ANN'S ANGEL

by

CQB

CHAPTER 4

THE CHAPTERS

INTRO

CHAPTER 1

CHAPTER 2

CHAPTER 3

CHAPTER 4

CHAPTER 5

EPILOGUE

Both Frank and Joe turned toward the door as they heard their aunt’s cry.  Wide-eyed, they knew they were caught, yet it wasn’t anger they saw on their Aunt Gertrude’s face.  

“Oh boys,” she said sadly, walking up to them.   

“These…these…they’re beautiful!” Joe finally managed to blurt out.  

Frank, still too bewildered to speak, just nodded his head in agreement.  

Gertrude sighed.  Putting down the package, she made room on the edge of the bed and sat down, facing the boys.  

Fenton Hardy had heard his sister cry out and hurried up the stairs.  He saw the boys and was immediately ready to reprimand them for going into the room, but stopped as Gertrude took Frank’s hand, then Joe’s hand into her own.  

“I think it’s time I told someone about Ann…” he heard his sister say.  

* * *

Gertrude Hardy couldn’t believe what she was hearing.  “No! It can’t be true!” she cried, tears streaming from her dark brown eyes.  

Mabel Johnson had rushed back to the waiting area to find the dark-haired teenager.  The girl looked perplexed as she searched in vain for some member of the Webber family.  

Mabel led the girl into the hall and carefully explained what she’d heard.  The teenager had refused to believe that Ann Webber was dead.  

“S-she’s only sixteen!” Gertrude sobbed.  “She just can’t be dead!”  

They both looked up as a sound of utter anguish filled the hallway.  Gertrude recognized Mrs. Webber’s red hair, so much like her daughter’s.  

As she watched the Webber family being led to a private room down the hall, reality hit Gertrude Hardy.  Her best friend in all the world was dead.  She’d never see Ann’s bouncy red curls, or dancing blue eyes again.  

Gertrude fell against Mabel and broke into soul-wrenching sobs.  

* * *

“I didn’t know what to do with the angel doll I’d made,” Gertrude Hardy explained to her nephews. “After I’d calmed down, I told Mrs. Johnson about the doll.  At first, she suggested I keep it, but I knew I couldn’t. I knew the doll belonged to Ann.  

“Mrs. Johnson probably broke every rule in the hospital rule book,” she continued, “but she took me into a room where I could see Ann through a glass window.  She looked so pale, but she looked peaceful too.  

“I realized then that Ann didn’t need the angel doll.  She was with real angels.”  

“What happened to the doll?” Joe asked quietly.  Gertrude gently squeezed his hand.  

“Mrs. Johnson led me out of the isolation ward, and we passed through the children’s intensive care area.  I was hurting inside, but I got glimpses of children, some bigger, some quite small, that were hurting physically and emotionally.  

“I saw one little girl, about six years old.  She had red hair like Ann’s only much shorter, and her eyes were green instead of blue.  I looked at the wrapped box in my hand and I carried it into the room.”  

Frank reached his free hand up and carefully wiped a tear off his cheek.  

“Her name was Abby.  I found out later that she and her parents were going away for the holiday, but they had an accident.  Abby had several broken bones, but she was alive.  Unfortunately, neither of her parents had survived.  

“I gave her the gift.  When she opened it, she began to cry and I thought I’d made a big mistake.  But she looked at me and told me that the doll looked just like her mommy.”  

Gertrude let go of the boys’ hands and reached behind her.  She held a beautiful angel doll in her hands, not much different than the first one she had made as a girl of sixteen.  

Outside in the hallway, Fenton smiled to himself.  He quietly slipped down the stairs and into his office, realizing, not for the first time, what a truly caring person his older sister was.  

“What do you do with them all?” Frank asked, gazing at the bed full of the celestial, red-haired dolls.  

Gertrude looked into Frank’s brown eyes and then Joe’s blue ones.  “If you’ll leave me alone for about two hours, I’ll be able to show you what I do with the dolls.”  

Both boys grinned and started for the door, glancing back at their aunt as she called their names.  She reached down and pushed the ball to them.  

“I’ll forget that I saw that in here,” she said. “Scat now!  Let me finish these last few,” she mildly scolded, shooing them out the door.  

* * *

Several hours later, Frank and Joe sat bundled up in their winter coats in the back of their family car.  Fenton Hardy was driving and Gertrude was riding in the front passenger seat.  

A short time later, the car stopped at the Bayport Hospital .   

“Frank, Joe” Fenton ordered, “Come with me.”  

The boys obeyed and got out of the car.  They helped their father grab a large box from the back of the station wagon.  The pair followed their dad into the hospital.  

“Special delivery from Santa Claus,” Fenton told the receptionist.  “These are to be distributed to any child that might need one.”  

The woman peered in the box and smiled.  “I’m sure we can help Santa find some children that would love these dolls.”  

Fenton hid a smile as he watched his sons climb back in the car.  Neither had uttered a word, but watched in an almost reverent, awed silence at the exchange in the hospital.  

They made several more stops; delivering several more boxes of the angel dolls, before heading for home.  

Finally, Joe asked the question that had been plaguing the twelve-year-old all night.  

“Aunt Gertrude, why didn’t you take the dolls to the children yourself?”  

Gertrude smiled and turned to face her young nephew.  “Because, they aren’t mine; they belong to Ann and she needs to get all the credit for them.”  

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