Working the past five years as a nurse in the trauma ward, Jeanette had seen some bad cases.

The patient in room 320 was probably the worst.

The man’s body was a grotesque patchwork of stitches, and ugly metal scaffolding protruded from his limbs, holding shattered bones together. Tubes drained off his urine and kept fluid and blood from filling his lungs. His face was so swollen and discolored it looked like it belonged on a corpse dragged out of a lake.

The patient had jumped from the roof of a seven-story building. An apparent suicide attempt. Jeanette thought of how much pain he must be in, how grueling a recovery he had ahead. She crossed herself and wondered if he’d have been better off if he’d succeeded.

As Jeanette checked the broken man’s IV drip, he began muttering faintly. His one eye that wasn’t totally swollen shut locked on hers.

He was heavily sedated and his jaws were wired shut, so it was hard to make out what he was mumbling. Jeanette leaned closer. It sounded like he was saying one word over and over.

“Fly,” he rasped. “Fly... Fly... Fly.”

“Fly?”

He repeated the word again. And again.

Jeanette glanced around the room, wondering if there had been a fly buzzing around, bothering him. She rolled up a magazine from the night table and looked for one in the room. She didn’t find it.

“Fly,” the man said again as she returned the magazine to the table. His eye followed her.

He reached up weakly and placed a hand on her forearm. The stitches on his palm were rough against her skin.

“God bless you, honey, I’m not sure what you you’re trying to say,” she whispered, gently lifting the man’s hand and laying it across his chest. “You get some rest.”

Jeanette walked back to the nurses’ station and got her cigarettes. She needed a break.

She usually stood outside the employee entrance to smoke, but she thought she would head to the roof today, feel the wind in her hair. It would be quiet up there, and she wouldn’t have to chit-chat with the rest of the smokers who congregated at the entrance.

When she stepped into the elevator, Jeanette realized what the stitched-up man had been trying to say. Not “fly” as in bug, but “fly” as in soaring through the air. He was heavily sedated; did it feel like he was flying? Or when he leaped off that building, did he think he could fly?

Fly.

Jeanette felt the hair on her arms prickle as she thought of the man plunging to the pavement. Of the sickening sound he must have made when he hit. She pressed the elevator button and closed her eyes.

On the roof, she lit a cigarette and tried to forget the patient in room 320.

The sun was disappearing pink behind the city skyline, and the buildings had taken on a silver shimmer. It was beautiful. She wondered why she didn’t come up here more often.

It felt serene. Far from the hustle on the ground, from the chaos of the trauma ward.

Fly.

Jeanette took a drag and walked to the edge of the roof, looking down at the tiny cars below. She finished the cigarette and flipped the butt over the edge, watching as the wind kept it aloft for just a second.

There was something magical about the way it had hung there. Just like there was something magical about the quiet sunset.

Up here, it seemed like there was no one else in the world.

Fly.

Jeanette looked over her shoulder. Wings had sprouted from her back. They were huge, white-feathered wings. An angel’s wings.

Wings strong enough to keep her aloft.

She smiled and stepped forward.

To Fly.

* * * * *