Chapter Three
He stopped crying and just lay there glowing with happiness.
If it had been because of true love, or a new baby, or any of a dozen things I’d have been happy for him, but I’d seen the same angel and I wasn’t glowing.
It did feel good to stand near him, though, as if waves of happy contentment were flowing from him to the rest of the room.
The nurse on duty came in to check his vitals and stayed talking to him, smiling down at him as he smiled up at her.
Of course, Gimble was smiling at everyone; the whole world would be his friend while the afterglow lasted.
Lieutenant Charleston took me outside the room and spoke low while Gimble made friends with another nurse. “How long is this going to last?”
“Hours, days, months.” I shrugged.
“Are you telling me one of my detectives is going to be like some charismatic preacher for months?”
“Or it could fade in an hour,” I said.
Two other nurses came down the hallway and entered Gimble’s room. We stepped back to look in on him, but he was beaming at the four nurses and telling them about the angel. There didn’t seem to be any medical emergency that warranted that many nurses.
Dr. Paulson came down the hallway frowning. “Where the hell are my nurses?”
We both pointed at the room behind us. Paulson strode through the door. “We have other patients on this floor, ladies and gentleman.”
They made sounds of apology and seemed a little embarrassed or confused about why all four of the nurses on the floor were in one room when there didn’t seem to be much wrong with the patient.
Dr. Paulson shooed them out of the room like they were children being sent outside to play. He didn’t seem affected by the angelic bliss spilling off Gimble; neither were Charleston and I, but we had training in resisting metaphysical interference, and the doctor didn’t. So how was he unaffected?
He looked at both of us, the irritation in his eyes bordering on anger, but his voice was still controlled and even. “The religious mania is fine, I’ll have someone from psychiatric look at him, but why is it affecting the nursing staff?”
I answered, because as Charleston liked to remind me, I was the unit’s angel expert.
“Sometimes people come away from angelic visitations trailing clouds of glory. Being that close to God can make them high, but it can also make them shine to other people. People are naturally attracted to things that bring them closer to God’s presence. ”
“I know that seeing an angel in pure form can drive a person insane or give them amnesia, so they don’t remember the incident at all, or even this type of evangelical experience, but there’s nothing in the literature about it being contagious.”
“It’s a rare side effect,” I said.
“I’ve never heard of it either,” Charleston said. He joined the doctor in giving me unfriendly looks.
“It may be because Gimble is psychic in his own right, so that his powers are combining with the protective story his mind built for him.”
“What protective story?” Charleston asked.
I looked at him as if to say, did he really want me to give out this much detail in front of someone who wasn’t one of us? But he said, “Dr. Paulson is the doctor in charge of Gimble’s treatment, Havelock. He needs to know enough to make that treatment effective.”
“Point taken, Lieutenant,” I said, and turned to the doctor. “I saw the same angel and it wasn’t all light and choral singing. It was special and awe-inspiring, but it wasn’t the way Gimble is describing, at least not to me.”
“Are you saying that he saw something you didn’t?” Paulson asked.
“I’m saying that there is some debate on whether spiritual beings look different from person to person.
The theory is that it’s the same reason that we can see spirit, but it doesn’t always show on film, so we may be seeing it with the parts of our minds that see dreams, or daydreams, rather than concrete reality. ”
“So, you’re saying that what you saw and experienced may not be what the other detective saw.”
“Yes.”
“So why is that a protective story?”
“It could be that he saw exactly what I saw, but it’s too powerful for his mind to deal with, so in order not to go crazy his mind has given him a wonderful vision instead of the scarier truth.”
“You mean like a trauma victim remembering things differently,” Paulson said.
“Yes, in either case the mind is trying to protect the person from something that was overwhelming to them mentally and emotionally.”
“Don’t forget spiritually, Havelock; maybe what’s happened to Gimble is that seeing an angel in person has given his religious beliefs a kick in the head,” Charleston said.
“Maybe, but most of the time this kind of shiny happiness doesn’t last long enough to change a person’s religious habits. I pray that it doesn’t last for Gimble.”
“Why?” Charleston asked.
“Because this kind of belief can lead people to quitting their jobs, giving away their possessions, and devoting the rest of their lives to charity or something.”
“Is that so bad?”
“It is when it’s the mind protecting itself from trauma instead of a deeply held religious belief.”
“If a person leads a good life, does it matter what motivated it?” Charleston asked.
