"And now I stand beside your bed

Your body bleeding from toe to head

Legs mangled, twisted and bashed in tight

My hands cleaned and cared for your injures all night

So as you lay there in dire pain

Know that I am here to sooth and calm the aches which cease to refrain." -Excerption Straight from the diary of Christine Daae

Christine's POV

My date with Erik was like anything beyond my imagination. He took me to this wonderful restaurant that was lined with fountains and a train that would run above our heads. I danced with him, oh, how I had danced with my Erik. Everything had been so perfect! Our food was delicious, and the Christmas lighting was spectacular. Never in all my life had I ever seen anything like it before. I had witnessed Christmas over and over again with Raoul, but when I saw the lights light up Coney Island, I knew I was going to want to spend Christmas with Erik forever more.

After a while of staring at the lights, I took Erik and cut through the park to get home. I stopped him about halfway, and leaned in to tell him that I loved him. I couldn't help this feeling. I wanted to tell Erik that I loved him and never wanted to be parted from him ever again. I was even going to seal it with a kiss just to prove to him that I wasn't lying. Though, I never got to finish, because we were interrupted by some thugs. It was horrible, I was grabbed and touched inappropriately while my angel was trying to fight back. God! They beat him, oh how they beat him! I saw a man bash his legs in, while another threw him into the snow. But once this happened, blood began to turn the white ice crimson red and this scared the men. They ran, leaving me to tend to Erik. The exposed part of his skull was gushing blood, and he couldn't stand….I was so scared, but found the strength within me to wrap my arm around him and help him back to the flat. Once there, I tore off his trousers, and gasped as the hideous sight those men had done to him. The braces had cut into his legs, leaving open gashes and no way of removing the braces. My whole body shook, as I pressed a towel up against Erik's gushing head wound and told him to press.

I was sweating, and ran into the bathroom, circling around. What was I going to do? I couldn't do anything. I wasn't a nurse, and didn't even know what bones were inured in his legs. Quickly, I filled a basin up with warm water, and rushed back out only to find the floor beside Erik's bed full of vomit, and him leaning over, heaving and gasping for air.

"Erik?" I rushed to his side, and rubbed his back sympathetically.

"I'm….I'm sorry." he gasped.

I leaned him back against his pillows, and began to tend to his legs. The most important part now was getting the braces off. Gently, I took each leg, prying away the metal indented into his flesh. He cried out at ever second, and I would stop to let him catch his breath before continuing. When I had the first brace off, I dipped a cloth into the warm water, and ran it over his torn flesh. My angel was sweating profusely, and his head was still gushing blood, but I didn't stop. I tightly bandaged them, and propped his sore legs up onto a few pillows before doing the same to his head. I had once wished that Erik had me here to care for him when those thugs first busted his legs, but never did I ever wish for this. History was repeating itself, and I was going to be sure to stay by his side as long as he needed me.

By the time I was finished with all of his injuries, he had fallen into an unconscious sleep. I propped his pillows, covered his body, and began cleaning up the bloody water in the basin, and mopping up the vomit covered floor. The once white bandage that was on his head had turned crimson red, along with the bandages that were covering his legs. I knew once morning came, I was going to have to fetch the doctor. I was no nurse, and I wasn't taking any chances on losing Erik.

By the time I finished cleaning up, it was nearly morning. Right now, I could have been waking up beside Erik from a long night of making love, but instead, I was making him breakfast and preparing some medicine to give him. I had left Erik in his underwear, and the white dress shirt he had gone out in. I didn't want to undress him completely and make him uncomfortable, but was going to do so when ever he woke. I made a few pieces of toast, and spread some of his peach jam on them before entering his room. He was still wearing his mask, and asleep as the sun shun in through the window, hitting the walls and bouncing over his body.

I placed the toast down on his night table, and fixed the blankets that were covered over his body. He looked like he was in agonizing pain, even when he opened his eyes, they were red and teary.

"Erik." I kept my voice down to a low whisper as to not hurt his ear drums. "How are you feeling?"

He didn't answer me, only turned his head to the side of his pillow, and pressed his eyes shut.

"I made you some toast. I even have some medicine for you, but you have to eat first."

I thought he was allowing me to feed him the toast once he reopened his eyes, but when I placed a piece up to his lips, he didn't open his mouth.

"Erik, please eat something."

"I'm…I'm not hungry, just in pain."

