I heard Gabriel before I saw him, urging the crowd to let him through. In the presence of authority the students breathed a collective sigh of relief. They had been absolved of further responsibility. Whatever happened now was out of their hands.
While Xavier went to the aid of the other driver, Gabriel knelt beside me and used his power to close the girl’s wounds. He worked quickly and quietly, feeling for the broken ribs, the punctured lung, the twisted wrist that had snapped as easily as a twig. By the time the paramedics arrived, the girl’s breathing had returned to normal although she hadn’t regained consciousness. I noticed that Gabriel had left her minor cuts unhealed, probably to prevent arousing suspicion.
As the paramedics were lifting the girl onto a stretcher, a cluster of her hysterical friends rushed over to us.
“Grace!” one cried. “Oh my God, is she okay?”
“Gracie! What happened? Can you hear us?”
“She’s unconscious,” Gabriel said, “but she’s going to be fine.”
Although the girls continued to sob and cling to one another, I could see that Gabriel had calmed them.
After directing the students back to class, Gabriel took me by the arm and led me up the front steps, where Ivy was waiting for us. Xavier, who had not followed the others inside, ran over when he saw my face.
“Beth, are you all right?” His walnut-colored hair was ruffled by the wind, and his tension showed by the veins pulsing in his neck.
I wanted to answer, but I was struggling for breath and the world was starting to spin. I sensed that Gabriel was anxious for us to be alone.
“You’d better get to class,” he said to Xavier, adopting his teacher voice.
“I’m waiting for Beth,” Xavier replied. His eyes swept over my untidy hair, the bloodstained sleeves of my shirt, and my fingers clutching at Gabriel’s arm.
“She just needs a minute,” Gabriel said more coldly. “You can check on her later.”
Xavier stood his ground.
“I’m not leaving unless Beth tells me to.”
I wondered what kind of look was on Gabriel’s face, but when I twisted my head to see, the steps I was standing on felt as though they were about to give way. Or was it my knees that were giving way? Black spots appeared across my field of vision, and I leaned against Gabriel more heavily.
The last thing I remembered was saying Xavier’s name and seeing him take a step toward me before I fainted quietly in Gabriel’s arms.
I woke up to the familiarity of my room. I was curled under the patchwork quilt on my bed, and I knew the balcony doors were not completely shut because I could feel a breeze carrying the briny scent of the ocean inside. I lifted my head and focused on comforting details like the peeling paint on the window-sill and the pockmarked floorboards softened by the amber glow of dusk. My pillow was soft and smelled of lavender. I buried my face in it, reluctant to stir. Then I saw the time on my alarm clock — seven p.m.! I’d been asleep for hours. My limbs felt like lead. I panicked momentarily when I couldn’t move my legs before realizing that Phantom was lying across them.
He yawned and stretched when he saw that I was awake. I stroked his silky head, and he looked at me with his doleful, colorless eyes.
“Come on,” I murmured. “It’s not your bedtime yet.”
I must have sat up too suddenly because a wave of fatigue hit me like an avalanche and I nearly fell back again. I swung my legs over the side of the bed and tried to muster the effort required to stand. It wasn’t easy, but I managed to slip on my robe and stumbled downstairs, where Schubert’s “Ave Maria” was playing in the background. I sank into the nearest chair. Gabriel and Ivy must have been in the kitchen; the smell of garlic and ginger filled the room. They stopped what they were doing and came out to greet me. Ivy was wiping her hands on a dish towel, and they were both smiling. This took me by surprise as it felt like a long time since we’d been on anything more than civil terms.
“How are you feeling?” Ivy’s cool, slender fingers stroked my head.
“Like I’ve been hit by a bus,” I replied honestly. “I really don’t know what happened. I was feeling fine.”
“Surely you know why you fainted, Bethany,” Gabriel said.
I gave him a blank look. “I’ve been eating properly and taking all your advice.”
“It’s got nothing to do with that,” my brother said. “It was because you saved that girl’s life.”
“That sort of thing can really take it out of you,” Ivy added.
I almost laughed aloud. “But, Gabe, you saved that girl’s life,” I said.
Ivy looked at our brother to indicate that he should explain and discreetly moved off to set the table for dinner.
“I only healed her physical wounds,” Gabriel said. I gave him a stupefied look, wondering if this was his idea of a joke.
“What do you mean only? That’s what constitutes saving someone. If a person gets shot and you remove the bullet and heal the wound then you’ve saved them.”
“No, Bethany, that girl was going to die. If you hadn’t given her your life force, nothing I could have done would have saved her. Closing wounds can’t bring someone back once they’ve reached that point. You spoke to her; it was your voice that called her back and your strength that kept her soul from leaving her body.”
I couldn’t believe what he was telling me. I had saved a human life? I hadn’t even known I had the power to do that. I’d believed the extent of my powers on earth to be only good for soothing bad tempers or helping retrieve lost belongings. How was it possible that I had found it in me to save a girl on the brink of death? Power over the sea, over the sky, over human life, that was Gabriel’s gift. It had never occurred to me that my powers might be greater than I was aware of.
Ivy looked across at me, her eyes bright with praise. “Congratulations,” she said. “This is a big step for you.”
“But how come I feel so bad now?” I asked, suddenly alerted to my aching body.
“The effort of reviving someone can be very debilitating,” Ivy explained, “especially the first couple of times. It sends your human form into shock. It won’t always be like that; you’ll grow accustomed to it and eventually you’ll be able to recover more quickly.”
“You mean I’ll be able to do it again?” I asked. “It wasn’t a fluke?”
“If you’ve done it once, you can do it again,” Gabriel answered. “All angels have the ability, but it develops with practice.”
Despite my exhaustion I felt suddenly buoyant and ate my dinner with appetite. Afterward Gabriel and Ivy refused my offer of help with the cleaning up. Instead Ivy steered me onto the deck and pushed me into the hammock.
“You’ve had a very tiring day,” she said.
“But I hate not being useful.”
“You can help me in a minute. I have a whole lot of hats and scarves to knit for the thrift shop.” Ivy always found time to connect with the community, through small earthly tasks. “Sometimes it’s the little things that count most,” she said.
“You know, the whole idea of those places is that you donate your old clothes, not make new ones,” I teased.
“Well, we haven’t been here long enough to have old things,” replied Ivy. “And I have to give them something; I’d feel just awful if I didn’t. Besides, I can whip them up in no time.”
I sat in the hammock with a mohair blanket around my shoulders, trying to process the events of the afternoon. In one way, I felt I understood the purpose of our mission better than before, but at the same time I’d never been more confused. Today had been a prime example of what I should be doing — protecting the sanctity of life. Instead I’d been spending my time absorbed in a teenage obsession with a boy who didn’t really know anything about me. Poor Xavier, I thought. He would never be able to understand me, no matter how hard he tried. It wasn’t his fault. He could only know as much as I allowed him to know. I was so busy trying to keep up my façade that I hadn’t considered that sooner or later it would all have to come undone. Xavier was tied to a human life and an existence I could never be part of. The satisfaction I felt at my success that afternoon faded, and I was left feeling strangely numb.