price tag."

"And what makes you think it's angels?"

"Because we have half a staff spreading the Good News."

"I see. Well, I'll let you boys know soon enough if you're right. Any suspects?"

"Yeah," Sam replied, pulling out his notebook. "Three. Monica, Tess, and Andrew."

Pamela's brow narrowed. "Why do those names sound so familiar?" she asked.

Dean shrugged. "I don't know. Do they?"

"I'm not sure," she answered, looking around as if she could see something they couldn't. "But you boys are /definitely/ dealing with angels here."

"Are you sure?" Sam questioned.

Pam chuckled. "Yeah, you kind of remember what angelic energy feels like after it burns both your eyeballs out their sockets."

"Oh, right," Sam said with regret on his face.

"How many?" Dean asked.

"Three. So I think we can all assume it's our three suspects."

"Right," Dean said. "All right, here's what we'll do. Sammy, you and Pamela go to room 203. I remember it was empty. And get a ring of holy oil ready. I'll go to nurses station and have them send-What was one of their names? Monica, right?-I'll have them send Monica down to the room. Everybody clear?"

Sam nodded, taking Pamela by the hand and walking away.

The holy oil was poured as Sam and Pamela waited in room 203. The door opened, and Sam reached into his coat and put his hand on his lighter but relaxed when he saw it was Dean. "Nice. Glad I beat her here," Dean said, checking the floor. "All right, everything looks good to go."

A few minutes later, a red-headed woman walked into the room. Her face was partly obscured in the dim light. All the three of them could see was her smile. "Hello," she said warmly. "I'm Monica. I was told to report to this room."

"Yeah," Dean answered. "I was wondering what happened to the person who was last in this room."

Monica's smile widened. "Yes. The most wonderful thing happened. A few days ago, there was a patient in here with kidney disease. One night, he pressed the call button and told the nurse that he felt completely better. So, we checked his kidneys, and both of them were perfectly healthy. It was a miracle."

"And what do you think caused this 'miracle?' " Dean asked, his eyes narrowed in suspicion.

"It was the grace of God," she answered simply.

"The grace of God. Right. How silly of me," Dean muttered. "Hey, you mind telling me what that is on the bed on the bed there?"

"What?" Monica asked, walking towards the bed. As she reached the middle of the room, Dean threw down his lighter. A circle of flames erupted, illuminating her face. "What the hell?" Dean said immediately, shock in his voice, as he saw who it was. "Roma Downey? Roma frickin' Downey?"

Monica watched, her lips curled in a curious smile, as the flames danced in a circle around her. She always thought fire was perhaps the most beautiful and mysterious of the Father's creations. But it /could/ be deadly at times, so she thought it best to extinguish it. She wasn't sure quite what these people were up to, but it was dangerous to have an open flame like this-in a hospital no less. She took a deep breath and asked the flames to extinguish themselves. But when she opened her eyes, they were still burning as high as before.

Her brow narrowed in a puzzled look. That wasn't supposed to happen. When she was in Search-and-Rescue, she'd put out thousands of fires. She didn't know why these were acting any differently.

"What the hell's going on here?" the man in the beat-up leather jacket asked the woman with black hair and sunglasses. "What? A trickster who's got a Touched by an Angel fetish or something?"

"This isn't any trickster, Dean" the woman answered. " I can sense angelic energy, and, I'm telling you, the woman trapped in that holy fire is a real, live, blue-blooded angel, not a Trickster illusion."

"So what then?" the man asked, shaking his head in bewilderment. "Roma Downey was really an angel all along? Come on, you gotta give me something better than that," the man said before turning to face Monica. "Listen, sweetheart," he said. "You have five seconds to tell us what the hell is going on here."

Monica wondered how they figured out she was an angel. She guessed that one of the patients they healed must have forgotten their instructions and told somebody. Or maybe not, she thought. Maybe she could convince them that they were wrong. "My name is Monica," she answered him. "I'm a nurse on this floor. I don't know what you three are doing, but you'll need to extinguish these flames immediately."

"Sorry," he replied. "But we usually like to keep the angel in the bottle."

"Angel?" she asked.

"Yeah, we know about your halo, your wings, the whole enchilada."

Monica's mind raced to come up with what to say. She knew she couldn't lie. As an angel, she was entrusted with sharing the truth of God. If she told a lie, even once, it threatened her existence as an angel. "Where did you get that idea?" she asked instead.

"Oh, you're not?" he asked, his eyebrows raised in disbelief. "Then why don't you just step over the flames?"

"All right. I suppose I'll need to ask security to come in here," she said, placing her toe over the flames. But she screamed as an incredible pain seared into her foot. She immediately pulled it away. She'd felt physical pain before when she was in human form, but this was like nothing she felt before. It was like the flames were /actually/ capable of destroying her. Maybe they were, she realized with horror, because these weren't ordinary flames. That's why she wasn't able to extinguish them. And that's why, although she'd walked effortlessly through burning buildings before, these caused her such agony. That's when she realized who these people were.

Demons.

She silently prayed to the Father for strength in her confrontation with them.

"What is this?" she asked, trying to figure out what their plans were. Although, demons rarely had actual plans, only to pervert and destroy.

"Don't act like you don't know," the man answered. "That's holy fire, bitch. And it's gonna keep your feathery ass safely in there while we figure out what to do."

She was right. They were demons. It was the only explanation for how much they swore.

"I don't know how you found out, but I /am/ an angel," she said, as a warm glow enveloped her. The light that was so bright, it even overpowered the glow of the flames. "I am an angel. . .sent from God."

The man chuckled. "Sorry, sweetheart. You didn't hear? God isn't in the picture anymore. He pulled a dead-beat dad routine."

Monica smiled a forgiving smile. "I know it's hard to find God when you aren't looking in the right places. And when you're so distracted by the noise of every day life. But I tell you I have /been/ to the Mountain, and I have /seen/ the Creator. I have /seen/ his love."

"Really? Because ditching an entire universe doesn't really seem like 'love' to me," the man answered cynically.

"God is with us now," Monica asserted. "He is in everything that's good. The laugh of a child, a warm night's breeze, a soft winter snowfall."

"A steamy night with an expensive hooker?" the man quipped. Monica gave him a disapproving stare. "What?" he said, shrugging. "That falls under my definition of good. And if God was there. . ." he turned to the taller man. "Then God's a /pervert/," he said with pure amusement on his face.

"Dean, seriously, shut up," the taller man answered.

"What?" Dean said. "Don't tell me you're /seriously/ still a Jesus-freak?"

"No," he replied. "I know that God's disappeared, but you shouldn't talk like that." "Come on, Sammy. Do you /realize/ how many times we could have used the guy's help? But instead he decides to pull a Ferris Bueller's Day Off routine?

"He resurrected Cas. Twice."

"All right. So he does /two/ things that aren't dick-moves and suddenly he's father of the year?"

Monica's head spun as she heard them talk. Were they insane? They were talking about God like He was just a person, a person who was capable of simply walking away. Monica knew that could never happen. God was necessary for the universe's very existence. If He ever really did 'walk away,' the very fabric of the universe would dissolve. Because when He created the universe, he made himself a part of it. God was life, so without him, life would be impossible. She silently laughed at how they could /possibly/ think otherwise.

Suddenly, the flames were extinguished. Monica thought maybe Tess or Andrew had finally come. But that wasn't who walked into the room. It was the man she'd met earlier. The man who gave them their assignments. She was surprised to see him again, standing 4 feet in front of her still wearing his tan trench coat.