A Terrible Fall of Angels (Zaniel Havelock #1)(8)

Lieutenant Charleston took me outside the room and spoke low while Gimble made friends with another nurse. “How long is this going to last?”

“Hours, days, months.” I shrugged.

“Are you telling me one of my detectives is going to be like some charismatic preacher for months?”

“Or it could fade in an hour,” I said.

Two other nurses came down the hallway and entered Gimble’s room. We stepped back to look in on him, but he was beaming at the four nurses and telling them about the angel. There didn’t seem to be any medical emergency that warranted that many nurses.

Dr. Paulson came down the hallway frowning. “Where the hell are my nurses?”

We both pointed at the room behind us. Paulson strode through the door. “We have other patients on this floor, ladies and gentleman.”

They made sounds of apology and seemed a little embarrassed or confused about why all four of the nurses on the floor were in one room when there didn’t seem to be much wrong with the patient.

Dr. Paulson shooed them out of the room like they were children being sent outside to play. He didn’t seem affected by the angelic bliss spilling off Gimble; neither were Charleston and I, but we had training in resisting metaphysical interference, and the doctor didn’t. So how was he unaffected?

He looked at both of us, the irritation in his eyes bordering on anger, but his voice was still controlled and even. “The religious mania is fine, I’ll have someone from psychiatric look at him, but why is it affecting the nursing staff?”

I answered, because as Charleston liked to remind me, I was the unit’s angel expert. “Sometimes people come away from angelic visitations trailing clouds of glory. Being that close to God can make them high, but it can also make them shine to other people. People are naturally attracted to things that bring them closer to God’s presence.”

“I know that seeing an angel in pure form can drive a person insane or give them amnesia, so they don’t remember the incident at all, or even this type of evangelical experience, but there’s nothing in the literature about it being contagious.”

“It’s a rare side effect,” I said.

“I’ve never heard of it either,” Charleston said. He joined the doctor in giving me unfriendly looks.

“It may be because Gimble is psychic in his own right, so that his powers are combining with the protective story his mind built for him.”

“What protective story?” Charleston asked.

I looked at him as if to say, did he really want me to give out this much detail in front of someone who wasn’t one of us? But he said, “Dr. Paulson is the doctor in charge of Gimble’s treatment, Havelock. He needs to know enough to make that treatment effective.”

“Point taken, Lieutenant,” I said, and turned to the doctor. “I saw the same angel and it wasn’t all light and choral singing. It was special and awe-inspiring, but it wasn’t the way Gimble is describing, at least not to me.”

“Are you saying that he saw something you didn’t?” Paulson asked.

“I’m saying that there is some debate on whether spiritual beings look different from person to person. The theory is that it’s the same reason that we can see spirit, but it doesn’t always show on film, so we may be seeing it with the parts of our minds that see dreams, or daydreams, rather than concrete reality.”

“So, you’re saying that what you saw and experienced may not be what the other detective saw.”

“Yes.”

“So why is that a protective story?”

“It could be that he saw exactly what I saw, but it’s too powerful for his mind to deal with, so in order not to go crazy his mind has given him a wonderful vision instead of the scarier truth.”

“You mean like a trauma victim remembering things differently,” Paulson said.

“Yes, in either case the mind is trying to protect the person from something that was overwhelming to them mentally and emotionally.”

“Don’t forget spiritually, Havelock; maybe what’s happened to Gimble is that seeing an angel in person has given his religious beliefs a kick in the head,” Charleston said.

“Maybe, but most of the time this kind of shiny happiness doesn’t last long enough to change a person’s religious habits. I pray that it doesn’t last for Gimble.”

“Why?” Charleston asked.

“Because this kind of belief can lead people to quitting their jobs, giving away their possessions, and devoting the rest of their lives to charity or something.”

“Is that so bad?”

“It is when it’s the mind protecting itself from trauma instead of a deeply held religious belief.”

“If a person leads a good life, does it matter what motivated it?” Charleston asked.

I looked at him. “What would your wife say if you came home tonight and asked her to sell the house, empty out your savings, give or sell everything of value you had so you could give it to the poor, and then you’d spend the rest of your lives helping the homeless, or something like that?”

Charleston looked at me for a moment, then laughed. “She’d think I’d lost my mind and wouldn’t do any of it with me. She’d probably try to have me put on a twenty-four-hour psychiatric hold.”