His coughing did not sound at all normal. This was her first thought as she entered the bleak hospital room after her frightening new acquaintance had fled so swiftly, it left her with a dizzying assortment of thoughts that tumbled one after the other like clumsy acrobats in her mind. The fits seemed to possess her father completely and his brow was dotted with perspiration. He was sweating like he did in the late summer sun, which seemed too unnatural in this cold building.
"Christine," he managed despite the shuddering, phlegm-thick attack. "I don't approve of your odd new friend. He frightens me, I don't want whatever he is near you."
"What's wrong?" She demanded, ignoring his statement to focus on the pressing matter at hand. Pressing a palm across his damp forehead she quickly recoiled from the heat of it. "Papa. I think you have a fever."
"I'm only healing," he replied quickly—too quickly, in the way he always had at times like this. Her father had a habit of being dismissive of these things. She never knew how he truly felt. His mind was as untouchable as the stars. Knowing this about him, she had the nurse call button pressed beneath her finger.
It was an uncomfortable four minute wait. Her father did not say much more besides another comment about her new 'friend'. And it seemed that, while she could regale him with the story of how she came to know such an unusual being, it didn't matter at that moment. Besides the emergency of her father's distress, he wouldn't believe in such a thing as reapers of souls or a person's ability to walk through space itself, leaving one apartment to enter another place like she had that night. The truth was that she was not entirely unsure that she wasn't experiencing some sort of delusion. But hadn't the nurse spoken to the creature or was that a very sophisticated trick of her already broken mind?
Maybe she needed to talk to her psychiatrist…
The nurse entered the room, all business, her pink scrubs making a shuffling sound as she walked. Christine found the sound comforting, it was what she imagined angel's wings would sound like. Christine didn't need to say anything, as the nurse took one look at her ailing father in his bed and was upon him in an instant, checking his vitals and making adjustments with his pain medication.
"He's got a high fever," the nurse said in confirmation of Christine's fears. "I'm paging the doctor."
Christine stood in one spot, frozen with fear as her father began to cough again and again. The nurse was fixated on her task of making her patient as comfortable as possible. Minutes later, a doctor was in the room too. The four of them in such a small space with the beeping equipment and depressing window made it feel claustrophobic. Suddenly it felt like it was all too much for her. She couldn't seem to take in full breaths and her mind was careening on that all too familiar edge of crisis. A panic attack was upon her and she was helpless to stop it. She could see the doctor asking her father questions, but the words were not registering to her. Instead, her mind played over and over again the same terrible scene, a funeral—the one she was certain she would have to plan for her father, cheap due to the state of their funds, and lacking company, because her father had garnered so few friends. It was all too much for her—she was having too many epiphanies at once.
"I suspect there is a post-surgery infection," the doctor said somberly, which yanked Christine back out of her cacophony of thoughts. "We'll start him on a round of IV antibiotics and monitor him closely to gauge his reaction. Until then, we'll make him as comfortable as we can. This is an unfortunate complication of his surgery. At this time, I think it would be best for us to limit his visitors while we work towards getting him on the mend."
The doctor was trying to be comforting, but the words felt ice cold to Christine, delivered with too much professionalism as to contain any warmth. He was asking her to leave, she could read between the lines, and she knew that he was making the call in her father's best interest, but it felt like a betrayal.
They had managed to get through an entire year of a global pandemic, in and out of hospitals, without her father contracting Covid. They had managed to get a procedure that was expected to rid her father of his cancer, and now she was standing here before a doctor who was telling her that her father was not getting better at all—in fact he was so ill, he was not to be in the company of his only surviving family.
As though sensing her distress, the doctor lowered his voice and calmly said, "I promise we will keep you informed of everything. You will not be kept out of the loop."
"He's all I have," she heard herself say, the words were wooden and bland because she was so overwhelmed, she found she could not find it in her to emote.
The doctor nodded and quietly left the room. The nurse, having reentered the suite to hook up a bag of potent antibiotics to her father's arm, turned to gently say, "Hang in there, honey," before shuffling off. Her scrubs no longer sounded like angel's wings, but the sound of a reaper's scythe cutting through grass.
It made her wonder where he was—Erik. She was sure that was the name he gave. It seemed both ordinary and unusual at once. She wondered—briefly—if it was spelled with a c or a k…or if it had some wholly unusual spelling—Erick, Erich or Erikk. Oh, what was she doing worrying about spelling when the man claimed to eat souls and looked like…well, when he looked like he did? But she did wonder about him. She wondered a great number of things. For example, what was his life like before he became what he was, why did he seem so angry and sad, and what did he want with someone as insignificant as her? He spoke of a mother in such an off-handed resentful way that she knew there was a story there that was most certainly more wound than memory.
After assuring her father she would return, she reluctantly left the room. It felt like she was abandoning him. She had the horrible, sinking feeling that it would be the last time she would see him alive. She forced herself to look at him once more through the ajar door. He was hacking sickly once again and settling himself into his stark white pillow. His face looked a sickly color, more gray than the flesh pink of his usual self. It wasn't the sort of final memory she wanted—like a grim Polaroid she didn't want to keep, but couldn't throw away. Her memory bank had grown so full of them, she wondered if she even had any with smiles in them at all. There were a few that had been corrupted by others. She had a bright memory of the Christmas morning she was given a red scarf her mother made, but it was tainted by the image of blood, red upon the bathroom floor, the same color as the very yarn she had used to make the scarf. Each time she put it on she could see her mother, eyes staring back at her, unseeing. She could still remember how confused she was, her mother didn't even look real—she was so white and resembling plastic, she could have been a mannequin.
