chapter 4

Monday

Dr Dayton listens to everything I tell him about the night before. It's morning, which means he's been awake for just a few hours, and I'm over-due to be in bed. The Doctor asks me careful questions about how I've been feeling these past few weeks, how I've been sleeping. I tell him like normal, though my normal of the last three years is like anyone else's insomnia. The only thing that seems to help me sleep is extreme physical exhaustion, which is great for my physique but bad for my social skills. I get tired of the questions before long and remind him that I'm just a nurse bringing him an observation about a patient and that I'm not on the clock here and would like to get home. He still seems concerned, but wishes me a pleasant day.

I change to street clothes and go home. I sprawl on the bed and stare at the ceiling. The waking day passes around me, and I must sleep a little, because I wake up. One day is blending into another as I shower and change into clothing almost identical to what I was wearing before the shower.

When I get into work, I'm relieved that "Ray" isn't there waiting for me, but I cant help myself from being disappointed at the same time. I want to argue with him, reason with him, make him be sane. I'm halfway down the line, bathing patients, changing sheets, when he arrives. I wasn't watching, and he doesn't announce himself. One of the nurses must have opened the door and pushed his chair inside. When I notice him, he's sitting there with that smile of vague amusement, watching me.

"You spoke with Dr. Dayton." He says, and I nod.

"I needed to. Helping patients is my job."

"I respect that," he says, watching me work, "but I cant let him think I'm mentally ill. I explained to him that you and I must have had a misunderstanding, and that I was still a little disoriented and must have confused you too. I apologize if this makes things harder at work for you."

I groaned. This was not my week. "I don't think I want to talk to you anymore."

He shrugged, eyes never leaving me. "If that's the way you chose, that's the way it will be. However, I feel that there is something you want from me, or need from me. I want to give it to you."

I had a split-second fantasy, as clear as a memory, of him in my bed with me, face-down under me, his scarred shoulder-blades flexing and pushing as he met me stroke for stroke. I felt color rise to my cheeks; I felt sunburned, I flushed so hot. The corner of his mouth turned up, as if he knew the exact image I had thought. I wanted more than anything to change the subject from my wants and needs, and I couldn't find the strength to tell him to get out.

"Look. About this angel stuff that you were talking about. You really believe all that?"

He laughed, a light quick sound. "Ah. We're at the part when you question everything I say. You ask me if I can prove it, I say no. I don't know the future, I don't know what you're thinking, I don't know any of the past except what I have experianced." I blushed again, this time because that had been exactly what I was thinking. "You'll ask if I can heal the sick, or raise the dead. I am...was, an angel, not a saint, and Fallen besides, so sorry, no miracles. What do I have to back up my story? Unquestioning certainty that it is true, and memories of all I have seen since before the Fall."

Yeah. That had been what I was about to say. In the list of questions there was only one he hadn't touched on. "If you're an angel," I corrected myself, "A Fallen, how did you end up a vegetable in a hospital?"

He winced. "I'm just as easy to hurt as any man, but much harder to destroy." He smiled, acknowledging the irony, "It must be a counter-balance for having no soul to live forever after my flesh is gone. There are ways for us to hurt each other, however, and I am..unpopular with the other Fallen. I've said things that make them question themselves, their reality." His voice drifts off a little, and his eyes are unfocused. "I seem to be the only one to realize that I'm still a tool, we all are. The end result has to be the greater good. I have to believe that or go mad. Sometimes it gets more lonely than I can bear."

He closes his eyes, resting his forehead on his hand, and I don't know what to say or do. How do you respond to that? His world might be imagined, but the distress it caused him was very real. I watched him for what seemed like a long while. "I would like to go back to my room." His voice was an exhausted whisper.

I asked another nurse to keep an eye on my room, and I pushed Ray back to his. He moved slow and tired, trying to push himself out of the chair and onto the bed, but couldn't manage. "You're getting stronger." I comment, trying to be encourageing as I lift him from under his arms, helping just enough and leaving him with as much dignity as possible. I ease him back on the bed, making sure his pillows are comfortable, and cover him with his sheets.

"Get some rest." I say with a smile that I don't feel. I don't touch his hair, I don't brush his lips with mine. He closes his eyes, pale lashes shading the blue of them.

"Goodnight, Garreth," he murmured. I walked out, and didn't look back.