Valkyrie

Sometimes, I wake up with a story in my head. Until now, I haven't been writing them down. Typing them down. Whatever. Today I'm going to change that. This story is an embellishment of a dream I woke from moments ago.

Someone's time was up. I knew who it was, and that he would die on my watch. It was hardly an unusual occurrence at a nursing home, but, being what I am, I could always feel it. I had to be careful. Always knowing when someone was going to die could draw suspicion that I might be chemically assisting their passings. So, most of the time, I didn't give the residents any special attention on the days of their deaths. I just muddled along, business as usual; handing out meds, checking vitals, dressing wounds, wiping butts -- the stuff nurses do at places like this. Sometimes, I would help prepare the bodies for transport to the next destination.

Other times, I'd prepare the souls.

"Caleb hasn't been responding since this morning," said Bethany, one of the nursing assistants. "His vitals are okay, but it's like he's checked out. We've been keeping an eye on him."

"Thanks, Beth," I said, setting my back pack and my coffee down at my nursing station. "Have a good night."

"You too," said Bethany, leaving through the back door as the alarm spat out a cautionary "beep".

My two aides were already on duty, doing between-shift rounds. Third shift was always blessedly quiet. No visitors. No meals. No wheelchair traffic jams in the elevator. No screaming, usually.

I waited most of my shift before going to Caleb Albrecht's room-- 205B. The TV was on, and the wizened old man was slumped in his wheelchair, staring into space. I tsked at my aides, who should have put him in bed hours ago.

"Caleb," I said, shutting off the TV. "Time for sleep, sweetheart."

He was so light, a mere shade of the man he must once have been, that it was no trouble for me to lift him into bed myself. (Totally against protocol, but we were so understaffed that if I didn't go against protocol at least twice a shift, nothing got done.)

As I expected, his blue eyes met mine soon after I tucked him in. "Wait," came a soft, ragged voice.

And wait, I did, because I could not have moved if I'd wanted to. It wasn't in my job description. My real job, I mean.

Some call us Angels of Death. Others call us Valkyries. Most don't call us anything at all, because they can't see us for what we are, or don't want to. (I can tell you that we're not Angels. Angels are terrifying, beastly creatures who only appear as beautiful to those for whom they have a message. They are beings unto themselves, and they're often rather haughty, unsociable fellows.) Valkyries can come from any race of beings, including humans, and our job is usually pretty simple. We're the Choosers of the Dead. We often end up working in places like nursing homes and hospitals, and more than a few of us are in the military.

You might think we only flutter around battlefields, hoisting the fallen to our bare bosoms to take them to Valhöll. Well, um, I've never done that, and Valhöll isn't the popular destination it used to be. Truth is, the Chosen get to go to whatever version of the Afterlife would make them happiest, and we take them there.

So, to clarify: I am completely human, but Chooser is my job description, and I'm not naked. Usually.

On this occasion, the Chosen was Caleb Albrecht, a World War II veteran with two purple hearts and a battle scar he loved to show off to the younger female carers here at Amber Acres. He smiled toothlessly, and I smiled back.

"You here to take me?" he asked.

"Take you where?" I countered, speaking merely as a nurse.

Caleb grew silent for a moment, squinting hard as he looked at me. "Yer wings are showin', doll," he said, winking a blind eye.

"Say the Word and we'll blow this joint," I shot back, in his vernacular.

"The word? Oh, yes... the Word," said Caleb, his voice dropping to a whisper. "I was told never to tell St. Peter'imself that Word."

"Do I look like St. Peter?" I asked. "C'mon, it's part of the deal. Then we can go. Your wife's waiting, and so's Whiskey Tango." Whiskey had been Caleb's loyal dog for seventeen years.

"Well, all right," he said. "The Last Word I'll ever say."

To anyone else, Caleb's Word would've sounded like a string of unintelligible syllables, the babblings of a demented, dying man. To my ears, it was a sweet, harmonic note that froze time for all but the two of us...

A minute later, I covered his face with his favorite blue quilt. I walked down to the nurse's station, and made the call.