Shoulder Angel

2: Not Thinking Thing's Through.

I woke up in the hospital. There were tubes in my throat, and I panicked. Moving wasn’t… It wasn't great. I just sort of flopped, and wiggled a bit. I was breathing... trying to breathe, it should have been coming in really-really fast, and two men stood by the window. They seemed so out of place that I froze, loud beeping ringing in my ears, and then I passed back out. Blurring blue shapes rushing in the door as I did so. They made no noise as they did so, or maybe I just could hear it.

The second time I woke up was better, there were no tubes anywhere, but my arms were still plugged into IV’s. There were dot’s on the white square panels on the ceiling. Hospital, my brain seized on. I was in a hospital. The dots on the ceiling were a staple of every hospital I'd ever been in. Nanna and I used to have competitions on who could count the most, while she was having her chemo when I was a kid. This was definitely a hospital. I tried to sit up, it wasn’t as bad as last time but it wasn’t great.

“Careful,” a male voice cautioned. It was light and airy, not matching my current situation at all. Stepping from the shadowy corner he walked into view, while the other sniffed and stood impetuously in the sunlight streaming through the window.

“Whaa,” I groaned, and my mouth was so dry that looking back I’m surprised that my tongue didn’t just crumble into dust and start spewing out of my mouth…. Okay, so that’s morbid.

“You’ve been unconscious for almost two months, just… take it slow,” he said, placing a gentle hand on my arm. Briefly I wondered if I had died, and the afterlife had some kind of recovery period so you could come to terms with what happened to you, because this guy was pretty. As in so gorgeous it almost hurts, although maybe that’s just my injuries. With short sandy blonde hair that framed his face, eyelashes that most women have to pay for, and electric blue eyes I stand by my statement. That was a pretty, pretty, man. He was wearing denim jeans, and a Nirvana t-shirt. Leather and beaded bracelets encircled both wrists, and around his neck there was a shark's tooth necklace. His ears had multiple piercings in each, and he had a cheeky grin on his face.

“If she hadn't tripped off an escalator then it wouldn’t have been a problem,” the other man snorted, and his tone was cuttingly dismissive, “Don’t baby her just because she was so hopelessly careless that she almost got herself killed.” This one was a brunette, with caramel coloured skin and eyes so brown that they were almost black. Disdain dripped from every perfectly tailored inch of him. Which I found comforting, because otherwise I’d be in a room with two unbelievably hot guys. This guy opened his mouth, and it suddenly stopped mattering how handsomely he was nicely put together. From the slate blue button up shirt, to the perfectly pressed black slacks, and the grey waistcoat he wore. The one that stood next to me rolled his eyes.

“Why it happened doesn’t negate what treatment is necessary Johna, or the amount of care she has to take with it” he said almost tonelessly in reply. Johna, the one that clearly didn’t like me, didn’t seem to be impressed by his answer. He just turned and faced out the window. “Ignore him, he’s ridiculous. My name is Owen,” he said, turning to me and smiling brightly, “What can you tell me about the last thing you remember?” Pictures flashed behind my eyelids, the feeling of weightlessness, and then hitting the floor… Remembering made my skin crawl.

“My shoe got caught,” I said roughly, and I swallowed trying to make my voice work properly, “I fell.” It felt best not to dive any further into it than that.

“Right,” Owen said kindly, “You’ve been in hospital ever since. Honestly you’re lucky that you didn’t die.” Johna didn’t like that.

“You know very well as well as I do that luck had nothing to do with it,” he scoffed in a tone so smooth that it felt like somebody could slip on that, “We are the reason you didn’t die, when you should have.” I wasn’t doing so hot, I’d just been down for the world's greatest power nap, but finding out that I was supposed to be dead? That really took the cake, and any capability I had to respond to that fled. There were a lot of questions, but it was like they were all occurring to me at the same time, and I couldn't separate them into anything legible enough for me to actually ask it. After a couple of moments struggling with it, I managed to keep it simple.

“Why?” I croaked suspiciously.

“I’ll admit, I didn’t expect her to be that quick,” Johna quipped mockingly to Owen, as if I couldn’t hear him. Rude much? I was starting to not like this guy back, just as much as he didn’t like me. Kind of made me wish I had the energy to yell at him. I did give a pretty intensive glare, and did my level best to use it to make him feel like something I scraped off of my shoe though. f**k tolerating that attitude.

“It's terrible that nobody has any faith in someone doing something just because it’s nice,” Owen grumbled. Terrible for the people that like to take advantage of that maybe. Plan for the worst, hope for the best. It always felt like the option that made the most sense to me.

“You have been selected as a random participant in a challenge between good and evil,” Johna said impetuously, and it was more like intoned really. With the sinister infection to his words, and the way he still was refusing to face me, “Owen and I are representatives for our respective side's, and through your decisions one of us will become the victor.” I have never heard such a big pile of overly pretentious horse s**t in my life, I thought to myself, and I went to a public school that did its level best to make everybody forget that it wasn’t a private school. I was utterly stunned at the amount of unnecessary overly dramatic formal declarations that he was throwing around like confetti, as if they meant anything to me.

“We need you to help us settle a bet,” Owen translated in the voice of someone who has long-suffered this bullshit.

“Then why not just say that?” I said scratchily, because seriously why not just?! Did Johna find it hard or something speak plainly, or was it just some bullshit that he pulled on purpose.

