Guardian: The Divine Chronicles, #1

By R.J Radcliffe

Hospital Porter, Immortal, Guardian of the Afterlife

In the dead of night Bertie walks the corridors of Macmillan's Hope and Sanctuary Hospital, befriending the dying and letting them know they are not alone, that they have not been forgotten.

Is he an angel, there to guide them on to their eternity, or is he just a kindly hospital porter giving those so close to the end a little hope?

Bertie is both, and he is neither.

He is the guardian of the afterlife, guiding those recently passed back to a time in their life where they were the happiest.

Bertie isn't the only one with abilities he cannot explain though, and he isn't the only one for whom the sands of time do not flow.  Who is the man who finds him in his dreams, and why does he reach out to him?

• Language: English
• Publisher: Shattered Hourglass Publishing
• Release date: Dec 31, 2023
• ISBN: 9798201407339

Book preview

PART I

THE GUARDIAN

Introduction

I am writing this for you.

My love.

My inspiration.

You need to know the truth about me, about you, about this world we live in.

Chapter One

THE END

I sit here waiting for her to die. The doctors and nurses have disappeared. They have made her comfortable but she doesn’t look so to me. Her family is with her now, in her last hours. They are here to say goodbye to their sister, mother, grandmother. It won’t be long.

‘Bertie, can you take these files down to the fifth floor?’ Doctor Hasim asks me as he steps out from the nurse’s station.

I smile, diverting my eyes from her to him, and shake my head, lifting my can of soda, ‘Sorry dude, break time.’

He shakes his head and sits down in the seat next to me, ‘You know there’s a cafeteria down on the second floor, people usually have their breaks there.’

‘Yes, people do, don’t they? I’m not people though.’

‘You’re right there. Tell me, Bertie, you don’t mind me calling you Bertie do you?’

I shrug, ‘You have been doing so for the past two years, doc.’

‘Why do you come here on your breaks? Why do I always see you hanging around this ward? Have you some sort of morbid fascination with the dying?’

I frown a little. If I told him he’d have me down in the basement strapped up in a jacket which fastens from the back, and wearing a sponge helmet, faster than you could say ‘crazy’.

‘I guess I like the quiet. Here it is always peaceful.’

‘But the patients are all terminal. Perhaps you should have a little more respect for their loved ones. They don’t need to see an orderly enjoying his cappuccino and meatball sub, treating the waiting area as front row seats to the last hours of their loved one’s life.’

I turn and look at the doctor. He’s just a kid, thinking he is looking out for his patients and their families. It wasn’t so long ago Hasim was asking me for directions, the new fish out of water and thrust into real life.

‘Doc, I couldn’t care less about the loved ones. Yes, they’re sad grandma or grandpa is dying. Of course they’re sad, but this final goodbye is their closure. They always come to visit right at the end. Weeks can pass and the men and women who litter this ward go without a single visit. Take Clarence in there,’ I say, pointing at the elderly lady I have played chess with late at night every Tuesday, Thursday, and Sunday since she arrived here to die two weeks ago. ‘She has two daughters and four sons and only one of her children has bothered to visit her until now. It is the patients, like Pat across the hall, or Tony two doors down, Trevor, the most miserable son-of-a-bitch you’d ever have the misfortune to meet, but strike up a conversation about baseball and he’s like an excited child. These men and women are why I eat my food and drink my drinks here, because to them, at the end of their lives when they should have loved one’s surrounding them but don’t, I am a bit of familiarity, a comfort. I am their friend.’

The doc shakes his head again. I shouldn’t have bothered trying to explain. This isn’t the first time. He can’t order me out though. When the hospital you work in is called Macmillan’s Hope and Sanctuary Hospital and your name is Robert Macmillan, there is little the nurses, doctors, or board of directors (of which I am chairman) can do.

‘It’s sick, Bertie. You really should find another hobby in place of watching people die.’

I smile, nod, mumble that I’ll certainly give it some consideration, and he leaves me to my soda.

