Obligatory disclaimer - I do not own any of the Characters or plotlines of Phantom of the Opera, they of course are from the genius of Leroux.
A/N Wow, thanks for the all of the encouraging reviews! And a major thank you to my amazing beta Terpsichore314. She not only corrects my many grammar mistakes, she is also a major influence in the direction our story is taking. So thank you Terpsichore314, you are truly making me sound so much better than I am!
Author – KatieKay90 Beta – Terpsichore314 Title – UnforgivenChapter 4 – Reunion
Dr. Shawn Tanner's brow creased in concern as he heard his patient's telling words. "Can you tell me your name?" His clinical question broke through the oppressive tension that filled the room.
Christine pulled her gaze away from the intent stare of the strange half-masked man to look at Dr. Tanner. "It's Christine…Christine Daae," she said with a rehearsed certainty.
Shawn was careful not to alter his features as he studied Christine. "And can you tell me what month and year it is, Christine?" he asked her in a calm, soothing tone.
Christine looked somewhat puzzled that he would ask such a question. "It's July, 2004," she said confidently.
"Christine." Her name was an emotional plea wrenched from Erik's tight throat. He could only stare at her as a crushing bleakness filled his heart.
"I'm sorry," Christine said slowly as she pulled her hand from his uncomfortably tight grasp. "Have we met before?" she asked Erik hesitantly, seeing the sharp flash of pain in his green eyes.
"Oh God!" Erik cried out in response to her innocent question and he lowered his eyes, unwilling to let her see his feelings. Erik took a moment to compose himself, and lifted his astonished gaze to look upon her confused, bruised face. "Christine, I'm Erik…your husband," he said in a soft hushed tone, watching her intently for the minutest spark of recognition.
Shaking her head slowly, Christine regarded the man whom she had never seen before. "No," she said as she looked at him cautiously. "I don't know you," she said with a small amount of alarm filling her voice.
Erik felt as thought she had just plunged a dagger through his heart as she continued to stare at him without acknowledgment. "Christine, please listen to me. We were married in September of 2004. We…." Erik could not explain any further because he was cut off by Christine's exclamation of rapidly growing distress.
"NO! It's not true!" Christine cried as she lurched to the opposite side of the bed in an attempt to distance herself from the stranger who was beginning to scare her. "I'm not married! I don't know you!" Christine said, feeling a loud rushing sound assaulting her ears.
Seeing the look of unmitigated fear in her tearful blue eyes, Erik slowly turned to walk away, his heart constricting in unbearable pain.
Several alarms began to sound from the numerous monitors within the room, galvanizing Dr. Tanner into action. "Sharon, I need twenty-five milligrams of Midazolam," the doctor said, ordering a sedative for his agitated patient.
"Yes, doctor," the efficient Sharon said as she turned to access the requested drug.
Shawn crossed to the spot that Erik had recently vacated in an attempt to calm his overwrought patient. "Christine, I need you to listen to me. I need you to take in a slow, deep breath," Shawn said as he watched her struggle with her breathing.
"I don't know him," Christine insisted again as she turned her anguished eyes to meet Shawn's concerned gaze.
"Christine, I am going to give you something to help you sleep," Shawn said soothingly as he injected the Midazolam-filled syringe into her IV port.
Grabbing on to her doctor's hand, Christine began to cry brokenly. "Please make him go away. He frightens me…please."
Erik braced his arm against the wall, his legs threatening to give way beneath him. Christine's irrefutable fear tore though to his very soul. He had accomplished the impossible, the feat of staying strong and steadfastly in control over the last five hellish days. But it was now, in the face of Christine's relative safety, that his patented iron hard control chose to forsake him. Christine's total lack of recognition of him and their marriage was the one thing he had not expected, the one thing that he did not think he could endure. The proof of his fallibility was an unbearable shock.
Shawn watched Christine's breathing slow to an even rhythm as the sedative began to take effect. "Lie back, Christine," he instructed gently as he assisted her into a reclining position.
Still shaking her head gradually from side to side, Christine uttered her words in a repeating slurred chant, vehemently denying Erik's marital claim. "I don't know him…I don't…I don't" she said in slow torturous whispers as she faded into a deep passive sleep.
"Give her fifteen milligrams of Demerol and monitor her vitals every fifteen minutes. Let me know if there is any change," Dr. Tanner said tiredly as he turned towards the distraught man who had suffered more than any man should ever have to withstand. "Mr. Mansart, if you will follow me," Shawn said as he walked towards Erik.
Unable to speak, Erik merely followed Dr. Tanner out into the hall where Nadir stood with the hospital administrator.
"Erik! What is it? " Nadir exclaimed, alarmed by Erik's look of obvious distress.
"Mr. Khan, if you would please allow me a few minutes alone to speak with Mr. Mansart," Shawn asked tactfully.
"No," Erik said in a barely-there tone. "That's not necessary. Nadir needs to hear this as well."
