Christine

I knew something was very wrong when Dr. Valerius canceled class that day.

He had never missed a single class. Not once in his thirty-plus years of teaching. He'd gained somewhat of a legendary reputation around the university for his dedication—he'd been known to come in with a fever, much to the administrators' chagrin. But Dr. Valerius always said not showing up simply wasn't an option. He thrived on music. He came alive in the classroom, pacing and gesturing and positively bouncing on the balls of his feet during his lectures, always with his viola at the ready to illustrate his point if need be. He wouldn't have missed a lesson for the world.

Unless his world had somehow been toppled.

There was a hastily-scrawled note on the classroom door explaining his absence: A "family emergency." I stared at the offending piece of paper taped to the window, fear ricocheting through my chest.

Something horrible has happened was all I could think. Something horrible.

Antoinette's phone call confirmed as much a moment later.

"It's Edda," she said. The uncharacteristic tremor in her voice was noticeable even through the receiver. "She's been injured."

"Injured?" The word dropped from my mouth like the toll of a death knoll.

"It was one of her patients. A high-security patient. Somehow he...broke through his bonds and attacked her and twelve of the other nurses."

It was too much to process. Bonds. High security. Attacked.

"Attacked?" I echoed weakly.

"She's going to be fine," Antoinette was quick to assure me, "They all are. All the news reports are saying it's a miracle any of them survived."

News reports? It was serious enough to have been on the news?

As if reading my thoughts, Antoinette said, "Edda's hospital has never had an escape before, much less one of this magnitude. They don't know how it happened...And Edda...bruised and bloodied and exhausted and the reporters were still trying to hound her for information. Herman chased them away with his umbrella."

The image was so unlike Dr. Valerius that my nerves nearly compelled me to burst out laughing. Instead, I swallowed and asked, "But she's going to be okay?"

"Yes. She's going to be fine. Christine, I'm sorry I called—I know you're in the middle of your lectures—"

"No, no. They can wait. Where are you now? With them?"

"Yes. At L'Hôpital Cochin...Christine, you don't have to come right now. Wait to come until you have room in your schedule, I'm sure they'll understand—"

"No. I'm coming now, Antoinette. My schedule can wait."

She must have been surprised by how firmly I'd said it. I couldn't blame her-I'd surprised myself. But this was Mme. Valerius. My schedule could wait. It would wait. Everything would wait.

I knew Antoinette was nodding sharply as she said, "Alright. If you're sure."

"Of course I am. Where can I meet you?"

"Out front. Call me when you get here."

I reciprocated her nod, but then remembered that she couldn't see me, and offered a quick "I will" before hanging up and fairly sprinting out of the building, my bag banging against my hip as I headed toward the nearest Métro station.

I moved as if in a dream. I barely recalled buying a ticket or boarding the train, and was only vaguely aware of the rattling of the compartment as it sped over the tracks. My reflection in the window looked odd, somehow. Foreign. Disconnected. Wrong.

Of course it was wrong. Everything was wrong. Dr. Valerius couldn't have missed a class. Edda couldn't have been hurt. It was all wrong. It wasn't supposed to happen. Not to them.

I'd known Hermann Valerius nearly my entire life. He'd been the conductor of a small but notable university orchestra my father had joined for a brief period of time. Dad was a violinist, and Herman's heart lay with the viola, but despite that age-old violin-versus-viola rivalry, the two quickly struck up a friendship. Dr. Valerius was about ten years older than Dad and had already made a name for himself in the Swedish music community as an energetic, innovative conductor. He knew potential when he saw it. And he knew my father had it.

But Dad also had a nagging case of wanderlust, and though Hermann tried valiantly to convince him to stay with the orchestra, his efforts had proved futile. Two years into his college education and a promising professional music career, Dad left Uppsala to travel.

Flighty though he was, Dad remained loyal; he sent letters to Hermann during his travels, keeping his old friend posted every step of the way. The years progressed, and Dr. Valerius became revered as a musician's musician across Europe, conducting orchestras in Berlin, London, Paris, Vienna, Moscow, and Rome.

