The moment breathed…..
Aaron had long marveled at the sudden stillness and quiet that marked the end of a conflict. Faintly, he heard Allie sobbing in relief as she hugged him tightly from behind. His attention jumped from his own exhaustion, to Scott’s heaving form, to the Stranger, to the pile of bodies littering the hospital hallway.
Seventeen.
He assessed the deep cut on his forearm, noted the various abrasions and swellings on his best friend’s body, the untouched form of the Stranger.
Nothing serious.
Seventeen.
Not bad.
The air stank of sweat, disinfectant, blood, and the offal of a dead man.
No.
He shut the thought down before it threatened him further.
He turned his inquiry instead to the man that had come to their aid.
The Stranger wasn’t short, but not tall. Broad through the shoulders, with a kind face and piercing eyes. Those eyes ticked back and forth between Scott and Aaron.
Something flashed in them. Aaron wished he knew what it was. Recognition? Friendship?
There was something familiar about this man. Though Aaron was positive he had never seen him before, he felt as though he knew something about him.
It itched inside of his head, like trying to remember the words to an old song.
The look on Scott’s face said the same thing. Even Allie wore a puzzled expression as they all three appraised the bizarre man in the bizarre moment. He was nearly naked, standing barefoot in the broken glass and smeared blood of what seconds before had been a riot zone. The expression on his face was unreadable, but resembled amusement more than anything. As if he was the only one in on a secret joke.
Apparently he had nothing to tell them. Instead, he nodded at Scott, then Aaron, then flashed a row of white teeth in Allie’s direction and turned away. The immodest hospital gown revealed rippling back muscles and the rhythmic bunching of his buttocks as he stepped over sprawled forms and piles of broken hallway furniture.
Aaron wanted to follow him and find out who he was and why he had helped them.
He didn’t. He checked his wife over first.
Prodding at her and looking into her eyes for the telltale twitches that warned of oncoming shock. She was made of tougher stuff than Aaron ever gave her credit for, and she waved him off in annoyance.
Allie produced a roll of duct tape from somewhere and he and Scott spent the next few minutes restraining the injured and unconscious men who had attacked them. A few groaned or cursed as they lined them up in the hallway. One of them even tried to strike Scott again. The attempt was even less successful the second time around.
Aaron had a lot on his mind, but he couldn’t help pondering both the why? and the how? of what had just unfolded. It made little sense to him that Scott would charge unarmed into a very serious brawl. Even less sense that the huge man would so skillfully dispatch multiple opponents. Size and speed were certainly not a problem for his friend. He’d made a living out of possessing both. But the brutal efficiency Aaron had just witnessed was something he had only seen from seasoned SOCOM operators in his military days. Scott certainly didn’t have that level of training or experience…
There were bigger questions to answer for now.
Moments later, Allie enlisted the help of some shocked orderlies to start moving them to the wing that housed high risk patients like prisoners and drug addicts. Somebody put in a call to the police, but Aaron knew that it would be a long time before any showed up. One orderly brought a body bag from the morgue.
Aaron made it a point not to look at that.
So did Allie.
The three of them made their way down the hall, away from the scene of the attack.
Someone steered Aaron to a chair and used medical glue to close the gash on his arm.
After, he and Scott silently mopped the blood off of one another’s backs, sending the nurses away to tend to more important matters.
Allie had calmed down and was back to business. She bustled about the halls, disappearing and reappearing in spats, attending to the minutiae of their disaster.
Aaron tried to detach himself from the details. Despite his exhaustion, he was thankful for the action. Glad that he had been able to help his friend, but also relieved the attack was over.
It pulled at him. There was no easy explanation for the behavior of all of those men that had seemed so intent on hurting Scott. A desire so desperate they were willing to risk serious in injury or even death. There was no way that their manic behavior and crazy fevers were unrelated to the greater catastrophy. But an attack inside a hospital…
Aaron was no stranger to violence, but he did not relish it.
Today, he had come dangerously close to slipping into a dark place that was hard to come home from. There was no relief to be found in casting his thoughts backward. Reaching forward was even more daunting. He feared that it would get worse before it got better.
The feeling was dreadful, unshakeable. It sat in his chest. While his mind raced with questions, something deeper told him he already knew what was coming.
A haunted look in Scott’s eyes revealed similar inner workings.
Aaron could help his friend through at least. That would be enough. Maybe.
“Fitz. What the hell is going on?”
Only a head shake.
Then a familiar voice from behind them, nasal and hollow. Crazy Dave.
“You won’t believe me Dayne, But I think I can answer that question.”
Rio Di Janeiro, Brazil
Rafael Cruz had always been popular. His earliest childhood memories were filled with the laughter and praise of the people who knew him. His grandmamma had coined a nickname for him.
“Beauty!” She would call from the bottom of the stairs as she crossed the threshold of their clapboard home in the Vidigal favela of Rio Di Janeiro.
“Where is my Beauty?!”
Her sweet voice would cut through the stifling South American humidity and clear a space in his head for the fables she spun for him and his brothers. Tales of angels and mermaids and the elusive Yanomami or other lost tribes of the jungle. Mamma Cruz would demand a drink of limeade and paint beautiful tapestries of fantastic creatures, loving and fighting and dying in the dirty rectangular room that served as home.
