News From Poughkeepsie – Day 105

Who are the Regulators?

The citizens of New Albuquerque knew an angel when they saw one.

They knew her by her white coat bearing the cross, her severe hair, her heavy glasses and her slight smirk. She wandered in from the East, her steps leaden with the weight of her pack, but her head high. She went to the sick, the injured, removing her sacrament from their translucent bottles and doling them out one at a time to the loved ones.

“Make sure he takes this regularly,” she would say, and they would note down when such a prayer should happen, and how often. “Plenty of rest, and plenty of fluids,” she would say, and they would repeat it, often while crossing themselves or adding a quiet “Amen.”

It was a child, a small girl, who said what the citizens of New Albuquerque were thinking: “Are you an angel?”

But the woman just shook her head, and placed her pills and medicine back in her pack. “I’m just a Regulator, sweetheart,” she said…