Funnily enough, so did my father. Dad spent several years wandering Europe himself. Not conducting, but playing his violin wherever he could get a gig, or working odd jobs until the right one came along. And it always did.

I have never in my life seen a violinist as talented as my father. Playing came as naturally as breathing to him, and he did it with gustso, with unparalleled virtuosity and a passion that was so vibrant it was almost palpable. That talent did not go ignored: always shortly after his arrival in whatever new town he'd decided to temporarily call home, word would spread about Gustave Daaé, and before he knew it, he was inundated with offers to play at social engagements, restaurants, weddings, funerals. And inevitably, someone in the local community would approach him and subtly extend to him the olive branch of opportunity: "My husband teaches at the university in Belgrade; he would love to hear you play!" Or, "I'm a DJ on the classical station here—-would you be available for an interview? Do you have a sample track I can play on the air?" Or, "M. Daae, I'm with the city council, and the mayor has a fundraising gala coming up next month. What would you say about playing for his guests?"

My father was a brilliant musician. It only followed that there was never a shortage of opportunity in his life. But he never embraced it. Whenever someone made him an offer, he would always smile graciously and politely decline, offering up one excuse or another. I think I knew even at a young age that the excuses were a means to preserve his relatively carefree lifestyle. The fame that he could have so easily attained was as good as a death warrant to him. He always said it was because he simply preferred to go wherever the wind took him, that his personality just wouldn't mesh with a "normal" career, and that was true, to some extent. It took quite a bit to ruffle his feathers. But it was also true that the threat of responsibility unnerved him. Terrified him. Besides music, he'd never committed fully to anything in his entire life.

Which is why it came as such a surprise to Dr. Valerius when Dad wrote him several years after leaving the orchestra to say that he was getting married. He'd met a woman, he'd told his old friend, in the audience of a fair he was playing at outside of Stockholm. She was lovely, he said, and he'd never been so in love. They married shortly after that, with Hermann as the groom's best man.

And then Dad set off again, but this time with his new wife in tow. Several more years passed. All the while, he kept in touch with Dr. Valerius, who insisted that it would be better if Dad settled down once and for all. My mother was unhappy, and what was more, she'd learned she was pregnant.

"I'll bet you anything that Nora's had enough, Gustave," Hermann wrote. "You can't tote a pregnant woman around the continent. You've got no money, and that baby will have no future if you keep this up."

Come to France, he'd said. Let me help you. By then, Hermann had earned his doctorate, married, and had made quite a good life for himself. He vowed to help his old friend settle down properly, and offered to let my parents stay at his home in Paris until they felt comfortable enough to purchase a place of their own. Much to my mother's relief, Dad agreed, and they packed up their few belongings and moved into the Valerius' large Paris brownstone.

The home was always spotless. There was a garden out back, and crown molding on the ceilings and bright, airy cream walls and matching furniture. The neighbors were wonderful—-a married couple, Alain and Antoinette Giry, who, like my parents, were also expecting their first child. Antoinette came from the music stock, as well; or at least she had been around it her entire life while dancing in the corps de ballet at the Garnier. They all bonded immediately. After I was born, with the Girys' and Valerius' assistance, my parents set out looking for their own home. Somewhere to call their own. Somewhere to raise their daughter. Somewhere, Hermann insisted, that would give their daughter a future.

My mother was dead four years later from a sudden stroke, and Dad never quite recovered from it. He was a joyful man, but there was always a lingering veneer of melancholy about him. For the most part, he could hide it, but there were moments when it slipped through his easy smiles and threatened to unravel him. He missed my mother profoundly. I'm sure he had exasperated her. I'm sure his flightiness had taken a toll on their marriage.

But even still, he'd loved her like no other. Her death absolutely devastated him. He told Hermann he was sorry, but he just couldn't stay in Paris. He couldn't. My mother's memory was everywhere, and he couldn't take it anymore. He had to go. He had to. And once again, he set off, now with his daughter at his side instead of his wife.