Her stories stuck with Cruz long after she passed away. The name had stuck too, following him into primary school, and through the first two years of secondary school. His dark, cherubic complexion made him a hit with the local girls, and with the American tourists who brought their tan lines, fat hips and fat purses to Copacabana and Ipanima. He and his brothers would sell them cheap shell necklaces on the beach and charm their way back to lavish hotel rooms, where they would steal American dollars from the naive pocketbooks to take back home to their mother.
Rafael had never felt good about it, but that was life in the Brazilian slum.
You did what you had to do.
The beauty of the beachside hotels and clubs was lost on him, pregnant as it was with the drug addiction and greedy corruption that imprisoned his family in the hillside shack they returned to each humid night.
Every year at Carnaval, when the rich and poor and sick and lovely all mingled in a mess of debauchery, Rafael saw the way his country aspired to be, free and equal and a happy place for every person.
There was emptiness in that too, because of how fleeting the illusion proved to be. When the stadiums emptied and the confetti rotted on the streets, the unforgiving sun revealed Rio for what it was once more. An overcrowded and sharply divided monument to urban turpitude that would never nurture all of its children. The Divided City. An old name that still fit.
Scattered here and there throughout the megalopolis were oases, where Rafael and his brothers could go to find respite from the daily grind. Places where they could wash their faces and clear their heads. These plain-sight secrets were another gift from his late Vovo.
/> The Cruz boys even tried to sell the appeal to friends and classmates, despite the fact that they had always been laughed off. Such a trio paid no mind to the incredulous criticism of their peers.
A few days each week, and every single Sunday, they would steal away together to the cool, welcoming recesses of the city’s cathedrals. When they had a spare coin they would light a votive candle for their Grandpapa’s memory and wander apart to find their favorite spots. The crusty old priests would eye them suspiciously for a moment or two, reassuring themselves that the boys’ presence wasn’t precursor to a robbery.
When their tired eyes finally recognized the three boys, they would rasp a greeting and a “God Bless”. Rafael would always smile to the old men and wave, politely declining their invitations to hear confession. His youngest brother, Vanderlei, would stay in the back row and lie down. Most times he did nothing but nap until his older brothers roused him with a silent tug of the greasy locks that blanketed his head.
Renato, the middle child, would find an alcove dedicated to a particular Sao, where he would kneel beside women so old they seemed ossified into the cathedral floor to pray in earnest. He was the smartest and most serious of the brothers, with tightly cropped hair that shined in the candlelight. The bronzed skin of his forehead held a permanent crimp from his soulful frown.
Renato loved to talk to God.
As the oldest, Rafael would wait until his brothers had settled in to find his place. Normally tightly-wound, he would release the tension in his shoulders with a slow nasal exhalation. Something about the atmosphere inside the old churches set him at ease and awakened his senses all at once. He would shuffle slowly toward the altar, relishing the smell of old wood and dust, listening carefully for the murmurs of the ancient women and the clatter of rosary beads. His eyes would wander to the crucifix, the baptismal font, the stained glass windows, while his feet wandered their way into a random pew. Rather than kneeling to pray like his brother Renato, Rafael would simply sit and think- about his friends, his family, his country, his pets and anything else that came to the mind of boy trying to find himself in a city notorious for losing its children. He would open his senses and his mind, letting the coolness of the empty church chill the perspiration in the small of his back and on his forehead. After a time, never set, never measured, he would stand, gather his brothers, and exit into the glare and hustle of the urban jungle.
On Sundays, when the cathedrals were crowded and hot, he and his brothers would sit together, heads swiveling to take in not only the art and architecture, but the myriad faces and costumes of the congregation. They would poke one another and play small “can you find” games with the outrageous hats of the old guard or the out of place cleavage of the young. Rafael would smile, outwardly and inwardly as he contemplated the true meaning of such a gathering place.
In Rio, it was the only building where the rich and poor and righteous and corrupt were all on equal footing. What Carnival falsely promised, the rehearsed hour of Mass fulfilled.
On special occasions, He, Renato, and Vanderlei would hop on a bus to the Avenue Republico do Chile, where the crown jewel of modern Brazilian cathedrals stood. They and thousands of other faithful would pack the cone-shaped cathedral to marvel at the stained glass windows climbing sixty meters toward heaven. Rafael would throw his arms around his protesting brothers in the pew and glory in the social equality of it all. Here, the poor could look upon the gilt gold and ornate carvings without envy because they knew this wealth belonged to God. Wealthy, privileged families in turn looked at the poor differently for a day because they too, belonged to God. They all could unite in resenting the corrupt government and the necessary evil of tourism, at least for a day. The Cruz boys were at home in God’s house. With the wisdom of a street boy Rafael knew even then how rare and beautiful such comfort was.
Especially in Rio.