I kept the toast placed on his nightstand, and moved to pick up my cloak.

"I'm calling the doctor, Erik."

"Please…please don't."

I threw on my cloak, and placed my hand over his masked forehead. How badly I wanted to abide by his request, but he was getting a fever.

"I'm not a nurse, Erik. Your injuries are too severe for me to handle without the advice from a doctor."

"Ch..Christine…."

"Shh…Just relax, Erik."

My body was about to turn back and let the whole "getting a doctor" situation go, but when he arched his back, and cried out in pain I knew I couldn't let this go any longer. I left him for only five minutes. I left the flat, and used the public Phantasma phone to connect to an operator and request the doctor. When I was told one would show up within an hour, I raced back to the flat and looked after Erik who now had sweat running down his forehead.

"Erik, are you too hot?"

"No…" his voice was weak and labored. "J..Just fine."

Just to be safe, I cracked the window above his bed, and let some of the cool winter air seep into the room. I looked down at the dress shirt he was still wearing, and decided to change him before the doctor arrived. As my Erik laid there, I rummaged through his wardrobe closet and pulled out a long white nightshirt that was ruffled and open in the chest area. I carried it over to the bed Erik was laying in, and began unbuttoning his dress shirt.

"S..St..Stop." his face was pressed into his pillow, and his arms were too weak to lift themselves to stop me.

"Erik, I'm just trying to get you into something more comfortable, calm down."

As each button came undone, pale flesh began to expose itself right before my own very eyes. Once the last button came undone, I opened his shirt completely, only to be horrified. God! His ribs were protruding through his pale, discolored flesh, and his chest was filled with hideous scars. Was he born like this? No, the world had done this to him…my poor angel..If only I had known. I tried to fight back the tears as I reached inside his shirt and gently pulled his arms out of the sleeves. But once they were exposed as well, they too were covered in scars. His shoulders, oh, how his boney shoulders looked the worse. The scars that were located there crisscrossed and overlapped one another. I turned away from it, and placed the nightshirt over his head before maneuvering his arms into the sleeves. The shirt was so long that it stretched all the way down to the tops of his knees; just where his injuries started.

I had to get my mind off the scars, I just couldn't bear to look at them any longer. I picked up his dirty shirt and other clothes that were scattered around the room, and placed them into Erik's wash bin. Cleaning his clothes later would take my mind off of certain things and his condition. When a knocking occurred at the door, I answered it, only to see a doctor standing there. He was an older man dressed in a white coat and was carrying a leather bag in his hand.

"You are Christine?" he asked.

I only nodded, and invited the man inside. When I had spoken to him over the phone, I had explained everything from how the thugs beat Erik's legs, down to the previous condition they were in. But I was in luck, for this was the same doctor who had treated Erik before when the thugs first made him a cripple. But if there was one thing I knew right way, it was that this doctor and I were going to be anything but friends.

He placed his bag down on Erik's night table, and aggressively tore away the blankets that covered his legs. I stood there while this man pressed his fingers over Erik's legs with the hardest of pressure. When Erik would cringe and cry out, the doctor only pressed harder. I couldn't stand here and watch him hurt Erik any longer…it wasn't right!

"Could you be gentle with him?" I angrily questioned. "He is in agony if you haven't noticed."

"I'm the doctor, Madame." he snarled. "It would be best to stand back and let me work….Where are his braces?"

I pointed to the corner of the room where I had placed the mangled parts.

"Right over there. Those thugs bashed them so hard into his legs that I had to destroy them in order to get them off."

"It doesn't matter. He won't be walking anymore."

How dare this man come into Erik's home and treat him like this!

"How can you say that? He's done it before hasn't he?"

The doctor packed up his bag, and looked at me.

"He's a cripple. If you want to help him, you'd place him into an asylum, that's where he belongs, Madame. I tried to beat that into his head when this happened the first time, but he didn't want to listen to me. He's a cripple, and cannot live on his own."

"So that's it?" I crossed my arms. "You're not going to give him anything to help with the pain? Or instructions to heal his wounds?"

"You want instructions?" he grabbed his bag and headed to the door, turning to me right before walking out. "Do yourself a favor and put him in an asylum. Good day, Madame."

The doctor slammed the door on his way out, leaving me to care for Erik. How could he ever expect me to do such a thing? Just because Erik was different, didn't mean he couldn't care for himself or heal like a human being. The bastard didn't even care for the wound on his exposed skull! How dare he treat my Erik like that? How dare he! It was up to me now, and I wasn't going to fail him.

