Thanks so much all of you reviewers! I didn't want to let you down so I stayed up til 2 am to finish the longest and hardest to write chapter yet! I'm so glad that so many of you like the story, and I'm going to try not to disappoint anyone.

Chapter 4: Sickness

Looking back on the events that followed, Christine could only remember them as one remembers a dream, with cloudy memories, and the feeling that she was powerless to stop things from happening, with her voice no louder than a whisper.

Christine remembered the doctor's visit, but nothing that he told her. She faintly recollected the doctor listening to Raoul's chest, taking his temperature, and then shaking his head gravely and pulling Christine aside as Raoul lay back down, closing his eyes.

"What is it? What's wrong with him?" Christine asked the doctor with such intensity that he was taken aback.

"Madame, all of your husband's symptoms indicate to me that he has consumption."

Christine was silenced by the words the doctor spoke, and she looked back at him without moving or responding. The diagnosis rang out in her mind, stunning her, and striking her with a cold horror that caused her heart to leap in her chest, almost paining her. She breathed in sharply and brought her hand to her throat.

"Will he be alright?" she asked, suddenly desperate. The doctor didn't reply right away but just looked back at her steadily, and she gasped.

"Madame, your husband has been sick for quite some time. Consumption is an extremely dangerous disease, and if it has been caught early there is a small chance of survival. I'm very sorry to tell you that I'm afraid there is nothing I can do for the Vicomte at this stage of the disease." The doctor spoke kindly, sympathetic with the woman who looked so fragile and young. His words were also unrelenting, and caused Christine to suddenly feel dizzy and weak. She sunk into a chair and put her head in her hands. After a moment she looked up at the doctor.

"Excuse me," she said, shaking her head and pulling herself together. "Are there any instructions you can give me for how to care for him? What to expect?"

The doctor described to her how to make Raoul comfortable, to feed him light meals, and to administer a cough medication to him regularly. He described the disease as a gradual wasting away, originating in the lungs. He warned her that Raoul's coughing would worsen and his fevers would rise. Christine bit her lip as hard as she could while the man spoke methodically of the gradual increase in symptoms that would lead to her husband's death, but she couldn't stop a tear from escaping and slipping down her cheek.

Wiping it away, she shook the doctor's hand and thanked him for coming. He would be back in two weeks to check on Raoul, he told her and she forced a smile as she showed him to the door. After closing the door behind him, she stopped, and looked down at her shaking hands. She slowly lowered herself to the floor and began to cry, allowing the sobs that had built up inside of her to flow out, her shoulders shaking with grief. Christine cried heartbrokenly for only a few minutes, her sobs subsiding to tearful whimpers. Wiping her face with the sleeve of her blouse she resolved from that moment on to be strong for Raoul, to smile when she wanted to cry, and to comfort him, allowing no comfort for herself. With that decision, Christine was no longer the young woman who was questioning, scared, and unsure, but someone stronger and older, who was able tell her husband, who had been so in love with life, that he was dying.

There was nothing in the world that could possibly be more painful for Christine than watching the one person she loved more than anything slowly waste away. Every morning she would greet Raoul with a smile that cost her everything that she had to hold on to. He would smile back and look at her with hardly veiled sorrow in his eyes, but try to joke and pretend that he was fine, even though he was rapidly losing weight, his cheeks were sunken, and his cough was ever present and unrelenting. Raoul insisted that he remain in the apartment alone with Christine for the duration of his illness, despite his parents demands that he be sent to a sanitarium or pursue further medical attention. It was futile, he told them, and he'd rather spend the time he had left with Christine. She held that sentiment in her heart when she looked at Raoul, loving him more and more in his weakness, and a little bit of her heart dying each day with him.

Bringing him a bowl of soup on a tray, Christine touched his forehead, feeling its unnatural warmth that was becoming permanent, and wiping it with a cool cloth. She sat down on the edge of the bed close to Raoul, and helped to prop him up so he could eat the soup more easily.

"There we go," she said softly, half to herself.

"Thank you, Christine," Raoul said, meaning it, as he began to eat slowly, as he was becoming resigned to do everything.

She rubbed his arm affectionately and watched him eat, smiling when he looked at her. After he finished she took the tray away and he lay back against his pillows, closing his eyes. As Christine was clearing off the tray and washing the used bowl, she heard Raoul start to cough from the bedroom. Dropping what she was doing, she was by his side in an instant, handing him his glass of water and steadying his shoulders. Minutes passed and the coughs subsided, and Raoul lay back down again, trembling a little from the exertion of coughing.

Christine reached for his hand and took it in her own, stroking his fingers with her thumb. He turned his head to the side and looked at her, tears in his eyes.

