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Amber’s head might not have been in the right place at the start of her shift, and looking back, she’d blame her frazzled nerves and lack of coffee for the oddness of her encounter with the two men in C7. Second week of night float and she’d slept through two alarms, waking up to the sound of her flatmate running the VitaMix for his post-workout smoothie. The light coming through the crack in the black-out curtains was the harsh yellow of the streetlamp rather than the pinkish orange of sunset, and a familiar sinking feeling in her stomach accompanied the confirmation on her phone that it was after 1730.
She’d flung on scrubs, skipped dinner and caffeine, and scrabbled through the fast food container graveyard in the passenger seat for her pager. Badged in at 1803 and received a purse-lipped stare from Amanda, the chief of the day shift consultants. Amanda had sent her customary “signout is starting now in the conference room!” text to the team two minutes and thirty seconds earlier, and was now probably putting the final mental touches on the bollocking Amber would get when shift change was over. Christ, and she’d slipped into two different pairs of shoes in the dimness of the front hallway, and she had a clog on one foot and an actual orange croc on the other, and Psychiatric Emergency night shift at the UCLH A&E could very much fuck right off and sit on a cactus.
Following signout on current and to-be-seen patients- and a furrowed-brow, faux-concerned lecture on punctuality from Amanda (“When you’re not present at the start of signout I’m concerned that important information might be missed. And Amber, at our level, we’re setting an example for the FY1s. They’re looking to us to model appropriate behavior, you understand.” Amber hoped she’d go home and step on one of her toddler’s legos)- Amber dragged herself into some semblance of upright and headed down the hall for the first consult. She glanced down at her notes before rapping on the doorframe of C7.
50-year-old male, last name Fell. Presented earlier in the afternoon with chest pain and shortness of breath. No record of past hospitalizations, no established GP or specialist. His vitals, labs and ECG looked pristine. His chest X ray was unremarkable. Psych consult was requested for a possible panic attack. Amber had groaned internally looking through the chart in the computer. The only red flag in the history was the truly impressive amount of alcohol the man endorsed, and she had too much of a headache to argue with him about the diazepam which he almost certainly wanted and was certainly not getting. It was also all but impossible to send the anxious ones home. They always wanted medications, tests, admission; a higher level of… everything. The A&E registrars appeared to take a malicious pleasure in avoiding mental health and social history questions altogether during their assessments, and phoning the gormless psychiatric consultants in the unit next door to do the heavy lifting. So he’d need a complete history, a drinking assessment, an appointment with a GP and a therapy referral at the very least. Then she could clear him for discharge and spend another half hour telling him why he was being sent home with no Valium and a “soonest available” follow up appointment with a counsellor a month and a half from now. That always went over well.
Sighing, Amber put on what she thought of as her “work face” (wide friendly eyes, close-mouthed smile, slightly cocked head) and tapped the doorframe. “Mr. Fell?” She flashed her badge. “I’m Dr. Lee, one of the Psychiatry Specialty Registrars.” Sometimes people went immediately on the defensive when she told them what department she was from. (The A&E SpRs also enjoyed being “too busy” to go back in to let their patient know they’d called Psych, and letting their visit be a complete surprise, because they lost interest when there wasn’t any blood involved and wouldn’t know tact if it bit them on the arse.) The man seated on the narrow stretcher, worrying at his cuticles and looking every inch the poster “anxiety evaluation” patient, merely glanced up and smiled in a vaguely distracted way.
“Lovely to meet you, doctor. I was hoping you might be able to help. This is… ah, a bit difficult to explain, but suffice it to say that this body’s been giving me a bit of trouble.”
This body, Amber thought. Not, my body. It wasn’t uncommon. When the brain went on the defensive it put the body on the offensive. The brain had plenty of attack plans involving muscle, heart, eyes and nerves that seemed not to require any higher authority clearance. You stood to attention when adrenaline opened the floodgates, that was all. Your identity, the very essence of who you’d always thought you were, was stranded miles from shore during those times, tossed from wave to wave on fractious seas. The captain could wrestle the wind for control of the rudder, but the body belonged to the conscious mind no more than the ocean belonged to the sailor.
Mr. Fell looked like he was equal parts offended and mortified that the lines of communication had been cut when his hindbrain staged its rebellion. He was shaking. His hands, when he stopped picking at his nails, wrung themselves together tightly in his lap. His breathing was fast and shallow. He’d done up the gown as neatly as she’d ever seen, both sets of strings tied precisely in the back, the neckline snug against the base of his throat, but the cloth under his arms was damp with sweat. She could see his pulse fluttering just under his jaw, and the wires snaking out of the sides of the gown and over to the telemetry monitor confirmed his heartbeat was just over a hundred per minute, for all it was regular.
His expression was one of acute embarrassment, but he seemed to be attempting to hide it behind proper English manners and a posh RP accent, like a child throwing a blanket over a broken toy. “At first I thought it was a glitch, you see.” He looked up at her with wide worried eyes. “A sort of problem settling in. You see, this body is quite ancient…” here he gave a little self-deprecating chuckle. “But in another way it’s very new to me. I figured there might be a bit of housekeeping, maybe some adjustments, but instead I’ve been afflicted with a… a palsy! Which I’m sure you understand isn’t the least bit acceptable.” He held out one of his hands, palm down, and glared at it while it trembled.