I looked at him. “What would your wife say if you came home tonight and asked her to sell the house, empty out your savings, give or sell everything of value you had so you could give it to the poor, and then you’d spend the rest of your lives helping the homeless, or something like that?”
Charleston looked at me for a moment, then laughed. “She’d think I’d lost my mind and wouldn’t do any of it with me. She’d probably try to have me put on a twenty-four-hour psychiatric hold.”
“It’s that kind of abrupt change, Lieutenant.
It’s not a person soul-searching for years to find their place in the world or in Deity’s plan, it’s like a lightbulb that gets turned on one day in a room that was already bright and sunny.
It’s not bringing people out of the darkness into the light of spiritual growth, it’s shining so much light on a person that they become blind to the joy they already have. ”
“Okay, but why is it impacting the nursing staff?” Paulson asked.
“Like I said, I think it’s because he’s psychic.”
“What kind of psychic is he?”
“Empath mostly,” Charleston said, which was my clue not to add anything else. If my boss didn’t want the doc to know everything Gimble could do, then that was okay with me. I didn’t like oversharing with civilians.
“Is he a receptive or a projective empath?” Paulson asked, and that meant he paid more attention than most civvies did to gifted Americans.
Most people didn’t even know that there was more than one type of empath, or that their power could be more than just picking up emotional impressions from others.
“Mostly receptive,” Charleston said, which again was my cue to not overshare.
“But he can project, too?” Paulson said.
Charleston made a head movement that could have been a nod or a shrug. Paulson took it as a nod. “Then could he be projecting his emotions onto my nursing staff?”
I nodded before I could stop myself, but Charleston conceded it. As if on cue the male nurse came back down the corridor and tried to go into the room, but Paulson stepped in his way.
“What is it, Gonzales?”
“Time to check the patient’s vitals, Doctor.”
Paulson shook his head. “No, it’s not.”
“Are you sure?”
The anger flared in Paulson’s eyes again. “You took his vitals less than ten minutes ago, I’m sure.”
“Maybe he pressed his call button?”
Paulson sighed and ordered the man to go back to his other duties. One of the other nurses was walking this way and passed Gonzales to reach Gimble’s room.
“What is it, Prescott?” he asked her.
“The patient pressed his call button.”
Paulson leaned back into the room and asked, “Did you press your call button?”
“No, but I’d love some company.” I could see George’s smile while he said it; he was a very social guy. I wondered if that was part of it; was he literally projecting his social need on the nurses? Had the angel somehow increased his psychic abilities? That would be a first.
“Check on your other patients, Prescott, this one is fine.” She went farther down the hallway, and I saw the last nurse peeking around the corner at us, as if she’d go into Gimble’s room as soon as the coast was clear.
“I can’t have the entire nursing staff on this floor ignoring the other patients.”
“Understood,” Charleston said.
“Then what are you going to do about it?” Paulson asked, one hand on his hip, so the white coat swept back from his scrubs as if he was going for a weapon almost.
“What’s your background with the gifted, Doctor, if you don’t mind me asking?” I said.
“I do mind you asking.” He turned back to my boss. “What are you going to do about his disrupting this hospital?”
“I’ll make some calls. I’ll leave Detective Havelock here until we can come up with a more permanent solution.”
“How is the detective supposed to help the issue? I mean, if he could help, then why isn’t he already?”
Charleston smiled at the man’s anger, trying to be pleasant. “Maybe he can help shoo the nurses out.”
“I cannot guarantee that their fascination with this patient isn’t compromising their ability to care for the other patients on this floor. Your detective isn’t the only one here who was negatively impacted by a spiritual experience. I need my staff to be able to care for all of them.”
“I understand that, Doctor, and I will find someone whose gifts help the situation a little more actively than Havelock here, but until I can find the right person for the job Havelock is one of my best people.”
I fought not to react too much to that last statement.
Charleston wasn’t much for that kind of compliment in front of civilians.
Of course, maybe he was just reassuring the doctor.
Either way I tried to look worthy of the compliment; some days I’d have believed Charleston was right, but Gimble was compromised because I had told the angel that it didn’t have to pretend to be human for me; if I hadn’t invited it to show itself in pure form it wouldn’t have done it in a public area.
So it was my fault that Gimble was blissed out and projecting happy social messages to the nurses, and if he gave away all his belongings and became a monk that would be my fault, too.
I prayed hard that he got over this—I didn’t want another person going insane because I couldn’t protect them from the angels. One was plenty.