Concerning Angels and Coffee

four

"Time to get up, sunshine."

It sounded like my mom's voice, warm and soothing and comforting, even though it had that hard edge to it I'd heard in the last months before our separation. I just pictured her, framed by the dying rays of moonlight as she leaned over my pillow to wake me up for school, her forehead lined and the bags prominent under her silvery eyes. Feeling a little, teary smile spread across my face, I reached out to grab her hand - and as we touched, the illusion melted away.

Instead, I was grasping Tala's wrist as she stood over me. She was holding out her arm ramrod-straight at a ninety-degree angle, looking tired and disgusted beyond belief - although I wasn't quite sure whether she was disgusted with me or not.

"Great, you're up," she sighed, prying my fingers off her. They were oddly stiff, and I had to flex them a few times - meanwhile, Tala was bending her wrist back and forth, wincing. "I couldn't get you off my arm all night - you slept just fine, but that hand would not let go. I wonder if you're secretly a claw-hand arcade game, Cody."

Groaning, I swung my legs over the side of the couch I was lying on - why a couch and not a hospital bed or cot, I didn't know - and immediately felt a swell of nausea so strong I almost toppled forward onto the floor. Tala deftly caught me, and I was once again surprised by the strength of her grip.

"I'm just about done catching your falls, sweetheart," she groaned, propping me up against a pillow. "Here." She reached toward my face and I flinched, but then she told me, "It's a smaller dose of that healing magic, if you don't want to be in agony through the entire Office interview." When I stopped squirming to get away, she brushed her finger across the tip of my nose, and a slightly muted sheet of coolness spread through me, like the one I'd felt yesterday - was it yesterday? It only seemed like a few seconds ago.

"Might not be the best idea to give her that right before the interview either," I heard a rich, smooth voice say from the corner. "Don't want her to be loopy."

"She won't be loopy, idiot, I just told her I was giving her a lighter dose," Tala snapped. "If you had half a brain, maybe you'd have heard me. Oh, but I'm forgetting - you spend ninety percent of your brain cells thinking up various cute nicknames to call different women."

"Ouch. That hurts, Tala. That really hurts. You're my one and only love." Dmitri sidled into my peripheral vision, and immediately I felt the lightness within me replaced by a feverish flush. "Morning, girlie."

"Hello," I said, rubbing the back of my neck.

"You ready for your interview?"

"I have no clue who's interviewing me," I told him honestly. "I don't even know where I am, what the interview is for, or where I've been for the past however many hours. How long was I out?"

"Seven and a half hours," Tala answered. "That's also how long you were clinging to me like a four-year-old, I might add. My arm is going to be numb for the rest of the day."

"What a pity," I shot back.

"Isn't it? Speaking of injuries, want to take a look at those hands of yours?"

"What?" I looked at my hands, resting on my knees - they were wrapped completely in soft white bandages. I flipped them over, palms up, and peeled back a strip of bandage. A horrifying sight met my eyes.

They weren't bleeding or festering or anything, but the fleshy parts of my hands that made up the muscle connecting my thumbs had been partly melted and blurred, like wax. Black burns scored my fingers, and there was a gaping, deep circle of red imprinted in both my palms.