Amber pulled the room’s extra chair towards the gurney, sat, and touched her pen to the paper on her clipboard. She wondered if there were gender identity factors at play- she’d heard “new body” from her trans patients, but the phrase was usually associated with glee rather than blind panic.
“That sounds uncomfortable,” she said. “When did this start?” It was a standard opening question, but she also had a pool going with the other 5th years. The Psychiatry SpR with the highest number of “last Saturday”s at the end of the week would win a bottle of Glenkinchie and an extra day off in September.
“Last Sunday.” Damn. “Now, it was rather a strange day, I grant you, but nothing whatsoever happened to my corporation! It was perfectly unaffected, but it started malfunctioning not six hours later. It’s not taking in enough air, for a start. I tried expanding the lungs manually and I got the most uncomfortable sensation- like I just need to inspire again, and again, without expelling anything properly. It’s, it’s as if… as if the whole thorax is being squeezed. And there’s a pain just here.” He tapped his sternum, and Amber watched a dark flower of sweat bloom on the cloth of the gown when he took his fingers away. “My voice sounds strange to my own ears... which may well be related. You see, when I finish speaking, there’s more air trapped in my lungs, but I can’t seem to evacuate it… if I don’t breathe in again right away I get the sense the body will seize. What else? Ah. I can hear my heart in my ears, which is so odd. Why should it have increased in volume? I haven’t made any adjustments.” He trailed off, looking helplessly down at his lap, continuing to take those shaky sips of air through his nose.
Amber put her pen back down. It was common for a patient to dissociate from their physical symptoms, but Mr. Fell was talking about his body the way her father had about his ‘79 Volkswagen Rabbit when he had to bring it round the shop. (Once, at the age of ten, she’d sat in front and steered while her father bent over and shouldered the rusting fender until the car was in the street and rolling down the gentle grade towards town. He kept his language civil, but she heard him swearing about it five ways from Sunday after she was supposed to be in bed. The whole thing had been tremendous fun.) And that word he’d used… corporation?
“Calling last Sunday ‘a strange day’ is like calling the Great Fire of London ‘a day out with some sparklers,” came a voice from the room’s only other chair.
Which was empty. Had been. Hadn’t it been?
The room was dim. They’d turned out the overhead lights; plenty of Casualty patients found the fluorescents a bit grating. The windows were clear and the hall lights spilled into the room through the open curtain, but the corners were pockets of shadow. She simply must not have noticed the long limbed man slouching in his seat. Even though one of his boots was on the bedrail. And his outfit looked like the unholy offspring of “Whitesnake wannabe” and “public school goth.” And his sunglasses were reflecting her surprised face back at her.
“I wish you wouldn’t do that,” Mr. Fell said to his apparent companion. “You’ve frightened her.” Amber realized she must have jumped when the other man spoke.
“Not my fault, is it? I’m lurking. That’s just my nature. You put me in a dark room, I lurk.”
“Neither of us is exactly doing what’s strictly natural anymore, Crowley. I believe that was the idea.”
Amber felt uneasy about Mr. Fell’s companion, not only because she’d have already kicked him out if she’d seen him from the start. (It wasn’t customary to have friends or family stay for the psychiatric interview; their presence could interfere with the sharing of sensitive information.) Something about him made her molars itch. She should ask him to leave. But she already hadn’t done that, had she? Now it would be awkward, it would disrupt the interview’s flow, and her head ached, and damn it, she really needed her evening espresso before trying to handle sensitive interpersonal dynamics..
Soldier on. “Let’s talk about things that can cause symptoms like yours. Have you stopped or started any medications?”
Fell looked at the other man in the room. “Medications…?”
“You remember when Mrs. Dowling would have one of her ‘episodes’ and need to have a lie down? I used to bring her paracetamol.”
“Did you turn it on in some way? Or did she, before she swallowed it?”
“Just a glass of water for afters, usually.” The man in black spread his hands, palms up. “Does that count?”
“I imagine it would ‘stop’ once it’s in the gastric cavity- or is that when it ‘starts’?”
Both men looked at Amber, eyebrows raised. She was almost sure they were taking the piss. Nearly, completely sure about that. 75% sure, at least. “No, I mean… well… do you take any medications regularly?”
“Ah, I see! Like an anovulant, do you remember the fuss when those came about, Crowley?”
“You’re asking me?” Fell’s friend grinned. “I practically got a five-year sabbatical between ‘60 and ‘65, after that one. Enough impotent rage floating around with the idea of women doing radical things-”
“Like attending university! Yes, I recall.”
“-to crush my annual targets, and I used the premarital sex stats to beat Hastur out for tops in lead acquisition. Got a nice bonus.”
“Ye-ess,” Amber said. Fell had been born in ‘69, and his friend looked younger. But what the hell. He wasn’t her patient. “Any daily medication, like, er- a blood pressure medication or antidepressant- that you’ve started or stopped recently. Though I’m guessing the answer is probably no.”
