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OK, so this chapter is full of fun. I hope you enjoy!
CH 3
Suddenly, Erik felt as if he couldn't breathe, and his hand went to his throat to loosen his cravat. He almost wished he had been consumed in the flames he could only imagine engulfed the Opera House after they had been sent forward. Why had they been sent forward? Was it the "universe's" cruel idea of a joke? Jenna had obviously moved on. She was in love—the evidence of it had been rather undeniable. She'd looked as if she were due to give birth to her child anytime now. She didn't wait very long before letting another man bed her, Erik, that old sinister voice cajoled inside his head. A real man. Must have been desperate to purge herself of your monstrous touch.
Erik closed his eyes and pressed his lips tightly together at the thought. The man she had been with had been undeniably handsome—and he had looked at her with such adoration in his eyes. At least there was that. He had only wished the very best for her these many months since he had sent her back by lying to her about his affections. He had fervently prayed that she would find love and happiness. He had just not realized how soon she would find it.
It stung to see how quickly she had been able to forget their passion, and shove the ecstasy they had shared out of her mind. She was the only woman he had ever touched—the only woman to whom he had ever made love. He would never forget those all too fleeting moments of bliss when he had been enveloped in Jenna's love and acceptance. And yet, he had just seen her carrying another man's child.
"We have to get out of here," he declared, as he stood to his full height, moving as if to lunge toward the door.
"Wait a minute!" Nadir spat, grabbing his arm and trying to pull him back to the floor, where the four of them were still crouching, out of the window's line of view. "How far do you think you're going to get looking like that?"
"Isn't anyone going to answer my question about the Vicomte?" Meg asked, annoyed that she was being ignored.
"Shhh, not now, Meg," Antoinette shushed her daughter, trying to get her to stay out of the men's argument.
"I cannot stay here any longer!" Erik growled, pulling back from Nadir's touch, but walking out of the direct view of the window.
"Well, we cannot go out there dressed the way we are." Nadir countered in a heated whisper. "We would have the entire hospital's attention on us without delay."
"Nadir," Meg began again, tossing her hands in the air. "Monsieur Erik? Doesn't anyone wonder why the Vicomte' is here? Or why we're here, for that matter?"
"Hush, Meg!" Antoinette said again, annoyance beginning to enter her tone, as she clutched her daughter's arm.
"Well, what would you suggest we do, Daroga?" Erik seethed, through clenched teeth. "We cannot stay here forever. They are bound to find us sometime."
"I am just saying it would be unwise to just waltz out there without a plan." He snapped at his friend, who was acting rather rashly. "Aren't you the one who clung to darkness your whole life? Think, Erik! Are you really ready to thrust yourself into that brightly lit hallway full of people, without a care in the world?"
"Didn't anyone else notice the Vicomte?" Meg demanded, in a loud voice. "He was there! The Vicomte de Chagny! Why isn't anyone listening to me?"
Erik was wrenched out of his argument with the Daroga by the shrillness in Meg's voice. He turned to glare at the diminutive blond dancer with a chilling expression in his eyes. "Silence, Mademoiselle!" he hissed.
Meg hung her head and looked up at him timidly through lowered lashes. "Yes Monsieur Phantom," she said in a cowering tone, as her mother shook her head in disgust at her daughter's brashness. Erik continued to fix his stare at her, burning her with his eyes, and Nadir took advantage of the blessed quiet to begin to look around the room for something that might aid in their escape.
Still keeping low, Nadir crawled to the small chest of drawers on the side of one of the beds. In the top drawer, he found nothing but a Bible, but he smiled when he opened the bottom drawer and discovered a pair of pants and a shirt, much like the ones the men and women out in the hall were wearing, neatly folded at the bottom. He gestured to Annie to check the other set of drawers, and she smiled over at him when she found a similar set of clothing there.
"Well Erik," Nadir exclaimed, in a tone of satisfaction. "We have the makings of a plan!"
