Does pacing actually help stress or Am I just so incredibly tense that I have no other hope?
Do I actually care about the girl behind the door or am I scared about what her fate means for my own?
What happens if she doesn't make it?
I loathe the thoughts circling about my head, only increasing the nerves racing about my body. Through every finger and toe and to the very ends of my wing tips, I feel the complete terror wash over me in flushes. The one thing that remains clear to me is that whether Hayley lives or dies is going to change everything I have worked so hard to achieve. What am I to do without her? She's been here for so long, the very reason for my existence. How can one walk away from someone like that so easily?
Hannah had fallen into step with me too long ago, pacing just as I was. Not that she could see me, completely coinsidental, but still comforting in relation to the confusion to my head. That maybe I had some sense of goodness, enough to fall into the same coping mechanisms as a mother when worried about another. Hannah's bleach blonde hair fell into her eyes and stuck together in sweaty strands. Her stilletos hung loosely from her fingers and her Sunday best had managed to fall in such a way she looked grungy and tampered with. Her makeup was leaving her face in streaks from her eyes, obviously she had cried too much for even the waterproof makeup to combat. We paced side by side, in a right ordeal.
My feet were battered and bruised, my right wing was most definitely broken. I had rips down my jeans and my arms were covered in a concoction of both Hayley's blood and my own.
Hayley, she had to live, there was no denying that she was going to walk out of that room absolutely fine without a single scratch. We'd go home and be happy and everything Would be the same.
I had been pacing for three hours at the time and before I knew it another three had passed. Hannah had fallen asleep on the plastic chairs in the waiting room after she had called Hayley's father and school and counsellor and whoever else she could. I was hanging onto hannah's cool head to calm myself down, but now I don't even have that to tether me to sanity.
This is exactly why the land above needs people like me to look after the humans down here. Because this world they have built for themselves is so gruesome and faulty that spirits need to descend to this barren land to fix them. I find myself looking at my reflection in the bathroom, if only I had one. Spirits simply live without them, though I know what I look like. I look like my person, Hayley. I don't pay enough attention in class to understand why but I believe it's just a way to tie us closer to the person we are assigned to help.
Why was I assigned Hayley?
She's depressed.
At the age of only fourteen young humans are already letting the reality of their crumbling world get to them. They start realising just how insignificant they are in the big scheme of things and feel hopeless and worthless and alone. They send people like me to fix that in hope that this world isn't going down completely.
I'm the laughter she omits when she watches her favourite movie. The spontaneous decision to accept an invitation to a party instead of turning it down. The falling asleep after a day where she never felt the need to frown or to contemplate such things as she had before. That was me to her. She never saw me either, no one ever can, but she can sense the happiness I bring her. I stay until she can do that for herself and I move on. Hayley is my first ever person, and I am the first in generations of my family to ever get one.
I'm not from a good spirit family. We just never seem to get things right. I'm determined to change that. Of course that means that if Hayley dies, I have disgraced my family's names and have to wait for the next generation in my family to try again. I'm not, under any circumstances, letting that happen.
My mind fills with thoughts until it overflows at times. Unfortunately, spirits also bear the fatal flaw of emotion. I deal with my feelings in my own way. Before I knew it, I was crying under the sink in a ball, ripping feather after feather from my wings and letting the blood seep onto the floor. It was non-existent to everyone else so I hadn't any fear of being discovered. Maybe I would have stopped there if that weren't the case.
Does it hurt? Only like it would for human to lose a limb.
I pull feather after feather out of my wings because, despite being a guardian angel, this is beyond my control and I can't fix that. Because I have control over the pain I am currently causing myself. Because I can't go back to the land above having failed everybody and sometimes tough love becomes motivation, even if it feels more like self-hatred.
It's ridiculous, really, just how much I resemble Hayley. Much like she still bears her white scars upon her skin, I bear black, sticky patches in which parts of myself
have been ripped. How I break down at the slightest obstacle like she has a tendency of doing.
A though strikes me and I attempt to dismiss it but it clings on like an annoying fly.
Maybe I can't possibly help her because I need help myself.
Maybe I'm depressed.
I try to shrug it off because it's ridiculous and impossible. This can't happen to spirits, it's not possible. But maybe it is. Maybe the pressure I've been putting on myself has destroyed me and now I'm harming myself just as Hayley did. Maybe I'm reading in far enough.
Soon the walls of the bathroom seem to close for comfort and I leave the cubicle and make my way towards Hayley's room, desperate to know if she's okay. It's both a relief and a blow when I approach the room to find the door ajar. With a deep breath of reassurance, I slip though the crack in the doorframe.
The sight I see before me upon my entry to the room can only be described as bad. Hayley has a neck brace on, her right arm and leg have been put into casts and her foot lays slightly elevated on a sling. Her face is covered in bandages masking multiple bruises and cuts and there is still blood seeping through the bandage on her head. A drip is injected into her forearm and she wears a thin plastic tube -that I presume to assist her breathing-under her nose. The only closure I find in the room is the steady beeping of her heart monitor reminding me that, despite how awful she appears in her unconscious state, she is alive and breathing.
In this moment the storm in my head clears. Some questions are answered and I come to the conclusion that I am rather fond of Hayley. That she is no lab rat and no experiment. No pawn and no piece to play. She's a human, and she's my human and although she has never really met me, she is most definitely my friend.
Hannah is sat beside her daughter who she looks over lovingly and guiltily. I can tell just from the look and not from her thoughts that she blames herself entirely for this, for the crash. For Hayley being the one unconscious and not herself. I place my hand on her shoulder as of to comfort her, but she would only feel a slight shiver. As a suspect she shakes slightly and readjusts in her seat before putting her hand over her daughters.
I hate being so useless. If Hayley were unhappy this would be so much more easy. I could bend her thoughts to make her happy and we could all walk away fine. But this wasn't about Hayley's happiness, this was her health. I unfortunately, have no experience in bending the reality of human bodies to make them well again. And so I just sit and watch.
Hayley's eyes flutter open for a second in the early morning and she looks over at me with a dull expression. She looks at me in a way no human has ever done and I know immediately why. I have no idea how or why but she can see me. Her face has no sign of alarm or confusion. She just looks exhausted as if every breath in a chore.
"Your wings are hurt," she mutters.
I nod, "As are you".
Her eyes grow more intense and she looks over me more carefully, studying me. "Who are you?. A nurse dressed up to cheer up the sick kids?"
I shake my head, "I'm not a nurse." I ruffle my feathers a bit as to explain that they belong to me and I pray that even in this state the young girl can piece two and two together.
"Ah, My guardian angel then?"
I nod. That's what humans call us anyway.
"Yeah, you can call me that".
And just like that the young girl is asleep once more. I am unsure as to wether she will be waking up once more or if she will see me when she does. What I do know is that she's knows in her head what she saw. Will she believe what she saw or pass it off as a hallucination? Now all I can do is hope that she'll fight with the knowledge that her guardian angel is watching over you.
Thank You for reading📝
CarolPretty💌
