The Nebulous Nana

“Andre! It’s time to leave!” Layla called as she stomped down the hall to her brother's room. Andre looked up from his drawing as she burst through the door. “Mum’s been calling you for ten minutes. We need to go visit Nana in the hospital.”

“Ok, ok, I’m coming,” Andre said, looking down at his drawing. He’d have to finish it when they got home. He grabbed a comic to read at the hospital and followed his little sister back down the hall and out the front door. They climbed into the car and headed out towards the hospital to visit the children’s nana.

“How many times have we visited now?” Layla asked her mother as they wove their way through the Los Angeles traffic.

“I think I’ve lost count,” said Andre. “We’ve been so many times.”

“But the doctors are trying their best aren’t they?” Layla asked. Their mum nodded.

“Of course they are Layla. Their job is to help people who are sick and do whatever they can to help them get well and to make them comfortable.”

“But will Nana get better?” asked Layla.

“My, my, you’re just full of questions this morning aren’t you Layla? They will do what they can, but there are never any guarantees when people get sick.”

Layla and Andre sat gazing out the window as their car slowly took them closer and closer to Nana. Layla was thinking about all of the fun trips they liked to go, and Andre thought about how nice it was when they all just snuggled up on the couch and watched movies together. 

When they finally arrived at the hospital, Mum parked the car and they all climbed out and walked up and through the front doors. Most mornings when they arrived to visit Nana, the doctors and nurses were all rushing around. There were lots of things beeping and everyone seemed very busy. This morning, however, things were a little different. 

Whilst there were still lots of beeping happening, and some people seemed to still be very busy, they also passed small groups of doctors and nurses who were huddled together talking. They were talking very fast and seemed to be very excited about something. Layla and Andre noticed the strange behaviour but didn’t think any more about it until they reached the floor of the hospital where their Nana was. 

There seemed to be even more people standing around talking, and by the time they neared Nana’s room, they were very curious about what was going on. Just as they were about to walk through the door of Nana’s room, a very flustered looking doctor came bustling out and ran straight into their Mum.

“Oh, I’m sorry, please do excuse me,” the doctor said as she closed the door behind her. When she looked up, her eyes widened.

“Oh! It’s you! Eh….before you go in I think I um….I need to speak with you,” the doctor stuttered. Andre and Layla looked at the doctor, very confused.

“What’s wrong?” their mum asked, “Did something happen? Is Nana ok?” The doctor smiled briefly, but then her expression became worried again.

“Well,” she began, “We spoke with Nana last night about trying a new type of treatment. We told her that it was only just out of the experimental phase and we weren’t certain it would do anything to help. We didn’t think it would have any negative side effects though.”

“Nana asked to try the new treatment so we got her set up straight away. Things seemed to be going fine last night but um...this morning when we went to check on her...she...um…” the doctor trailed off. 

“She what?!?” cried Layla and Andre at the same time.

“She….she disappeared,” said the doctor, in a voice that sounded like even she didn’t believe what she was saying. Everyone looked at her, mouths open and eyes wide in disbelief.

“What do you mean she disappeared? She got up and left?” Mum asked. The doctor shook her head.

“No, I mean she literally disappeared. One minute she was there, and then the next it was like I was looking at thousands of tiny specks of light all hovering over the bed. I blinked, and then there was nothing. I just can’t explain it.”

Layla and Andre looked at the doctor, trying to understand what she was saying. Their mum thanked the doctor and asked to please see the room. The doctor opened the door and let the family file into the room, softly closing the door after them. Layla, Andre and their mum stared down at the bed where Nana had been laying the last time they had come to visit her. 

“I don’t understand,” Layla whispered. 

“How can she just be...gone?” Andre asked. Their mum sat on the side of the bed and patted the bed down as if she was just double-checking that Nana wasn’t hiding there somewhere under the covers. 

“I don’t know. I’m sure the doctors will do what they can to try and find her. Though I don’t know where they would even start looking,” their mum said. She sighed a heavy sigh and then took Layla’s hand. “Why don’t we head home? We can’t really do anything here and I’m sure the doctors will call us if they find her.”

Mum and Layla walked out of the room, but Andre lingered for a minute. Looking at the bed, he pulled up the covers, fluffed up the pillow, and then placed his comic on top of the bed. 

“Just in case you get bored Nana,” he whispered before following his family out of the room. As he closed the door, he almost thought he felt a breath of wind brushing past his dark brown hair. He continued down the hall without looking back, but if he had, he might have seen the pages of his comic rippling in what appeared to be a breeze that began and ended entirely within the hospital room. 

The ride home was a quiet one. They had all known that at some point in time they would have to say goodbye to Nana, but this was just so sudden and unexplained. When they arrived home, Mum wandered into the kitchen to start preparing lunch. Andre went to his room and went back to his drawing, while Layla sat in the lounge watching the TV. Suddenly, the cartoon she was watching was cut off and the local news reporter appeared on the screen. 

