by Lucia Ashta
Paolo lay unmoving. His head, while repaired, was fragile. Even a slight impact would be sufficient to knock the angel’s repair loose.
But the other car’s horn was loud and persistent. It was bound to draw onlookers eventually.
Finally, after long, drawn-out seconds of deliberation that held the lives of at least two people in their balance, the drivers of the two trucks retreated. They reversed with screeching tires and made some quick, hasty maneuvers to free themselves of the roundabout. Once they both faced in the same direction, they ran over the curves of the roundabout, and sped off down Highway 179 heading toward the intersection with Highway 89A.
The sounds of the trucks faded quickly. Then their headlights went out, and the vehicles disappeared into the darkness of night.
Silence descended upon the scene like a cozy blanket, as if it could easily erase the ugliness of the scene.
Even with the angels’ help, that wouldn’t be so easy.
Chapter 2
The driver of the passing car continued to blare her horn until police arrived. She’d called 911 soon after the trucks initiated their attack on Lena and Paolo. Honking her horn hadn’t been as much to call help to them but to interrupt the attack.
When two squad cars showed up, red and blue swirling lights and sirens pierced the night. The moment the two officers stepped out of their cars, the woman— at first glance, no more than a happenstance bystander—gave abrupt orders.
“Call dispatch right now and have them send ambulances immediately. The car has two passengers, and both are gravely injured.”
The two officers stared. They were used to being the ones to give the orders.
“Do it. Now. They’ll die otherwise.”
One of the officers, a big, burly man, raised an eyebrow at her. But the other sandy-haired one clicked a radio on and spoke into it. “We have a car crash at the intersection of Chapel and 179. Requesting immediate paramedic response. Two seriously injured.”
“Copy that,” came a woman’s crackling voice over the radio.
“Now ask them to mobilize a medevac crew. They’ll need to be cut out of the car and transported to Phoenix for immediate surgery.”
The officer clicked his radio back on. “Medevac crew needed. The two passengers will need to be flown out of here.”
The burly officer, legs spread apart, hands on hips, glared at the woman. Then he moved to his squad car, removed a heavy standard-issue flashlight, and started walking over to the remains of the sports car.
The blond officer’s radio crackled to life. “Ambulances on their way. Medevac crew alerted.” He nodded at the bystander.
“Thank you. Two oversized, dark-colored four-wheel drive vehicles attacked the car from front and back. I showed up after they’d already rammed the sports car once. They fled the scene when I started honking my horn. They headed that way.” She pointed.
“I don’t suppose you got their plate numbers?”
“Unfortunately, I didn’t.” She left her car where it was, idling in the middle of the road, and went to join Officer Burly, who was shining his flashlight inside the car.
Officer Blond spoke into his radio again. “APB on two oversized, dark-colored vehicles, heading north on 179, nearing Tlaquepaque when last seen. Attack, hit and run. Cars should show damage on their front bumpers.”
“APB on two oversized vehicles involved in a hit and run. Copy that.”
The bystander was within steps of the sports car when she faltered. There was too much blood, broken metal and glass, and floppy limbs.
Officer Burly was feeling for Lena’s pulse. The blond officer was circling the car, giving it a wide berth to avoid crunching over broken glass, to do the same to Paolo.
Shewww, Officer Burly whistled. “She’s lucky, man. I didn’t think she’d be alive. But she has a pulse. It’s weak and erratic, but it’s there.”
“He’s alive too,” Officer Blond said. “Barely.”
This conversation was between the two officers, the ones who’d seen plenty of things they wished they hadn’t, even in a small town like Sedona.
“It’s an ugly crash,” Officer Burly said. “I’m surprised they made it.”
“So far.”
“Yeah, so far. If those ambulances don’t get here soon, she might not make it. She’s having trouble breathing.”
“This guy looks like he has serious head trauma.” Officer Blond spoke into his radio again. “Update on those ambulances?”
Static, then, “ETA is two minutes. They’re close.”
“I can’t believe they’ve survived this,” Officer Blond was saying. “There’s barely even room for a driver and passenger in here.”
Lena and Paolo looked like gruesome, overgrown fetuses, scrunched up and curled in on themselves in a space that was too small for them.
Nobody said anything else until the ambulances arrived. Even Officer Burly’s face grew grave.
The threat of death and the fragility of life hung heavy in the still air of the night. Like a cloying bad odor that leaves its mark, violence clung to the otherwise peaceful landscape, a seeming incongruity against the beauty of the moonlit mountains that surrounded them.
The bystander paced, fidgeting nervously. Even without reaching in to touch Lena or Paolo’s unconscious forms, it was clear that they hung onto their lives by a thin thread. Minutes counted. Even seconds did.
The tension in her shoulders didn’t abate in the least prior to the steady sound of approaching sirens. The sirens blared in her ears until the paramedics shut them off when they reached the scene. The lights of the ambulances merged with the flashing lights of the cruisers, casting a bizarre strobe-light tint over the morbid scene. It was like a disco with its bright, colored lights, only there was none of the lightheartedness.