“No. That is - yes! You’re correct. No… medications.”
“Have you made any changes in the amount of alcohol you drink? Says here…” she glanced down at her paper again, just to confirm. She’d seen numbers like that, of course, but usually not in someone who was reasonably upright and holding down a job. Or a conversation. “Says here 4-5 bottles of wine a few nights a week, occasional nightcap, whiskeys for lunch-“
“And I do enjoy a mojito in the early part of the day. So refreshing. The concept of “brunch” really elevated the morning meal. It was lovely when Balans opened. Didn’t you come with me once, Crowley? Back in ‘92?”
“You told me you were taking me to a place with a cocktail called the ‘Forbidden Fruit,’ angel, how could I resist?”
Amber had a queue of seven more patients to see before midnight. She rolled her eyes (internally). But Fell seemed to be starting to relax, which would make things easier all around. She was glad, on reflection, that his friend had stayed. “Mr. Fell, that is well over the alcohol consumption amount we’d recommend for a man your age,” Amber said, putting on her ‘concerned doctor’ face. Or anyone with a liver, she added to herself. “And alcohol can contribute to… the way you’ve been feeling. You should consider cutting down, but if you haven’t made any changes lately, it’s unlikely to be the cause of what’s happening now.”
“An idea, perhaps…” Mr. Fell held up a finger. “You keep mentioning ‘changes.’ That could be part of the problem. I’ve gone a bit against my… preconceived ideas of myself, of late. My corporation has always been a bit stodgy and perhaps it’s reluctant to follow suit.”
Amber took a mental step back. If the anxiety was simply a response to a life change, she might be able to recommend a good support group. “It sounds as though something about your circumstances has changed in the past week. Do you want to tell me more about that?” Open-ended questions were key when you were at a loss, and if she got anymore lost in this interview she’d have to think seriously about sending up an emergency flare.
Fell’s companion leaned forward, suddenly serious. “I’ll say. He was fired.”
Fell pursed his lips. “In a way. I suppose I was technically terminated. But I’d been absent without leave for some time, so it wasn’t exactly unexpected.” His friend let out a little snort at the word “terminated.” Amber would have guessed he found the whole thing funny, but when she looked at him his face was like stone.
“That’s an enormous stressor. Many people experience physical reactions after going through something like that. Can I ask what it was you did for a living?”
Fell preened. “Well, I am a bookseller… but up until now it hasn’t been my full time. I suppose you could say I was in development. My role was, essentially, to grow the company through acquisitions. But I had some trouble with the ethics of the… management team. More and more so as the years went on.”
His friend cut in. “Management is a bunch of out-of-touch, holier-than-thou, pompous gits who thought they could achieve world domination through the power of smarminess. Which I could just about stomach before-”
Fell held up a hand, and his friend closed his mouth around what was promising to be an impressively agitated tirade, if Amber was any judge (after two years in the A&E and on the wards, she’d seen a few). “Forgive him. He’s… I suppose you could say we’re from rival corporations. Our internal affairs were always somewhat hush-hush, but Crowley… he’s had the opportunity recently to see some of our… their... business practices up close. He’s been a bit upset.”
His friend looked less “upset” than “positively murderous,” but Amber was getting the sense that Fell was a born minimizer. He made a strange aborted gesture, lifting both hands to the hem at the neck of his gown as if searching for something, then let them fall again to tug at the cloth around his waist. His friend had leaned back again in his seat and was glaring at him, arms crossed.
Fine, time for the “yes-or-no” questions. “All right,” Amber said, “I’m hearing six days of symptoms. Starting shortly after you lost your job. Have you been sleeping normally?”
Fell shot his companion an odd, darting glance. With the sunglasses, it was impossible to tell if the other man noticed. “The usual amount. Or... a bit more than usual, if I’m being honest.”
“How’s your appetite?”
“It was all right at first. It has fallen off a bit.”
“Do you have activities that you enjoy doing?”
“I… I’ve had more time on my hands, for obvious reasons, but I can’t seem to concentrate on much. It’s funny… I always imagined that if I… left my position,” another rabbitty there-and-gone-again glance at Sunglasses, “I’d fall into another one more or less immediately. And that hasn’t happened. So I’m a bit at loose ends, to be honest.”
“How does it feel to think about the future?”
“Dear girl… until last Saturday night, I didn’t think there was much of a future to think about. Nothing worth being a part of, at any rate.”
Amber made a mental note. There it was. Saturday. Nine out of every ten patients the psych department had seen this week were wild-eyed, jittery, and complaining of a Saturday-shaped hole in their memories. A hole filled with strange visions and stranger dreams. Amber would have put it down to a bad batch of ketamine, but it was too universal- it would have had to have been in the water. Most of her colleagues denied having any strange experiences themselves- no psychiatric specialist wanted to admit to hallucinating- but they were tight-lipped and tense. (Amber, who had been working nights and had all the innate occult sensitivity of a brass doorknob, had slept through the odd, thunderous day with its occasionally piscine storms, and genuinely hadn’t noticed anything.)
