Maureen Johnson - The Name of the Star

36

AT HEALING ANGEL MINISTRY, COUSIN DIANE reads people’s auras. She says the auras are the angels who hover behind you, who protect you, and that you can tell the kind of angel it is by the color. She has a chart. Blue angels deal with strong emotions. Red angels deal with love. Yellow angels deal with health. Green angels deal with home and family.

The ones you want to watch out for are the white light angels. They’re at the top of the chart. The white light ones come when big stuff happens. If Cousin Diane sees a white light angel behind someone, she tends to check the newspaper for articles about accidents and obituaries.

“White light,” she’ll say, tapping the article. “I saw the white light, and you know what happens then.” And what happens then is that someone gets hit by a bus or falls into an old sewage ditch and dies.

I was seeing white light now, everywhere, soft and bright and complete.

“Crap,” I said.

In reply, the light faded just a bit. I wasn’t dead. I was pretty sure of that. Of course, it was possible that I was dead, and I just had no idea. I didn’t know what dead felt like.

“Am I dead?” I asked out loud.

There was no reply, except for the quiet beeping of some machine, and some voices. Things came into focus a little more sharply. There were edges now where wobbly blobs had previously been. I was in a bed, a bed with rails and white sheets with a light blue blanket on top. There was a television on a mounted arm that swung over to the side of the bed. There was a tube coming out of my arm. There was a window with a green curtain and a view of the gray sky.

The curtain next to me snapped back. A nurse with short blond hair came over to me.

“I thought I heard you say something,” she said.

“I feel weird,” I said.

“That’s the pethidine,” she replied.

“The what?”

“It’s a medication that takes away pain and makes you drowsy.”

She grabbed the IV bag that I now saw hanging over me and examined the level of its contents. After finishing her examination of the bag, she turned to my arm, checking the bandage tape that was holding the IV tube in place. As she leaned over me, I noticed there was a silver watch pinned to the front of her scrub shirt—not a normal one, like a wristwatch, but a specialized piece that looked like a medal. Like she was a soldier. Like Jo.

Jo . . .

It all started to roll back into my mind. Everything that had happened in the bathroom, the walk across London, the station. It all felt very distant, like it had happened to someone else. Still, a few loose tears trickled from my eyes. I didn’t mean to cry them. The nurse wiped my face with a tissue and gave me a sip of water through a straw.

“There we go,” she said. “Take a nice sip. No reason to cry. Nice, slow breath. Don’t want to upset your stitches, now.”

The water had a calming effect.

“You’ve had a rough night,” she said. “There’s a policeman here to speak to you, if you’re feeling up to it.”

“Sure,” I said.

“I’ll send him in.”

She left me, and a moment later, Stephen appeared in the doorway. All of the things that identified him as a policeman were gone—the jacket, the sweater, the hat, the belt of equipment, the tie. All he had left was his white shirt, which was streaked with dirt and full of wrinkles and sweat marks. He was pale to begin with, but now there was a distinct blue-gray undertone to his skin. Now I remembered. It came back in pieces. The station. The needle. Stephen on the ground. He’d been dragged back from the point of death, and it showed.

“We were sent to the same hospital,” he said.

He came to the bedside and looked me up and down, assessing the state of things.

“The wound,” he said quietly, “it didn’t penetrate your abdominal cavity. I’m sure it hurts quite a bit, but you’ll be all right.”

“I don’t feel it,” I replied. “I think I’m on some awesome drugs.”

“Rory,” Stephen said. “I don’t want to put pressure on you in this condition, but they’re coming.”

“Who?”

No sooner had I said this than there was a crisp knock on the door. Without waiting for a reply, a man walked into the room. He had a youngish face and a head of what seemed to be prematurely gray hair, and he was dressed in plain but well-tailored clothes—black overcoat, blue shirt, black pants. He could have been a banker or a model of some idealized traveler like I’d seen in the airplane magazine. Somebody expensive and polite and almost deliberately forgettable, except for the gray hair. Another man followed him—older, in a brown suit.

The gray-suited man gently shut the door and came around to the side of the bed closest to the window, where he could address both Stephen and me.

“My name is Mr. Thorpe, and I am a member of Her Majesty’s security service. My colleague represents the government of the United States. Forgive the intrusion. I understand you’ve both had a difficult evening.”

The unnamed American man folded his arms over his chest.

“What’s happening?” I asked Stephen.

“It’s all right,” Stephen said.

“We have some business to finish to clear this matter up,” Thorpe continued. “We require assurance that this matter is at an end.”

“It is,” Stephen said.

“You’re quite sure, Mr. Dene? Were you present?”

“Rory was.”

“Miss Deveaux, can you say without question that the . . . person . . . known as the Ripper is no longer with us?”

“He’s gone,” I said.

“You’re sure?”

“I’m sure,” I said. “I saw it happen. Jo took the terminus and . . .”

“And what?”

I looked at Stephen.

“They’re both gone,” I said.

“Both?” Mr. Thorpe said.

“Another . . . someone we work with.”

“One of them ?” Mr. Thorpe said.

Just the way he said it made me hate him.

“The threat has been neutralized,” Stephen said evenly.

Mr. Thorpe sized us both up for a minute. Before, someone like him would have scared me to death. Now, he was nothing. A man in a suit, living and breathing.

“You must understand . . .” Mr. Thorpe bent down to speak to me. He’d overdone it on the breath mints. “ . . . that it’s not in your best interests to discuss what happened to you tonight. In fact, we must insist that you do not. Not with your friends, your family, any religious counselors or mental health professionals. The latter would be most detrimental to you personally, as your account would be interpreted as delusional. Furthermore, you have become involved with an agency covered by the Official Secrets Act. You are bound by law to remain silent. We think it’s best that you remain in the United Kingdom for the time being, while this affair is being sorted out. Should you choose to return to the United States, you will still remain bound by this law, due to the special relationship between our two countries.”

Mr. Thorpe looked to the man in the doorway, who nodded back.

“You must realize talking about this won’t help anyone,” Mr. Thorpe said, softening his tone just a bit in a way that felt very deliberate. “The best thing you can do is return to school and continue with your life.”

The brown-suited man took his phone from his pocket and started typing something in. He walked out of the room, still typing away.

“Constable Dene,” Mr. Thorpe said as he straightened up, “we’ll be in touch, of course. Your superiors are very pleased with your performance in this matter. Her Majesty’s government thanks you both.”

He didn’t waste any more time on good-byes. He was gone as quickly as he had arrived.