Read Online Love Letters of the Angels of Death by Jennifer Quist - Free Book Online

your grandmother wanted from you is over. It’s failed. You know you can’t go any further on your own.
    â€œI really – I should – ” you begin. “I need to make a phone call.”
    Forgetful of the rule about the phone at the nursing station not being available for patient use, the hairy young doctor leads you back to the triage counter and hands you its telephone.
    The phone rings and rings in the blue dawn of your grandmother’s house. It’s your brother Derek who finally answers.
    â€œWhat are you doing on the phone? Where the heck are you?”
    â€œI’m at the hospital – with Grammie. She fell and broke her arm. Go out to the camper and tell Dad.”
    â€œOkay.”
    â€œNo, Derek. Go tell him right now.”
    â€œOkay.”
    â€œAnd Uncle Ned. You have to tell him too.”
    â€œFine.”
    â€œDon’t just go back to sleep – please.”
    â€œI said, okay.”
    The nurse is back, standing with one hand on the restricted doors. She sweeps her other hand toward you like she’s Virgil trying to get started on your tour of the Underworld, or something. “Come on, now. Grandma’s not herself and needs a familiar face to cheer her up. I’ll take you back.”
    You breathe in a chestful of hospital air. They keep saying your grandmother isn’t herself. It’s not true. She is finally herself – right out in the open where even her granddaughter will see it and know what it means.
    You follow Nurse Virgil through the restricted doors to where three gurneys sit lined along a wall, separated from each other by long yellow curtains blowing open at their edges with the currents of the air conditioner. A curtain edge parts slightly as you come near, and you glimpse a boy who looks a little older than you, just about dead drunk, lying on his side with a blue kidney pan pushed against his face. Another nurse jabs at the top of his hand with an IV needle. He sings a moan into the pink sheets.
    Nurse Virgil pulls back the curtain by the bed farthest from the entrance and holds it open while you step through the breach. On a narrow bed, a small, shaking figure lies tucked under a thermal blanket – the kind that’s kept in a warming closet for people in shock.
    â€œWe’ve got your granddaughter here,” the nurse calls to the heap on the bed.
    It sputters and shakes.
    â€œHave a seat there, dear,” the nurse says without looking at either of you.
    The curtain rattles to a close on its plastic hooks, and she is gone. You are left alone with your grandmother. “Looks like they’ve got you all fixed up, eh Grammie?” you chirp in a clinically light voice. “We can head home as soon as you’re feeling a little better.”
    Something turns under the blanket. There is nothing like recognition in the face looking out at you. The long pretense of intimacy between you and your grandmother crumbles. You are strangers now, as you have always been. She moves her hands to cover her face and seems startled at the stiff, white bandages swathed around her arm.
    She begins speaking into her fingertips. “I will send you Elijah the prophet,” she quotes, “before the coming of the great and dreadful day–”
    â€œIt’s okay, Grammie,” you croak, interrupting the Bible verse she’s reciting – the one from the very end of the Old Testament. “It’s okay. You fell on your arm in the basement. Remember? The saw bench? But – but it’s alright now. We’re at the hospital, and you’re okay – mostly okay.”
    It’s a credit to your under-developed sense of compassion that you know to lean forward, taking hold of the small hand your grandmother uses to cover her face. Its fingers spring closed on your own hand, trap-like, pulling you into the hollow of her throat, between the tendons of her neck.
    â€œI will send you Elijah,”