Erik turned slowly to the clump of blankets on the bed. Contrary to his prior assumption, this bed was not empty… there was, in fact, a small, flushed face peeking out from underneath the blankets.

"Help me," the patient in the bed repeated softly. Then: "Please, nurse…"

Nurse? Erik looked around quickly. There was no nurse here!

But then Erik made the awful realization that the patient was speaking to him; that – he – was the nurse! Oh, what a stupid mistake for her to make!

He crept further, wobbling a bit on his uneven step.

Her eyes were glassy and her forehead was damp with round beads of sweat. He could see her chest heaving up and down quickly yet shallowly, working hard as she panted for breath through her parted lips.

"Nurse?" she asked again, and this time Erik took notice of just how feeble her little voice sounded.

It was that feebleness that spurred him to respond. His voice was gentler than a lamb's as he asked, "What do you need?"

"I am so thirsty," she rasped. "I just need a glass of water."

Thirsty, was she? Erik could certainly believe that – her face was as red as a tomato under all those blankets! Certainly it would be better to just take all those blankets off of her?

But he wasn't her nurse. He wasn't her caretaker. He was just a strange, ugly man who had no business wandering into her room.

"A glass of water?" Erik echoed, as he spotted a styrofoam cup and a water pitcher on the bedside table, within arm's reach of the girl. Had she no strength to pour it for herself? No matter, this was an easy enough thing to do, and then he'd leave and be on his way.

He poured the cup and held it out to her – awkwardly, as it turned out, as she raised no hand to receive it.

A straw was resting beside the pitcher, so he placed it in the cup and held it up to her mouth. Her quivering lips wrapped around the straw, her eyes still glazed, and soon he felt the plastic turn cold under his fingers. The cup emptied in a matter of seconds, and Erik couldn't help but offer more.

"No, thank you," she said faintly, voice still just as raspy as before.

Erik moved to leave.

"I think - nurses are angels," the patient said suddenly. "When Pappa was dying the nurses were so sweet even though he was so mean to them. He didn't mean to be. He was the nicest Pappa. But the tumor just made him so awful." Her face scrunched up and Erik feared she would combust into tears. "And now I'm so mean to you too. I promise I'm not bad. I – promise -" And at last she did cry.

"Don't cry," Erik couldn't help but say.

But that just made her sob even harder. "You're so nice to me! So you must be an angel, too, then."

Now what the hell was he supposed to say to that? She was clearly delusional, or otherwise delirious or disturbed. He'd been called many things in his life, many things not fit for repeating, but an angel was certainly not one of them! He ought to straighten out the girl and show her what terrible monster actually stood before her.

And yet, as he gazed at the face in the bed, hardly more than a sick child, his compulsion to lash out at her receded. "I am," he agreed, with a sickening feeling settling in his chest. Why did he feel the need to lie to the girl? "All hospitals have angels that float around their wards, to visit the sick and the infirmed." Christ, why was he still talking?

Her face held all the terror in the world. "Am I going to die?"

"No," he said, because wasn't that the right answer? Wasn't that comforting? He couldn't help it! Her tiny sobbing figure was pulling at his withered heartstrings! "You will never die."

"But doesn't everyone die?" she whimpered.

Yes, they do. Erik had been personally responsible for the early demise of dozens of sorry souls. But did this crying girl need to know that? Would that staunch her miserable tears? "I won't let you die."

It was a bold claim, surely, and a blatant lie. But didn't he have the right to make that claim? As the man who'd snuffed out so many lives before, didn't that make him an expert on who dies and who doesn't?

"How?"

"Because I'm an angel," he said simply, "and angels have many powers."

That seemed to satisfy her, for she laid her head back calmly against the pillow and let her eyelids fall closed.

But then her head popped back up, and she asked with some amount more of energy, "Can you sing? Pappa said angels have voices like the clouds."

What a glorious question! Any other day, Erik could have parted his lips and obliged her request. He was gifted with a voice unparalleled by any other: a voice with saintly and inhuman qualities that could hypnotize even the strongest of wills.

But today was not any other day. Today Erik was weak, and his throat was scratchy and painful. His speaking voice sounded like his vocal cords had been sent through a meatgrinder… he could only imagine the demonic caterwauling noise into which his singing voice would be rendered.

"I cannot…" he therefore replied.

"That's okay," she said faintly. And then her eyes closed again, heavy with sleep.

But she did not sleep. From her lips poured the most beautiful sound Erik had ever heard. No, it wasn't technically good, or even remotely pleasant on the ears. And yet – for all the longings and desires hidden in the soft humming of the girl's voice, Erik couldn't help but feel the tell-tale pinpricks of tears welling up as he looked upon her with new eyes.

For this wasn't a sick child on the bed before him. This wasn't a scared girl, or a pitiful little thing. This was a young woman – twenty, at the least. A woman who'd undoubtedly felt the unrepetant slings and arrows of life, who'd been in pain far greater than she'd ever admit, who'd felt fantastic triumphs and even more fantastic losses. In her soft humming voice, Erik knew her.

He watched her for a long while, even past the moment her humming stopped and gave way to breathy silence – the tug and pull of each chest rise against the weight of the world. He watched her for far longer than he probably ought to, but there was something mesmerizing about her that made him reluctant to leave. Only when her breath caught momentarily, and his own heart skipped a terrible beat in fear until her next breath drew normally, did he find it within himself to at last stand up and leave.