Spring 2013 issue

In their routine visits to the hospital, Angel and Enoch visited as many of the young patients as time permitted. Many of the children were overjoyed at simply seeing the handsome Enoch, but for others, Angel could sense the loneliness, fear, and pain that lurked behind their gentle smiles and light-hearted words as they patted his dog.

It was onto these children that Angel bestowed his collection of thoughts and memories. He would slip them into their minds while they were engaged with Enoch or else while they drifted off into an uneasy sleep.

Unlike him, though, all other people—these children, the residents of Oak Grove Assisted Living where Angel would be this afternoon, or even the chronically depressed and schizophrenic patients at St. Gabriel’s—did not experience these bestowed memories as the originators once had. Angel had stripped the memories bare beforehand so that all that was left was unadulterated happiness. It was a feeling that pierced the soul with a soft euphoria and that briefly banished physical and emotional pain, but it could not heal and it could not last. It was a salve when all Angel wished for was a cure.

So Angel and Enoch went their rounds, visiting old acquaintances and meeting new while all the while Enoch’s tail sailed merrily back and forth and Angel’s vials muttered sadly with their growing emptiness.

It was the ninth or tenth patient that Angel and Enoch visited, though, who strung a chord somewhere on the hidden strings of Angel’s heart.

His initial reaction had been quite typical—she was a fiveyear-old with severely advanced infantile Tay-Sachs disease, and the first thing that Angel thought of was how he would label her vial: “Miriam Lior, age 5, cause of death: Tay-Sachs.” Upon entering the room, Angel perceived right away that she was already blind and partially paralytic, and glancing at her medical chart, he saw that she was apparently having trouble swallowing as well. He made a mental note to keep a close eye on St. Michael’s in the coming days—young thoughts were always such a pleasure to harvest.

These were his first thoughts.

And yet.

When she heard him enter, Miriam looked up at him with her sightless eyes.

They brimmed with a reflected inner joy.

Her skin was drawn whisper-thin over her cheeks.

The cheeks glowed with vitality.

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