Angel of Mercy by Andrew Neiderman

what it would lead to, didn’t she? But when she looked back toward Tommy Livingston’s bedroom again, her resistance waned.
    “I can’t help it,” she muttered. “Susie should be here. He does need her and she… needs to help him.”
    She closed her eyes and took a deep breath and then she made the call.
    The thing of it was, she didn’t feel like she was in a strange house.
    As the twilight came, Susie felt herself drifting back through time. This kitchen, this living room, these halls and these walls, even the vases on the tables and the painting above the fireplace had a certain familiarity. When she closed her eyes and inhaled, she thought she drew in the scents and the aromas of her own home. Not the home she was living in now with Faye, not the apartment on Palm Canyon Boulevard South, but her real home, her home when her mother and her father were alive and they lived in Pacific Palisades.
    She noticed the Livingstons’ family albums were still there on the glass-top center table, just as they had been in her own home. Someone always brought out the family albums at times like this, she thought.
    It was as if he or she were afraid Death would wipe the memories out of their minds, so they had better reinforce them quickly.
    But when she sat down and opened the first one, in stead of two little boys, she saw a pair of twins, and instead of Sylvia and Tommy Livingston thirty-someodd years before, at the threshold of their marriage and their lives together, she saw her own parents. She sighed.
    How young and beautiful they were, how handsome and strong, how healthy and vibrant. Why couldn’t they always be that way? Why did they have to grow old and sick, and why did one of them have to die before the other?
    It made her angry. Couldn’t God have figured out a different pattern, something more pleasant for people so in love? Why have something like love anyway, if this was going to happen? While He was at it, He could have prevented all this grief and sorrow with a swipe of His divine hand. Instead, she had to be called upon time after time after time.
    She rose and moved slowly through the vaguely lit house, moving like an apparition that had just arrived and was unsure of its haunting grounds.
    She limped down the hallway and slipped into the bedroom.
    Tommy Livingston slept so soundly. He resembled a corpse laid to rest in some funeral parlor. On his back, his nose up, his Adam’s apple prominent but still, his breathing barely discernible, he metamorphosed before her eyes and became her daddy in his coffin. She could even hear the organ music off to the right and behind her.
    She moved to him, her hands clutching her handkerchief. The tears were streaming down her cheeks.
    Vividly recalling, she reached out slowly and put her hand over his forehead. He felt stone cold.
    “You’re happier now, Daddy. I know you are. Good night, sweet Daddy.”
    She smiled through her tears and removed her hand.
    She was going to go to her knees and offer a prayer when suddenly the phone rang and shattered her memory like a window pane, the shards of precious images falling all around her.
    Angry, she stabbed at the receiver and lifted it before the second ring disturbed Tommy Livingston.
    “Hello,” the voice on the other end said when she said nothing.
    She reached around the phone and pulled the jack out of the base. The receiver went dead. Then she cradled it and went to her knees, only it was no good. The ringing continued when whoever it was called back.
    Frustrated, she rose and went out to the kitchen to answer.
    “Mr. Livingston’s residence,” she said.
    “Huh? Who is this?”
    “Susie Sullivan.”
    “Susie Sullivan?” There was silence for a moment.
    “You’re the nurse?” the man asked.
    “No. I’m her sister. I was called here to stay with Mr. Livingston.”
    “What? Who called you?” the man demanded.
    “Mr. Livingston asked my sister to call me. I keep the house clean and care for him during