Chapter Eight Parables
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“What are you doing?”
The pair broke apart immediately at Sherry’s blunt question, and Brie turned a particularly vivid shade of crimson.
“We were just… I mean… we were only—”
“Who’s we?”
Brie turned to look at Cameron, who gave her a meaningful look and stepped back.
Oh, God. They can’t see him. What must that have looked like?
Her face blanched the color of spoilt milk. Sherry was looking at her with concern that bordered on alarm. Dr. Matthews clearly just wanted to get out of there.
“I’m here to call time of death. What are you doing here?”
He directed this at Sherry, who skewered him with a scathing look before batting her eyelashes and replying, “Just doing my job, sir, here in my capacity as a sexual harassment lawsuit just waiting to happen.” She blinked sweetly and held his gaze as the man broke into a flop of sweat. He pulled out a handkerchief and dabbed his forehead in a fruitless attempt to dry himself.
“Nurse… whatever your name is. Were you here when it happened?”
“Yeah. Were you here when it happened?” Sherry looked at her again as though she was a wounded animal to be approached with caution.
Brie took a deep breath and nodded.
“Ms. Abrams passed away eight minutes after four o’clock this afternoon.”
“Time of death: sixteen-oh-eight.” Matthews signed her chart illegibly, turned on his heel, and practically ran back into the hallway, desperate to escape the self-proclaimed “walking lawsuit.”
Sherry was too concerned about Brie to even notice. “Are you okay?” A preamble wasn’t her style. “I heard the guy from the ambulance died, and that sonofabitch didn’t even bother to properly run the code. And now this?”
“I’m fine,” Brie said quickly.
She knew why her friend was so worried. Brie had been lucky during her clinical rotations back in Georgia. She hadn’t had to watch anyone die in front of her. Not since her mother. Not till today.
“Are you sure?” Sherry pressed. “Because when I came in here, you looked like you were doing a bizarre yoga pose with a dead woman lying on the bed behind you.”
“I…” Brie glanced at Cameron sitting in the chair next to Esther’s bed, invisible to all but herself. He looked at her apologetically and mouthed, Should I leave?
She took a deep breath and replied to Sherry. “That’s exactly what I was doing. It’s this yoga technique Dr. Rogers made me promise to try. Keeps the back flexible and calms down the limbic system when you’re stressed.”
“Oh!” Sherry’s face relaxed, then piqued with interest. “Can you teach me? Maybe I should try yoga. Things are going well with Mike, and I might want to limber up a little—”
“Absolutely.” Brie gave her a quick hug. “Thanks for checking up on me. You’re a wonderful friend. But you can’t run out on your own patients every time one of mine dies.” She looked at Esther sadly. “Though I do appreciate you coming for this one.”
Sherry looked at the patient for the first time. “Oh, no… Esther?”
Brie looked at her in surprise. “You knew her?”
“We all did. She’s been a regular around here for months. Nice lady.” She sighed. “Nice daughter, too, but very high-strung. This is going to devastate her.” She looked at Brie. “I should be the one to call the family. They know me a little.”
Brie shook her head. “It’s my responsibility. I can do it.”
“I know you can, love. But would you let me do this one?”
The two shared a sad look.
“Only if I can sit with you while you call.”
Together, they covered Esther with a blanket and called to inform the morgue. As they left to make the fateful phone call from the nurses’ station, Brie glanced back at Cameron.
His hand was resting upon the blanket. When he caught her looking, he said quietly, “I’ll stay with her until someone comes.”
Brie nodded almost imperceptibly and followed her friend out the door.
? ? ?
By the end of her shift, Brie felt as though her day had begun three days ago. Her eyes burned with the fluorescence of the hospital lights, her stomach was churning from day-old coffee, and her feet had been crammed in her shoes so long that she was beginning to seriously question her life choices.
I could be something more relaxing. Like an air traffic controller.
As she waited for Sherry on the bench near the ambulance bay, she tilted her face up to catch the sunlight, took in a deep breath, and slowly exhaled. Before she could congratulate herself for doing Dr. Rogers’ breathing techniques one whole time, her thoughts were interrupted.
“Is this seat taken?”
She opened her eyes and squinted. Her angel was looking down on her, haloed in the sunlight. Her lips pursed, and she gestured in a circle around his head with a teasing grin. “That’s a bit on the nose, don’t you think?”
“What is?”
“Never mind.”
