“Now I should go before my staff has a meltdown,” Linden said, standing up and smoothing his blazer. “Who knew being a politician was mostly being babysat by a pack of highly strung people?”
“Kind of like being an Angel,” Maddy said aloud before she could stop herself.
The senator put his hand out towards her. Maddy hesitated a moment. His smooth hand hung outstretched in the space between them.
Maddy shook his hand. He gripped hers firmly.
“You have your father’s eyes,” the senator said. “Goodbye, Madison. Let’s hope we meet again under more favourable circumstances.”
CHAPTER 20
Jackson and Mark sat next to each other at a gleaming oak table in the conference room of the medical centre. Across from them was assembled a panel of four doctors, wearing crisp white lab coats over their shirts and ties. The room also doubled as a library, and the walls were lined with volume after volume of handsomely leather-bound books and journals.
Jacks
wasn’t looking at the doctors or anything else in the room, though: his gaze was through the window at the sunny day outside. Birds flitted about, squirrels scurried back and forth with prize nuts, and sprinklers chattered along the green lawns as they watered the grass.
The tall doctor with a neatly trimmed beard whom Jackson’s stepfather often played golf with cleared his throat.
“Jackson?”
Jacks kept looking out of the window. After a long moment, he answered without turning his head. “Yes?”
“So you understand . . . what we’ve told you?”
Jacks spun in his chair and put his hand down gently on the table. “Yes, doctors, seems pretty clear.”
A pained look crossed Mark’s face.
Jacks stood up and put his hand out. “Thanks for your time.” He nodded to a shorter Angel doctor with auburn hair. “Dr Liebesgott, safe travels.”
The doctors all shook Jackson’s hand, grave looks on their faces. Jacks’s smile, on the other hand, was bigger than life. It confused them as they filed slowly out the side door to their offices.
The smile remained on Jacks’s face until he and Mark had reached the hallway, which is when it turned to disgust. Jacks took five quick steps and then spun on his heels to the right, punching the thick wall. His fist instantly flared in pain.
“Jacks,” Mark said, reaching forward. Jacks started walking further away down the hall.
“Over,” Jacks said in anger and sadness. “It’s over.”
“Jackson, wait.” Mark caught up to him, grabbing his shoulder. “We don’t know that yet. We can get a third opinion, a fourth opinion, a fifth opinion. They themselves said it’s not a hundred per cent.”
“How long can we fool ourselves?” Jacks began walking again, his footsteps quick and angry.
“It’s not fooling ourselves. There is a new treatment from England. We can find more doctors, another clinic, a— ”
Jacks stopped and turned to Mark, his eyes and voice were brimming with emotion.
“Mark, they said I’ll probably never fly again. What was the term he used?” A mocking tone edged his voice. “Oh yes, I think he used the term miracle.”
Mark looked Jacks squarely in the eye. “There have been those before, Jackson. There have been miracles.”
Jacks looked at him almost mockingly. “Not in my lifetime, Mark.”
Jacks turned and walked the rest of the way down the hall, pushing open the heavy oak door that led outside. Mark watched as sunshine poured into the dim corridor and then vanished as the door creaked shut again, Jacks disappearing into the sunny afternoon.
Outside in the blinding sun, Jackson put on his sunglasses and squinted off into the distance, past the well-manicured garden and fountains outside the medical building, into something more abstract. Something more terrifying. His stomach felt cold and vacant.
Ahead of him, his life seemed to stretch out to infinity. Empty. A series of meaningless daily rituals, adding up to nothing, meaning nothing. If he couldn’t be a Guardian, what good was he? He knew now that the parties, the clubs, the attention in Angel City – all of that would never fill a life in which he couldn’t do what he was sure he had been born to do. He couldn’t live on those empty events. Not after Maddy had shown him the deeper side of life, which was helping people. Not after saving Maddy, and being saved by her. He thought about Sylvester’s story of how he had lost his wings, and the young girl the detective hadn’t been able to rescue. Penelope. Maddy had saved more than Jackson’s life that night on the library tower.