The first thing I decided to do was clean out his head wound. I carefully unwrapped the bloodstained bandage from around his head, and looked down at the crusty red wound.

"Erik? Are you with me?" I softly asked.

He didn't say anything, but he did groan, which was a better reply than nothing. After dipping a cloth into some brandy I had found under Erik's sink, I gently ran it over his wound, carefully tracing the cloth around his other arteries and veins.

"Ch….Chr…Christine… Stop, please, it hurts so much."

"I'm almost finished, Erik."

And indeed I was. Once the crusty red blood was wiped away, I wrapped his head with new bandages and switched to fluffing the pillows that were supporting his legs.

"Better?"

"Could you sit me up?"

I smiled warmly, and wrapped my arms under Erik's to lift him up into a sitting position. Before leaning his body back against the rusty headboard of his bed, I placed a few pillows behind him to support his back.

"Comfortable?"

"Yes, thank you."

His sweat was now gone, and I could sense that he was shivering. I closed the window above his bed, and wrapped a blanket around his shoulders.

"Would you like something to drink? I'll make you anything."

Erik leaned back into his pillows, and looked down at the pieces of toast that were placed there.

"No, I'm fine. I know if I drink anything, I'll only vomit."

I stood there thinking about how to make him feel better, and then I thought about massaging his feet. Yes! That was it! I sat down at the end of his bed, and pulled off his socks before placing them down beside me. Erik seemed terrified at my actions, but I shied away and turned to his feet. Never had I ever seen Erik's feet before. I used to think them to be probably as monstrous as his face, but they weren't at all. They weren't scared and disgusting, they were handsome, and when I placed my hand against them, they were soft like a baby's….Not that I would know how soft a baby's foot was, but they were so soft.

He gasped under my touch, and as I gently massaged it, he sighed heavily. His foot crackled as my fingers ran over the bottom of it, causing me to stop. Was I hurting him? If I was, then I didn't want to continue…

"Are my feet disgusting you?" I heard him ask.

"No….never…"

"I would understand if they were."

I looked up, only to notice that he had tears streaming down his cheeks.

"Erik, please, your feet are handsome. I thought I was hurting you, so that's why I stopped and the only reason why."

"That crack felt wonderful. Erik never had his feet massaged before."

I began massaging his foot again, glad to see that he was relaxing his body.

"Erik, when the doctor was here, he…he suggested that you be put into an asylum. Has he ever talked to you about that?"

Erik's eyes moved to mine.

"I deserve to be in one, wouldn't you agree?" he asked, his heart choking within his throat.

"Never. How could you even think that?"

"Because I can't even take a girl out to dinner without being bullied. Yes, I may deny going to an asylum now, but when I can no longer care for myself, I know I'll have to go. For I know that I'll never have anyone to love me."

"Erik, I thought you did a wonderful job at caring for yourself with the condition you were in."

"Yes, but I'm not getting any younger. Are you blind, Christine? Look at my legs now. You saw how the doctor reacted, I'll never walk again."

I moved my massage over to his toes, and thought about what to say.

"That clown wasn't a doctor, Erik, he was a cruel man. Doctors don't say things like that."

I moved my hands to his ankle only to hear him cringe.

"Erik, is everything ok?"

He took a few breaths, and pointed to the bathroom.

"Fetch…my morphine."

I hurried to the bathroom where I took his morphine tools out of the cabinet, and walked back to him. I placed everything down on his nightstand, and Erik looked over at it.

"I…I can't do it myself. You're going to have to do it for me."

"Erik, I couldn't possibly."

"Of course you can. It's simple. Fill the syringe up to the marked line."

It was nerve racking. I didn't want to overdose him, or worse, hurt him. My hands trembled as I filled the syringe with the medicine, and looked at the line only to notice I had passed it.

"Oh, I over filled it."

When I tried to squirt some out, I emptied too much.

"Oh, dear, look what I've done."

"It's fine, Christine, relax." Erik told me. "Now wrap the rubber band tightly around my forearm."

I was such a nervous wreak, that I took the piece of rubber and wrapped it around Erik's sleeved forearm.

"Christine, you can't possibly give me a needle with my sleeve pulled down."

"Oh, forgive me." I tore away the band, and pulled up his sleeve, rewrapping the band around his now bare forearm. When his green vein became visible, my trembling hand took the syringe and placed the needle over it.

