It Never Rains (But It Pours)

Heavenly Messenger

Frank owned a commercial quality toaster that featured a conveyer belt. It was able to produce continuous quantities of hot toast, dumping them onto a plate at the end of the belt. The toaster appeared to fascinate Blake. The angel was leaning down, ducking his six foot five frame until he was eye level with the device, peering through the opening at the end to watch the toast turning brown as it traveled the conveyer.

This suited the doctor just fine. The doctor, whose name, Adam had learned, was Greg, had wanted Blake to have one more IV dose of antibiotics and finish the bag of fluids, just to be certain he was safe. Adam didn't understand enough about medicine and IVs to be able to explain it to Blake, which meant Blake understood nothing at all. All he'd known was that there was a tube sticking in his arm, and tape and a dressing securing it that irritated him. He'd started out by rapidly shaking his arm, trying to shake the annoying thing off. Then he'd started peeling at the dressing, trying to twist his wrist free from the tape, or simply trying to walk away from the IV pole, coming close to pulling it out of his arm several times. They'd finally attached a short thin wooden board to Blake's arm, wrapped it with several layers of gauze, and firmly told him that it was very important he leave it alone. But the angel had been sitting absently picking at the dressings anyway until Frank had started the toaster.

Adam was letting him explore as he ate. He'd already gotten a bowl of hot cereal and several pieces of toast into Blake, as well as a glass of milk. Now that he was distracted by the mysterious workings of Frank's toaster, Adam relaxed enough to feed himself. But Adam's attention was primarily on Frank.

"I was given my ability when I was a child," the old man began. "I remember walking to school and an old woman came up to me. She told me that I had a chance to do great things, touched my cheek, and suddenly I could see the girls smiling down at me. I don't remember exactly when or why I named them Gwen and Alicia. But I learned pretty quickly not to talk about them because no one else could see them. There was a time when I very nearly ended up with a lobotomy, and I gotta tell you, son, that leaves an impression on a fella. Well, like I said, I could see them, and I could see other angels as well. And of course, I could see demons. The demons terrified me until I came to understand that the girls would always defend me from them."

"So they always fight demons, but they let you get shot?" Adam asked.

"That's right." He indicated Greg. "The doc here tells me that he told you a bit about me, where I came from and some of how my life has been?"

"I did," Greg called. "And Blake is poking his fingers into the toaster. Is it alright that he's poking with the toaster?"

"Be careful, Blake, that's hot!" Adam called. "If you keep poking your fingers into it, you're going to burn yourself."

"Alright!" Blake continued to poke around with the toaster and hissed when he burned his finger.

"And what did you learn?" Adam said calmly. He was secretly pleased with himself for letting Blake learn this lesson, rather than demanding he stay away from the toaster.

Blake looked sadly at his burned finger. "Sorry."

"Just stick it in your mouth and suck on it a bit, Blake," Frank encouraged, not looking up. "Here's the most important thing to remember about guardian angels, Adam: They are divine, and the only thing they're really concerned about is the divine. So if a demon comes along, they'll give it a good swift kick in the can fast as it can blink, because they won't give it a chance to upset the divine plan. But humans are anything but divine! Now, that's not to say that they won't interfere if there's something they really need for me to do, and they've saved my sorry ass more than once. But I've never seen Alicia hit a human with her shield or Gwen swat one with her sword. The most exciting thing they did was stick out a foot and trip someone trying to attack me."