The paramedics didn’t have to look inside the sports car to know its passengers were in peril. They jumped out of the ambulances, hitting the ground at a jog, and didn’t stop moving until they loaded the bodies onto the medevac chopper.
Right away, two of them set about cutting the car open like a tin can to get Lena and Paolo out without causing them further damage. The other two paramedics tended to their patients as best they could, debating whether it was possible to intubate Lena before they removed her from the car. Her lungs were collapsing, they said in clipped, urgent tones. They needed to brace Paolo’s neck before they could pull him out of the wreckage, they said.
The conversation was just for the paramedics, and they spoke in abbreviated language only they could understand fully. They worked fast, aware that every second that ticked by was one that could bring the passing of either of the passengers.
It was a delicate process, but they managed to cut the car open and extricate Lena and Paolo. The four paramedics ran back and forth from the ambulance until they had both of them strapped onto transport gurneys, with neck braces, and IVs. They managed to intubate Lena, and a paramedic trailed her wherever they moved her, manually inflating her lungs with a squeeze of a pump.
While the paramedics were busy, and the two first-responding officers attempted to assist them where they could, several more squad cars arrived, rerouting the minimal traffic that drove down Sedona’s roads after dark.
Colored lights twirled everywhere. It was impossible to miss the fact that something terrible had happened here.
The medevac chopper arrived and set down in the middle of the road. A paramedic in kaki green hopped out and ran toward the gurneys. The emergency crews exchanged words no one else could hear over the sound of the whirring blades above them. A paramedic in navy blue handed over papers from a clipboard. The one in kaki tucked them under her arm.
She joined three ground-team paramedics. They each took one end of a gurney and moved toward the chopper. The paramedic artificially pumping oxygen through Lena’s lungs paced them, hopping into the chopper to continue until the medevac team could take over.
When he jumped out of the chopper, it took of
f immediately after, giving the man in blue just enough time to get out of the way. The helicopter lifted higher into the sky and pointed toward Phoenix, where the medical facilities were more sophisticated than in a small town like Sedona. Where doctors would do what they could to save Lena and Paolo’s lives, unaware that a team of angels had already done things far greater than any they could do.
The bystander watched until the helicopter lights faded to specks in the sky. Then she got in her car and wove her way through the roadblock. When a policeman stopped her, she told him she’d already given all the necessary information to the first officers to arrive. In the chaos and confusion of the remains of the wreckage, he waved her on through.
She, too, disappeared into the night. And no one had even gotten her name.
Chapter 3
When Paolo finally regained consciousness, his head was pounding, and both of his arms were hooked up to tubes. But what terrified him most was that Lena was nowhere in sight. Paolo had no memory of what happened after the impact, and he didn’t know if Lena had survived.
No one was in the hospital room with him. He started yelling, “Hello? I need help!” His voice was gravelly from the tube that had been down his throat.
A nurse ran into the room. “What is it? Are you okay?” she asked while she busied herself checking Paolo’s vital signs and the equipment that beeped in rhythm with his heart.
“The woman that was with me in the car, is she okay?” Paolo bore down on the nurse as if the sheer force of his will could get her to say yes. The nurse smiled at Paolo warmly. She reached out and patted his hand. The nurse was an older woman, with white hair pulled back into a neat bun, but kindness instead of age lined her face.
“Your friend will be fine… in time. She sustained severe injuries and has a long road of recovery ahead of her, but she’ll be okay, eventually.”
The hospital staff was perplexed by how well the couple was doing. Even their cuts and bruises were healing faster than usual.
“Among other injuries, she suffered a collapse of both lungs. But she’s healing quickly, remarkably so, in fact. You won’t be going anywhere for a while, but I believe that you’ll both have a complete recovery in the end,” the nurse said. “You were very lucky. You could have died, easily.”
“Can I see her?”
“I’m sorry, but no. That’s not possible. Both of you are still in critical condition. You can’t be moved yet.”
“I want to see the doctor then.”
The nurse tried to put him off, but Paolo became more insistent. “I want to see the doctor right now please.”
When she hesitated, he said, “I’ll start yelling out for a doctor until I see one.” He started to call out, but the nurse shushed him.
“I’ll go find a doctor if you’ll just be quiet. There are other patients in critical condition in this wing too, you know. You’re not the only one. You can’t be yelling.” She locked eyes with Paolo until he nodded his acquiescence, then she scurried out of the room.
Paolo was serious when it came to Lena. He didn’t care that his body hurt all over and that his head was pounding a violent rhythm between his ears. He had to see her. They’d been attacked, and he had no idea if they were out of danger. Now that he realized the severity of the threat, they needed to be prepared to defend themselves. If they’d been attacked for no apparent reason, he was concerned the aggressors would show up in his room—or Lena’s—to finish the job they’d started.
And he wouldn’t leave Lena exposed to danger. He’d crawl to her room if he had to. He just hoped he wouldn’t have to. He was hooked up to far too many dripping and beeping machines, and even before moving he could tell that his body wouldn’t do it with any kind of grace or ease.
When the doctor came in, he looked annoyed at first. But Paolo was persistent and finally persuaded him to order Lena to be brought to his room.