“We apologise for the interruption in your regularly scheduled program. Never in my newscasting career did I think I would ever report on something this incredible. Earlier this morning, there was a bank hold up in which four thieves locked down the local bank and held the tellers and customers hostage. They demanded that the bank manager open the vault and give them all of the money inside. However! Eye witness accounts from inside the bank tell of some kind of supernatural force that appeared within the foyer of the bank. We cross to our reporter Susie Maybourne who is on the scene. Susie?”

Layla watched as the TV flicked to an image of lots of police and other people standing around outside the bank. The reporter was speaking with a person who looked like he was probably the bank manager. 

“Yes that’s right Tom, I have here with me Bill Jenkins who is the manager at this branch of the Bank of America. Mr Jenkins, could you please tell us what you saw?” Mr Jenkins looked at the camera, white-faced and shaking. 

“Well, I could barely believe my eyes. One minute the thieves were standing there, looking mean, and then suddenly they were distracted by something on the ceiling. It looked like thousands of tiny stars were descending through the ceiling to hover over their heads.”

Layla, who had been absentmindedly fiddling with her Mum’s phone and not really paying attention, suddenly sat up straight and stared at the TV. “Tiny stars?” she thought. “Mum? You might want to come see this!” she called through to the kitchen. Mum came in, wiping her hands on a towel. 

“Did you say thousand of tiny stars Mr Jenkins?” asked Susie the reporter. 

“Yes! I know it sounds ridiculous. But there were just hundreds and thousands of tiny pinpricks of light hovering in the air. They were pink and purple and blue and silver and almost any other colour you could think of. The thieves were distracted by the stars and stood there looking up at the ceiling. Then suddenly the stars started moving around, they all just sort of rushed around, running into one another and then began to bunch together, almost like a swarm of bees. They looked like,” Mr Jenkins looked around hopelessly, as if he still couldn’t believe what he saw, “I mean they almost looked like they were swarming as a...as a person! It was incredible!” My Jenkins started to laugh uncontrollably and two medics had to lead him away to the ambulance to calm him down. 

“Well, Tom you heard it right here. And it’s not only Mr Jenkins testimony. I believe we have just gained access to both the security footage and to various different shots of the occurrence from peoples cell phones inside the bank. Mr Jenkins, it seems, was not wrong.”

The TV cut to the security footage from inside the foyer of the bank. There, above the heads of those inside, appeared a cloud of tiny specks of light. They seemed to come together to form the shape of a person, a woman in fact. 

“Mum,” Layla began, “doesn’t that look like…”

“Andre! Get in here quickly!” Mum called. Andre came in and Mum pulled him down onto the couch. “Watch,” she said quietly in response to his questioning glance. They watched as the vaguely familiar-looking swarm of light distracted, disarmed, and detained the would-be thieves. Then the police came racing in and they lost sight of the lights. The TV switched to footage from someone’s phone. 

They saw the police handcuffing the men and leading them from the bank. Then just before the video ended, they watched in amazement as the swarm of lights lazily floated passed the camera, winking at them, until finally the lights slowly flickered out and disappeared. The TV switched back to the newscaster in the studio, who stuttered something about keeping them updated as more information came in, and then the cartoons were back as if nothing had ever happened. 

“Was that…?” Layla trailed off. 

“It looked a lot like…..” Mum began. 

“It was Nana!” Andre shouted and they all sat there staring at each other for a very long time. 

Over the next few days, there were more and more sightings of what the newspapers were now calling The Nebula, a new superhero who was fighting bad guys and stopping crimes from happening all over Los Angeles. Even though they missed their nana, the family would sit together around the TV each evening and watch as The Nebula foiled robberies, saved people from fires and got cats down out of tall trees. It was hard to believe that their nana was now a superhero. Or at least they thought it was Nana. They hadn’t actually seen her since that last time in the hospital and although The Nebula looked like her, they couldn’t be certain. 

One night a week after Nana had disappeared, the family were outside, laying in the grass looking up at the stars. 

“Which one do you think is her?” Layla asked. Andre laughed. 

“We could never guess that,” he grinned. They lay there pointing out the different shapes they thought they could see in the stars, when suddenly they DID see Nana, hovering in the air above them. 

“Nana!” they all cried, jumping up off the grass. Nana smiled at them, her starlit form hovering just above the grass. 

“Have you come home?” Layla asked. Nana didn’t say anything, she just shook her head. 

“You can’t now, can you?” Andre said. “You’ve been given a gift and you need to help other people now.” Nana turned to him and nodded. She floated closer to them and, as much as a being made of tiny stars came kissed each one of them on their forehead. 

“We love you, Nana,” they all said. She smiled at them, looked upward, and then all of the tiny stars began to shoot up into the sky. They watched, and just before the stars disappeared from sight, they formed a giant love heart in the night sky. 

“It’s ok, Nana will always be watching over us,” Mum said as she hugged each of her children tightly. They wandered back to the house and, just before they went through the door, they heard a noise behind them. A comic book was slowly floating down from the sky. It landed at Andre’s feet. He picked it up. There, on the front cover, were the words “Just in case you get bored.”