Earth Angels (11 page)

The wind whirled her clothing around her when she dashed out the door, and the driving rain half-blinded her as she ran down the street, past the barbershop where Olaf and Quincy were watching from the window.

Go ahead and stare,
she raged silently.
Go ahead and gossip, too. It’s going to take more than words or insults or hail or even a damned locked door to keep me out of Doctor Joseph Gillespie’s house this time.

She was out of breath by the time she reached Joseph’s house. She ran up the front stairs. The wind had blown her hair loose from its knot and it hung around her shoulders, soaked from the rain. She thrust it back and hammered on the door. All the shades were drawn and the house looked as if no one lived there.

“Joseph,” she shouted. “I know you’re in there. Now open this door or so help me, I’ll break it down.”

No answer.

“Fine, then, I’ll break it down,” she muttered, going back down the steps.

Around the corner of the house she found a long, stout stick. She picked it up in both hands and went back up the steps. Taking a deep breath, she lifted it high and smashed the window that formed the top half of the office door.

The glass shattered, and with trembling hands she reached inside and undid the hook that secured the door.

“Joseph?” The house had a stale, musty smell. She went through the office and down the hall to the kitchen, calling his name. The stove was unlit and a neat stack of dirty dishes stood on a counter. There was no sign of him, and the silence was so complete she became frightened.

“Joseph.” Her voice echoed as she ran down the corridor and up the stairs. The bedroom doors were open except for one—his. She burst through, terrified now at what she would find.

The room was dark and stuffy, the curtains drawn, the windows closed. It took a moment for her eyes to adjust, and at first all she could see was his form on the bed.

“Joseph, what on earth is the matter with you?” She moved to the window and drew the curtains aside, shoving the window up to let in fresh air. Rain came pelting in and the stormy light was faint, but it was enough so that she could see him clearly when she turned.

She gasped. He lay on his back, wearing wrinkled trousers and what had once been a starched white dress shirt. His feet were bare. He turned to look at her but didn’t say anything, and for a moment she couldn’t speak, she was so shocked.

He looked ravaged, his cheekbones standing out in stark relief. He hadn’t shaved in days and his eyes were sunken and haunted. His spectacles were on the bedside table, and he made no effort to put them on.

His despair was obvious, like a thick cloud that almost crumbled her with its weight. She struggled for composure.

“Joseph, you look terrible. Are you ill? Can I get you anything?” She moved closer to the bed, longing to throw herself down beside him, hold him in her arms, comfort him.

He sat up and swung his feet to the floor. He looked at her, his eyes flat and blank, as if she were a stranger. “What are you doing here?”

There was no warmth, no recognition in his tone, and she fought against the pain his indifference caused her. She forced a light note to her voice, forced a smile. “I’m worried about you. No one’s seen you in weeks. Gossip has it you’ve become a ghost, haunting the country roads at night.”

“Go home, Emma. I don’t need your pity.” His dejected tone told her that her effort to be upbeat had been futile.

“Contrary to what you might think,” he went on, “I can manage quite well on my own. Unlike you, I don’t need crowds of people around me all the time.”

Hurt to the depths of her being, she persisted anyway. Her voice quivered, but she maintained the light tone. “It looks as if you could use a cook, Joseph. You’ve lost weight, you can’t have eaten, I’ll go down and—“

“Get out!” He rose, standing beside the bed, and his roar penetrated her very pores. “Get the hell out of my house, out of my life! I don’t need you, I don’t need anyone!”

CHAPTER TEN

Joseph saw the awful hurt on her face, but he was frozen inside: he couldn’t allow himself to feel. He heard the sound that came from her throat, the sound of a woman in mortal pain, but he couldn’t respond. He watched as she shuddered, her wonderful brown eyes wide, spilling over with anguish, her vivid features mirroring the new wound he’d made in her heart. But he was no longer a healer. He was poison, he couldn’t contaminate her.

He watched as she whirled and ran, his mother’s shawl tight around her shoulders, her bright blue cape wet-stained, her golden curls damp and soft around her shoulders. Against his will, he remembered how soft those curls were to his touch, how they wound around his fingers the way her love had wound around his heart.

He stood rooted as he listened to her feet pounding down the stairs. He heard the front door open and then slam behind her, and he knew it was the absolute end, the last time she would ever come to him.

At that terrible realization, his despair and fear crumbled. Unless he went after her, he would surely die.

“Emma!” The agonized cry tore from his throat. He moved, one step and then another, forgetting his spectacles and having to turn back and grope for them. Then he stumbled down the stairs, raced along the hall, heedless of broken glass under his bare feet. “Emma, come back!”

When he went out the door and down the steps, the force of the storm took his breath away. The rain obscured his lenses and everything was a blur—puddles of water, a flash of blue cape, a small figure running into the field behind his house.

“Emma!” He pounded after her, ignoring the stones that bruised his feet, the wind that tried to push him back.

He finally caught her in the middle of the field.

“Let-me-go-“

She fought him like a wild thing with her fists and elbows and knees. Her face contorted, her sobs rattled in her throat, but he held on until at last she quieted in his embrace, her heart hammering against his chest like a trapped bird.

“Emma, oh, Emma, my dearest love, please forgive me.”

