Chapter XIX.

- Don't forget to pack your bathrobe, Erik, dear.

– Christine carried the long sleeved, golden embroidered blue silk robe to her husband, like a mother who makes sure her child does not forget to pack the necessities or the favorite toy. Her constant caretaking and nagging was a bit of tiring for Erik, especially that he wasn't in the best mood other ways either. He didn't want to show it to his family though, this was his last morning at home before going to the hospital for the surgery and he wanted Christine and the children to remember him to be a happy and loving father and husband, if the misfortune that accompanied him through his whole life, would prevent him from ever returning. He was a bit of afraid of the risks of the operation, he heard about many mishaps that happened to people during tonsillectomy: unstoppable bleeding, change of voice, damaged vocal chords, later bleeding of the wound… and who on Earth is happy for the thought that someone he doesn't even know is going to work in his mouth by a scalpel? He was terrified of the thought of choking in his own blood.

- Christine… - He called out before the young woman left the room to check on Florian.

- Yes, Erik? – She turned back and ran to his side. – Do you need anything else?

- I love you. – He confessed, suddenly taking his beautiful wife's small wrist in his skeletal, twice as huge hands. – I always have and always will. Please remember that.

- I love you too, Erik. – She smiled warmly and leaned her head against Erik's chest, gently hugging him with her free hand. – I can hear your heartbeat. – She added some seconds later. – And it is the most beautiful music I have ever heard in my life.

- Oh, Christine… - He could not say anything else as his throat was suddenly too tight with crying.

As he was finished with packing his things he needed for a few days stay in the hospital in a smaller suitcase, he went to the children's' room to kiss them bye-bye before leaving. Mahtab hugged him tight and asked when he will come back.

- I am supposed to stay for a week or so. – Erik patted her head and kissed her forehead. – I know it seems like a lot of time, but you will see that time flies. Ask Mama how much nights do you have to sleep until Papa returns. That way it will be much better. Please be a good little girl to Mama and obey her and Tonton Mohammed, right?

- Right. – She nodded.

- That1s good. Papa doesn't want to hear about your mischiefs when he returns.

- No mischiefs, I promise.

- You promised. Remember. - Erik nodded and stood up from the bed and walked to the cradle. He caressed Flo's face with his thumb and said: - Bye – bye Flo, my sweet little son. Please be a good boy. Papa loves you. – He turned back to Mahtab as well: - Papa loves you both.

- I love you too, Papa.

She would have loved to run to hug Erik's leg and ask him to take her with him and she wanted to cry of the thought that she won't see Papa for so long time. But she decided to be a good and strong little girl, so she just followed Erik to the Hall without a word. Erik took his suitcase and shook the Daroga's hand before leaving.

- Thank you, Mohammed for helping me yet again. I can't be thankful enough. – He paused for some seconds, leaned closer to the Persian's ear and added: - Please take care of my family… and if I don't come home… please…

- Erik, don't say that…

- We have to think of every possible outcomes. – He sighed, then said good bye to the Persian as well and left the house.

Christine and the carriage were waiting for him in front of the garden gate. Erik looked back at the house once again, memorized every single detail about it, just as he saw it for the first time in his life, then he leaned close to his wife and kissed her cheek for one last time before getting in the carriage. As the vehicle started moving, he saw Christine waving with a handkerchief and Mahtab storming out of the front door, running along the small garden patch to the gate and she was caught by her mother before she could run outside after him. Erik turned his face away from the coach window, as he felt his heart was heavy and he did not want to start sobbing uncontrollably. Crying and tears would do nothing good to his false nose that was built in his human mask. He placed down his suitcase to his feet and hoped for the best to happen.

When he arrived to the hospital, he was surprised about people being actually kind to him. It never happened before that he was treated so kindly at a place he visited, but well, this new human – like mask sure makes his appearance more bearable. He was afraid to meet the doctor, but he was a well- mannered young man as well. After shaking his hand, he kindly offered a seat in his office, and told him everything he already heard from Dr. Bonsanté about the surgery. But there came the unpleasant part.

- Excuse me for asking… - Dr. Francois Boucher changed the tone of his kind of raspy voice to a more compassionate one while adjusting his glasses with a quick and nervous move. – But my good friend told me something special about you upon consulting with me about the operation and…

- You want to see my nose. – Erik interrupted. – Or to be clear, the lack of it.

