by CS Yelle
Copyright CS Yelle 2013
Staccato Publishing Zimmerman, MN
First US Edition: March 2013 *ebook version* The characters in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons; living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.
Author: C.S. Yelle
Editors: Sara Johnson Karen Reckard
Cover: Terra Koster of KMS Design
ISBN: 978-0-9892027-0-1 Printed in the USA
Taking Angels
The Angel Crusades
C. S. Yelle
Chapter 1 Eighteen and dying. My reality sucked the big one and I’d had enough.
The movement of the canoe hypnotized me while I lay in the bottom of the aluminum craft, the waves creating a hollow pinging sound as we cut across the lake. I kept my eyes closed against the bright sun baking my face, the light breeze keeping me from feeling the burn.
Spending most of my time in hospitals under the dull fluorescent lighting with its incessant hum had left my skin pale and white. I’d rather be out here instead of taking chemo or radiation, anyone would. This felt like heaven; a place I’d spent far too much time thinking about lately.
“Britt, you’re getting sunburned,” Mom scolded as she paused in her paddling to stare back at me. “Put your chin down so your hat can block the sun.”
“Let her be, Mary,” Dad sighed.
“She’s going to get burnt. It isn’t good for her skin, Jim.”
“What will it do besides make her
uncomfortable?” Dad argued.
He paused now and again to drag the paddle in the water, steering us towards his goal across the lake. I didn’t remember which lake we were on; only that it was part of the pristine Boundary Waters Canoe Area in Northern Minnesota.
I pulled the large-brimmed hat down over my eyes and went back to listening to the rhythmic waves. I moved my bony butt on the metal support of the canoe, trying to get comfortable. Without any padding, it wasn’t happening. Still, it beat the hospital beds and the sterile linens.
Shifting again and looking to where we headed: tall pines reaching for the blue sky, little white clouds floating overhead; I remembered the place. It was a nice campsite with good fishing and a waterfall leading into the next lake. The mosquitoes were murder on that trip six years ago. I hoped they didn’t like the taste of my blood as much this time. Maybe the chemo could stop something.
“Not much further, Britt,” Dad said. “Getting stiff?”
“Yeah.” I nodded, shifting a little more.
My parents kept paddling, steady and strong. I closed my eyes again, recalling how Mom and I used to take turns paddling up front. Now I couldn’t lift a paddle, much less use one. Soon sand and rock crunched against the bottom of the canoe bringing us to a sudden stop, jolting me hard against the metal frame.
“Land ho,” I cried as loud as my chemo ruined lungs allowed. I breathed like a severe asthmatic or someone who’d smoked all her life.
Mom began unpacking our supplies while Dad pulled the canoe further onto shore and I went along for the ride. The smell of pine hit me and the sound of the waterfalls reached my ears.
“I want to go in the water.” I forced a grin from under my absurdly large brim.
Dad nodded as he lifted me in his arms and carried me to shore. “You need to get your suit on and we have to set up camp first.”
“I have my suit on.” I showed him, pulling my shirt up with a thin hand.
He chuckled. “We have to get things set up before it gets too dark though, Britt.”
“Can I just sit in it up to my waist?” I pleaded, glancing at the outlet and the water flowing over some nearby rocks.
He stopped and turned to Mom who stood with her arms crossed, listening to our conversation. She opened her mouth to object but looked at my face and her expression faltered. She gave a resigned nod.
“Yay.” I clapped as Dad set me down.
Mom helped take off my shorts and top leaving the baggy one-piece to cover nothing anyone would want to see. Dad picked me up again, walked down the bank, and began to set me in before I stopped him.
“Hey, I want to have some current flowing over me,” I protested. “Closer.”
He glanced at me and then back to Mom. Sighing, he took another dozen steps or so closer to the small waterfalls. A light rumble reached my ears as the water struck rocks out of sight and felt the mist drift over us. A bigger fall lay just beyond these.