Nodding in agreement, Shawn pointed them to a small, empty waiting room. Tim Ryan tried to enter the room with them, but Shawn turned and pointedly blocked his way. "Thank you for your help, Tim, but I can take it from here," Shawn said as he pushed the door shut, leaving a very annoyed hospital administrator on the other side.
Erik held his head in his hands as his mind cruelly kept replaying Christine's abject look of incontrovertible fear.
"Mr. Mansart, let me begin by telling you that it is not uncommon for patients who have suffered a traumas such as Christine's to temporarily lose their memory," Shawn said as he took the chair directly across from Erik.
Nadir felt a cold chill seep through his skin as he realized the cause of his friend's latest distress. "Christine has lost her memory?" he asked with a pained expression on his dark features.
"She is showing the classic signs of temporary amnesia. She believes that it is July 2004," Dr. Tanner informed the stunned Nadir.
Nadir fell back against his chair in shock as he registered the extent of Christine's condition.
"You said temporary," Erik's stilted words filled the uneasy silence. "Just how long is temporary?"
Shawn grimaced. Erik's barely controlled emotions appeared to be held by the thinnest of proverbial threads. "I can't answer that with any clinical certainty. Some patients regain their memory within hours or days, while others go on for weeks and months. Some, I'm afraid, never achieve any recollection," Shawn relayed concernedly as a look of dejection took up residence on Erik's half-masked face.
"Is there any treatment that will help her recover her memory?" Erik asked with a resigned tone which reflected his utter sense of helplessness.
"No, none that I would recommend, at least for the time being, as our first concern is Christine's infection," Shawn said purposefully.
"You had said earlier that the infection had entered her blood. How long will she have to stay on the antibiotics for the infection to clear?" Nadir asked, knowing that Erik was too spent to even begin to think straight.
"I expect to see some signs of improvement by tomorrow evening," Shawn predicted encouragingly.
"And if she responds like you hope, when will she be released from the hospital?" Nadir asked as Erik listened intently.
"If Christine responds well and shows signs of improvement, I would guess that she can be released in five days' time," Shawn said with a pensive look. "With that said, I think we should discuss Mr. Mansart's effect on Christine in her current condition," Shawn said as he leaned forward to emphasize his point. "I think that it would be in Christine's best interest and in the interest of her recovery if Mr. Mansart would not visit her over the course of the next few days."
Erik carefully banked down his urgent impulse to smash in Doctor Tanner's face, for he knew that the good doctor's assertion that his very presence proved detrimental to Christine's healing was correct. "And after three days…what then?" Erik asked with a frustrated sigh.
Shawn could see the discouraged gleam in the troubled man's eyes. "Mr. Mansart, if after three days Christine still shows no signs of regaining her memory, then we will have to consider calling for a consult with Dr. Baird, our Chief of Psychiatry," Shawn offered gently.
Unable to speak, Erik just nodded his head.
Nadir wondered what other possible hell was in store for his friend and boss. "Dr. Tanner, here is my card with my and Erik's private numbers. If there is any change in Christine's condition…." Nadir's voice trailed off as Dr. Tanner nodded understandingly.
Shawn stood and held out his hand to Mr. Khan, "I'll contact you with any change."
After Shawn made his exit, Nadir slid back into his seat beside Erik. "There is little you can do here, Erik. Let me drive you to the penthouse so you can get some rest," Nadir said.
"She didn't know me, Nadir," Erik said bleakly as though he didn't hear Nadir's suggestion.
"Erik," Nadir said sadly, frowning in concern.
"She looked right into my eyes and didn't know that I was her husband," Erik said so despairingly that Nadir began to worry Erik was teetering the on the very edge of his own sanity.
Reaching down, Nadir grasped Erik's arm and pulled him up. "It's time to go home now, Erik," Nadir said simply.
"Home," Erik repeated the word as he rose to follow Nadir out the door. His home was lying broken and battered in a bed across the hall. His home was fighting some unimaginable demons that had caused her mind to retreat into itself in order to preserve some sense of self. His home was his Christine, and until he had her completely and firmly back in his life, he would wonder aimlessly, without a place to call home.
Three days later
"Damn that man!" Madeline cursed Nadir as she threw her cell phone down on the dining room table. "You'd think that he would let me talk to my own son," she said with an ugly sneer marring her perfectly lined lips.
Angelique lifted her tea to her lips as she regarded her mother's oldest friend. Smoothing a wrinkle from the skirt of her pink wool Versace suit, she probed Madeline for information on the call. "Did he at least give you an update on Christine's condition?" she asked with a calculating look.
"Apparently the little bitch is on the mend. The infection is almost at bay, so they are allowing Erik to see her this afternoon," Madeline informed her preferred choice of wife for her son.
"Erik hasn't called me at all this week," Angelique informed Madeline with an annoyed sigh. "My only contact has been with Renee, who set about to cancel all future plans."