We eventually settled in Brittany. Dr. Valerius and his sunny wife, Edda, always made it a point to visit whenever they could, and I awaited their visits with zealous anticipation. Mme. Valerius would bring homemade caramel wafers and prop me up in her lap and her husband would bring his viola, and I would watch, enraptured, as he and my father dueled it out on their instruments, laughing until they were hoarse. And then they would ask me to sing along with them, and Dr. Valerius would stop and watch and say, "Gustave, that kid has got some pipes."

It was a wonderful time. Idyllic. And as a girl, I had wanted it to last forever.

But I knew it never would.

And it didn't.

Yet even among the turbulence in the wake of my father's death, I'd been afforded a stable foundation, saving graces that had somehow managed to make it all worthwhile: Antoinette, of course, who had loved my parents and took me in immediately to love me as much as she loved her own daughter. Meg, a sister in every way but by blood. Raoul, the perennially optimistic and unflinchingly loyal friend I'd made when Dad and I had been living in Brittany. And the Valeriuses: Edda, with her sweet smiles and endless generosity, and Hermann—-good-natured, good-humored, brilliant Hermann, who still never missed an opportunity to try to persuade me to take up singing again. Who had told me when I'd signed up for his class at the university to "expect my constant nagging, Christine, because you've got some pipes and they'll rust if you don't use them."

We were an odd family, I suppose, but a family, nonetheless. I couldn't bear the thought of anything shattering us.

An ashen-faced Antoinette met me outside the hospital entrance, her mouth pressed so firmly together that it looked in danger of disappearing entirely. I swallowed against the lump that had risen in my throat, and together, hand in hand, we walked silently into the building and took the lift up to the third floor.

Madame Valerius' room was at the end of the hall and it seemed to take an eternity to reach it. Our footsteps were deafening. I felt awash in the cold clamminess of the fluorescent lighting, felt stale and tainted somehow as I passed the wan sea green wallpaper.

All I could think about was my father. His room had been at the end of a hall. My footsteps had echoed loudly then, too, footfalls of the living invading the realm of the dead. And each time I'd entered his room, he'd sunken further and further into death's iron grip, his smile long abandoned beneath the tangle of tubes and wires that snaked over his wasted body and hungrily devoured every last inch of his dignity.

Would Mme. Valerius look the same?

I paused involuntarily outside the door. My father's glassy, deadened eyes stared back at me, barring entry. I couldn't do it. Not again.

Let her be okay. Please.

There was a warm pressure on my arm and I snapped my head to the side. Dad's lifeless eyes were gone, replaced by the soothing blue-gray of Antoinette's. She'd always had a rather unsettling ability to know exactly what I was thinking. Her head tilted to the side and she assured me softly, "It's alright, Christine."

I nodded. Inhaled. And stepped forward.

The curtains were drawn. I squinted into the gloom and felt my stomach plummet to the earth.

She was sleeping, I noticed with indescribable relief. Her chest rose and fell in a steady rhythm, and there was no tension in her face. Streaks of light glinted off of an I.V. bag that hung above her bed. She wasn't in any pain, at least not at the moment.

But I knew she would be soon. Her hair was hidden beneath thick gauze that had been wrapped securely around her head. The gauze was tinged a reddish brown in several spots from where she had bled into the dressing. Her left eye was blackened and sealed shut, swollen to the size of a small plum, and her face and arms were covered in angry-looking cuts and bruises. She wore a neck brace that made her look incredibly small and frail.

"Oh," I breathed in dismay. My hand found its way to my mouth in disbelief. Antoinette's hand rested reassuringly on the small of my back, but I could feel her fingers trembling.

"Hermann, Christine's here," she said quietly, and I tore my gaze away from Madame Valerius' battered form to look at her husband, who sat in a chair at his wife's bedside, clutching her motionless hand with nothing less than desperation.