Across the way, Clarence’s family file out of her room. Her children wipe tears from their eyes and hold each other. A family united for half an hour. The next time they will see each other will be at Clay’s funeral and then maybe a year or two later. Arthur, Clarence’s husband, will not last too long without his love in his life. I’ve seen it a hundred times. Clay’s death sentence, the cancer, is his death sentence too. He’ll give up, lose all meaning to his life once Clay has gone. He will die of a broken heart.

The door is still open, and I catch Clay’s eye. She smiles at me and I lift my hand.

An alarm beeps and two nurses and a doctor rush past me, heading down the hall.

‘What’s happened, he was stable…’ the doctor asks the nurse as they disappear inside Trevor’s room. I close my eyes. I thought Clay was going to be next.

Standing up, I wave again at the eighty-year-old stage four cancer victim and wink at her. Perhaps she’s holding on, fighting it for a few more hours with poor Arthur. She smiles, managing a wink of her left eye in my direction. She is almost blind, bless her, but she says she always recognises my silhouette.

Before I reach Trevor’s door, I hear the heart monitoring machine’s continuous high pitch drone. I lean on the wall opposite the door and close my eyes, sighing. Static crackles in the air, and for a moment the ward is in complete silence. Inside the room, medical professionals are attempting to revive an eighty-three-year-old man who has a brain tumour the size of an orange in his head. He’s gone for them. They shouldn’t be so hard on themselves, but they always are. People die. It is written into their genetic makeup. The second man is conceived, the clock is counting down to this moment.

Trevor walks out of his hospital room, his face full of colour, eyes bright and alert.

I smile and hold out my hand, which he takes.

‘It’s nice to see a friendly face Bertie. Those young guns were getting so flustered and up in my face, I could hardly breathe. I thought this place was supposed to be a peaceful, stress-free environment, that’s what it said on the brochure. I should sue.’

I crack Trev on the back and put an arm around the man’s shoulders, ‘You’re a miserable ass aren’t you.’

‘Well, wouldn’t you be? It’s Tuesday, that nurse with the perky rack and cute little ass isn’t on until Friday. Did I tell you how much she reminded me of my Winnie?’

‘Only about a million times you boring old fool,’ I laugh.

‘You’d never seen a beauty like her. I was eighteen years old the day I met her at the diner in my hometown just outside of Iowa. She was seventeen years old and had just started on as a waitress for a little extra cash. I’ll tell you, those deep blue eyes, they could’a sunk a thousand ships. I knew right then and there I would dedicate my life to winning her over and then making all her dreams come true.’

The elevator pings as we arrive at the end of the hallway, stepping inside. I press the button for the top floor. Trev doesn’t even notice. He is too busy telling me about his Winnie.

‘It took me months to build up the courage to ask her out on a date. I remember how nervous I was the day I finally grew some balls and did it. I was wearing my favourite baseball jacket, hair oiled back. In those days I had a jet black curly mop on my head. She looked me right in the eye and smiled, blushing before saying she would love to go out with me sometime, that she had been waiting for me to ask. Imagine that, little pissy pants nervous wreck with no clue and all that time she had been secretly admiring me from afar, just as I had her.’

I smile and then notice a tremor in Trev’s left hand.

‘You ok?’

He nods, ‘I feel great kid, this is the first time I’ve been able to take a walk in two weeks. It’s good to get a bit of air in the lungs, you know?’

Reaching down, I take Trev’s hand in mine and squeeze it, stopping the shakes, ‘Where did you take your Winnie on your first date?’

‘For a picnic. I picked her up in my bright red Chevrolet, the roof down so we could feel the wind in our hair as we drove down to a special place I knew. She was wearing a bright red summer dress, the same shade as the car. Her hair was loose, those blonde locks dancing in the wind. We wound up by a little stream I knew about, which fed into a secluded lake. Under the shade of a tree we ate our picnic and talked all afternoon, then as the sun was setting we walked down to the lake and watched as it disappeared into the water. It was the perfect day.’

The door pings and we step out by the water’s edge. Trev turns to me and frowns, his haggard face now youthful, those dark curls oiled back.

‘What’s happening?’ A lighter, more carefree voice asks me.

I nod across the lake, to the jetty which juts out into the water, ‘Can you see her?’