“When people aren’t thinking about the future, I need to ask about any thoughts or plans related to suicide, Mr. Fell,” Amber said. “It’s an important part of my job. Has that ever come up for you?”
“This is a waste of time,” said Sunglasses.
“Crowley. No, doctor,” Fell said, turning to Amber with an apologetic smile. “Apart from the question of where exactly I’d go… certain doors are closed now, you see… I’ve never wanted to give up on the world. Quite the opposite, in fact.”
“What’s this got to do with anything?” Fell’s friend (Crowley) snapped. “His corporation is buggered up. His human corporation. We came here so that the humans could have a go at fixing it. With…” he gestured with one hand, seeming to deflate a little, “your… your ‘medications’, and things. Machines. Um. You know. Like, you scan him with computers, and they tell you what’s wrong. Why aren’t you telling him what’s wrong?”
“Crowley, that’s what they do on those scientifiction shows you watch,” said Fell. “Not in real life.”.
Amber was at sea again. She took a breath. “So first of all, no. The computers can’t tell us everything. But from what they can tell us, your body is working just fine. There’s nothing wrong with your heart, or your lungs, or your bloodwork. I’m here because the concern is with your brain- the part of you that controls all those things. It’s sending you signals that you’re in danger when you’re not. Sometimes that’s a reaction to the fact that you’ve been in dangerous situations before, and your brain had to react that way. Now it’s having trouble shutting that reaction down again. Could that be a possibility?”
Amber was prepared for defensiveness, but Fell looked intrigued. Crowley laughed- a short, barking, humorless sound. “Danger? Aziraphale’s been in danger since I’ve known him. Mostly because I know him.”
“I didn’t have the sense to see what it was from, though. Not until very recently.” Fell’s voice was soft, and the look he was aiming in Crowley’s direction was softer, but Crowley had found something interesting to inspect on the far wall. The corners of his mouth turned down at Fell’s words.
“You mean you never believed it,” Crowley said flatly. It wasn’t a question.. His expression was a mix of incredulity and frustration. “You really thought they were the good guys. All these years. You worried about what my bosses would do to me if they found out… but you never suspected that your people might- might-“
“Terminate someone with prejudice?”
Amber, who had seen Apocalypse Now on a date in high school (her own tastes veered more toward Michael Lehmann than Francis Coppola, to her partner’s eternal consternation), felt as if icy water had been poured down the back of her scrub top. There was something about the tone Fell used, coupled with the look in his eyes- she felt suddenly that a lack of interest in any more details about Fell’s mysterious job might be healthy.
“No, never, not your lot. Not the angels. They might lay waste to huge swaths of land, raze cities to the ground, hell, they might harass you to the ends of the bloody earth, but it was all in pursuit of the greater good, wasn’t it?” Crowley imbued “greater good” with the same sneering contempt that she had heard Nigel Farage use when saying the words “Remain Bonus.” (She was subjected to a great deal of right wing telly during her visits home.) “Meanwhile, I’m about going to pieces trying to keep your silly angel head on your shoulders, and all I hear is ‘you’re being ridiculous Crowley,’ and ‘I’m sure they’ll listen to reason Crowley- “
Crowley was nearly shouting now. Amber’s stomach churned. Phrases like “shared delusion” and “religious preoccupation” would usually be on the tip of her pen in situations like this, but there was a feeling in the room like a building static charge that made her wonder… well. At any rate, Fell was cringing and his friend was haranguing him, and she knew how to handle that.
“Sir, I think you should-“ she started, moving in between them, but she might as well have been just another beeping monitor for all the mind they paid her.
“-until the very, concrete, literal fucking end times!”
The mood in the room was suddenly sour enough to taste. Fell, his hands shaking badly again, looked up at the light in the hall and blinked rapidly a few times, a trick Amber had employed dozens of times while getting chewed out during her first Foundation Year.
“You- you don’t understand…” Fell stuttered. His voice sounded strangled.
“Please, sir, if you could step out-”
“You weren’t safe. You weren’t safe, but you didn’t realize until it was too late to do anything about it. Is that it? Until you were already in so far that our side was all that was left.” Crowley pounded two of his long fingers against his opposite palm, a jarring, sharp gesture, and Fell flinched. He flinched, and Crowley saw it, and it was remarkable what you could read on a face that was half hidden in sunglasses and shadow. Crowley drew a quick breath in through his nose, and for a moment the room with its gurney and various instruments and little sink was silent. The blood pressure cuff started to inflate with an rrrrr sound. Both men looked at the floor.
“Sir, this isn’t helpful for your friend right now. I need you to lea-”
“It’s all right,” Fell snapped in her direction. She felt a swat of something soft and writhing and psychic, like the tip of a cat’s tail being dragged across her frontal lobe. Her mouth was still open, but she couldn’t think why. It was all right, of course it was. She had no reason to be worried. She shut her mouth.
When Crowley spoke again, his voice sounded thick. “For the record, I am sorry. Said that, didn’t I? I’m sorry that I messed things up so badly for you that you lost your… job. They’re bastards, the lot of them, but… it wasn’t my place. If it weren’t for me you’d have been all right.”
