The following weekend I decided to take some time off from practicing and go visit my human again. After all, she was my assignment and I had only visited her once, while my classmates had gone several times already to visit their assignments. I kept postponing it since I thought Rosey would only be sitting in that wheelchair all day doing nothing, so there wasn’t much for me to do. I wasn’t planning on going but that Saturday Abhik was going for the fifth time to visit his little girl in Uganda. Before he left he looked at me and said, “Don’t you think it is about time you start taking this assignment seriously?”
“I don’t know what to do down there,” I tried to explain myself. “She just sits in her chair all day and does nothing.”
“You will not graduate if you do not fulfill your assignment,” he said. “It doesn’t matter how good you are at all the other stuff. This is the most important one. It shows you care more about other people than yourself. That is worth a thousand times more than all of your special talents and skills. They are worth nothing if you don’t use them to help someone or improve someone’s life.”
It felt like I had been punched in the stomach. Abhik had a way of speaking the truth and making me feel like a horrible person. But this time I needed it. I realized I had been selfish. I had focused only on myself and all my talents and neglected my most important assignment.
So I went to see Rosey, my assignment, my project. On my way there my mind drifted as I flew with snow-covered mountaintops underneath me. There was only a week left until Jason would come to the school and lately I had a lot of butterflies in my stomach at the thought of it. I didn’t quite know if I was looking forward to it or not. Things were better with Mick now and Jason coming here might ruin that once and for all. But again it might not. Maybe I would finally realize that Jason wasn’t the one; maybe I would finally let him go. I was looking forward to getting it over with and move on with my life, but at the same time I enjoyed the secrecy between me and Mick. We weren’t really seeing each other, not officially, but still we would “accidently” meet somewhere in the castle every day and talk, and even sometimes kiss where nobody saw it. I enjoyed the sneaking around. I enjoyed that it wasn’t all so serious. When Jason arrived, I knew I had to make my decision. I had to choose between Mick and Jason. And if I chose Mick it would get serious again. I would have to marry him.
I had gone over it a million times in my head. Jason would arrive at the school. I would face him, look into his eyes and maybe talk to him. I was hoping it would be easy, that seeing Jason would make me feel nothing at all, but I knew in my heart that seeing him again—and him finally seeing me—would be emotional for me. Just thinking about him as I was flying toward the psychiatric hospital made tears well up into my eyes. I had loved him so much once and I was afraid that I still did.
I looked for Rosey in the activity room but she wasn’t there. All the other patients were playing games or watching the broken TV as usual, but she was nowhere in sight. So I found her room and went in through the door. There she was in her bed. She looked pale, even more than last time. She had a tube in her nose that I guessed they used to force feed her with. I sighed and sat at her bed. Her eyes stared at nothing. They had lost all life. Tears rolled down her cheeks. I didn’t quite know what I was supposed to do. So I sat there for awhile thinking about Jason. An hour or so later a nurse entered, the same nurse I had seen last time. Her nametag said Mary.
“Time for lunch, Rosey,” she sang as she fastened a bag of tan fluid to the end of the tube and it ran through Rosey’s nose. Rosey didn’t even blink. The nurse sighed and stroked Rosey a few times. “I know it is a tough day for you,” she said. “But killing yourself by not eating will not bring your daughter and husband back.”
My ears perked up. Finally some answers. So her husband and daughter from the picture were dead. That made sense. I looked at Rosey and thought I saw a reaction in her eyes as the nurse mentioned the family. Rosey was still in there somewhere.
When Mary left, I followed her into the break room where she poured herself a cup of coffee. Then she sat at a table with a younger nurse who flipped through a magazine. Mary sighed deeply while she shook her head.
“Having a tough day?” asked the younger nurse.
“Not as tough as it is on Rosey in there,” Mary said. “It has been eight years today.”
“Oh. That has to be rough.”
“Yeah. We always let her stay in her bed on this day, the fourth of November. It’s just too much for her.”
“Well no wonder. Terrible story.”
“I know. She is the one patient I’m closest to actually understanding. I have no idea how I would have reacted if that happened to me.”
“Me either.” The younger nurse trembled. “That story gives me the chills. But still do you think you would be able to do what she did?”
“What? Kill someone?”
“Yeah. Could you do that?”
Mary shrugged. “I have no idea. I mean I guess in Rosey’s case she just went insane, but could I do that? I don’t know. I don’t think anyone can even imagine how they would react in a situation like that.”
“I guess you’re right.” The younger nurse rapped on the table. “I just hope that sort of thing will never happen to me, knock on wood.”
I felt like everything inside of me froze. Rosey had actually killed someone. I was confused. If she had killed someone, was she still going to the Academy and into Heaven afterwards? I had discussed this with Mick on several occasions and he had told me that we never knew who was going where and why, but I didn’t expect a murderer to go to the same place that I went. Could they have made a mistake? Or was it considered extenuating circumstances that she had lost her family and therefore lost control? I had no idea. The two nurses paused for a couple of minutes and drank their coffee. The young nurse broke the silence. “So you do think she’s guilty, right?”