"Daroga," Erik responded. "I see only two sets of clothes. In case you have been suddenly rendered unable to do math, there are four of us."
Nadir scowled at Erik. "I said we had makings of a plan. It's not a full plan yet!" He shook his head and rolled his eyes, muttering under his breath, "I wish the universe had seen fit to send some Cognac with us if it expects me to deal with him."
"I heard that, Persian," Erik called.
"You were meant to, Phantom," Nadir answered back, as he looked once again toward the window. Another part of his plan fell beautifully into place. There, along the opposite wall, only a few feet from the room they were in, was a gurney, and next to it, a wheelchair.
Nadir took cover behind the hospital bed farthest away from where the others were crouching, and in a moment, Erik saw his pants tossed on the bed. "Are you undressing?" Erik asked him, disdain dripping from his voice.
"Yes," Nadir answered back from behind the bed. "And I don't need any help from you. You, however, Annie," Nadir called to his new wife, humor lacing his voice. "Are more than welcome to come help me if you'd like."
Both Meg and Erik scrunched up their faces at his comment and Antoinette blushed at the implication of what he said. "Nadir, not in front of the child."
"Which one?" he shot back, earning a dark look from Erik.
"I am not a child!" Meg insisted, taking insult at her mother's remark. "I am a grown woman!"
"Yes, dear." Antoinette placated her daughter, patting her hand, which earned her another glower.
Nadir emerged from behind the bed, newly outfitted in the loose fitting clothes he had found in the dresser. He walked over to the door, and motioning for the others to remain silent, he opened it and walked out into the hall, bringing first the wheel chair, and then the gurney inside the room with him. He tossed the other set of scrubs to Meg, whose dress was far more damaged than Antoinette's. "Here, young woman," he said, tossing her the other set of clothing. "Go behind the bed and put these on."
Catching the clothes Meg complied.
Dressed as one of this day and age, Nadir moved around the room a bit more freely. He opened the closet doors, and found a pile of folded sheets and blankets, which he assumed were for the beds. Pulling them off the shelf, he spread one sheet out flat on top of the wheel chair. "Your chair, my love," he said, gesturing for Antoinette to take a seat. Once she did, he handed her Ayehsa, and wrapped the ends of the sheet around them. He then covered her, from neck to toe, with a blanket. "When we get into the hallway, try to look sick." Antoinette smiled and coughed a couple of times. Smiling himself, Nadir leaned forward and gave her a quick kiss. "I knew there was a reason I loved you!"
Erik rolled his eyes at the display of affection before him. These two were going to start grating on his nerves with their unending touching.
"Alright, Erik," Nadir said, patting the gurney. "Hop on!"
Erik narrowed his eyes at him. "Why do I have to ride on that?"
"Well, because, you see, there were only two sets of clothes, and four of us. Do the math."
Erik sneered at having his own words used against him, but got on the gurney as directed. Nadir draped another sheet over him, covering his face as well. When Erik humphed at the indignity, Nadir only reminded him, "You wouldn't want to take the chance that Jenna might see you, would you?"
"What about you?" Erik demanded from under his sheet.
"Shut up. You're dead!" Nadir quipped back, and heard a low growl from Erik beneath the sheet but nothing more.
When Meg emerged from behind the bed, fully dressed in the modern day attire, he instructed her to gently push the wheel chair out of the room, while Nadir pushed the gurney, careful to bump it into the wall a couple times for good measure, smiling at the muffled grunts he heard when he did. And, hiding themselves thusly, in plain sight, they looked for an exit.
Since they appeared to be several floors above street level, they had to take a rather harrowing ride in something called an elevator, which they had observed many of the other modern men and women using freely. Their nerves at being noticed mounted in the few minutes they had to wait for the moving compartment to arrive. Once the doors opened, Nadir accidentally bumped the stretcher on the back wall of the elevator in his haste to get in, thus earning himself some raised eyebrows from the other riders who were already inside the large moving metal box. A look of horror came over one elderly woman's face as she pointed a shaking finger at the sheet that was covering Erik's face.
