Chapter Twenty-Two

Jack

Heaven

WHEN HE STOOD in the doorway to his supervisor’s office, Jack tried not to gulp nervously as Ernie had when his trainee had heard the request for Jack to come here. She looked up, her ancient eyes dim with despair.

“Come in, Jack.”

He did.

“Close the door behind you.”

His knees knocked together beneath his robe as he complied. He could recall only one other time when this door had been closed. That angel had been transferred from the Pray Care Center to filing records of incoming souls, one of the most boring jobs in Heaven. No one ever knew what the reason was, but everyone had assumed it was because of some sort of irreparable mistake.

“Jack,” his supervisor asked, “what do two wrongs make?”

“A bigger mistake.”

“And what about three wrongs?”

He stepped closer to her desk. He did not demur. He owed her honesty... and it seemed that she knew the truth already. How long had she known about his mistake? Had her other attempts at conversation been offers for him to come clean? He had not taken the hint then, but he would now.

“The computers were not damaged irreversibly,” he said. “I knew it would require some work to get them back to functioning as they had, but if I had let the testing be done, it would have—”

The look she gave him silenced him. When she pointed, he sat in a chair in front of her desk. She came around the desk and asked quietly, “Did you realize that you destroyed Dr. Michael Archer’s experiments as well as all the others at the laboratory at the same time you interrupted the computers’ normal processes?”

“No.” He wrung his hands in his long sleeves. “I would never intentionally do anything destructive. I was only trying to make everything right once more. I made sure that the computers were not permanently damaged, only that it would take a while longer before Dr. Cho could do his tests on the samples provided by Gabrielle D’Angelo and the baby.”

His supervisor drew in a deep breath and let it out in a sigh. “You have good intentions, Jack.”

“But good intentions are the road to...” He gulped. “That other place.”

“Not really. Good intentions often take us on a path that leads us to our own private hell. That is where you are now.”

“I am.”

“And it was all for nothing.”

“Nothing?”

“Dr. Cho has worked to correct his computers and run the tests. He gave the results to Dr. Archer a short time ago.”

He leaned forward and put his clasped hands on her desk. Resting his forehead on them, he whispered, “Heaven save us!”

“Dr. Archer has good reason to believe that the computers are still faulty, so he intends to have the tests redone.”

“And Miss D’Angelo? What does she believe?”

His supervisor’s eyes grew sad. “He has not told her, and I have to wonder if he will. Your plan to halt the test from being done has created further complications. If it had been done soon after the baby arrived, there would not have been time for affection to grow between Dr. Archer and Miss D’Angelo. Now he is torn between being honest with her and not destroying what they have built together. He knows what he should do; yet he knows what the cost could be when they are so close to love.”

“But if he does not tell her... ?”

“He will suffer. He is suffering. Greatly. If he lashes out at her because he is so angry at himself, he may wreck what he is trying to protect. I doubt he realizes that now when he is so lost in the maze of his quandary.”

“I had no idea. I was only trying to correct a mistake with as little pain as possible.”

“I know.” She put her hand on his clasped hands. “These unanticipated results of meddling are why Heaven seldom directly intrudes on matters on Earth, other than through prayer.”

“Tell me what I can do to make everything right again and escape this torment I have created for them as well as myself.”

“I think the answer is simple and quite obvious.”

“It is?”

“You must go to Earth and do what you must there to correct your well-meaning mistakes. You need to go to both Dr. Archer’s lab at Warren Scientific and Miss D’Angelo’s assisted living facility, so you may put to rights all the ramifications of your interfering.”

“Down there?” He barely could choke out the two words. Swallowing hard, he managed to add, “You just said we should not meddle with lives on Earth.”

His supervisor’s voice remained calm. “Normally, no, but now there is no other choice. You have done all you can from here, and the results have only added more complications to an already complicated situation.”

“But to go down there...” He gulped. “Alone?”

“You know you will not be alone. We will be watching you as we do everyone there.”

The idea of having his supervisor peering over his shoulder offered him no comfort. “But it has been several centuries since I was last there.”

“All the more reason for you to spend some time on Earth while you deal with the decisions you have made.” She gave him a sympathetic smile. “We will send you any help you need, but I believe, as others do, that this is a situation you can handle by yourself.” She folded her hands and her wings at the same time in a pose that he knew meant she was distressed. “Sending you to Earth is the only solution we can see to these problems.”

“When must I go?”

“Your temporary replacement is waiting at your desk in the Pray Care Center. Instruct her in what to do, and then it is time for you to go.”

“I understand,” he said. “I will do my best.”

“Vaya con Díos,” she replied when he opened the door and walked out.

Jack noticed how everyone seemed not to be looking at him when he returned to the Pray Care Center. His feet felt heavier with every step as he walked back to his desk to hand over his duties to someone else. They seemed to sink more deeply into the cloud. It was the first sign, he knew, that he was becoming again the corporeal being confined to Earth.

He wondered how he was going to put things to right on Earth when he had failed in Heaven.