"Of course he hasn't. That bitch has him tied to her side once again!" the older woman said as she threw up her hand in a gesture of frustration. Inhaling a deep breath, Madeline began to drum her red lacquered nails upon the highly polished cherrywood of the table. Her keen green eyes were menacing as she plotted to once again oust her daughter-in-law from her son's life. "We have to get Erik away from her," she said with an insistence borne of her strong resolve.
"Easier said than done," Angelique replied. She tucked a stray piece of icy blond hair back into place that had dared escape her expertly fashioned chignon.
"I did it before and I can certainly do it again," Madeline said coldly. "I think it's time we paid a little visit to my dear little daughter-in-law."
Angelique raised one perfectly groomed eyebrow in response to Erik's mother's calculating statement. Offering Madeline a knowing smile, Angelique almost felt sorry for the poor unsuspecting Christine.
Erik cursed the barrage of unending questions as he pushed his way past the ravenous pack of press and photographers who had taken up residence at all of the hospital's entrances.
Nadir stood just inside the hospital entrance as he watched his boss stalk through the throng of paparazzi. Pushing open the door, he allowed his boss entrance as he heard a multitude of yelled-out questions.
"Have you talked with Dr. Tanner this morning?" Erik inquired as he walked quickly to the bank of elevators.
"Yes. He has arranged for Dr. Baird to meet with Christine later this afternoon," Nadir said in reply to his friend's briskly worded question.
"Then she is well enough to talk about her loss of memory," Erik said more to himself than to his closest friend.
"So it appears," Nadir said as they filed onto the elevator. "Madeline called again this morning," Nadir said cautiously as he informed Erik of his mother's call.
"She is absolutely the last thing I need right now," Erik said with disgusted shake of his head. "Try to put her off for today, I will call her tomorrow."
"All right. Also John called in to report that the FBI are zeroing in on Montana as the location where the Myers have gone into hiding," Nadir said as he closely watched Erik's features, which took on a cold, steely look.
"Good, keep me posted and…." Erik's words were cut short by the sound of Christine's screams of fear. Breaking into a run, Erik rounded the corner of the hall to push open the door to Christine's private room. What he saw caused his blood to boil with suppressed rage.
Nadir peered past Erik to see that one of the paparazzi had made it past hospital security and was now firing a line of vicious questions at a distraught Christine as he snapped a series of photographs that would surely fetch top dollar.
Erik could not contain his rage at that sight and rushed into the room and grabbed the offending man to crush him high up against the wall. "YOU DARE ENTER MY WIFE'S HOSPITAL ROOM," he roared with his anger-filled eyes lancing the loathsome reporter into silence.
Christine watched as tears began to run down her cheeks, for the reporter's questions had just revealed that the man who currently had the reporter pinned against the wall was in fact her husband.
Nadir reached down and picked up the fallen camera to access the memory card to erase all of the unauthorized photographs depicting a frightened Christine. Looking towards Christine, he saw that she was crying silently as she watched Erik confront the intruding reporter. "Erik," Nadir called firmly to his boss.
Hearing his name, Erik forced himself to release the little man. "If I see you near my wife again, I will kill you." Though his statement was quietly worded, the full force of his ominous intent could be felt throughout the room.
As the reporter made his hasty retreat, Nadir threw his camera towards him, almost enjoying the look of relief on the stupid man's face. "I'll get Dr. Tanner," Nadir said as he turned to walk out of the room, leaving Christine and Erik alone for the first time in over a year.
Erik swallowed hard at the look of fear and confusion on his beautiful wife's face. "Are you all right?" he asked gently.
Christine looked up into the stranger's, no, her husband's, concerned gaze. "That man, he said…." Her voice trailed off as she forced herself to confront the telling questions that had been so rapidly thrown at her just moments ago.
Erik wanted nothing more than to gather her up in his arms and protect her for the rest of her days, but if he even approached her, he risked bringing a renewed sense of fear to her. Therefore, he remained across the room, powerless to offer any sort of comfort to his wife. His quietly worded apology would have to do. "I'm sorry, I should have foreseen such an incident," he offered.
Christine was pulled from her self-absorbed thoughts at the strange man's self-berating words. "It's really true, then. I am your wife," Christine said as she looked directly at the man who was her husband.
Erik nodded, watching her reaction closely.
Christine had to look away as she struggled with the truth that she had no recollection of knowing this man, let alone marrying him. Taking a moment to collect her thoughts, she began to consider all that this poor man had to endure over that past few days. A strange sense of calm began to settle over her as she regarded the man whom she had tied herself to in an unremembered past. "What is to happen now?" she asked softly.
Erik felt his heart kick into overdrive at the question, for he did not know the answer. "I honestly don't know," he said as he crossed to stand at her bedside. Seeing that her eyes did not hold the same fear as before, he tentatively reached out and took her hand in his. "But this I can assure you, Christine. Whatever comes our way, we will face it together," he said with a conviction that embraced Christine with its promise of certainty.
With her hand held so gently within his, Christine felt an unerring sense of belonging. Smiling up at him for the first time, she nodded her head in agreement, feeling that whatever fate held in store for them, they would face it together.