"Believe me, Madame," Nadir quipped. "It would be even more horrible if the sheet were off." The old lady turned her face, with a whimper of distress, into the chest of a man Nadir presumed to be her son. "Ow!" the Persian winced when Meg stepped hard on his toe to shut him up. He turned away and looked straight ahead, bumping the stretcher clumsily against the wall once again to cover up the sound of the quiet chuckle he heard emanating from beneath the sheet. Still, he felt the eyes of the old woman's son boring angry holes into the back of his head throughout the rest of the ride.
Meg stared at the row of buttons in front of her and figured that they somehow controlled the motion of the elevator. It was going rather slow, and Meg was swiftly running out of patience, not enjoying the feeling of being boxed in with so many strangers. In an effort to make the thing go faster, she pressed every button she could find, each one glowing amber as she did. This simply earned her a groan from the other passengers. She soon discovered why, as the doors now proceeded to open at every floor, whether someone wanted to get on or not.
When the doors opened and finally revealed the exit to the outside, Nadir and Meg pushed their cargo out of the elevator, much to the delight of the other occupants who were apparently continuing on their ride. "Hey, man," one particularly obnoxious man shouted after him. "Don't let the door hit ya on your way out!"
"Oh, well," Nadir said, turning back and waving, "Many thanks for the advice!"
"Freaks!" they heard the man exclaim in response.
"Do you wish to die, Monsieur?" Erik growled, suddenly shooting up indignantly. Blessedly, the sheet did not come off to reveal his masked features, and Nadir quickly shoved Erik back down into a prone position. As the elevator doors snapped to a close, Meg looked up just in time to see the old woman faint to the floor.
"Are you mad?" Nadir hissed angrily, as he quickly pushed the stretcher towards the exit sign that hung over a set of glass doors. "Next time I am using the restraints."
"Next time, Persian?" Erik snapped back from beneath the sheet. "I assure you that there will be no next time!"
"With you, there is always a next time!" he seethed back.
Red and blue lights swirled outside the glass exterior doors, and Nadir and Meg witnessed several members of the medical staff running out to a big white wagon, tending to a patient who was lying on a gurney much like Erik was—only this patient seemed to be seriously wounded. They could see large stains of red spreading on the white coverings that had been draped over him. Everyone's attention seemed to be focused on the man on the stretcher and Nadir used the momentary distraction as an opportunity to get them out of the hospital undetected.
"Come on, let's go, let's go!" he said to Erik and Antoinette, flinging the sheet off Erik's gurney while Meg helped Antoinette, who was still holding fast to Ayesha, out of the chair. They snuck past the chaos on the street as inconspicuously as they could, Erik only pausing briefly when he heard two of the medical staff discussing the patient's "catastrophic car accident," which left the young man with life threatening injuries. "We don't expect him to make it, doc," the man behind the stretcher said, and Erik's blood ran cold. He realized that if things had gone differently for Jenna when she had her own accident months ago, this might have been her fate. Instead, she was alive, home again—in another man's arms, but safe.
Erik felt Nadir pulling on his arm, and, finally turning away from the scene in front of the hospital, he followed the Persian into the night. Despite the ache he felt in his heart for losing Jenna, at least she was alive. At that moment, Erik knew that sacrificing his own happiness had been worth it. It had all been worth it, if it meant that Jenna had lived.
"Here, give those to me," Chris said, taking the stack of freshly folded receiving blankets from Jenna, and squatting to place them in the bottom dresser drawer.
"I'm not an invalid, you know," Jenna teased with a heavy sigh.
"I know, Jenna," he countered, looking up at her with a smile. "But you must admit that the little guy kind of gets in the way of you bending over. Besides, I don't mind helping."
"You're so good to me," she said, returning his smile with one of her own. She stood there, smiling into his sky blue eyes a quiet moment until they heard the intercom buzz. "Pizza's here!" Jenna exclaimed.