- Yes… if you please. – Boucher nodded and ran his fingers across his thick reddish blonde hair.

- Promise me you won't freak out, please. I am a bit sensitive about it. – Erik eyed the other man.

- Monsieur, I am… actually very much interested in… in…

- Various interesting disfigurements of the human body. – Erik finished the sentence, a bit impatiently. It bothered him if someone was trying to euphemize about things too much and the time someone spent searching the correct word not to harm him just made the situation way more awkward than it should have been. Erik was the person to name things as they were, and unnecessary "politeness" wasn't his cup of tea.

- Exactly. – The young man nodded in agreement and he was happy to see that Erik reacted so well on the subject and there was no need to be afraid he might hurt his feelings.

Erik removed his mask with a small sigh and turned back to face the surgeon. He walked closer to examine his patient, which fact Erik did not like too much, but he was bearing it for the sake of a successful operation.

- I am not going to place you with other people in the same room, Monsieur… - He continued, not really knowing how Erik will handle this conversation.

- I was just about to ask that. – He nodded gracefully. – But I am glad you see the problem as well.

- Oh. – Boucher sighed in relief. - I would only do it for your sake, Monsieur, as you have to remove the mask for the operation and afterwards.

- I understand. – Erik nodded. He wasn't too comfortable about the thought, but at least he did not hear the doctor scream at him of horror as he would have expected – the hospital wasn't as bad as he imagined it to be.

He got a hospital room of his own with one single bed and an end table, and a locker included, it was small but at least no one was going to bother him and use the situation of him being helpless to laugh at, or even torture him in his sleep. He was afraid of the anesthesia happening as well – he was never been put to sleep artificially before and he heard a lot of unpleasant things of it as well – the worst possibility was he wouldn't even wake up from it ever as sometimes complete collapse of blood circulation may happen… but that's not the right thing to think of at that moment. He tried to close his eyes while sitting down at the edge of the bed to evoke the sight of his beautifully built Victorian mansion, with Christine and his children happily waiting for his return.

He didn't get anything to eat or drink after 6 o clock in the evening, and he was constantly licking his lips as they became unbearably dry after a time and he was oh so thirsty. He never thought a few hours without water would be so hard to tolerate. He usually did not drink a lot at all and would go well without fluid intake - why does he want to drink so badly all of a sudden, only when knowing he wasn't allowed to do so? Time passed so slowly and he couldn't really sleep much that night, knowing he was going under the knife the next morning.

Mahtab wasn't calmer than Erik at all, the only difference between them was that while Erik tried his best to not to show any of his feelings, Mahtab was crying from the top of her lungs which woke up Flo as well, so Christine had to guide Mahtab to the master bedroom and lay her in their double bed where Erik would be sleeping. Christine sat beside the sobbing little girl, trying to comfortingly rub her back, singing for her or telling her a bedtime story, but Mahtab did not really want any of these. She was just crying and kept repeating:

- Papa… Papa… I want Papa… !

Christine picked Mahtab up in her arms and rocked her back and forth for a while but the child did not want to calm down and was wheezing so hard that the poor worrying mother was afraid she might run out of breath. She had to clean Mahtab's nose hole several times, carefully not to hurt any of the veins inside to cause the child a nosebleed. How good it is that Erik taught her to handle the small girl's lack of a nose! Without him she couldn't take care of Mahtab all alone right now.

Suddenly Christine had an idea. Erik invented a device back in the Opera that recorded voice and he once showed it to Christine and recorded his own voice by it, as he was reciting The Raven from Edgar Allan Poe. It was among Erik's favorite poems, and though it wasn't a poem she would show to a child under normal circumstances, but this was an emergency. She knew they still had that device and also the recording with Erik's voice. She went to the attic where they stored the things they did not regularly use, and looked through the boxes and items. It was easy to find the talking machine as it was just placed on the floor, about in the middle of the room. She lifted it up and carried it downstairs where she cleaned it up a bit, carefully, not to break anything on it, then put it down on the small table in the bedroom where Mahtab was still sobbing into Erik's pillow. As Christine cranked it up and with a few cracking sound the machine started talking on Erik's bit of muffled, but still beautiful and recognizable voice, Mahtab instantly sat up in bed, hopefully turning to face the door.

- Papa….? – She dried her eyes.

- Only his voice, my sweetie. But I think it is easier to bear his absence if we can hear his voice.