“Oh yes. No doubt about it. She had the victim’s DNA all over her. They found hair and even a little blood under her fingernails and blood on her clothes,” said Mary.
The younger nurse drank from her cup. Then she put it down. “But there was no body?”
Mary shrugged. “Well, they never found it. But she did it, all right. The DNA they found on her matched a missing person. Plus she told the police she did it and she couldn’t remember where she hid the body. The police still question her about it every once in a while. But she still can’t remember what happened and where. All she remembers is that she killed someone. She doesn’t even know how she did it.”
The younger nurse nodded pensively. “I guess you are right. She wouldn’t have told the police if she wasn’t guilty.”
My mind swirled as I left the nurses and went back to Rosey’s room. I couldn’t escape the thought that this woman might be innocent. That was the only explanation I could find. She had to be if I had been asked to take her to the boat. She had to be if she was going to the Academy, right?
Rosey had fallen asleep when I entered her room. She breathed heavily with her tube in her nose and even snored from time to time. I watched for awhile. Then I got up and found her picture in the drawer. She had been so beautiful when the picture was taken. Her daughter was her spitting image. The girl looked like she was eleven or twelve at the time this picture had been taken. I wondered how old she was when she died. “Eight years ago to the date,” I mumbled to myself while I touched the picture gently. “What happened to you?”
Before I left I put the picture back in the drawer. I went to look at Rosey and saw how she tossed in her sleep. Gently I stroked her head when I noticed colors on top of her head. I focused and soon they became people and I could see the whole bubble where the dream took place. It seemed blue and calm. I saw a child playing in a yard with her dad. She was happy, smiling and laughing as she ran between the big trees. The dream made me feel warm and I noticed that for the first time Rosey wasn’t crying. In her dreams she was happy.
It was night t
ime before I got back at the castle, but I wasn’t ready to go to bed yet. I needed a few minutes to calm down, so I went to the common room. There I found Abhik. He was sitting in one of the chairs, crying, bent over. I hurried to him.
“Hey. What is going on?”
He lifted his head and wiped his face with the sleeve of his hospital gown. “I am sorry, I thought I was alone.”
I had never seen Abhik cry before, so it had to be bad. He was always the happy one, the grateful one who enjoyed his newfound illness-free life and freedom. I sat next to him and put a hand on his delicate shoulder.
“It is nothing, I just needed to let it out a little. It is nothing, really,” he said and tried to smile but it seemed forced.
“Just tell me what it is,” I said and leaned back in the chair. “I have all night if necessary.”
Abhik looked at me with his sparkling brown eyes. “It’s that assignment. It is getting to me.”
“The girl? Did something happen today?”
“It is just so sad.”
“Tell me about her again. She has AIDS, right?”
Abhik nodded. I could see the tears were piling up in his eyes again. I was beginning to see how our assignments got harder as we got into them. Rosey’s story was beginning to get to me too.
“She was born with HIV and she has AIDS now. She is supposed to die from pneumonia in six months. She is only four years old. It is just way too early.”
“So you heal her, right? You have the right to do that, don’t you? It was in the folder that you could choose to heal her.”
Abhik wiped more tears from his eyes. Then he looked at me intensely. “I could choose to do that, but what’s the point?”
“To give her life back? To give her more years to live?” I didn’t understand Abhik’s dilemma. For me it was really simple.
“She has nothing, Meghan. She lives in a small village, but she is an outcast. Her parents are both dead. The mother died at her birth, the dad died two years later. Her mother’s sister could take care of her, but she refuses. She will bring her food once in a while when no one sees it, but she will not have anything to do with her. Because she has AIDS she is cast out from everything. She is an embarrassment to her family.”
“That is horrible!” I said while I felt the anger rise quickly inside me. “It’s not her fault that she’s sick. She was born with it. She got it from her parents. How could that ever be her fault?”
Abhik shrugged. “That is just the way it is where she lives. They think she is cursed somehow, that she is demon possessed. So they stay far away from her. No one in the village will talk to her.”
I sighed. I was beginning to see his point. “So you are hesitating. You are not sure that healing her will be in her best interest?”
“I can’t heal her AIDS. I can let her go through the pneumonia and cure her from that. But the AIDS she will have to live with the rest of her life. So I am afraid she will be an outcast the rest of her life. In the folder it says that she will live till she is 53 if I choose to heal her, but if I don’t she will die in six months. I can’t help but wondering what kind of life she will have if I heal her, compared to the life she will get here.”
I nodded. “I see what you mean. You are afraid she will have a terrible life as an outcast.”
“Yes. She is so alone. What kind of a childhood is that? No one loves that sweet child. No one even looks at her. What kind of a human is she going to be?”
We both stared into the fire for a long time while thinking. I kept seeing Jackline in front of my eyes. She was from Uganda as well. Her story had shocked me when she had told me about what had happened to her and her sister. They had been abducted and made into child soldiers. Jackline was then forced to kill her own sister. Was that the kind of future that waited for this little girl? Or could it be better? Could she actually do great things if she was healed? Maybe she would grow up to be someone who fought for children who grew up as outcasts because of AIDS. We didn’t want to rob the world for a fighter like that. But then again, what if she didn’t?