“Crowley, don’t say that!” Fell reached a hand out. Crowley abruptly pistoned himself out of his chair and paced across the room to the jumble of equipment next to the sink. He stared down at the instrument tray, sharps container and glove dispenser, looking mulish and a little lost.
Amber shook her head. What was she doing, standing there like a brand new FY1 while her patients had a domestic dispute? “Look, if we could all just-” she said. They ignored her. Crowley, with his dark glasses and dark clothes and darker expression, was between her and the door now. Terrible situational management, that was. Never let anyone block your exit.
“You could be up there with them now. Safe as houses. Celestial harmonies and the whole bit, not a feather out of place. If that’s what you- what you wanted.”
“That’s not-” Aziraphale started, drawing himself up, but Crowley was apparently on something of a roll.
“I keep thinking, maybe you could have laid low. Kept under the radar. Right from the start. No reason you would have had to even know anything about the boy. Your side wouldn’t have told you. My side wouldn’t have told you. You’d have stayed in one piece!”
“Crow-” Aziraphale stood, his whole body shaking. Amber could hear his respirations, an effh effh effh sound, loud through his nose. He stepped towards his friend, but the telemetry cord pulled him up short.
“Look, if both of you could take a seat-”
“I just had to get you involved, and for what? For them to take everything- everything away from you! Your, your body, your h-home, your job, and now you’re back but you’re not, Aziraphale! You’re not-”
“Calm down, please-”
“- you’re not yourself, and I, I think it’s me, angel. I’m the one who stole that from you. It’s me, it’s me, and I… I’m sorry...”
At that moment, several things happened in quick succession. Fell surged towards Crowley, pulling the tele lead out of the monitor. The cord caught on the bedrail and Fell’s forward motion propelled the wheeled gurney into the IV pole, which toppled over towards Amber. Amber, feeling the situation might be reaching a point where she’d need security, took a large step backward, promptly snagged the strap of her mismatched croc on the sink’s footpedal, stepped hard on it, and stumbled. Water started to flow with the usual thumping gurgle from the plumbing, filling the sink with a deepening plashing sound. Crowley tried to catch Amber, pivoting on one snakeskin-clad heel, and staggered sideways into the side of the sink, where he promptly soaked the elbow of his designer jacket under the spray, and swore.
Amber heard a horrible noise from the man in the hospital gown, a noise that would haunt her dreams the remainder of her life, a noise so far from human that it wasn’t even in the same postal code. And then the room was full of feathers.
Holy shit. Holy shit. Literal… holy fucking shit. This seemed to be the only thoughts Amber was capable of forming. Her tongue felt thick in her mouth. The hairs on the back of her neck were standing on end, and the air was greasy with electrical discharge. She crawled into the corner, between the chair and the wall, and crouched, pulling the bin in front of her. Through the gap, she watched Crowley thrown backwards like a ragdoll. One of his hands moved deliberately upwards even as he fell. He snapped his fingers. The background noise of the hospital- shrill alarms, the squeak of shoes, the clatter of stretchers and the susurration of other human voices (human, this is what he meant by human! her mind shouted hysterically) - suddenly cut off, as if a door had been shut on the world.
But someone was shouting.
Fell- Aziraphale, Crowley called him Aziraphale, and I thought it was a strange name but I’m starting to get it- stood facing the sink, staring at the running water as if it were a cobra drawn back to strike. He had wings.
White wings, half again as tall as he was. One was cramped against the tiny room’s near wall, the other had toppled the monitor tower. There were no more shadows in any of the corners, because the room was full of white light, light that seemed to come from Aziraphale’s face and hands but mostly from his eyes, which were golden and terrible and too bright to look into directly. And he was screaming at the sink. “You will not harm him!” He pointed at the inoffensive porcelain and steel basin and it exploded in a shower of sparks. White shards hit the front of Amber’s makeshift barricade.
Angels weren’t real, but Amber was looking at one now, right enough – majestic, avenging. She thought of her mother. “You might not believe in God, but God believes in you!” She bit her tongue to hold back a hysterical giggle.
“Maybe you won’t ever stop. Maybe you won’t ever let us be, but I promise you, if you come for us you do so at your own peril! I am the guardian of this world, I am the sword that humanity wields, and I will cut down any who threaten what I am sworn to protect. You will not touch him. He is mine!” The word mine contained frequencies that human ears weren’t meant to hear. Aziraphale’s voice was deep and rich and it hurt. Amber clapped her hands over her ears and screamed.
Behind the apparition of light and noise, she could see a black-clad figure peeling itself off the wall, where he had apparently been thrown to protect him from the dangers of West London taps. Now he walked slowly towards the bewinged and luminous spectacle berating the remains of the sink, leaning forward as if fighting a strong wind. Amber noticed absently that Aziraphale was floating a foot or so off the ground.
“Angel, angel, angel,” Crowley was saying over and over, a calm litany, soft and warm as treacle poured into tea. “Hey. Hey. It’s all right. It’s all right, Aziraphale. Just- just kill the lights, okay? I’m here. I’m all right. Everything’s okay.”