He sat down beside her, brimming with curiosity but wanting very much to be respectful of the current mood. “Brianna, why do you ask if the seat is taken if—”
“Cam, it’s been a long day. Could we do idioms tomorrow?”
“Of course. I understand.”
They sat silently for a moment before he threw her a sideways glance. “So, you saw my earthly purpose today — what I do.”
Brie nodded slowly. “I did.”
He hesitated, picking some nonexistent lint off his pants. “What did you think?”
“I thought… it was strangely beautiful.”
He stared for a split second, as if he was worried she might retract it. Then, he let out a breath in utter relief. When she tilted her head at him quizzically, he said, “I’ve often wondered if humans would approve of us, if they knew about us before the end.”
Brie was puzzled. “Why wouldn’t we?”
“Well,” he hesitated, “we aren’t always there in time to ease suffering, as you well know.” He watched her carefully. “And violent deaths aside, the human population growth has so far outpaced our own that there simply aren’t enough of us. It becomes ‘unfair,’ you see.” He looked at Brie with sudden intensity. “Your kind is very concerned with the concept of fairness.”
She considered this. “There’s this story we have about starfish. I think you might call it a parable.”
His eyes lit up. “I was raised on parables. Tell me.”
She took a breath. “One morning, after a great storm, an old man goes for a walk down the beach. He sees a young boy throwing things into the ocean. The man asks, ‘What are you doing?’ and the boy replies, ‘The tide is going out, and the sun is coming up. I’m throwing these starfish back into the water so they don’t die.’ The old man says, ‘You foolish boy. There are miles of beach and hundreds of starfish. You’ll never make a difference.’ The boy looks at him for a moment, then picks up another starfish and throws it into the ocean. He turns to the old man and says, ‘I made a difference to that one.’”
She turned her face to the sun again and closed her eyes, feeling its warmth on her skin. She never saw the way the angel continued to gaze at her in silence. Like she was the sunrise itself.
“Whatcha doing?”
They both jumped and turned to see Sherry standing a few feet away, resisting the urge to snap a picture while openly grinning from ear to ear.
“Brianna Weldon, did you secure alternate transportation home and forget to tell me?”
Brie grinned as they both rose to their feet. “Nope. I found this stray wandering around in the parking lot. Can we keep him?”
Cameron glanced between them in confusion. “A stray—”
“Aw, honey, did you take a cab here just to surprise our girl?” Sherry cooed. “You are makin’ everybody else look bad, mister.” Her eyes swept over him, and she couldn’t help but add, “In more ways than one. Come on, I’ll give you both a lift. Cam, you’re in the back.”
They piled into the car together, Cameron in the back seat next to the sparkling blue box containing Brie’s replacement dress, as promised. “Don’t let her forget that,” Sherry said, pointing. “Trust me, you’ll thank me later.” She winked at him and threw the car into gear with a sigh. “It’s too bad he doesn’t have a chronic illness or something, Brie. Then we could see him all the time.”
“Sher, he can hear you.”
“He doesn’t mind.”
“I don’t mind,” he echoed from the back seat.
“Did Brie tell you all about her first day?” Sherry asked. “She had a bit of a rough one.”
Brie glanced back at him. “He’s aware of the situation.”
“Well, we have to do it all over again tomorrow, so you know what I think?”
“Sher, I wanted to talk to you about that. Are you sure—”
“We’d better make the most of tonight.” Sherry beamed at her exhausted friend, then blithely continued, “I’ve been looking forward to introducing you to Mike for weeks, Ms. Weldon. You will not postpone my night of jubilee. We are celebrating your move, we are celebrating your first day, we are celebrating your bizarrely good-looking new boyfriend, and we are celebrating the blue satin dress with the corset top I’ve been dying to wear for two weeks.” She winked at Cameron in the rearview mirror. “A neckline to slay the souls of men.”
His face paled slightly. “I have seen such a neckline before.”
The girls shared a look.
“Have you now,” Sherry said, raising an eyebrow.
He looked out the window and shuddered. “I understand it is now widely believed that it was Helen of Troy’s face that launched a thousand ships, but I can assure you on behalf of all who gave their lives in the bloodshed that followed — not one of those poor soldiers ever once looked at her face.”
Sherry narrowed her eyes at him in the mirror before looking at Brie. “His sense of humor is a bit of a high-wire act, isn’t it?”
Brie sighed and looked out the window. “You have no idea.”