The cold, fresh water made me shiver as he put me into a spot between two large rocks, worn smooth from centuries of moving water. I gasped and tensed until my body began to relax, acclimating to the temperature.
He looked down, impatient, as I grinned up at him.
“What?”
“Is that enough?”
“No, I want to sit a while.” “Britt, I need to set up camp.”
“Who’s stopping you?”
“I can’t leave you alone.” His eyes were wide and anxious.
“I won’t be. You and Mom are only a few feet away, I’ll be fine.”
He stared at me, cocking an eyebrow and crossing his arms over his chest.
“Go on, I’ll be fine,” I reassured him.
His eyes narrowed as he leaned his head to one side and frowned. Without another word he walked back to camp, looking over his shoulder every few steps, making sure I wasn’t going to slip off somewhere.
The funny thing is…that’s exactly what I planned. The four years of treatment, the endless hours in a hospital bed; I wouldn’t allow any more. I would slide myself into the current and let the water take me away from here, from this world filled with nothing but pain and suffering. The decision didn’t come easy. My parents were wonderful, my friends, the ones that stuck by me, very supportive. I would miss them all, but to watch their eyes cloud with sympathy and sorrow as I became a hollow shell was something I didn’t want to put any of us through. Not anymore.
I glanced over my shoulder at the camp. Mom was setting up the tent with Dad. I waved at her, putting on the smile I learned to use when she needed to feel better. If they knew my plan, of course they’d try to stop me. What parent wouldn’t?
She waved and turned back to the tent and my smile melted away.
Inching my butt forward, closer to the current tickling at my toes and ankles, I slid down further, pushing off from the smooth boulders. My suit hitched up, but I didn’t care about a wedgy before floating to my death. I grinned at the thought. After all those months in a hospital bed, sliding down as my underwear crept up wasn’t even a worry. It ended today, now.
Stealing another look at the campsite revealed them collecting firewood around the edge of the camp’s clearing. Their backs to me, I took my chance.
I thought it would feel different, somehow, when my body floated off the rock. The panic I feared would seize me at that moment didn’t come. The urgency to reach this point melted away. I leaned back, my head rested in the water. An eagle drifted above me gliding on air currents while it searched the water for fish, captivating me with its elegance and majesty. I’d forgotten the beauty of this place. For the first time in over a year, I felt my world around me, caressing me, stimulating my senses which had gone stale and making me feel…alive.
A rush of fear gripped me. What was I thinking? I wanted to live, I wasn’t a quitter. I wanted to fight until I couldn’t fight anymore. But the realization that my choice in the matter was gone hit me as I slid into the current, my head above water for a split second before the sounds went muffled. My silly hat with the big brim pulled away from my hairless head.
I expected them to try and reach me, hoping they would be too late. Now, I prayed that they would
come. Paddling with all the strength in my atrophied muscles, I fought the current. It tugged, hard, and carried me away. Mom screamed and Dad shouted right as a loud splash hit the water upstream.
I opened my eyes in the hazy water as a dark shape darted past, too late to catch me. I hit something hard and was airborne, the sound of the falls rumbling in my ears. The feeling was like nothing I’d experienced before. The air and the water mixed to frothy foam and then I plunged underwater again, the sounds going muffled. My body hit the rocks and debris at the bottom of the falls, jarring me and forcing the warm air from my lungs to be replaced by cold, crisp lake water. Spinning over and over I lost my sense of up and down as the churning water kept me lurching from side to side. My head throbbed and my lungs bucked. The water pulled me along and soon black spots filled my vision. The spots spread until the blackness enveloped everything. Then, the pain was over and the next stage of my existence, if any, began.
I heard a voice. Melodic and sweet; female I thought, but couldn’t tell for certain. The words indiscernible, the voice sounded urgent then stern; something I didn’t want to hear upon my arrival in heaven. I cringed.