“Crowley!” Aziraphale wailed. In his normal voice, thank fuck. His toes touched the floor, then his heels. The light faded. Crowley fell forward as if his strings had been cut, as if the glow had been holding him up and away. He stumbled, almost went to his knees, righted himself, and lurched over to stand behind his friend. After a beat, he put his hands on Aziraphale’s shoulders, carefully, carefully, handling him as gently as spun glass. Aziraphale spun around to face him, his face etched in misery and terror. One of his wings swept around the small space as he turned, dragging glove boxes and dressing kits off the high shelf and upsetting the bedside tray, which fell with a clatter. The other nearly knocked Crowley out cold. He ducked.
“Sorry, sorry, I’m sorry…” Aziraphale clutched his own cheeks with both hands, fingers digging claw like into the flesh. “I can’t breathe…” He was gasping. Sweat stood out on his forehead in fat beads.
“Hey. One step at a time, yeah? Okay? Okay. Here, put your wings away.” Aziraphale flinched and twitched his- wings, yes, still wings, Amber wanted to use another word in her mind but there simply wasn’t one, looking frightened and halfway ready to turn the dimmer switch back to full. Crowley stood still for a beat, jaw clenched, then reached out and took his hand. He held it in the tips of his fingers as if he expected it to be snatched away, but Aziraphale sagged. With a whoosh of inrushing air, the huge white wings were gone and Amber’s brain got busy convincing her she’d never seen them at all.
Crowley gently guided Aziraphale back to the gurney and sat down beside him. Aziraphale’s back was to Amber, but she could hear his harsh breaths. See his shoulders shaking. He let out a choked noise and put his hands over his face.
Crowley took his glasses off. His eyes were the color of sulphur, with slitted pupils like a cat’s, and deeply alien. Except… Amber recognized their expression. It was the look mothers gave their newborns, the look one spouse gave another over the side of the hospital bed. It was undiluted oxytocin.
“Aziraphale.” Crowley’s voice was jagged. He cleared his throat and tried again. “Aziraphale. What did you see?”
“The water sounded just like that. When Michael poured it into the tub.” Aziraphale’s voice was damp and flat. It sounded like it was coming from a long way away. “That hiss, and then the splashing, getting deeper as the basin filled.” For a moment they were both silent. Breathing. They looked at each other. “I- I hear it all the time. All the time, Crowley. The noise of fountains in squares. Gardeners filling buckets with their hosepipes. Tea pouring from a kettle. It’s always been such a nice sound...” Aziraphale sniffed.
“Tea… oh. Is that why you rushed off, after lunch on Sunday? I poured the tea, and the next thing I know you’re out the door and halfway down the street… I’m sorry Aziraphale. I didn’t know.”
“My dear… why should you have? I’m being perfectly ridiculous. I couldn’t imagine telling you that the sound of… of water being poured has been sending me into hysterics.” His shoulders slumped. “What you must think of me.”
Crowley made a noise in his throat that sounded like “gnhah.” Amber wasn’t sure if Aziraphale caught what that meant or not, but he went on.
“All those long years, I was afraid. You think I didn’t have the sense to be afraid of the angels?” He laughed. It was a hollow sound. “I know very well what they are. Crowley, they cast a third of us out, at swordpoint, into flames. Do you think I could ever forget what that was like? I kept my head down then. ‘Under the radar,’ as you said. If I had wanted to choose them again, I would have done.” He lifted his head. “You don’t make my choices for me; you can’t. And you of all people should know that.”
The corner of Crowley’s mouth quirked up. He started to say something, but Aziraphale turned his hand over in his and laced their fingers together. Crowley looked down at their joined hands as if his neural circuits had temporarily fused.
“I’m not finished,” Aziraphale said. His voice trembled. “Please, please let me just get this out. I-“ he took several deep breaths, and then said in a rush, “Your-lot-doesn’t-send-rude-notes.” He scrubbed his free hand over his cheeks. It came away damp. “You- you always told me that, too. But now I know it. I’ve seen it. And I ca-can’t stop se-seeing it, every time I close my eyes…”
“Angel-“
“They would have destroyed you, Crowley. They wanted to, and, and my lot wanted to help them do it. There would have been nothing left. I saw what happened to the one they used to test what Michael had brought. He. He sort of bubbled, and, and steamed, like dropping a lump of sodium in water. And then he was gone, he was gone, and the water was still so clear, just like he’d never been there! It would have been you, my dear heart, gone like mist burned off a lake, a-and I can’t help thinking it still could be you, Crowley. They could come back, my old bosses, your old bosses, it doesn’t really seem to matter now. They could take you from me as quickly and easily as turning on a tap, and I-”
Aziraphale began to cry, great gulping sobs that seemed to be torn out of his very core. Crowley let go of his hand, and he wailed, but then Crowley put his arms around him and pulled his face into the shoulder of his jacket. They didn’t move for a long moment, and the only sounds were Aziraphale’s muffled sobs and the soft rasp of skin on rough cloth as Crowley stroked his back slowly, up and then back down again, in a soothing rhythm.