The rain poured down on them, a cloudburst now. He did his best to shield her from it, as he wondered how he could ever explain what he didn’t fully understand himself.

Nathanial, please, help me this one last time. Please, please help me find the words.

And like a benediction, he felt his friend’s calm, loving energy, and somehow the words he needed were there. “Emma, I’ve been alone too long. I’m such a fool, I’ve made so many mistakes.” He squinted down at her, the rain making it impossible to see through his spectacles, but it was as if a light had gone on inside him, and all at once he saw clearly what had made him the way he was.

“I was an only child, Emma. My mother had lost three babies before me, and she and my father doted on me. I had the best parents a boy could have, the happiest of childhoods. As I grew older, I fell in love with the girl on the next farm, Ruth Montgomery. I planned to wed her, live here and farm and raise a family. My life stretched before me, full of promise. But my mother and father died of typhoid, they were sick for only two days. And within a week, so did Ruth. She was only eighteen. Losing all of them like that, so quickly, changed me. It hurt so much I vowed never again to love anyone that deeply.”

She was quiet in his arms, and he knew she was listening. He wrapped her still closer, locking his arms around her.

“I became a doctor to fight death. And most of the time, I managed to help people, to heal them. Not by myself, Emma. See, I had a special gift, a—a friend—“

But Nathanial was so much more than a friend. If he and Emma had a chance together, it had to be rooted in absolute honesty this time. He drew in a breath and silently asked for courage. “His name is Nathanial. He’s—well, he’s an angel who comes—came—to assist me with patients whenever I needed him. He would appear whenever I called, he helped me save so many lives. He was there the night I visited Elmer, he’s the one I was talking to. I always felt like a charlatan, taking credit for things when it was really Nathanial who told me what to do. He was even the one who told me I needed you in my life.”

He expected Emma to pull away, to laugh at him and tell him he was loony. He’d only ever spoken of Nathanial to Granny, because he knew the old woman believed in such things. He waited, certain that Emma would leave him now, that she’d see him as a crazy person, a lunatic.

“You should have talked to me about him, Joseph.” There was only sadness in her voice. “Did you think I wouldn’t understand? I’ve always known there were angels; I’ve always known my mother was one of mine. I know she watches over me. Just because I can’t see her doesn’t mean I don’t know she’s there. You are so fortunate, being able to actually see your guardian angel.”

“But I drove him away, just as I did you.” He was so ashamed to admit it. “I’ve destroyed all the things I most love. I’m so terribly sorry for the abominable things I said to you, Emma, and for the terrible way I’ve acted. I was stupid and foolish, and I thought that when you saw what a bumbling idiot I really was, you’d leave me. And I was so afraid you’d leave me that I drove you away, to get the pain over with.” He used his thumb to swab at her wet cheeks. “Except it didn’t work. Every day without you is a fresh agony.” He faltered, because what he had to ask her would determine the rest of his life. He squeezed his eyes shut and forced out the words. “Can—could you find it in your heart—Emma, do you think you could ever forgive me?”

“Oh, Joseph.” She touched his cheek and he opened his eyes.

Hers were filled with compassion and glistening with unshed tears. “There’s one important thing you haven’t said. You used to tell me that you loved me. Do you still?”

He cupped her chin and shoved his smudged glasses up to rest on his tousled hair. He looked into her eyes for a long moment, feeling everything shift and melt and

inside him.

“I love you, Emma,” he said simply, from the depths of his being. “I’ll love you until I die, and even after that, I’ll go right on loving you. You are my earthly angel.”

She sighed, a huge, satisfied sigh. “And you’re mine, and nothing else matters, does it?”

He bent and kissed her, deep and long and passionate, and wondrous joy filled his heart. “You’ll marry me, then? Please say you’ll marry me.”

She giggled, and the happy sound began to heal the wounds in his heart. “Of course I’ll marry you, silly. I thought you’d never get around to asking.”

When he lifted his head after kissing and kissing her, Joseph peered around in nearsighted awe. The rain had stopped, and the sun blazed in the sky. At the edge of the field, he thought he saw Nathanial smiling at them. And was that Granny beside him? Behind them both, a radiant rainbow cast a spectrum of breathtaking unearthly light.

“Angels,” he breathed. “Angels everywhere.”

Including the one in his arms.

*****

EARTH ANGELS is the first in my series of wacky stories about everyday angels.

Next will be ALMOST AN ANGEL, about klutzy, endearing Sameh Smith, a visitor from the future. P.I. Adam Hawkins can’t figure her out. He tries to be cynical, but with Sameh around, cynicism just doesn’t work. Can a man rooted firmly in the present and a woman not quite from this planet or this time make romance work?

I’d love to hear what you think of my stories. Writers write for their readers, and it’s always thrilling to hear your opinions—good, bad or indifferent!

Get in touch with me at:

[email protected]

http://www.bobbyhutchinson.com

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Bobby Hutchinson's Bio

Bobby Hutchinson was born in a small town in interior British Columbia in 1940. Her father was an underground coal miner, her mother a housewife, and both were storytellers. Learning to read was the most significant event in her early life.

She married young and had three sons. Her middle son was deaf, and he taught her patience. She divorced and worked at various odd jobs, directing traffic around construction sites, day caring challenged children, selling fabric by the pound at a remnant store.