"I'll get it," Chris said, starting to rise to a standing position.
"Oh no you don't," Jenna put her hand out to stop him. "Paying for the pizza is not strenuous in any way—and I am not going to have you buying me dinner on top of everything else you've been doing for me! I'll get the pizza and meet you in the living room." Jenna walked out of the nursery to get the door.
Chris sighed as he watched her go. "Buying you dinner is the least I would like to do for you Jenna," he whispered once she was out of sight. Taking a deep breath and swiping his hand down his face to try and clear his mind, Chris stood and made his way to the living room, where Jenna had already placed the pizza on the coffee table. She handed him a beer, grabbing herself a bottle of water, and they settled in on the couch to enjoy their customary Friday night dinner and movie.
"You know, I can't believe Red's not out here," Chris said, mouth full of pepperoni, "demanding a piece of pizza and control of the remote."
Jenna rolled her eyes. "Maybe we bore him."
"I don't know how you could ever bore anybody, Jenna," Chris responded, taking a swig from his beer.
"Oh yeah," she snorted. "I'm very entertaining, what—with the way I waddle everywhere I go, and have to go to the bathroom every half hour. I can't even bend over to put the laundry away. I'm riveting company, to be sure."
"Jenna," Chris admonished, "Don't be so hard on yourself. You're pregnant."
"I'm a house!" she laughed in self-deprecation.
"You're beautiful," Chris cut off her laughter by looking directly into her eyes. "It's true, Jenna," he said, reaching out and running his knuckles down her cheek. "Even pregnant, you are still the most dazzling woman I have ever known. You glow, Jenna."
Jenna was frozen as Chris closed his eyes and cupped her chin to draw her closer, molding his lips against hers. There was sweetness in his kiss, and so much affection and tenderness, and Jenna tried for a moment, to move her own lips in time with his, and truly kiss him back. She willed her breathing to quicken, her heart to beat faster—but she soon found that it was useless to expect cooperation from a part of her body that now resided a world away. After a few moments had passed, Jenna broke their embrace.
"Chris…" she sighed, not able to look at him.
"Jenna, I'm sorry," Chris blurted, jumping back a little bit in horror at what he'd done. "I didn't mean…I mean, I meant it, but I shouldn't have …," he ran a hand through his blond locks, and let out a deep breath of frustration and embarrassment.
"No, Chris," Jenna, put a hand on his arm, trying to get him to look at her. "You have nothing to apologize for. If anything, I'm the one who should apologize to you."
Chris shook his head, still not looking at her. "Of course you don't have to apologize, Jenna…"
"Yes, Chris," she said, her tone imploring him to look at her, "I do." When she finally saw his striking blue eyes look directly into hers, she took his hand and continued. "Chris, when I woke from the coma, I was such a mess. Everything, everything in my world had changed. Completely. I didn't know what was real or not real. And then, when I found out I was pregnant," she took a deep breath. "If I didn't have you, I don't know what I would have done. Chris," she said, looking into his eyes and squeezing his hand tightly. "You are my rock. You're always there to listen, to help. You are always there for me to lean on, and I'm afraid that sometimes I lean too hard."
"No, Jenna," he shook his head at the suggestion. "I want to be here for you. I want to help."
"I know you do, Chris," she looked down, while still holding his hand. "And I value you so much. But I'm afraid, that sometimes I take from you more than I can give."
"No, Jenna," he laughed a little, awkwardly. "I don't want anything in return . . ."
"You want my love," she said to him, plainly. When Chris only looked back at her with sad eyes, she continued, "And I want to love you. But Chris," she closed her own eyes a second before looking at him again and continuing, "I'm broken."
Chris felt anger boil up in his heart at Jake, the imbecilic ex-boyfriend who devastated Jenna so badly that she drove her car into the Hudson River. He never even bothered to visit her when she was in a coma—his new love interest monopolizing too much of his time. When Jake had moved to Paris, Chris was thrilled that he was too far away to ever hurt Jenna again. Little did he know the pain would continue.
