The Guardian

Chapter Thirty-Three

Julianna woke in post-op, a pain in her wrist. She fluttered her eyes open to see Seth sitting there, fingers steepled as he watched her sleep. He looked tired. "You stayed." She tried to make sense of things, tried to remember what her brain was telling her was important. But she couldn't.

"I'm your guardian. I had to stay."

She smiled. She was glad to know that Seth was her guardian angel. She had been waiting a long time to meet him, and she was glad that he was someone who was so nice. "But you probably need to work tonight", she said as she remembered that it was a night when Seth was scheduled to work.

Seth smiled. "My father is covering my shift. I need to be here with you."

"Okay", she said, and her eyes fluttered closed once more.

A little later, Julianna woke in post-op again. "How are you feeling?" asked Seth as she checked the monitors above her bed.

"I'm thirsty", she said. She looked up, and saw a bag of fluids attached to her IV tube. "What happened?"

"You cut your wrist. Angela patched you up. You'll have a sore wrist for a while."

Julianna looked down at her white-swathed wrist. Tears came to her eyes. "I remember." She whimpered in pain.

"What do you remember?" asked Seth gently as he sat on the bed beside her.

She whimpered again. "I remember my mother. And I remember I killed her."

Seth wiped the tears from her eyes. "You didn't kill her. The junkie killed her."

She shook her head broken-heartedly. "I did. She told me to run but I didn't run. She died trying to protect me."

"I was there", said Seth. He looked down, ashamed of his actions. "Your mother probably wouldn't have died if I hadn't startled the junkie. It was more my fault than it was yours. I'm sorry."

"It wasn't your fault. Why were you there, anyway?" she asked as the night came back to her in bits and pieces.

"I'm a guardian. That was what I did. I would comb the city, looking after the residents, protecting them against crime."

"You wore black. Like Batman", she said as she remembered a bit more.

"Yes", he smiled sadly, "kind of like Batman."

Julianna shifted her body and winced at the movement in her arm. "Are you my guardian angel?" She thought he was, but the wooliness of the anaesthetic remaining in her system was making it difficult to think.

"Yes, I am", he said. "But I wasn't allowed to tell you until you turned eighteen."

"At first it was twenty-one", she said as she remembered what he had told her in the past and tried to put it into context with what he was saying now.

"Yes, it was. But we petitioned the council and they reduced the requirement to when you turned eighteen." And, he thought, based on what had happened that afternoon, it was a good thing that the restriction had been modified. He would have had a hard time avoiding her questions with her realizations about him.

She looked at him, confused. "How can I hear you in my thoughts and in my dreams?"

"I'm your guardian", he said simply, knowing that it probably wasn't enough of an explanation for her, but not sure how else he could explain it.

"I don't understand."

He brushed her hair back from her face. "You're tired, Jules. I can explain it later."