? ? ?
“Brianna,” Cameron called up the stairs. “Tell me again?”
“Cam, I’ve told you twice already.”
“Yes, but is it not better to be over-prepared in this situation? Sherry impressed upon me the importance of this dinner several times after you went upstairs. She was… compelling.”
Brie’s musical laughter chimed through the house. “Yeah, that sounds like her.”
“Brianna—”
“Weather, sports, hobbies, job. Art if you’re stuck.”
The angel paced the living room, muttering her words to himself on a loop. “Weather, sports, hobbies, job. Weather, sports, hobbies, job. Art if I’m stuck.”
He paused, staring at Brie’s woebegone Ficus “tree” for a moment. He looked to the top of the stairs, then out the window towards the heavens before quickly, even sneakily, stroking one of its bedraggled leaves with his hand. He casually walked away and didn’t even wait to watch it magically grow into a lush, verdant version of itself, three times its original size.
“Weather, sports, hobbies, job. Art if I’m stuck.”
Five minutes later, he glanced at the clock. “Brianna, I’m familiar with the term ‘fashionably late,’ but do you not think…”
He stopped short.
Brie descended the stairs, long curls cascading down her shoulders and bouncing with each step. The dress Sherry had purchased for her was a fitted, knee-length, one-shouldered cocktail number that hugged her curves in exactly the right places while still maintaining elegance and class. Tiny cutouts that resemble constellations swirled up her side and across the neckline.
She was putting in an earring, an heirloom from her mother when it slipped from her fingers and dropped next to her black stiletto. “Oh, shoot…”
Cameron was there in an instant. “Please, allow me.”
He knelt at her feet and recovered the diamond, gazing down at it for a moment before offering it up. She took it hesitantly. “Thanks.”
“My pleasure.”
Their eyes lingered a moment longer before both turned at the same time. She stabbed the earring frantically as though trying to pierce it through her skin. He looked anywhere except at her dress, deeply inhaled the scent of her perfume, and narrowly avoided walking into a wall.
“We should probably—”
“Yes, we should get going.”
They headed silently towards the door, both trying to keep steady, both suddenly nervous about what lay ahead, when she suddenly gasped with delight. “My plant!”
He shifted his weight uncomfortably. “Yes, well, I was just—”
“I told you it would make a comeback.” She stroked one of its leaves, then looked smugly back at the angel. “All it needed was a smoothie. They’re very good for your electrolytes, you know.”
Without another word, she sashayed out the front door to the car. She didn’t see him whisper, “Wow,” under his breath or shake his head with a tender fondness.
She never saw it. He made sure of that.
? ? ?
The place Sherry had chosen was called Le Canard Gris, which the patrons of the small Virginian town wrote off as being something “fancy” and “French” without realizing it actually meant “The Grey Duck.”
Cameron hid a grin of recognition as they passed beneath the looping script, pushing open the door and offering his arm simultaneously. “This looks lovely.”
“It does, doesn’t it?”
Brie gave her dress an unnecessary tug, feeling a sudden flurry of nerves. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d done something like this — gone out to a nice dinner with friends. It was the kind of thing she’d lost track of after Sherry moved to Virginia. The type of social touchstone that used to be so easy, that used to be so normal… but now?
I’m going to be sitting next to an angel. And I absolutely cannot tell my best friend.
She flashed a sideways glance at Cameron, only to see that he looked just as nervous as she was feeling. While handsome and composed on the outside, his fingers were drumming secretly on the side of his leg, and it looked as though he had yet to pull in a full breath.
Then there were the fish.
What the hell?
For a split second, she thought she must be imagining it. The tank itself was perfectly ordinary, the same kind of aquarium and fountain combination that many upscale establishments commissioned for the lobby to create a soothing ambiance and add to the general air of prestige. The smooth stones curved in a gentle crescent, and the sound of splashing water tinkled in the air. But the fish themselves?
If she didn’t know better, she’d swear they were…
Staring?
Her mouth fell open as her eyebrows shot skyward.
Holy hell, that’s exactly what’s happening.
Not only had every single fish turned towards the door the moment they stepped inside, but now they’d crammed themselves against the side of the tank and were gazing with riveted attention at the angel by her side. If it wasn’t so unnerving, she might have laughed.
There had to be upwards of fifty, hovering in a little line, staring with unblinking, glassy eyes at the fidgety man standing next to her — the one who was focused on his breathing and tapping complicated rhythms on the side of his leg. He’d yet to even glimpse the cheerful little fountain.