"He was a fool!" Chris spat, his anger finally reaching a tipping point and spilling out of his mouth in the harshest of tones.
"I loved him, Chris," Jenna spoke of Erik, knowing Chris could never understand who really owned her heart. "I love him still."
"But what he did to you!" He seethed.
"He couldn't help being in love with someone else," she said, looking at him pointedly. "Chris, no one can tell their heart who to love. God knows I've tried."
Chris's jaw clenched, and Jenna thought she saw a tear of frustration glisten in his eyes. "Just as I've tried to make mine stop loving," he snapped.
"I've tried that too," she whispered, finding herself near tears. Why couldn't she stop loving Erik? Why did he have this hold on her heart? He was a world away, and in love with another woman, and yet, even now, she could not be happy with this perfectly wonderful man who loved her—who wanted her, and only her.
When Chris noticed the tears in Jenna's eyes, his demeanor immediately softened. "Hey," he whispered, tenderly, reaching out to brush away a tear that had fallen down her cheek. "Don't cry.
Of course, his order for her not to cry only made the tears come faster. "I'm sorry, Chris," She sobbed. "I'm so sorry."
"Jenna," he murmured, taking her into his arms, and stroking her hair soothingly. "Stress is not good for the baby."
Jenna chuckled darkly. "There you go again—taking care of me, when I've given you no reason to."
"I have my reasons, Jenna," he whispered.
Jenna remained in his embrace, neither she nor Chris saying anything, for a few moments. She concentrated on the gentle way he stroked her hair and rubbed her back, allowing her emotions fall back into place. "Chris," she said, finally pulling back, and looking him resolutely in the eye. "If this is all too much for you, I understand if you need your distance. You can walk out that door right now, and I will never think less of you for it. I promise, I would understand."
Chris sighed and put a finger to her lips to silence her. "Oh, there you go again, talking nonsense. I swear, I could have a more sensible conversation with Red." Jenna giggled a bit at Chris's attempt to lighten the mood. After giving her a sweet smile, he continued. "I am never going to 'walk out that door,' Jenna. I will always be here for you and the baby. I know you're not in love with me, but as much as I wish things were different, I am not about to walk out of your life like the little guy's father. I value your friendship too much."
Jenna sniffed and nodded, and said, "Just promise me you won't hold back. Promise me that you will find somebody that you can truly love—someone who can love you in return. You deserve someone so special, Chris."
Chris rolled his eyes and smiled, feeling that there would never be anyone as special in his life as Jenna. "I promise if someone so special catches my eye, I will ask her out on a date, ok?"
"I am going to hold you to that, Doctor!" she promised, pointing her finger at his chest. "I'm even going to keep my eyes open for candidates."
Chris groaned, "Oh no! Matchmaking by a hormonal pregnant woman. Who knows what I'm going to end up with?"
Jenna gave him a good-natured punch in the arm, and once again settled into the light banter that was customary between them. "Better than anyone you could pick out for yourself."
"Oh yeah," Chris agreed facetiously, reaching for another slice of pizza. "I bet she's going to be named Sapphire, or Amber or, hey, maybe even Fuchia."
"Chris!" she squealed, laughing now at the running joke.
"Speaking of which," he smiled at her and tapped her nose with his finger. "I really think it's time to start discussing baby names. How about Tom. Or Fred? No, not Fred. You know, I still like Chris as a name for the baby… "
Jenna buried her head in her hands and groaned, "Oh no…" as Chris' list of possibilities droned on.
Oh, Chris. My dear, Chris, you are breaking my heart. Poor thing-so crazy about Jenna. But her heart is spoken for. And little does she know, Erik is back to claim his prize! Only he thinks his prize belongs to Chris. Sigh. . .
And how did you like the Parisians' escape from the hospital. Ahhh Nadir! Such a clever guy.
Please let me know what you thought of this chapter! There will be another tomorrow! :)