He had wilted. That was the only way to describe it—he looked like a plant that hadn't been watered, like a tree bowed beneath heavy rain. His shoulders sagged, and his eyes were bloodshot and shadowed. His hair—-usually a fluffy, cotton ball white—-looked dull and fell limply over his temples as if it had been deflated. White stubble dotted his jawline; he hadn't shaved. I'd never seen him unshaven.

"Christine," he said with a small, sad smile. He gestured for me to come forward and then wrapped me in a one-armed hug, heaving a great sigh as he gave my upper arm a squeeze.

"You didn't have to come," he said hoarsely. "Your classes—"

"That doesn't matter," I interjected. Antoinette had pulled up a chair next to the bed. I did the same. It was hard and uncomfortable. "There are more important things than school."

Dr. Valerius peered at me over the rims of his glasses, and much to my surprise, there was a faint twinkle of familiar amusement in his gaze.

"You know I can't possibly let you say that in good conscience," he said. "'More important things than school...' You're talking to a professor here, Christine."

Antoinette and I chuckled, but the light-hearted moment vanished as quickly as it had come. Dr. Valerius heaved another sigh and ran his free hand down the side of his face. It fell gracelessly back into his lap. There was a brief silence punctuated by the humming of machinery before he spoke again.

"But I'm glad you're here," he said, looking at his wife as he spoke. "Edda will be glad to know you were here."

"Doc, I'm so sorry," I said softly. He nodded. Swallowed.

"Thank you. So am I. But," he added with a note of hope, "she's going to be fine. The doctors said everything checked out fine. A few weeks of good, solid rest and she'll be back in top form."

"Thank God," I said, feeling a slight weight lift from my chest at the news. She was going to be fine. He said so himself. The doctors said so. She's going to be fine.

"How long has she been sleeping?" Antoinette asked.

"About an hour. She was...in quite a bit of pain." He grimaced as if the memory was causing him pain. "But the drip should help. It put her out like a light."

"That's good. She needs rest...Hermann," Antoinette began, and I knew that tone: she was delving into full-on mother mode. "Let me make some dinners for you this week. I'll cook a few meals and stop by in the mornings to drop them off—"

"Antoinette." The lines around his eyes deepened as he smiled—-a real one this time, nearly untainted by melancholy. "Thank you. Really. But that's hardly necessary. I'm 63 years old. I fended for myself for 25 years before Edda came along; I think I've learned a thing or two about cooking."

"Defrosting peas in the microwave does not constitute cooking," she sniffed.

"Peas are peas," he chuckled. "It hardly matters how they're prepared; they all end up in the same place eventually, anyway."

"Oh, Hermann," Antoinette chided, wrinkling her nose. But she, too, was smiling. "But please tell me if you do need anything. I mean it. Anything at all."

"That goes for me, as well," I said.

"Thank you both. Really. That's very kind."

"We mean it, Hermann," Antoinette said firmly. "Anything."

"Well, I just may take you up on that, Antoinette" he said, absentmindedly running his thumb back and forth over the top of his wife's hand. "Provided you can give us a beach house in Bora Bora so we can get away from all this nonsense."

"I would if I could," she said earnestly.

"Ah, what are you going to do, mm?" he sighed. "You can't control these things...I just wish...oh, I don't know. I could have done something. Persuaded her to...Her working in that ward always did make me nervous. She got on my case about it, you know. All the time. On and on about how these people can't fend for themselves and if she didn't, then who would? On and on about how I needed to trust her because she was trained for this, she was a nurse, after all, and that's what nurses do." My heart throbbed as I heard his voice crack on the last syllable.

"You couldn't have known something like this would happen," I told him. "You just couldn't."

"No, I know. Of course not. Edda probably couldn't have even known herself, and she's the nurse. None of them could have known. Things like this...well, they just don't happen in real life, do they? Not to anyone you know."

The image of my father withering away in hospital bed flashed briefly before my mind's eye, but I stifled it as quickly as I could.

"All the other nurses, though," I asked Dr. Valerius, "they're going to be fine, too?"