When it finally caught his attention, he wasn’t at all pleased.
“Stop that,” he whispered furiously, casting a fast glance around the room to make sure no one else could see. “I said stop it! Go away.”
He waved his fingers, and they scattered to the opposite side of the tank.
It was a clear victory but a fleeting one. No sooner had he let out a secret breath of relief than he glanced down to see Brie staring right back up at him, arms folded across her chest.
“Are we having a Little Mermaid moment?”
His face went perfectly blank. “What?”
She gritted her teeth, pulling him down to eye level by his lapels. “Does someone have some amphibious powers he neglected to mention?”
His cheeks flamed in the soft light as his gaze shot to the fish.
“What? No. That’s just…” He linked their arms together, turning her deliberately in the opposite direction. “They’re just being rude. Don’t pay them any attention.”
This is going to be a disaster of epic proportions.
She took a final look at the fountain, then steered them towards the bar. “I’m going to need a drink.”
? ? ?
In hindsight, it was probably a good thing that Brie’s idea of fashionably late still turned out to be a few minutes earlier than Sherry’s interpretation of the same concept. That way, Brie could sit elegantly at the bar and power-gulp a much-needed glass of Merlot.
Cameron stood impassively beside her, looking around, taking note of the exits, and nodding vaguely at the waitstaff and fellow patrons when they made eye contact.
“Aren’t we getting a table with your friends?”
“They’re not here yet,” she answered, lifting her hand for another glass. “And that’s excellent because I’m going to need a little alcohol in my system if you’re going to spend the night recreating scenes from Finding Nemo .”
He shot her a scowling glance. “While I have no earthly idea what you’re talking about, I can assure you, we will have no further interruptions from the fish.”
If I had a dime.
“That’s exactly my point!” she said, fingers clutched around the glass. “How are we supposed to do this? I don’t know if you realize, but every single interaction we’ve had has involved some sort of supernatural tomfoolery or obviously nonhuman behavior. This place is so fancy, it would make me feel awkward even if my dinner date wasn’t, I don’t know, from another freaking dimension. And beyond all that, how am I supposed to lie to my best friend?”
The wine sloshed back and forth, as she shook her head frantically.
“I have no idea what to tell them about who you are, where you come from, or why you’re here. I don’t even know how you acquired that suit. Do you just… manifest things?” Her gesticulations with the wine glass were becoming increasingly precarious. “It doesn’t matter. The point is… I mean, we’ve never come right out and said it, Cameron, but I’m more or less assuming this whole angel of mercy thing is something I should keep to myself.”
A few customers flashed her a curious look as they passed by, but Cameron waved them away with a fixed smile, just as he’d done to the fish.
“Yes,” he said softly, “it is something you should keep to yourself. There is a reason my kind has remained a mystery to yours. To interact directly with mortals is just shy of forbidden.”
Just shy of forbidden? But not quite?
She rubbed at her temples, warding off a coming migraine. “What’s your point?”
“My point is this is new for me as well.”
He took the glass of wine and eased it from her hand, using a finger to gently sweep her hair at the same time. For a split second, she thought it was simply a sweet gesture. It wasn’t until she felt the warm tingle of his fingertips that she realized the threat of a headache had vanished on the spot.
He offered his arm. “Don’t worry about what to tell your friends. I’ll think of something. In the meantime, perhaps this can be new for us, together?”
She stared at him for a moment before taking his arm. “Alright. But full disclosure: I’m not trying to be dramatic, but if I get one more unwanted surprise tonight, I am throwing myself into the sea.”
? ? ?
By the time Brie and Cameron wound their way back towards the main restaurant, the doors were just closing as Sherry and a tall gentleman swept inside, giving a name for the reservation.
Sherry looked stunning, all curves in jewel-toned satin, with her hair swept into an elegant chignon reminiscent of Old Hollywood. And her date… seemed strangely familiar.
Brie’s eyes widened in shocked recognition, and she gripped Cameron’s arm in a vice, just as Sherry spotted them and let out a little shriek of delight. A second later, she was waving them over, steering her escort along by her side. He was tall and handsome, with reddish blonde hair and brown eyes, and he carried himself with a posture too erect and symmetrical for a civilian.
Even without the sunglasses, Brie recognized him immediately.
Officer Mitchell.