I looked at Abhik as he rubbed his forehead. This was a difficult task for him. But I finally understood why he had gotten that assignment. It made sense, that he had to understand it wasn’t always the best solution to heal someone. Sometimes it was better to let them die. That had been Abhik’s big question ever since he died. Why wasn’t he healed from his cancer? Now I realized that maybe he was saved from a life and a future that hadn’t been worth living. Maybe there was another reason. We would never understand the reasons and ways of life and death. There was no right or wrong way Abhik could handle this, but nevertheless it suddenly occurred to me how well these assignments were designed to teach us something in an area we needed, just like Salathiel had told us. But I didn’t see it before just now. The question was what exactly my assignment was supposed to teach me.
Chapter 17
That night I hardly slept at all. I sat in the window sill and stared at the moon-lit forest, hoping to spot the unicorn again. I couldn’t find rest. Abhik’s story had shaken me. I felt badly for the little girl—it was really sad and horrible. I felt badly for Abhik as well, for having to make this decision. It was really tough. But most of all I was thinking about myself. About my own assignment, about Rosey. I couldn’t figure out how her story could be connected to me. I felt sorry for her. Something had happened to her family so she had lost them, and then she had killed someone. But who was it she had killed and why? Was it a revenge killing? Or was it something else? I realized that if I wanted to figure out why this assignment was designed for me, I had to dig deeper into her story and get to know her better. I had to figure out how her family died and who she had killed. But how?
While the moon climbed slowly across the dark sky and the sun replaced it, I thought like crazy. Finally I made a decision. Before I did anything else, I wanted to help Rosey. I wanted to bring her some peace of mind. She was so tormented that I thought she deserved it, no matter what she had done.
I found Mick in the kitchen before everybody got up. He was smoking a cigarette out of the window like he often did in the mornings. He only smoked that one cigarette a day. I liked to call it his small rebellion—the only thing about him that wasn’t perfect. The only thing he did that no one knew about, except for me of course.
He didn’t try to hide it as I entered the kitchen. Instead he smiled when he saw me and threw the cigarette out the window after taking one last puff on it. He closed the window and looked at me with a grin.
“To what do I owe the honor?” he asked.
“Don’t think too highly of yourself just yet. I’m here because I need your help.”
“My pleasure. How can I be of service?” He approached me and bowed.
“I’m serious. I need you to find someone for me.”
“Sure. You know I will do anything for you.”
I handed him my folder with Rosey’s file in it. He opened it and flipped through the pages. “I don’t understand. This is your assignment?”
“Yes. I need you to find her daughter and husband for me.”
He closed the folder. “And might I ask why?”
“Yes you may. I want to ask them to come to her in a dream. She needs to know that they are all right. She needs to see them again.”
“I see. That is very thoughtful of you.”
“So you’ll do it?”
“I will see what I can do.”
“Thank you so much.” I hugged him.
He looked into my eyes and stroked my cheek. “But I have to say that finding someone in Heaven can take quite some time. Are you prepared to wait for that?”
“Sure.”
We stayed close for a while. Mick stared thoughtfully at the floor. I studied him, trying to catch a glimpse of his eyes.
“What’s wrong?” I asked.
“I was just thinking.” He looked up. “About this Saturday.”
I sighed. “J-day.”
Mi
ck nodded. “I am trying to enjoy every moment with you these days … before it is too late.” He looked at me intensely. “It is killing me.”
My heart jumped. I knew this had to be hard on him. This arrangement was a bad idea from the start. I had used him, misused his love for me. “I’m sorry,” I said, my voice getting thicker. “For putting you through this.”
He tried to smile. “I will get through it. I am a big boy.”
My heart was torn in pieces and I deliberately avoided Mick the rest of the day. It was time for me to be more responsible and not toy with his emotions. Obviously, he couldn’t stay away from me, so I had to try to put some distance between us, for his sake. It was messing up his emotions, and that was never my intention.
The following day I skipped breakfast and went straight to class. Mr. Grangé was waiting for us outside where we were to practice flying faster than the speed of light. We exercised a lot in his class lately and we didn’t seem to be getting anywhere close to the speed needed, but I was really hoping to do that soon. I was the fastest in my class by far, so if anyone could do it, it had to be me. As I arrived at the track my classmates were complaining about the tough workouts. Some of them were telling the professor they thought they weren’t getting anywhere. They were tired of all that training, and they wanted results.
“Flying is like any other sport. The more you train, the faster you get,” Professor Grangé roared at us when we lined up. “It is all about developing the right muscles, so to speak.”
“But we don’t have any muscles, do we?” Nigel asked while he touched his arm and showed how wobbly our bodies were.
“That’s right. You don’t. And I was only speaking metaphorically,” he emphasized. “If you want to fly fast, you need to exercise. And there is no quicker and simpler way to increase your speed than by following the Athletic Quickness Speed Training Exercise Program like we have done so far. I have developed it myself and it is, modestly speaking, nothing less than incroyable.”