- Yes, I love when Papa talks. – Mahtab nodded and crawled closer to the machine in bed to hear it better.

She finally fell asleep after the 3rd round of The Raven, she lay across the feet of the bed, occupying both some of Christine's and Erik's place. Christine did not want to wake her up by moving her small body to Erik's pillow, and as her feet had enough space even this way, she just covered her daughter up and placed a soft kiss on the top of her head, then she went to sleep as well. It was 3 o clock in the dawn and she wondered what Erik was doing at that moment.

Erik, to his own surprise, did fall asleep at some point, even with his thirst, missing his loved ones and fear of the surgery. He was woken up by the nurse in the morning, who informed him that he was going to have his surgery very soon. Very kind of her to start his day with causing him a mini panic attack. He lived up until 57 years with his tonsils, and he wasn't at all happy about suddenly getting them removed forcefully from his throat. To his even bigger surprise, removing the mask for the surgery was his smallest problem right at that moment. He thought it would give him a lot more uncomfortable feelings but he could care less about his mask when he was asked to remove it and follow the nurse to the operating room.

In there, he was half alive, half dead of being so nervous and scared of what might be waiting for him. He was guided to take a seat in a chair with many belts made of leather and they tied each and every body parts he could use for fighting, even his ankles. He tried to grip the handrail and think of something else, relaxing as much as he could, but his fear of being helpless kicked in. He was tied down before and it never meant anything good. He suddenly realized what had he done to Christine when he tied her to a chair on that wicked night when he nearly blew the whole Opera up. God, it was terrible! What a monster can do such a thing… to tie someone to a chair… restrain them from moving… He found it a good idea back then as Christine wanted to end her life, and chose the easier way than marrying him… but now he understood what a pain Christine was in. He will never tie everyone to anywhere if he ever gets free again…Oh no, no, no! He doesn't want that thing in his mouth! Now he was completely unable to shut his mouth and it was even more terrible than being tied to the goddamned chair! He felt the coldness and the strange taste of the iron in his mouth and it nearly made him gag. Light was shining in his eyes directly, so he had to close them. Tears were forming in his eyes, and he suddenly had to sneeze… he wanted to kick if he was able to, kick and hit and claw. "Let Erik go! Let him go!" – his mind echoed this constantly as the doctor and the nurse were trying to tell him something that did not even reach his mind… With his mouth totally opened he can't even perform ventriloquism to tell these two to stop what they were doing… The doctor asked him if he was able to breathe through his nose. He could only faintly nod… and after he got something under his nose hole to smell… he took a few deep breaths… the room was spinning… and then everything went black.

When he regained his consciousness he was alone, laying in the bed in his hospital room, on his side, and a small pot was placed under his mouth and blood was slowly dripping from his throat. He was through the operation, and carried back here to wake up and start to recover. He couldn't feel pain. He felt nothing. Not even thirst any more. His mouth was dry but he did not want to drink at all. He was surprised that it did not hurt. He wasn't yet strong enough to think, just closed his eyes again and drifted back to sleep again.

As he woke up again, he felt terrible. He wasn't in pain, but he knew something wasn't right. His head spun, his hands were trembling and he felt his chest was heavy. This time he wasn't the only one in the room, a nurse was standing by his side, holding a pitcher in her hand that she slowly placed to the end table, looking at him in- as at first, he imagined- disgust, as he still wasn't wearing his mask, but as he better examined the young woman, he noticed it was rather worry than disgust. Yes, something wasn't right.

- Monsieur Spöke, you have to drink some tea now. Are you ready? – She asked kindly.

Erik did not want tea. He turned as white as the wall, and reached out his hand as he was trying to grip the air. His stomach turned.

- Please don't talk. – The nurse hushed him as he wanted to open his mouth to ask for help. – You are not allowed to talk after the surgery…

Erik pressed his eyes shut, his body was shaking violently and suddenly, he started vomiting blood uncontrollably.

The nurse screamed, and ran out of the room, crying for help. Here comes the death he was so much afraid of… choking in his own blood… Erik wasn't able to concentrate any longer, he fainted back on his bed, making a total mess of it in seconds. Hurrying footsteps could be heard, the door flung open again and the doctor hurried in. He knelt beside him, but he couldn't say nor do anything and finally darkness fell on his vision. He could no longer see or hear anything that was happening around him.