The Secret (Touched By An Angel)

Aftermath

There was her stepfather with Haley, raping her. She screams for her big sister to stop him. He looks up at her and smiles. "Payback's a..., well, I don't have to tell you the rest. And you drove me to do this." Looking at the dead face of the ten year old under him, "In fact, my dear Haley, she forced me to do this. She's begged me day and night for this, because she wants to watch, don't you girl?" He tells the teenager, giving her a wink and a nod.

Crystal steps forward to pull him off, but from under a pillow he pulls out a pistol kept around for self defense. "One more step or that pretty little head of yours becomes art splatter behind you." Then he proceeds to further brutalize Haley in front of a terrified Crystal, and he lets them both go when he was finished. "Take a shower!" He tells the younger one as she stumbles away.

Gloria and Andrew were there, unseen and sickened by what had just unfolded before them. She had to throw up and thankfully Andrew had a bag with him. In her short time in existence, this was certainly one of the most disturbing things she's ever seen, violation of a child in such a horrific way. Andrew was fuming, frustrated by not being stop it. A tear ran down his cheek and the emotions were like Crystal's, pure rage.
"I have to go, Gloria." He says, "I can't take it!" and he vanishes, reappearing under a tree beside an abandoned house on the other side of town. It was quite simply, falling apart, like their assignment. Tears began to run down his face.

"Why God, why is it I have to stand by and witness the worst in humanity while my hands are tied? And why does it feel like I've seen my assignment before?" He asks God out loud in frustration. Then he senses another angelic presence arrive. It was Monica, today dressed in a off white pantsuit with a green shirt underneath.

She looks at him like a mother with a child who just cut themselves. "It hurts too much, seeing all this death and destruction is too much for me. I'm seriously thinking about a transfer request." The Irish angel sits beside him, offering a shoulder to cry on and a ear to listen.

Andrew takes up the offer, telling her what had just happened. "After all this time, I'm still mystified by how humans can treat each other like this, especially children. Andrew always had a soft spot for kids, and that made his job at times harder than it needed to be.

"Gloria is with them, don't worry. Now to help answer your questions. Humans are flawed and with free will, it can be disastrous, you know that. But, at the same time out of the greatest pain comes the greatest motivation to make the world a better place, sometimes even the greatest art." Monica sits down beside Andrew and finishes. "As for the other one, maybe this can help."

Running her hand in front of him, an image appears... a little girl, with dark brown braided pigtails that went down her back, comes running past him. She was barefoot and had a cast on her right arm, wearing a flowered sundress. "Crystal, come inside, supper's ready. You better have not been playing in the water barrel again with that cast. " A woman had come out and sees her daughter and a friend playing tag. They hear her voice and run up the front steps to go in the front door.

Then Andrew finally remembers. There was a case where he was taking someone Home as an assignment and he had to catch a girl who had fell off a sheer drop, but almost missed. She had looked straight at him and asked him to stay with her, wincing in pain, clutching her wrist.
It was an assignment within an assignment, so to speak. After seeing that she was safe, he went about his way. This was the girl before him! Then his memory brought another revelation.

It was 1997 and he was assigned to a hospital ward for sick kids as a nurse. Sometimes during these shifts, he would have to take one Home. It was around midnight and Andrew had just did rounds, checking each bed and was about done when a little girl, almost two, came wandering down the hall. There was some blood on her arm where IVs were inserted that she had pulled out, and was waving at everyone like she was leaving.