Two Books in One - Ominous Love and Paradox - The Angels Are Here (18 page)

Chapter 3—Hallelujah

“Goodnight, little one, sweet dreams,” Brian whispered in Grace’s ear that night as he tucked her up in bed and kissed her goodnight.

“Goodnight, Daddy,” Grace cooed, releasing her tight grasp from around his neck. He tickled her and she giggled.

He made his way to the door, then paused to reach out and touch his daughters pink ballet tutu that hung on the back of her door.

“Goodnight,” he whispered, knowing only one would hear him. “It’s Hope, isn’t it?”

“
Yes, it’s Hope
,” came the silent reply.

He walked through the doorway, turning the light off as he left the room, confident in the knowledge that Grace was in very safe hands
. But for how long
? he wondered. His confidence wavered, a frown creased his forehead. They had all heard whispers. And with the sudden arrival of Hope, although welcome, it was an indication that the enemy was hovering somewhere, and not too far away.

When the door closed behind Brian with a click, the light from the hallway evaporated, leaving Grace’s bedroom in darkness.

Hope materialized from the darkness and sat on the end of Grace’s bed. A soft glow emitted from her dainty body, dimly illuminating the room.  Grace smiled at her and sat up a little, resting on her elbows, and listened intently as Hope spoke.

Grace fell asleep that night listening to stories that her new friend Hope told her. The stories were from another time and place, a very long time ago. Stories that would stay hidden within her, locked away safely in her subconscious until it was time… time for her to remember them. 

A gentle breeze danced through the bedroom windows, billowing the sheer pink curtains. Hope slid off the end of the bed, walked over, and covered the sleeping child, tucking a white stuffed rabbit called Bugsy under her slender arm. She walked over and peered through the window and out into the darkness of the night. There was a full moon. Bright stars shone through the rolling grey clouds above.

She stood silently, closed her eyes, shrugged her shoulders, then took a long breath, and exhaled. Slowly, like a flower coming into bloom, small white feathers started to unfurl between her shoulder blades. By the time her magnificent wings had completely bloomed they dwarfed her small frame. Hope’s eyes remained closed, seeing, hearing.

She could hear Grace’s rhythmic breathing as the child slept peacefully in the bed behind her. She heard a news broadcast being televised down the hallway in the lounge room.

“A 7.6 magnitude earthquake has hit
El Salvador,” the news reporter announced, “killing at least eight hundred people and leaving thousands homeless. Many still fear for their lives as more quakes are predicted...”

Crickets chirped outside the bedroom window. A frog croaked in a downpipe signaling rain. Five houses down the quiet tree-lined street, K. D. Lang sang
Hallelujah
on a radio.

Hope heard a child humming to the same song three blocks away. She could see the small redheaded girl resting peacefully in the crook of a dying old man’s arm… waiting.

His room was dim, lit only by a small bedside lamp and the moonlight that eased its way through dusty floral curtains. An old framed wedding photograph of a happy couple sat on the table beside the lamp. Meager furniture lined the walls. Old family photographs filled dusty picture frames on a set of drawers. The old man slept on a double bed covered with crumpled sheets. An old wheelchair, its paint faded and scratched, sat empty on the left side of his bed, the grey rubber tire tread worn down with use.

The child looked intently at his old weathered face as he stirred and opened his tired eyes; tired eyes that had seen plenty of this world. Beads of sweat dotted his forehead from the stifling humidity in the tiny room. She reached over and brushed away a lone tear from his crinkly grey skin with her tiny velvety fingers.

He looked into this stranger’s brilliant blue eyes.

“I’m dying aren’t I?” he asked the child in his frail voice, frightened by the understanding of his own words
. Is this beautiful child sitting on my bed Death?
  he wondered.

“Yes,” she whispered softly. “But don’t be afraid, Abel, I will be here with you, I promise,” Tia answered, placing her hand on his heaving chest as he fought back his tears, fears.

He nodded gratefully, consoled by the knowledge that when he exhaled his last breath on this earth, on this night, he would not die in this bleak room alone.

“Would you like me to tell you a story, Abel?” Tia asked gently, sitting up, taking his big crinkly hand, and squeezing it tightly in her tiny ones.

His hand trembled in hers. These were strong hands once, he remembered, looking at them now. Hands that had lifted his son up high, so he could climb the big flame tree in the backyard. Hands that had taught him how to catch a ball and swing a cricket bat. Hands that let go when he taught his son how to ride his first red two-wheeler bike and catch his first fish. He missed his son, so far away now. He wouldn’t get the chance to say goodbye. That was the hardest part. Regret crossed his face when he remembered their last conversation seven years ago.
Seven years ago, seems just like yesterday
, he mused.

“Yes, I would very much like to hear a story,” Abel said, closing his eyes. He dragged long painful breaths into cancer-blackened lungs as he listened to Tia’s soothing voice.

Wind chimes
, he thought to himself.

Tia chanted quietly in his ear, her breath soft against his skin. She squeezed his hand.

“Take my hand, light of day diminish. Fades the sight to hearts held dear. Blue star shine jewel in night. Altair Aquila luminous light. To guide no fear near and far. To sight of Angels a death held dear. Amun.”

Images of Abel’s long life flashed through his mind like a movie on fast forward on a big widescreen television. His own birth, bright lights, his mother’s sweat-drenched crimson face as he was placed into her outstretched arms.

When he was seven, sitting on his favorite grandfather’s deathbed with a small redheaded girl, the same age that he had been.