After Mass concluded, the Cruz boys would go home to their mother’s steamy kitchen and waste the afternoon away with full bellies. They would lounge on the tarred or tin roofs of the favelas, sweating in the sun and resting up before another week of hustling. Rafael would sometimes wake in the middle of the night, dreading another six days of making a dishonest living but looking forward to his small visits at the cathedrals. Come Monday morning, he was Beauty again, smiling and charming and wishing he could find a way out for himself and his brothers.
Rafael reflected with a sad smile.
The way out had been here all along.
His only regret -the nightmare that haunted him so frequently that its sting had dulled to a melancholy ache- was that his brothers had not survived to find escape with him.
Rafael had found solace and relief from the life of a street urchin in the very place his grandmother had always told him he would.
The cathedrals -his massive homes-away-from-home- would prove to be his true place in the world.
But like the wealthy hotel owners and tourists he saw at the Metropolitan Cathedral, his salvation would not come without a price.
Poor as he was, he had been forced to pay his tithe in blood, like the Crusaders of old.
Rafael had never been one to question the way of things, never one to challenge God or fate, but it seemed impossible that he should be expected to embrace the events that had stolen his family from him as part of God’s master plan.
Even now, as an ordained priest, he found faith of such profundity impossible.
In the twelve years since he’d left his home in the slum, Rafael Cruz had learned much. Through faith, he had evolved into a completely different man.
The Church paid for a real education, sending him to Bond University on the Gold Coast of Australia. Six years Down Under had provided him with a two doctoral degrees.
Another year in Rome granted him the experience and training needed to be medical emissary for the Holy Roman Catholic Church.
He had since traveled the world twice over, learned three languages, helped find the cure for AIDS, and gained a reputation as one of the finest epidemiologists on the planet.
Still, the capacity for utter forgiveness evaded him.
His leathery and abrasive mentor Monsignor Mazzone -who had heard nearly every one of Rafael’s confessions- blamed the younger man’s intelligence for his spiritual weakness.
“You have sharp mind,” he would often rasp in heavily-accented English. “So sharp it make your soul dull.”
Rafael Cruz remained unmarried, even after Vatican III had allowed for special dispensations in the Western Church due to the lack of Seminary candidates.
His mind and his heart were devoted to service now, to eliminating the suffering and disease that mankind had brought upon himself with his oversexed, overindulgent, overcrowded, and unbelieving lifestyle.
Father Cruz reached up absentmindedly to scratch at the ropy scar that trailed from behind his right ear and across his throat before it disappeared into the collar of his smock. He was standing at the foot of one of the world’s most recognizable monuments -back for the moment- in his hometown of Rio.
The house of his grandmother was gone, bulldozed years back in a gentrification project that failed halfway through. Now vines grew through the cinderblocks and tin sheets. Soon enough, the street kids would reclaim the land and rebuild a shanty town. No doubt even more dangerous than the first.
Even some of his beloved churches had been sold off to international firms to be converted into offices or leveled in the interest of more profitable use of real estate.
He still had his monument though. Redentor. Redeemer.
Overhead, gulls circled the Cristo, complaining even as they grew fat on the refuse scattered by the thousands of visitors who made pilgrimages to the statue every week.
The humidity was stifling, but to Rafael it was a welcome alternative to the bitter cold of Norway, where he had spent the last six weeks investigating an outbreak of Sarloos fever in the Salesian-run orphanages there.
The warmth would only l
ast another week or so before the rains began and the vivid greens and blues of the landscape were washed out to watercolor grays.
At his feet, fat brown pigeons braved the crowd in search of dropped tidbits, while the parrots, with their haughty carnival colors protested indignantly from low branches.
The riot of hue and sound near the base of the statue were a true testament to the desperation of the believers in the city. Mounds of floral bouquets and laminated prayer cards, picture frames and smothered candles, all rested at the foot of the Redeemer’s pedestal, each one attached to some pressing need.
Rafael himself was here not to ask of his Savior, but to provide some of those in need with answers. He liked to come here, because -like the cathedrals and the streets during Carnaval- there was a genuine mix of peoples. The wealthy and the destitute alike flocked to the iconic image on top of the hill, responding to the silent beckoning of Christ’s outstretched arms. On the rare occasions that his demanding schedule allowed him to return home, Father Cruz made it a point to come here and perform blessings and marriages for the residents of the favelas and the folks that traveled from all over the continent, often spending their life savings to be in the presence of a physical manifestation of Christ.
Their faith was inspiring to him, even in its misguided simplicity. The truth was that He was alive and ever present, and that the statue itself was just a symbol, a beautiful work of art, forged of concrete, steel, and soapstone.
Still, Father Cruz understood their need to see Him, to touch Him.
The inanimate monolith was tangible, solid, and real. The atmosphere here was different than anywhere else in the city, as if the statue’s proximity served as a reminder that Jesus was indeed watching them all. All the time, or nearly so, excluding the week of Carnaval when a giant blindfold was tied over the statue’s eyes.
The majority of visitors made the trek up Corcovado in a mood that was somber but optimistic. Their conversations with one another filled the air with a somewhat apologetic lull. Rafael reveled in their faithful discomfort. It told him that they did believe, whether some of them knew it or not.
To Light Us, To Guard Us (The Angel War Book 1) Page 18