He nodded. "Yes. It's a miracle. It really is. Believe it or not, Edda didn't even get the worst of it. There was one doctor—-desMarais or something or other—-who has a punctured lung, a few cracked ribs, a concussion, five broken bones—"

"And one hell of a headache, I imagine," Antoinette finished grimly.

"My God," I said, my eyes wide and brows drawn together. "What...do we know what happened? Surely it wasn't just—-I know you said it was a high-security patient, but surely it wasn't just one person."

"That's what's so bizarre about it, Christine," Dr. Valerius said, briefly removing his glasses to rub his eyes. "As far as we know, it was just one person. They're not telling us too much at this point—"

"The authorities?"

He nodded. "But they have said that they're looking for a single person. And it...happened...in a single room. Apparently, only one patient was registered to that room. He's the only one missing from the hospital."

"But..." I frowned, looking around the room as if searching for some elusive answer before turning my gaze back to Dr. Valerius'. " How? How could any of this have happened? How could he escape? It was a high-security ward, wasn't it? And how did he cause so much...?"

"We don't know. No one knows. That's what's getting to me the most, if I'm going to be frank...no one's quite sure how any of this could have happened..." He was silent for a moment, but then he lowered his voice and leaned forward slightly as if he was divulging some great secret. He exhaled heavily. "I was talking to one of the investigators. They'd been asking me a few questions. If Edda had witnessed anything to suggest that the patient had the means to...do something like this...and I told them no, not to my knowledge. And the policeman looked at me—-and let me tell you, this was a big, burly fellow, not one to be perturbed by much—-but he looked right at me and said that there was something wrong with this whole mess. Something too out of the ordinary. He said it was almost supernatural."

"...Supernatural?" Antoinette's voice sounded strange, sharp. A muscle in her jaw tensed.

"They don't know how he got out." Dr. Valerius' exhaustion was now colored by something else. He looked disturbed. "The patient. They don't know how he got out. They have no idea what he did that caused so much...damage...and they have no idea how he could have escaped. I overheard one of the investigators-they weren't exactly being quiet about it, because it was so odd, see—-but I overheard one of the investigators saying that there was something funny about the footage in the room. They have the patient on camera with all the staff one minute, and the next there's some sort of flash and he's gone. And everyone's hurt on the floor. And he's just gone. "

"What do you mean 'just gone?'" I asked, frowning.

Dr. Valerius shook his head. "Gone. There was no way he could have possibly escaped. They had guards around the door. The door was locked from the outside. There wasn't a window in the room...Edda always..." He swallowed, looking briefly at his wife and squeezing her hand. "She always complains about it. She'd worked with this particular man for a while, and she didn't like how they kept him holed up like that, locked up in the dark. She always told me he needed more stimulation. Interaction with others, that sort of thing...well, he got that in the end, didn't he?"

He stared at the ground and let out a dark chuckle. "You know, this whole...this whole thing has just been unbelievable. One minute, you're going about your business, and the next..." His voice broke and he quickly looked away, holding up one hand. "Sorry."

"Oh, Doc, it's going to be okay," I said, trying my hardest to keep my voice level. I grabbed his hand and tried to squeeze it reassuringly, but I felt anything but reassured.

"Of course it is," Antoinette said, her voice still curiously terse. Determination was etched in every line on her face. Cold determination. Frighteningly cold.

"Edda's going to be fine," I said. "She'll be up and at 'em in no time. And they'll find the man that did this."

But Dr. Valerius was shaking his head slowly.

"I don't know, Christine," he said. "Edda will be fine, of course. Thank God for that. But that man...he just disappeared into thin air. I've seen that security footage. It's not right. I'm telling you, something is not right about this. I know this sounds absurd, but it's almost as if he's..."

"Supernatural?" Antoinette said grimly from between pursed lips.

"Like a ghost," Dr. Valerius finished, staring at a nondescript spot on the tile. "The man's like a ghost..."

His unspoken question hung heavily in the thick silence.

How can you catch a ghost?