Neither man seemed to have noticed Amber. She felt she ought to say something. No, she felt she ought to stay quiet and hidden, but she needed to say something. She could feel it bubbling up from her stomach into her throat, and if she didn’t speak she was going to cry or scream or bolt for the door in hysterics, and goddamn it, she was a doctor. She was tougher than that. So she spoke.
“The brain can and does respond to witnessed trauma in the same way it reacts to dangerous situations you experience directly.”
The little tableau on the bed froze.
“Same goes for if the dangerous situation- that is, death or the threat of death, or violence- happened to- to someone you love.”
Aziraphale lifted his head from Crowley’s shoulder and twisted to stare in her direction. Amber stood up and held out her hands in a way she hoped seemed completely nonthreatening. She noticed in a vague, floating, something-to-be-dealt-with-later fashion that everything outside the doorway to their little room was completely still. Sharon, the unit secretary, sat with the phone halfway to her ear as if she’d been carved from marble. Similar sculptures littered the hallway- an EMT pushing a wheelchair, a man in a wall stretcher paused mid-cough with his hand over his mouth, a woman walking with her purse suspended in the air behind her, frozen in its swing. Well. That was a thing.
“I- I didn’t mean to eavesdrop, but. Look. Er. You wanted help. So, so…” there were two sets of supernatural eyes boring into her. Amber swallowed. “It sounds to me like you-“ she nodded at Aziraphale- “saw someone killed with, with water.” Her voice sounded high pitched in her ears. She wasn’t going to scream again. She was not. “A-and your friend was in danger. Of having the same thing happen to him. You heard water being poured when you experienced these things. So! So, when you hear that sound now, your brain tells your body to act. To protect your friend.”
The two men? beings? looked at each other. “I thought you stopped time,” Aziraphale said.
“Egh, sorry angel. She must have been between us when I snapped. She got caught in our bubble,” Crowley muttered.
Aziraphale started fiddling with his nails again. “It does sound… plausible.”
“Let’s put this to rights, eh? Then we can let her explain.”
Aziraphale nodded. Crowley raised one hand and snapped his fingers, and-
Amber blinked. She had a fading sense of- what? A crazy conflagration of lights and noise, and… feathers? And the smell of water and something else, sweet and pungent. Like the air after lightning. The world had been wrong, somehow, but she couldn’t put her finger on exactly what had seemed out of place. She looked around. There were the sounds of beeping and ringing phones in the hallway outside. A door slammed. A baby began to cry. The layers of the expected closed over her head like water, and she felt soothed. She looked at her patient, Mr. Fell, seated on the bed. At some point while she’d- drifted?- his friend had moved to sit beside him. They were holding hands.
“I’m- I’m so sorry.” Amber pinched the bridge of her nose. Her headache was gone. Huh. “I seem to have missed the last thing you said. Would you mind repeating it?”
Fell smiled at her. “Of course, my dear. You had just been telling us that someone can have a reaction to seeing another person threatened. Particularly if it’s someone they- they love.”
Crowley’s head snapped around to face him. His jaw was slack. His lips parted, just the slightest bit. Amber couldn’t see his eyes behind the glasses, but she really didn’t need to.
Fell looked steadily at his lap, where their hands lay clasped on one of his thighs. “In that case, there’s a bit more to the story of what happened last Sunday that may be relevant. The thing is- well, we were both fired. For a number of offenses, really, but fraternizing with one another,” he paused, and shot Crowley a shy, small smile, making the corners of his eyes crinkle in a way that was really rather sweet, “was paramount. Our superiors were very unhappy. Much of what we do is- I suppose you would say it’s classified. That being the case, my partner here,” Crowley made a noise at that that sounded like a combination of a squeak and a swallow, “was threatened. With physical harm. I bore witness to what they planned to do to him- when another, ah, colleague, was subjected to it. The problems I’m experiencing with my body started very shortly after that.”
Amber wondered if Crowley would add anything to this, but he simply sat looking at Fell as though he’d opened his front door one morning and found himself in the land of Oz. “They’re likely related,” she said. “Have you noticed that certain things-” here she found her eyes drawn to the little sink in the corner of the room, which sat as innocuously as it ever had- “remind you of what happened? Almost as if you were in that situation again? And if you do... are those reminders associated with any physical sensations?”
“That’s it!” Fell grinned, and the expression lit up his face like a streetlamp. “Oh, you’ve put your finger right on the crux of it, I think. Whenever I hear a- a particular sound, I see it all again- like a film reel, here behind my eyes. Then the shaking starts. I have trouble with my breathing, like I said before. And the pain in my chest- I thought this body was breaking down. I wondered if it couldn’t hold me. And I feared…” he squeezed Crowley’s hand, “I feared I was going mad.”
“Mr. Fell, the good news is that what you’re describing is panic. It feels like you’re dying- that’s actually one of the ways we diagnose it. It’s a terrible, destabilizing, overwhelming sensation, but it won’t cause you physical harm. It can and does pass.”