“Because he’s pretentious,” Owen replied, before Johna could say anything.

“It hardly matters, you’re going to help us prove which side is superior. As if there was any debate about it,” he said directly after that. Owen was right, he was pretentious as f**k, but I’d already figured that out.

“Why?” I croaked, and although I would like to be more articulate it wasn’t really possible. The whole conversation was starting to exhaust me, and how was that even possible? I’d been sleeping for weeks, I should be ready and raring to go.

“You mean what’s in it for you?” Johna said, turning his head just enough I could see his lip curling with disdain. No that hadn’t been what I meant, but now that he’d brought it up… I did wonder what they were going to put on the table, because if they were figments of my imagination then it was all just insight really. So it was curious to know what I really wanted out of this situation.

“Zero repercussions from your little fall,” Owen answered the question for me, “It’s like this. People who come out of comas don’t just get up and go about their life like they’ve gotten out of bed in the morning. There’s physical therapy, and all sorts of diets so your stomach can acclimate to food, and a bunch of other stuff that I’m not really sure about the particulars on. Point is: you aren't done healing, and you aren’t anywhere near recovered. Do this one little thing for us, you take a nap and wake up miraculously healed. As if nothing had ever happened. You could be at home, and rebuilding your life by this time tomorrow.” Okay, so it would make sense that was what I wanted, because now that he said it I was starting to wonder how I ever thought it could be anything else. It also settled things, they were definitely imaginary. This sounded too good to be true. It wasn’t like I didn’t know that good things aren’t free, but let's be honest I was probably going to go back to sleep and chalk this up to a weird dream. If I remembered it at all.

“If I agree to this, you heal me and I get to sleep?” I said blearily, and they both nodded. I was resolutely ignoring the atmosphere. There was being a crazy lady, and then there was advertising the fact that you were a crazy lady. I had no interest in doing that. It was how you got yourself some nice grippy socks, and a jacket that helps you hug yourself. Johna walked from where he was standing by the window to stand on the opposite side of the bed than Owen. Both studied me seriously, and there was the strangest feeling, as if the world as a whole was just melting away from around us. I knew that they weren’t real, but for the rest of the conversation it felt like they were the only things that were.

“Yes. That would be correct,” Johna told me, eyes boring into me. They held their hands out for me to shake, and I tensed my whole body with the effort it took me to raise both of my hands and place them into there's.

“Okay,” I said, doubtful that I was going to wake up feeling any better than I was now. They shook, which was appreciated because I didn’t have that much in me, and an ominous ringing started to clang through the air. As if the universe was held in the belly of a grandfather clock, and that clock was striking twelve, and one more for good measure. The pressure in my head suddenly went pop, and I passed back out. Awareness completely fading away.

****

“So you just… agreed to this? Tiana! Are you serious?” the goddess in front of me snapped.

“Well I’m sorry…” I shot back before faltering for a moment when I realised that I didn’t know what to call her, “Um… Awkward question, do you have a name?”

“Ess,” she replied and rolled her eyes. My eyebrows rose.

“S?” I asked her, because that was a random thing for a goddess to be called. Were one letter names something they did way back when? I suppose that there was no telling how old she was. Maybe when she was born there were less people then there were letters in the alphabet?

“E-S-S,” she said with the groan of somebody who has had this conversation a lot, “It’s short of the Goddess of all Creation.” The? Like the first one in existence? I cringed, and then almost did it again because I did not want to be giving that kind of response. I know she can intimidate me, she knows she can intimidate me, and there was no need to be`tacky about it.

“Well I’m sorry, Ess, what more did you expect of me?” I said sarcastically, “What part of I thought I was dreaming didn’t you get?” Frustration had leaked into my voice, but she didn’t seem to care.

“Maybe for you to look before you leap?” she asked archly, and I threw her a dirty look, “You had, like, one shot to tell them to take a hike and you said okay? Because you didn’t think they were real? It sounds kind of weak to me.”

“Seriously?!” I scoffed, “I’d almost died. Keep your crappy expectations to yourself, I probably had brian damage.”

“You thought Owen was an angel, you probably still have brain damage,” she said bitingly, and it would have been a lot more insulting if I didn’t know for a fact that in hindsight I really should have seen that. She sent a victorious look in my direction when I didn’t argue.

“Shut up,” I groaned before I thought better of it… Ess didn’t seem interested in blasting me to bits, but she did seem interested in laughing her ass off. “It’s not funny,” I complained.

“Spunky little thing, aren’t you? It’s hilarious,” she said before letting out an honest to goodness snort, “You can’t even argue with how wrong you were.” I scowled.

“Do you want to hear the story or not?” I demanded impatiently. She gathered some sort of self-control back, crossed her arms over her chest. Just daring me to follow through on the implied threat. I wanted to backtrack, but I very pointedly refused. It wasn’t my fault that she was so touchy.

“Given that you still haven’t explained how things ended up in such a mess, I’m sure you can guess,” Ess said the very picture of disapproving… If disapproval was going to a Burning Man Festival.

“We’ll then stop complaining about my bad decisions and listen then,” I scolded her with attitude, “I didn’t stay in the hospital long, because as I’m sure you know, my miraculous healing came through. My best friend came and picked me up from the hospital…”

****