Angels in the Moment

At fourteen I hiked Mount Humbug alone. At one point the path narrowed and I lost my footing. As I slid off the edge four arms lifted me to safety. It was a couple in their sixties. I wanted to ask them if they were angels but they were gone. 

If I had gotten to ask they would likely have said that, no, they were definitely not angels, but a mere retired couple hiking the Pacific Northwest. 

I wouldn't have believed them.

Fast forward sixteen years. It's a crisp morning around the turn of the century. I drive my beat up Ford Escort out of our apartment complex into our otherwise affluent neighborhood.

On the street I see a parked van with a man walking behind it and a woman running towards my car. My Jersey brain kicks in high gear. They want to run a scam on me. Better beat it outta here, fast. But her eyes stop my car cold. No, she isn't with this guy. That's primal fear in those eyes.  She's fleeing him.

I lunge onto the passenger side lock, push the door open and yell, "Get in!".

We round the van and I burn his license plate number into my eye sockets.

This would be abductee in the pink hat (I'll never forget that pink hat) hysterically tells me she is visiting her father from out of state. She went out for a morning run when this van pulled over and that guy tried to throw her in it. She grew up here. How could this happen here?

"Then I saw you", she says.

She leans sideways, viewing me in full and asks, "Are you an angel?".

"No", I chuckle, "I'm just a girl on her way to work".

I don't think she believes me.

----------------