Big Love(3)

“Actually, you’re supposed to save people first. Then you can amaze them.” Annabelle pulled a big, thick book out of the folds of her toga. “I suggest you read this while you’re waiting for your human to wake up.” She tossed the book at Zing. It landed on the floor with a thud. Zing wasn’t much for catching things and Annabelle wasn’t much for throwing them.

Zing pushed the book with the toe of her Croc. “Well, I suppose I do have some time to kill.” She picked up the book and studied the cover. “Hey, it has my name on it.” She ran her fingers over the embossed cover. Her name looked good in print.

“That’s because it’s your book. Remember, you have less than a day to fix this,” Annabelle said, standing. “By the way, why are you dressed in pink? It clashes horribly with your red hair. And the stripes aren’t doing much for your hips.”

Zing had long, brilliant, curly red hair and sparkling green eyes. She was lovely in an Amazonian kind of way—tall, well built, with a sculpted Grecian face. In human standards she was drop-dead gorgeous. “This is a candy striper uniform. It was all I could find at the last minute.”

Annabelle looked puzzled. “Candy?”

Zing explained, “They’re volunteers at the hospital. I get to sit with her in case she wakes up. They don’t like them to wake up alone. Nell is an orphan and her best friend, Carol, is running the bakery right now.”

“I forgot about her parents dying. The family seems to have gotten a bad shake.” Annabelle looked down at Nell with compassion, touching her hand. “She didn’t mean for this to happen,” she whispered to Nell.

“I really didn’t. If she pulls through, I promise to be better. I swear,” Zing pleaded.

“Tell that to Bertha.” Annabelle shook one finger at Zing, saying, “Read the book!”

And just like that, Annabelle disappeared. Nell wouldn’t have believed it if she hadn’t seen it with her very own eyes.

Zing looked at Nell. “Oh! Hello, there. You’re awake.”

Nell touched the top of her head. It was swathed in bandages. And it hurt like hell. Nell stared at Zing’s pink striped smock. Her eyes were still a little bleary. She looked down at her green gown and then around the room. “I’m really in the hospital?”

Zing nodded.

“I had a dream I was dead. I thought I’d gone to heaven.”

“That was no dream. It was a close call, but it wasn’t your time.” Zing pulled her chair closer to Nell’s bed.

“Hurts,” Nell moaned.

“You have a whole bunch of stitches and you’re missing some hair but it’ll grow back. No worries. That’s the beauty of hair. It always grows back, you know, unless you have that pattern baldness thing. Yours just got shaved off because of the stitches. You have sixteen of them.” Zing knew she was blathering but couldn’t stop herself so she went on, “You fell in an open manhole. You hit something on the way down that cut open your head. The doctors said it was lucky you didn’t break your neck. I am so sorry. It was all my fault.” Zing took Nell’s hand and was the perfect picture of penitence.

“Did you trip me?” Nell asked. She was studying the IV thingy they’d stuck in the top of her hand. She looked around the room again, trying to take it all in. She looked back at Zing.

“Uh, no. I didn’t trip you.”

“Did you leave the manhole cover off?”

“Uh, no.”

“Then how can it be your fault? I’m the one who was texting and not looking where I was going.”

“I should’ve been there to save you,” Zing said. “That’s my job.”

“You really are my guardian angel?” Nell whispered. She looked around the room like she suspected somebody was spying on them and continued, “You’re not a dream or a hallucination?”

“I really am,” Zing said. She held up the guardian angel handbook as proof. “See? That’s my name right there, printed in gold.”

Nell accepted this without question. She’d heard of a lot weirder things that ended up being true.

Zing said, “I was playing Hacky Sack instead of watching over you and one second you were staring at your phone and the next thing I knew you went zip down the hole.”

“My phone…” Nell said and then she burst into tears.

Zing was flustered. “I’m sure you can get a new one. Those city people said they’d pay for everything, especially if you don’t sue. See, they sent that big bouquet of flowers,” she said, pointing at the vase sitting on the window sill. It was a wide window sill that seemed especially made for large bouquets of flowers.