“How-” Crowley croaked. He cleared his throat. Opened his mouth. Closed his mouth. Opened it again. Holy crap, Amber wasn’t sure what she’d missed, but it had clearly been something. The man looked like he was hanging on to composure by his fingernails. He reached his free hand up and tangled it in the short hair on the side of his head. Clenched, pulled. This seemed to ground him, and he tried again. “How do we help him?”
“First, we wait and see. This sort of reaction is very common when the trauma is recent. Generally it improves or goes away within two weeks. If it doesn’t- well, we work to help your brain learn to relax again.” Amber spread her hands. “Therapy, certain medications. If the symptoms don’t resolve, we can teach you how to cope with them. It’s helpful to have support and to slowly re-expose yourself to the trigger- the thing that causes this reaction- so you don’t start avoiding it entirely.”
“Well. Here’s hoping you won’t have to keep taking me to Casualty on a Friday night because a water main broke two streets over from the shop while you were out and I took complete and utter leave of my senses.” Fell looked up at Crowley, abashed but smiling.
“S’right, you completely scuppered my plans. Had a lot on, too. Wiling and such.” Crowley still looked poleaxed, but he raised an eyebrow at Fell. If Amber had ever doubted whether an eyebrow lift could be loving, she doubted no longer.
“Let me make it up to you. Dinner?”
“I could be convinced.” Crowley squeezed Fell’s hand. “Aziraphale- I. M’sorry for what I said. You were practically jumping out of your skin whenever I came around, and you weren’t telling me things again. I thought you might- regret…”
“None of that. Oh Crowley, of course, of course I don’t regret. Not a single bit of it.”
Amber cleared her throat. She rather felt she’d been forgotten again. “Let me get you some fact sheets and a referral. Then you can be on your way.” She smiled. “Make your date.”
The two men, who had been staring into each other’s faces like something out of a damn Disney cartoon, resurfaced. Fell smiled at Crowley, another one of those luminescent arc sodium smiles, muted a little but no less intense. Crowley looked like a man who had temporarily lost the ability to speak.
“Doctor, we’re much obliged,” Fell said. “Now! To the matter at hand- Barrafina or Quo Vadis? Barrafina’s grilled quail is always spectacular, but if I’m being honest I have something of a hankering for onglet…”
Amber drew the curtain on her way out.
She was charting at the nurses’ station when the two men emerged from C7, discharge papers in hand. She was having a bit of trouble. CC: panic attack; diagnosis: acute stress reaction, rule out PTSD. But the history… she needed something for Criterion A: qualifying trauma or stressor, and she couldn’t recall the precise details of what they’d told her to save her life. It had been legitimate; she knew herself, and she was very strict when it came to diagnostics. But when she tried to remember, she ran right up against a blank space in her mind, like a closed door. She got a taste in her throat like rich, damp earth and heard the slowly deepening cascade sound of water being poured into a container. The rest was just- white, some sort of strange, rough-textured whiteness, filled in around the edges with light too bright to look into. She rubbed the heel of her hand across her forehead. She’d at least get a coffee before the next patient, queue be damned.
Her email chime pinged. She reached into her breast pocket for her work phone and swiped the notification. Huh. A note from her supervisor about her outpatient schedule. She’d been full up since the start of her fourth training year; they all were. But it appeared that one of her regular patients had moved to Prague- Shira, who had family there and had been trying to get a work visa. At any rate, she had an unexpected opening. Her supervisor Debra, who had no apparent sleep schedule and a passion for organization and punctuality that made Amanda, the day chief, look like a stoner from Manchester, was strongly suggesting she fill it right away.
“Hey- uh, orange shoe girl!”
Amber looked up from her screen. Crowley and Fell were halfway down the hall towards the exit, but Crowley had turned. He held one finger up to his friend and jogged back to her desk. “Mr. Crowley? It’s Dr. Lee. Sorry, I suppose we weren’t formally introduced.”
“Ah, sure. Anyway,” he put one elbow on the desk and leaned in. “The stuff you mentioned- the treatments that might help. I thought- well. You got a handle on things pretty fast. And you rolled with the punches. So- you’re alright. I was wondering if maybe… if you maybe had a card.”
Amber smiled. She reached into her jacket and pulled out a square of cardstock. “Go ahead and call on Monday first thing,” she said. “I’ll tentatively add him to the schedule for next week.”
Crowley nodded. “Right. So. Maybe we’ll see you around.” He turned away, paused, turned back again. “You have something in your hair.” He strode away towards Fell without another word. Fell extended his hand and Crowley took it. For a moment they were silhouetted against the streetlight in the square of the open exit door, and then they were gone.
Amber reached up and ran a hand through her hair. She didn’t feel anything, but when she pulled away she was holding a downy white feather, no bigger than an acorn.
When she went back to check the patient queue, she found that two had been discharged, one sectioned, and three already seen by the juniors. The remaining consult was a confused but pleasant older lady who was a quick in-and-out delirium evaluation. Amber was asleep on the cot in the call room by 2345 and her pager stayed quiet for the remainder of her shift.
And the next day it turned out Amanda had stepped on one of her toddler’s legos when she returned home, but that was not the result of any divine- or diabolical- interference.