Then another voice came, deeper but no less sweet. Calm and soothing it flowed on, pulling me with it. I longed for it to keep speaking, to fill my ears with its infectious happiness and joy. The voice I needed to hear in heaven. A much better welcome, I concluded.
I pried my eyes open but my vision blurred, showing me nothing but light and shadows. Blinking to clear them only made it worse. The voice touched my ears again, the deeper one. I took a deep breath, surprised by the wonderful odors of pine and lilac, the enveloping happiness consuming me.
I blinked again, beginning to see them as more than just shapes. Halos of blonde hair against the sun and a faint glow about them. They were angels, both of them. Even though my sight remained cloudy I could discern one female and one male as they stood before me; the collage of green starting to take the shapes of trees behind them. The familiar sound of the waterfalls and a rushing river drifted to my ears and mist wet my skin. How could that be?
“What have you done?” the female’s voice accused, her words finally clear.
“I don’t know,” the deeper voice said.
“You did something different,” she pointed out.
I frowned. What did he do?
“I touched her, but it didn’t work the same.”
“This is not good,” the female warned. “You touched her too late.”
“What are we going to do?” he asked.
“We? There is no ‘we.’ You touched her, I didn’t.”
Both faces turned to me again. The shapes became clearer as the two heads of hair came into focus.
“Don’t tell anyone, you have to promise,” the deeper voice pleaded.
“Fine, but if they find out, you’re on your own.”
I closed my eyes and everything began to jerk and twist as sirens sounded in my ears and the smell of antiseptic filled my nose, pulling me out of my peaceful dream. Opening my eyes, my parent’s faces lurched into my field of vision.
“She’s awake,” Dad shouted.
“Oh my God,” Mom cried. “Britt, can you hear us? Britt?”
I tried to sit up, but found my body strapped down making it impossible to move.
My parents vanished. A woman and a man stuck their heads over mine, one with a light attached to his head shining in my eyes, blinding everything else.
“Britt, you’re okay, but we’ve got you on a backboard so you won’t be able to move,” the man said, definitely not the musical voice from earlier.
“You’re in an ambulance in route to the Ely Hospital,” the woman explained.
“Can you remember what happened?” the man asked, lifting an eyelid and looking at my pupil.
“I drowned?”
“You nearly drowned,” the man corrected. “Do you know where you nearly drowned?” the woman asked.
“The BWCA?”
“Good, good Britt.” The man smiled down at me.
I heard my mother crying and wished I hadn’t. Tears welled up and began to spill from the corners of my eyes.
“Britt, it’ll be okay.” Dad squeezed my hand lightly. “Everything will be okay.”
I’d survived but now the cancer would win, taking away my choice. My one chance to take control back and I’d chickened out.
“Don’t cry, Britt.” Mom comforted me. “You’re going to make it.”
I cried harder; the thought of lying in a hospital bed, nothing more than a husk of myself and withering to nothingness filled my mind.
We pulled into the emergency room entrance, the automatic doors whirring open as they wheeled me in. The two paramedics were on either side with Mom and Dad following close behind. The fluorescent lights beat down from overhead as we sped past.
“Oh great,” I sighed. “I’m home.”
We went into a room with two nurses and a doctor rushing in behind us, calling out directions to the paramedics. The doctor examined me while the nurses put an IV in one arm and a blood pressure cuff on the other. They attached electrodes to my chest and began switching on all the standard equipment until the room beeped and chirped, just like old times.
The doctor straightened from listening to my heart and lungs, his brows furrowed.
I looked up at him and he smiled.
Noticing my inquiring look, he nodded. “Sounds fine. Lungs clear, heart strong. Do you feel pain anywhere?” He continued to press his hands along my body, searching for breaks along my rib cage and then moving to my arms and legs. He pulled back the warm blankets the ambulance crew wrapped me in.