"I'm so tired, Christine. I feel so weak. Every day it gets worse and worse, and soon enough…" he trailed off and squeezed her hand. She looked back at him, barely able to contain her tears.

"I know, Raoul. And I'm powerless to stop it. I just have to watch you suffer and there's nothing I can do!" Her voice wavered as she spoke, and one tear fell, which she quickly wiped away.

"Christine, you're my everything. Just seeing your face is enough to get me through the whole day." He paused and she smiled crookedly at him. "But I promised you that I would always be there for you, and now… I can't do that. I can't take care of you and that's the worst thing about this," he said, faltering as tears filled his eyes and his throat constricted. "Being with you has been like a dream, too perfect to be real, and now we can't-" he stopped, shaking his head and fighting to regain his composure, but unable to continue.

Christine tried to speak, to reassure him, but she couldn't. Everything that he said was so poignant and true, and he was suffering so much because of it. It was more than she could bear.

"Oh Raoul," she whispered, and started to sob, showing him her sorrow for the first time, breaking down because there was nothing else she could do. He opened his arms and she leaned against him, kneeling on the floor and holding on to him, feeling him shudder beneath her as he cried, the only time she had ever seen him lose control throughout their whole marriage. He stroked her back and she clung to his shoulders, still gentle and careful not to hurt him. As minutes passed and tear subsiding, Christine pulled back and looked at Raoul, sitting down on the floor.

"I love you," she offered, taking his hand in hers again.

"You know I love you," he said back, managing a smile. And that was all that needed to be said.

As the days and weeks passed, Raoul grew weaker. He was thinner than Christine had ever seen him, and every fit of coughs left him so exhausted that he was unable to speak. He began to cough up more and more blood, leaving him pale and listless. He couldn't even lift a spoon to feed himself, so Christine did it for him. She knew that he was ashamed of what he had become, but she remained insistent and loving, occasionally coaxing a smile out of him. She took up the habit of passing the long days by reading aloud to him, never leaving him alone unless it was absolutely necessary. She hired a girl to take care of the meals and cleaning, so she could spend every moment by Raoul's side.

It killed her to see him like this. Every now and then Christine would see a sparkle of life in his eyes, and it made her love him even more, for holding on so for so long, for her. It became apparent that no amount of love or will to survive would keep him alive forever. With every day Christine could see him slipping away, as he spent more and more time sleeping, and his only waking hours coughing. Christine woke up in the middle of the night to intense, hacking, unceasing coughs. She immediately helped Raoul sit to clear his lungs, and covered his mouth for him with a handkerchief. He didn't stop after minutes, and the time passed with agonizing slowness for Christine, and seeing the panicked look in his eyes, she began to cry. The handkerchief was soaked with blood before he was able to have a moment's rest, and somehow she knew, from the loss of blood, the sweat on his face, or the glazed shine in his eyes, that the end was near.

"I love you Raoul, you know that," she whispered, her arms around him, her lips in his hair.

"Christine," he whispered, so weakly that his voice had only a shadow of the strength that it once had in it.

"Raoul," she responded tenderly, combing back his hair with her hand, and stopping to kiss his forehead, holding on to him as if that alone could keep him with her.

"You should sing again. When I'm gone."

"Sing? I sing all the time. To you," she told him, her voice quiet and plaintive.

"To people other than me. Your voice is so beautiful, the world deserves to hear it again," he whispered.

"Alright, alright, I will, if you want me to," she promised.

"I do. I love you, Christine," he said again, softer than before, closing his eyes a little bit, as if he was too tired to hold them open.

"I love you, Raoul."

"Christine, do you think you could-" he stopped and swallowed.

"I could what?"

"Sing something, for me?"

"What do you want to hear?"

"You know."

She did know, and after kissing his lips briefly but so tenderly, she opened her mouth and sang softly, almost like a lullaby, "Say you love me every waking moment, turn my head with talk of summertime. Say you need me with you, now and always. Promise me that all you say is true- that's all I ask of you… that's all I ask of you."

As she sang the last notes, she knew that he was already gone, had taken his last breath as she sang, and was gone forever. Closing her eyes, she buried her face against his neck, letting the tears seep down her cheeks and onto him, her husband, lover, and best friend.

I REALLY did not want Raoul to die but I had to do it :'( I cried a little when I wrote that... I really need some reviews on this one to let me know if that was actually sad or if it was only me... lol. I'm leaving for vacation on saturday and coming back tuesday so I'll try to update tomorrow but if I don't then the next time you'll hear from me will be late tuesday or early wednesday, so leave me LOTS of reviews and I'll update faster! Thanks so much and I hope everyone enjoyed that last chapter.