Trev frowns and I watch as tears form at the sides of his eyes.

‘But she’s…’

‘Shhh… less of that now, Trevor. I think you know where we are. Go on, I’ll find my own way back, go to her my friend, she’s been waiting on that jetty for you for too long.’

Trevor takes a step forward and turns, throwing himself at me and hugging me, ‘Thank you, Bertie.’ He then runs off along the water’s edge towards his love, whooping and waving his arms. The silhouette of the seventeen-year-old Winnie waves back at him, beckoning him closer towards their eternity.

I open my eyes and wipe the tears away. Even that miserable son-of-a-bitch was once young and innocent. By that lake is where he belongs, with his love.

I watch as the doctor and nurses file out of Trev’s room, faces downcast. It is always hard for them to lose a patient. If only they knew where he was now, sat at the end of a jetty overlooking a lake on a perfect summer evening. Perhaps then they would not feel so bad. Death is the condition of life. It doesn’t mean it is over. There is always a part of them waiting for me to take them in the elevator. While their body ceases to function, their consciousness is still there for a little while longer, floating around in limbo, waiting on guardians to show them the way. That’s who I am you see, I am a guardian. I protect that consciousness, guide it across, back into that forgotten memory, and leave it there to spend all of time.

Others would call me an angel, guiding souls through the pearly white gates to heaven, but this fairytale is a little too sickly sweet for my liking. To begin with, I ain’t no angel. I’m an overweight, overworked hospital porter. I mop shit and sick up for a living, I drink too much on the good days and I am comatose on the bad. There is no halo here, no fluffy white wings beneath my overalls. These people die and I still see them. At first, I didn’t know what to do with them. It took a bout of murders across London until I understood my calling.

Chapter Two

THE CHILDREN’S WARD

An Angel. That is the conclusion they draw when I’m there to meet them upon their passing, and it often surprises them. They expected feathered wings, a halo hovering above my head, distant harp music playing as I approach them to guide them over. They do not expect Bertie the hospital porter to be the guy to send them on their way, although they are thankful it is. For the most part, I have been a friendly face in an otherwise inhospitable situation. Dying is not fun. Knowing your time has come to an end and there is nothing you can do about it can leave patients bitter and they lose all hope. I always try to lighten their spirits. That is my gift, I suppose, to connect with these people in a way so they do not feel like they’re doing this alone.

I also have another gift that makes my relationship with the dying all the more special. I am able to connect with their conscious moments before it is lights out. It’s usually quick. I have to grasp hold of the last ebbing light, which is all that is left of them before they disappear forever, leaving in their wake a body that has given up.

My first was many years ago before they built this hospital, before I called New York home again after many years living away. All day long I had been wrestling with an almighty headache. I was living in London, working down the docks, loading and unloading cargo ships. An honest day’s work for an honest day’s pay, the latter of which would often be spent in one of the many Gin houses along the riverfront. This particular evening I declined my invitation to either end the night unconscious in the gutter or in a whore’s bed, and I was walking home to sleep the headache off…

‘Bertie, you’re wanted down on three. Blood and a burst colostomy bag just as you step out of the elevators.’

I nod to the nurse and whistle as I walk, smiling and greeting several doctors and patients on my way to the cleaning cupboard. An honest day’s work for an honest day’s pay.

After cleaning up the mess and sanitising the affected area, I have a wander around the ward. It has been some time since I’ve been on this floor. The Children’s Ward is further on down the corridor and I stop myself from going any further. Several years ago I stopped helping the children because it was screwing my head up. So many innocents dying way before their time and looking to you for guidance. It is too much.

Sitting down on one of five chairs opposite another bank of elevators, I stare at the sign above the doorway advertising the ward and feel my heart beating hard in my chest. What kind of person do I pretend to be? I help those who have lived their lives, but not those who have had their lives stolen away from them.

I stand up from my chair and take a deep breath. Beyond that door is so much joy and also so much pain. Unlike the reluctant children visiting their dying parents, in here you taste the love, smell the anguish, hear the terror in that parent’s cries as their little bundle of everything is stolen away from them. When I used to walk this ward, I found I drank a lot after my