“No, I feel …” the thought trailed off. I didn’t feel any pain. None. Not the continuous aching of my muscles, joints, and bones from the cancer. Even more surprising, nothing hurt from the trip over the falls and the landing on the rocks below. I had to be in shock. “She’s stable. Let’s get her to x-ray and see if anything is broken,” the doctor ordered. “If those come back clear, we can take you off the backboard and check you out further.”
They wheeled me out of the room with the monitors and IVs attached to hooks on the bed, the cords and tubes tapping against the side rails of the bed. I lay under the x-ray machine as it hummed above me, taking pictures and possibly reducing my chances of having children in the future, although the cancer would pretty much have seen to that already.
We returned to the room, passing the concerned faces of my parents as we rolled in. Seeing them reminded me of the worst part: the pain they continued to endure every day my future hung in the balance.
The bed jerked to a stop and the nurse clicked the brake on the wheels. The doctor stood over the top of me before the bed stilled and unbuckled the straps fastening me to the back board. With the help of the nurses they slid the device out from beneath me and eased me onto the soft mattress.
“Nothing’s broken,” he said with a smile. “How you managed that one is a miracle.” He stepped away to write something in my charts.
I lifted my head and looked at my body for the first time since going over the falls. My arms and legs, stomach and chest, looked … normal.
My mouth and eyes shot open. My body looked normal. Not sickly, not post chemo, post radiation, but normal, not in the process of dying. My muscles were full and firm. My bones didn’t stick out like before, but were covered smoothly by healthy looking skin, not the pale white, almost yellow skin I’d come to expect.
“Mom, Dad,” I shouted, my voice on the edge of hysteria.
They rushed in from just outside the door, their eyes on mine, searching for my anguish, my fear. Their concern turned to confusion.
“Look at me,” I cried.
“We are,” Dad said, still concentrating on my eyes and face as his mind tried to justify what he saw and what he should see.
“Mary,” he said. “Look at Britt.” He placed a hand on her chin, moving it to look at my body.
Mom’s face fi
rst went white and then flushed red.
“Oh, Britt,” she gasped, rushing to me, sending one of the nurses sprawling. She put a hand to my head as she pulled me to her chest.
“I think your hair is growing.” She leaned back, her eyes wide, looking at my head.
I raised a hand to my scalp and, sure enough, the beginnings of new growth tickled my fingertips. Closing my eyes to my parents and their joy, the fading vision of the two angels floated in my thoughts. Why did they send me back? Was I not worthy? The way the angels discussed “touching” me made me feel uneasy, uncertain.
What did they do to me?
Chapter 2 The doctor ran some more tests to assure my stability after the ride over the waterfalls. He scratched his head as he signed the discharge papers, a crooked smile on his face.
“Looks like someone was watching out for you today, young lady,” he said as my parents grinned at me over his shoulder.
“Uh, I guess.” I shrugged.
“I can’t check your cancer without sending blood and tissue samples out to a lab. I’ve been in contact with your specialists at Mayo and they want you to head down there for a look-see.” He glanced back at Mom and Dad who nodded their agreement. The Mayo Clinic in Rochester was our second home and the best medical facility around.
“She looks different from before,” Mom said and all eyes turned to her.
“Different how?” the doctor asked.
“Well, she was a lot thinner this morning,” Mom began.
“That can be due to some swelling from the tumble she took,” the doctor explained.
“And her hair is growing again,” Mom continued.
“We don’t know a lot about how the body reacts to the radiation and chemo. I’ve seen patients who haven’t had hair for years. They begin growing hair again out of the blue.”
“But her eyes,” Mom whispered.
“My eyes?” I said as the doctor and Dad echoed, “Her eyes?”
“Yes, they were brown. Now they’re…” she hesitated as the men turned to me.
“Blue.” Dad stared at me, surprised, and turned back to Mom.
“Let me see,” I demanded.
The doctor reached in the drawer of my side table and pulled out a small mirror. He handed it to me and stepped back beside my parents.
