Thursday
26 May 2022

When he returned the next day, he knew outright that it was a bad idea. The poor girl was feverish and delusional – she thought he was her nurse! It was entirely wicked to deceive her, and yet...

Who else was there for her? There was this poor woman, alone and forgotten, at the hallway's end in Room 594. Unit 5B was the COVID unit, and every patient was placed on strict isolation. What fool in their right mind would spend more time than they had to in a room like that? Add to that no visitors were allowed in or out…

If she even had people in her life to visit her. Where were the balloons, the get-well cards, the flowers? Her room was bare, save the spare supplies the nurses kept on the counter. It was as if she'd been plucked right out of her life and deposited in that bed, and nobody had noticed.

Except him. He knew she was there. He saw her. He was able to help her. He – he gave her a glass of water. Where was her real nurse? So maybe that meant something. Maybe, just maybe – it wouldn't be the worst thing to visit her again.

He walked in through the front doors, following a cluster of slow-moving doctors. The security guard who doubled as the lobby greeter waved them along, barely glancing at the automatic temperature sensor as they walked past. Erik kept close enough behind the doctors to pretend to be part of their group, and just after they passed the checkpoint he split off from them and made his way to the elevators.

Foresight was on his side. He'd kept the scrubs from the day before, figuring they worked decently enough as a disguise. Combined with a carefully pinched surgical mask upon his face and a plastic face shield he swiped from a utility cart – plus shoes, finally - he looked like any other nurse walking in for the day.

The elevator spat him out on the fifth floor like the rank, foul carcass he was. A terrible feeling of dread sat over him as the sheer wrongness of what he was doing pricked at the edge of his mind yet again. Here he was, a complete stranger, just walking into the hospital to visit a barely conscious woman who would scream if she ever saw his face. It was creepy behavior… something like stalking, yet that word didn't quite seem to fit. Regardless: he shouldn't be doing this. And yet –

And yet –

He was just so lonely, dammit!

She was awake when he arrived, and notably less delirious than the day before.

"Ah, my angel!" She smiled good-naturedly, propped up against her pillow in a reclining position. "They didn't give you the day off today?"

"No," he sputtered, caught off-guard.

This wasn't what he was expecting! She was supposed to be his sick patient. A poor, unfortunate soul to tend to, to ease his troubled mind and sate his wilting conscious. A good deed, for a girl who'd never know of it. She wasn't supposed to be aware of him.

"You look better than you did yesterday," he managed.

"I feel much better, too," she agreed. "I think I might finally be on the road to recovery."

Erik lingered in the doorway. The door wasn't even shut behind him. He could still leave. The damage wasn't completely done yet. There was still a chance for redemption somewhere in this mess.

"Do you think I'll be better by the weekend?" she asked, stopping him before he could decide one way or another.

"Maybe," he said.

"I hope so. I hate it here." Then she looked at him and waved her hands in front of her face. "I don't mean it like that though! You guys take great care of me here and I'm so thankful for every single one of you! It's just that it'd be nice to sleep in my own bed, is all."

How many years had it been since he'd slept in a bed? Real sleep, that he'd chosen of his own volition? Without collapsing from exhaustion? Without those terrible drug-induced nightmares, reminding him of his countless vile crimes against humanity? "I can see how that would be… nice."

"It'd be nice to sing again, too," she said. "But I think that's a long way down the road for me."

There it was again. She was talking about singing again. He wanted to ask, but – ah, hell, why not? He was already condemned. "Do you like to sing?"

A thousand-watt smile lit up her face. "I'm a professional opera singer, actually! Singing is my life, music is my soul – that sort of thing. Sounds kind of cheesy and lame, I know. But I love it."

That sort of thing…

It wasn't cheesy. It wasn't lame. It was… him. He knew exactly what she meant. Music was the lifeblood coursing through him, giving him reason to draw each breath. He'd suffered through so much wretchedness in his life with only music to salve the pain. What were the odds that he would find such a kindred spirit in this strange young woman in the hospital bed before him?

