“I don’t know, but Bertha does try to keep things from us. Remember the squirtle incident?” Gloria asked.
Zing laughed. “It was cute! A cross between a squirrel and a turtle.”
“It was a mistake of nature. I wouldn’t call that thing cute,” Annabelle said.
Zing looked back at the monitor. She saw Nell picking up feathers. She was so beautiful. It made Zing’s heart hurt looking at her. It felt like having brain freeze of the heart.
Annabelle put her hand on Zing’s shoulders. “Don’t worry. We’ll find a way.”
***
After they finished their shifts, Gloria, Frida, Annabelle, and an ever-anxious Zing, powwowed in Annabelle’s room. Annabelle patted Zing’s hand while they sat on the floor with the papers spread before them.
“I wouldn’t say that Betty was an ideal guardian angel,” Frida said, putting another report on top of the already read pile.
“How come we’ve never heard of Betty before now?” Annabelle asked.
“She was expunged from the records and she worked in Trauma Management not Lesboland,” Gloria said.
“She had a category six rating,” Frida added.
“What does that mean?” Zing asked.
“It means she was an uber rescue angel. She got sent in for the big stuff like floods, fires, hurricanes, and tornadoes,” Frida said.
“You mean like all those people that shouldn’t have survived but did?” Zing asked. Her opinion of Betty was growing ever larger. People thought they became superhuman when they lifted cars off people during times of danger, but they didn’t know it was angels like Betty who actually did the lifting.
“Yep. She was the big stuff,” Gloria said. “Look at this.” She handed Zing a file listing some of Betty’s bigger guardian angel saves.
Zing studied it. Betty had done some truly amazing feats. She had saved a dog during a tornado in Oklahoma City; she had saved a young man during a shooting at Pulse in Orlando; and she had saved a dozen of people during Hurricane Katrina. A very impressive resume.
So why had Betty wanted to leave? Why did she want to be human so badly? Then she got it. Betty had fallen in love just like her.
“Well, I’ll be damned,” Frida said, waving a piece of paper over her head. “I’ve got it.”
Zing bounced up and down. “What is it? What is it? Show me.”
“Don’t get your hopes up until we see what she found,” Annabelle said.
“Buzz kill,” Gloria said. “If Frida says she’s got something then she’s got something.”
Frida beamed at Gloria. “I do have something. It’s the something we’ve been looking for.”
“Well, what is it?” Zing asked.
“Betty signed a Contract of Permanent Banishment,” Frida said. She turned the paper around so they could all see it. She pointed to a paragraph. “It says here that she was allowed to keep her human form after performing an act of selfless love, but she had to renounce her rights to being a guardian angel.”
“Yay!” Zing said, springing to her feet. She lifted Annabelle up from the couch and danced around with her. “I’m so, so, so happy! I get to be with Nell!” She danced for a few seconds before she realized that nobody else was dancing with her.
Zing stopped dancing. She looked at Annabelle’s face, then at Frida’s and Gloria’s. “What’s wrong? Aren’t you happy for me? Isn’t this what we were searching for?”
Annabelle burst into tears and threw herself onto the couch. She stuffed her face in a pillow and sobbed.
Zing stood perplexed. “What’d I do?”
“Does the word ‘banishment’ mean anything to you?” Frida said.
The gravity of the situation draped itself over her like a thick dark cloak. “You mean I’d never get to come back here? Ever?”
“That’s exactly what it means,” Frida said.
Annabelle sobbed harder.
Zing snatched the paper from Frida and studied it. “Never come back,” Zing said trying to process it all. She looked down at the paper and summarized what she read: “I would no longer be able to see any of you— even during an intervention. I would be human. Just like all other humans. I would even die as a human.”
Zing looked up from the paper.
Annabelle threw the pillow at Zing. “We’ve been friends for over one thousand years and now we won’t be.” She sobbed again. “You promised me we’d be together for always.”
Zing picked up the pillow and put it back on the couch. She sat next to Annabelle. “I love you, too.”
Annabelle stood up and whacked Zing in the face with the pillow. “Just not enough.” She marched from the room, the door slamming in her wake.