"Christine, calm down. You're going to hurt me by trembling like that."

That was all I needed to hear. I no longer had the strength within me to prick him.

"Christine, take a breath. Please, I'm begging you to give me this. My body is in so much pain."

He was right. I was the only one who was going to be able to give this to him. There were no doctors to do this, leaving me as his only option. I took a breath to calm myself down, and stuck the needle into his vein before pushing the medicine into his arm. When the syringe was empty, I gently pulled it back out, and removed the band from his arm.

"Better?"

"Yes."

Within a matter of minutes, his eyes began to get heavy, and I placed him back down into a laying position so he could rest. While he was sleeping, I carried his laundry bin to the sink and filled it up with soapy water. Afterwards, I began unloading his dirty clothes into the sink to wash them. In his pile were a few shirts, one with an ink stain on the front of it, a night shirt, a few pairs of trousers and some underwear. He dressed like a normal human being, and yet, in the past I had thought differently. I believed him to be a monster, but never took the time to get to know his heart. I was cruel back then, and didn't dare to be like that now. Erik needed me, and by god, he was going to have me.

I scrubbed all of his laundry as if washing glass, before hanging it up over the fire to dry. I was hanging up his last pair of underwear when I heard the sound of sobbing coming from his room. I rushed to the doorway, and looked in only to see him laying with his back turned towards me, heaving with cries.

"Erik?"

I rushed to his side, and placed my hand on his shoulder.

"Erik, what's wrong?"

"I…I'm not worthy of any love…" he sobbed.

"What makes you think that?"

"B..Because I should have protected you…Those men touched you so inappropriately, and yet, I couldn't stop them."

I wouldn't have Erik talking like this. It wasn't his fault, he didn't have any power over what happened. I rolled Erik onto his back, and wiped his tears away with my thumb.

"Erik, don't cry. You didn't have any control over what happened."

"I can't even take a girl out to dinner without getting tormented." he pulled the covers over his head, and sobbed louder. "I would understand if you never wanted to have dinner with me again."

I peeled back the blankets, and smiled.

"Erik, I want to have dinner with you every night. You can't be afraid to go out into the world just because you get knocked down."

"It's not getting knocked down that scares me, it's the thought of you getting knocked with me. You're not a freak, I am….But you will get tormented just because you're with me."

"I'm not afraid, Erik. Life may knock us down, but we can choose to get back up again. As for me, I will always stand up, dust my dress off and then reach my hand out to you to help you up. But for now, it's apparent that you won't be going out for sometime, so until then, I'm the chef."

"I don't want you to be my maid." he coldly stated. "You don't deserve that."

"I'm not doing anything I haven't wanted to do."

"Just do me a favor and don't do anything until I ask it of you."

As much as I hated it, I obeyed his request A chore completed every now and then without Erik knowing wouldn't hurt.

"Yes, Erik."

"Because I don't want you constantly working while I lay here doing nothing."

"You have a deal, just promise me you'll keep your anger away."

"I'll try." Erik closed his eyes, and pressed his face into his pillow. "But you know I can't promise anything."

"Are you cold?"

I noticed that his shivering had only gotten worse over the past few minutes. I placed my hand back over his forehead only to feel his hot skin burning through it.

"You're fever is rising. I'm going to start a compress that will hopefully bring down your fever."

I went to the kitchen, and wet a cloth in cool water before bringing it back to lay over Erik's forehead.

"That's making me feel even colder." he shivered.

I pulled my quilt from off my bed, and covered Erik with it.

"Just let me know when your compress gets warm."

"I'll be happy when it does."

I tucked him in, and fluffed the pillow that was behind his head.

"Would you like anything to drink or eat? I'll make you anything."

"No, just perhaps some dinner later on."

"And what would you like?"

Erik groaned, and opened his red eyes.

"You're acting like a maid again."

"Sorry."

"You know what I can and can't eat. Just make anything light that won't make me vomit later."

"Right away, sir." I teased.

"Not funny, Christine."

I giggled, and headed towards the doorway.

"Erik?"

"Yes, Christine?"

"Get some rest."

With that, I left the room to finish the wash. Erik was my patient, and like a nurse, I was beginning to fall in love with him.

Ok everyone, please review. More to come soon! Oh, and I always like getting people's ideas into my story, so if anyone has something they've been dying to see in this story, please don't hesitate on letting me know.