"Opera, you say?" Erik inquired, stepping further into the room as his intrigue increased. There was that opera house uptown… he'd been to it many times before. Perhaps he'd even - "Anything local?"

"Right in this city, actually! Not the opera house uptown though, I'm at the one in the eastern side of the city. I'm in the current production of La mort d'Adam there."

Oh, well, he'd been there too before! Not as many times, but he managed a show or two per season. In fact, he'd actually seen La mort d'Adam just last week! Could it be he'd already heard her sing? "Which role is yours?"

"I'm Sélime," she said happily. "It's a dream come true."

Sélime… Erik thought back to the night of the opera. What had he thought of Sélime? He'd been far more interested in the soprano playing Éve, of course, as she was very beautiful and beguiled him with her poisonous charms, but had he spared a moment back then to think about the others in the cast? His mind churned as he worked to recall the soprano's voice.

Wait. That voice. It was –

"You were good." More than that, he wanted to say. Like her humming from yesterday, it wasn't perfect – but it was full of passion and yearning. It reached out from her heart to his and embraced it fully in a lover's caress.

She gaped at him. "You've seen it?"

"I, too, have a relationship with music," Erik replied carefully. "Perhaps one similar to you."

Take the apple, he dared her.

Her eyes glowed with a desire. A desire to please… "How did you like it?"

"Like I said – I thought you were good." He shrugged, feigning nonchalance. "Memorable too, I suppose, for that slight crack in your upper register at one point."

Bite the apple.

She gasped. "That was last Monday's show! I was hoping nobody would notice that! Oh, I was so embarrassed!"

"It was a simple mistake," Erik said comfortingly, "that I doubt anyone else heard besides me. I have very sensitive ears, after all."

"But I'm a professional!" She moaned. "I shouldn't make those sorts of errors!"

He said nothing.

Wait for it…

She suddenly sat still as a realization overwhelmed her. Tears spiked at her eyes. "Well, I suppose it's no true matter anymore. It'll be a long time before I sing again, I think. The way I used to, anyway." She gestured helplessly at her throat.

"I could…" he began hastily before trailing off. He didn't mean to make her cry! He couldn't bear it when she cried. But he couldn't just rush into this sort of thing. He thought over his words and started again after a moment. "What you need is vocal rehabilitation. Your vocal chords are weak and the strength must be rebuilt, otherwise you will damage your voice for good. With help you could eventually sing as well as you did before." He paused. "With my help, you could sing like an angel from heaven."

"An angel?" she asked dubiously, rubbing her eyes. "Are you even qualified? Wouldn't it be better for me to hire a vocal coach for this sort of retraining?"

"I assure you I could do it," he said quickly, before sitting on the bed and grabbing her hand. "I could bring your voice to levels far above this realm."

"But you're a nurse, not a music teacher," she said.

He was neither, of course, but he wasn't about to tell her that.

"Nurses have many skills," Erik explained obliquely. "If a nurse can help a patient walk again, what says I can't help you sing again? It's all just medical therapy, in the end."

"But nurses don't help patients walk. I thought that's what physical therapists are for?"

He laughed and patted her hand. "Oh, I am certainly a nurse, but I can also be a physical therapist, or a doctor, or a pharmacist, or, yes, even a music teacher. I can be whatever you will me to be."

And he would, because he knew in that very moment - as he stared into her eyes, their hands rubbing against each other and his heart beating so close in time with hers - that he would make time itself bend if that was what she willed. He would slaughter a thousand innocents for her if she commanded. He would do anything. He would – for her.

How could he not? When two hearts so alike in their beatings ached to be so near to each other? The music in her soul clearly echoed the music in his. After so many years of isolation and solitude, to meet someone whose very being reached out to him, cried out never to be torn from him… didn't that mean something?

He left her shortly after that proposal, because she grew suddenly tired from their conversation and began to sleep. He watched her for half an hour as her chest rose and fell. A sick taste licked the back of his throat, threatening him with the nauseating truth of the matter:

He was hopelessly, desperately, irretrievably in love with the damned woman.