More thoughts came quickly. His beloved wife Rose, giving birth to their beautiful son David—a birth and a death, happiness and pain jumbled together in a time span of moments.  His wife’s dying breath following the moments that their son David had drawn his first.  

He thought now about the girl that sat beside him. He had seen her face before, sitting on his grandfather’s deathbed all those years ago. He looked at her flawless ivory face, perfectly framed by her long red hair, then further, into her crystal-clear blue eyes. They appeared to glow like gems in the darkness of his room. She had held his grandfather’s hand, seventy years ago. Now she held his.

He searched Tia’s face for answers and found an infinite depth of peace there.
Yes, it is her, she looks exactly the same
, he realized. He closed his old eyes, knowing that it would be for the last time. He had found the answers to the questions he asked when he looked deep into Tia’s hypnotic blue eyes. She heard his thoughts. He sighed and exhaled a painful breath. There would not be many more to be endured. The constant pain that wracked him was now subsiding, leaving his wretched body limb by limb.

Back in Grace’s bedroom, Hope lifted her head slightly, the sultry breeze played with wisps of her fair hair that danced across her face. She smelt rain in the air. The sky lit up outside, thunder crashed, the rain fell, bringing with it instant relief from the stifling humidity. Her thoughts went further still. Away for a moment from the bed where Tia held Abel’s dying hand. Further. Thousands of miles away, across vast oceans to the sterility of a New Jersey hospital maternity ward.

Hope heard a woman’s guttural cry of pain. It was type of pain that only women suffer during the hideously long hours of childbirth. Her husband tried helplessly to comfort her and wiped her hot brow with a cool water-soaked cloth. Beth had never felt such searing pain.

“Just one more push, Beth,” the doctor encouraged in his Scottish accent.

She had pushed with every uterine contraction for the last forty-five minutes. She had endured over twelve hours of labor before that and now truly felt she had no more to give. Within seconds of these thoughts, Beth could feel her womb torturously squeeze and rise forward within her. Her face contorted as she screamed through the tearing pain as another contraction engulfed her abdomen once more.

Instinctively, she stifled her scream, closed her mouth, and bore down using what she believed to be her absolute last drop of energy. Immense burning pain caused Beth to lose her focus, her control. She hissed through clenched teeth, her clawing fingers gripped aimlessly at bed linen, her husbands arm, marking him. Her entire body stiffened in sheer agony.

Suddenly the burning, the tearing sensation and the pressure were going. Her baby was being born right at that moment and she knew it. She exhaled and opened her once tightly closed eyes just in time to see the doctor smile and her tiny purple baby unfold into his strong and guiding hands. The infant’s face was covered in a thin filmy membrane, remnants of the amniotic sac.

“Right on cue,” the doctor announced, examining the ticking clock on the wall. It was six a.m., the thirteenth of January, 2001. Outside, snow fell, blanketing
New Jersey in a thick layer of white.

A cold chill ran down Beth’s spine, her face drained of blood.

“What’s wrong with him?” she gasped, terrified that her child had been born dead.

“Ahh, not to worry, Beth,” the doctor replied in a jovial, reassuring voice. He wiped the membrane from the child. “Some babes are born a caulbearer. Some consider it a lucky omen to be born with a veil, a hood as it’s sometimes called, over the wee bairn’s face. It tends to run in the family, in the bloodline, so to speak. Nothing to be alarmed about, I can assure you.”

The doctor clamped the umbilical cord and with the confidence borne from experience, cut the cord with scissors, separating mother and infant. A few gentle spurts of fetal blood trickled over the blades of the sharp scissors. The fetal blood was the perfect color on the blades before slowly turning the customary crimson color in newborn infants. He passed the child carefully into the hands of a young African American nurse named Lucina standing by his side, and grinned at her confidently.

The child gurgled and gasped in her hands as he drew his first long breath deep into unblemished lungs. He cried out fearfully when the frigid air filled his new lungs, burning them.

He was ‘pinking-up’ before her eyes, and she knew he was healthy. His tiny lungs just seconds before squashed by the birth canal, were now inflating with oxygen-rich air. His heart now pumped his own blood throughout his entire perfectly formed body. His grey eyes blinked rapidly as he tried to adjust his blurred vision to the light-filled room. It was so bright in contrast to the soothing, watery darkness of his mother’s womb.

Lucina smiled down at the frowning child, all arms and legs kicking in the air, before passing the infant into the outstretched arms of the weeping mother.

After thirteen hours of labor, Beth was exhausted but elated at the tiny miracle she now held tightly at her swollen breast. Both mother and father wept tears of joy for their first-born son.

“He’s beautiful,” Lucina said as she lent in and soothed his cheek with her warm palm. Comfort filled his fearful mind, relaxing his tiny pink face. “What will you call him?” she asked in a soft voice.

“Abe, after David’s father, Abel,” Beth said looking up into her husband’s beaming face. He was in awe, overwhelmed by this tiny miracle that lay squirming in the arms of his wife. His son.

David kissed Beth’s forehead gently, stroking her sweat- drenched hair.

“As soon as Abe here is up to travelling, we are going to Australia, so he can meet his grandfather, Abel. We haven’t spoken to my father for a while so I, my wife and I, thought this would be the perfect time to mend fences, put the past behind us.”

Lucina nodded as she watched the joyful parents counting tiny fingers and toes on tiny pink feet. She pushed her hands into the pockets of her nurse’s uniform. “Your father is so proud,” she said softly.

Back in
Australia menacing clouds continued to clash. Lightning flashed, fracturing the darkness.