“We’ll recover more quickly together than apart, doctor. You’ve got to see this. She’ll feel me even if she isn’t awake.” It was this argument that finally won the doctor over. The two patients would fare much better if they were together.
The doctor had seen enough in his decades of practice to agree to try.
Paolo waited with impatience as the nurses prepared to wheel Lena’s bed into the room, moving all his machinery around, condensing it to make room for hers.
He was nervous, wondering how she—his beautiful, striking beloved—looked. He so very much wanted her to be well and healthy. He realized he must look like he’d taken a bad beating. His face was swollen and tender. He hadn’t asked for a mirror or tried to touch his face. Just making ordinary facial gestures was enough to tell him that he must be bruised and discolored everywhere.
But inside, he felt all right. He knew that, although he was beyond sore, he wasn’t broken in any way that couldn’t heal with some time. He felt broken but somehow still able to be whole, if only the other part of him would arrive to share his room.
The two hours it took the staff to wheel Lena’s bed next to his morphed into twenty for Paolo as he tried to battle his need to rest with his need to see her. Whatever pain medication they had him on made his eyelids droop. But he couldn’t allow himself sleep before he saw her, before he found the way to ensure their safety. He couldn’t relax when somebody might still be trying to kill them.
How could it take so long to wheel a bed over? Despite his exasperation, she eventually arrived.
She came in with an entourage of beeping equipment, an IV drip, and a respirator, the look of which frightened the breath from Paolo. His beloved looked so fragile and incapacitated. Tears welled in his eyes, but he hurt too much to try to battle the tubes and cords attached to him to wipe them away.
Paolo had to look hard for it, but finally found the dormant power within her that he was looking for. It was then he knew she’d survive this ordeal.
Lena hadn’t woken yet. She was still unconscious from the time of the accident. Her lungs were healing well, and she was only receiving minimal assistance with her breathing.
“It’s a miracle,” one of the nurses told him while she arranged all of Lena’s equipment around her bed, checking her vitals as she went. “If she keeps recovering at the rate she’s been, the doctor will order us to take her off the respirator before long. After that happens, we’ll monitor her closely, but we’ll try to have her breathe on her own.”
Like Paolo, Lena’s face was bruised and battered, but already the cuts and scrapes were healing and the bruises were turning various shades of burgundy and purple from beneath bandages.
More than anything, Paolo wanted to reach out and protect Lena from all harm.
But he couldn’t.
He was confined to his bed.
He’d have to wait. And that would be torture, knowing that at any time someone could come into this room to hurt her, and he’d be unable to intervene sufficiently or in time.
At least he could see her.
When the nurses finally left them alone in the room, Paolo stared at Lena for the entire thirty minutes until the nurses returned to check their vital signs again. He couldn’t get enough of her. Now that she’d almost been taken from him, he wanted to feel her all the more. He willed her to sense his intensity of love from across the room.
And he willed his eyes to remain open, to resist the lure of the morphine pumping through his veins. He had to stay vigilant. At the very least, he could yell out over his scratchy throat if someone came in to hurt her.
His eyelids dropped. He forced them open.
Chapter 4
The twins finally arrived at the mainland after hours of rowing. The almost-full moon continued to illuminate the shore even though the sun would rise before long. They disembarked and tied the boat to a tree, hoping to find it upon their return, whenever that might be.
They had no real idea where they were going or how long they’d be gone from the Temple of Laresu’u Kal, the only real home they had since their pare
nts dedicated them to the temples at the age of seven. They just knew that Archangel Michael summoned them, the golden children of prophecy, and that they had a duty to fulfill. It didn’t matter that they’d never asked for this duty, or that the prophecy that foretold their births and destinies was centuries older than them. Everyone on this planet has a purpose to fulfill. They wouldn’t shirk theirs. All humanity would suffer if the golden twins didn’t do what they incarnated upon Earth to do; they understood that.
Neither would they resist the path that was opening up for them only because they didn’t understand where it led. They saw what others didn’t see. They could do what others believed impossible. They felt what others shrugged off as madness instead of the whisperings of a knowing that transcends the immediacy of the human body. They knew there was so much more beyond the reality that most people see with their open eyes, a lot more to life than what appears on the surface.
The ongoing war between light and dark that continually raged upon the etheric plane had bled over into the physical world. Archangel Michael’s summons was urgent, and so they’d left right away, on the night before what was going to be their wedding day—but couldn’t be any longer.
Archangel Michael was gathering an army of light warriors—both physical and non-corporeal—to defend earth. A contingent of sinister beings from another planetary system, intent on causing devastation, had crossed the threshold of earth’s defenses. If they succeeded, the consequences would span far beyond the outcome of one battle.
All life on earth began as a spark of light, the divine essence of Creator that exists within all things. If the forces of darkness managed to oppress the light—for neither Asara nor Anak believed they could fully vanquish the light—then the way of all life on earth would change for the worse.
There was no time to waste. Archangel Michael had been clear on this. The situation was critical. The forces of darkness weren’t waiting.