Her father was all she had. He had been her rock, he had been an island—forever caught in the same amber of grief as she. He had been both those things, but he had been there and she had grown accustomed to the fantasy that he would never die. She had cultured and carefully tended to the idea since the death of her mother, that her father would never leave her—but now that false, fantastical belief was shattered by the harsh hammer of reality. It was certain he would leave her one day and where would she be after that?
Looking at the scraps of what she had of a life, she was found wanting. Where were her dreams, her aspirations, her accomplishments—or even friends for that matter? All she had to show for it all was an empty apartment, a string of dead end jobs and an unrequited love with a man who clearly saw her as more charity case than friend. Had she ever truly wanted to do anything more with her life? Was this raw despair and emptiness what her mother felt before she shut herself away in that well-cleaned bathroom and exiled her family to a life without her? She kept herself awake on far too many nights wondering what her mother thought in those last moments—did she find relief at last, or was there an instant of regret? She would never know for sure, but there were days, however fleeting, when she understood the depths of agony her mother must have felt to have given up a loving husband and daughter so she could walk through the gates of death.
In the waiting room she stood lost. Erik was not there. For some reason she expected he would be, as though he were a figure she could manifest at will and not like the Cheshire Cat who only appeared at the most inopportune times. Glancing at the clock, she knew already that it would confirm what she already knew, that evening was far away. Instead, she pulled out her phone and sent Raoul a text over the hospital Wi-Fi. Her phone had been shut off for three days, but she didn't want to tell Raoul because she knew he would offer to pay for it.
"I just saw dad. He's not getting better."
She paced around the room while she waited for the three little dots that appeared in a bubble on the bottom of the screen to metamorphosize into a text.
"Stay positive, Chris. It's still too soon after the surgery."
The corners of her eyes started to burn with the fresh emergence of tears. She would give anything for Raoul's optimistic words to be true.
"He has an infection from the surgery, they have him on antibiotics."
She took a deep breath before adding, I'm scared.
His reply was swift.
"Where are you?"
"I'm at the hospital."
"Stay there. I'm coming for you, I'll be there in 15."
She debated whether to type in a half hearted denial of his chivalrous act, but she didn't have it in her. Truth was, she wanted to see him, even if he was a continued source of her pain. Because, like her father sustaining everlasting life, a romance with Raoul was her other most ardent of fantasies.
"Ok", she replied with a sigh.
When he arrived, he looked like a paragon of business, in well tailored black pants and a crisp white button up shirt. He was always so put together, but his hair was careless and his shirt sleeves were rolled up haphazardly to his elbows, giving him an aesthetic of cool Christine felt was out of her league. His new, well kept Audi was filled with the fragrance of his signature sweet cologne which embraced her with its familiarity.
"Hey," he said softly, placing a warm palm on her thigh once she had buckled herself in, the heat of it penetrated her thin black leggings. Everything about him was reassuring. It was in moments like this, when he looked at her just like this, that she could dive straight into her fool's paradise of a future with this man. "Tell me what's going on?"
She didn't know she was holding back tears until his question served as a key to the gate which held them back.
"He's sick!" She cried, and then she thrust her face into her hands to hide her horrible grief stricken face. Having him see her even more broken than she already was only added to the heartache she felt. How many times would he stand in witness to her crying before he would desert her too? "He looks terrible, he looks worse than before the surgery."
The sound of his seat belt unclicking startled her, but the sound of his car door opening and closing forced her eyes to peel from behind the safe obscurity of her hands. He was walking around the car to her side and opening her door. With gentle fingers, he unfastened her own seatbelt and extracted her from the car with gentle arms that curled around her in an embrace so loving, that it brought fresh and conflicted tears to her eyes.
She had wanted this for so long. Each moment in his arms felt like a small miracle. Some nights, when she found herself tucked in his bed for one circumstantial reason or the other, both in teenage years and on, she would wake to find herself held against him. Always afraid to wake him, for fear she would shatter the dream by reminding him he wasn't whoever he dreamed of in that instance, she would instead snuggle against him.
"We'll get through this, Christine." He said so softly beside her ear that the closeness made her arms bristle in goose flesh. "I promise, you won't be alone through this." As he made the promises, his arms tightened her closer to the comfort of his body.
"I'm so afraid, Raoul," she cried, "I don't understand what's happening. I feel like I'm going mad."
She didn't want to tell him about Erik, because what would she say? There was no way she could reveal what she wasn't even entirely certain was real in the first place. It hurt her to keep this in. The secret was pushing against her insides like an uncomfortable pressure of forbidden and fantastical knowledge, and yet, it still paled in comparison to the news of her father's rapidly deteriorating health. So she stopped the procession of the words that lined up on her tongue, waiting for their chance to emerge, and squashed them where they stood.
Raoul eventually untangled himself from her, but it was slowly, almost reluctantly. She allowed him to help her back into the car and they departed from the hospital, with every mile between her and her father feeling more and more like a sin than the next. She knew she couldn't possibly have stayed—she had been removed from his side by medical professionals and there was nothing she could do but wait.
Raoul took her to their diner and she ordered the lightest thing possible, soup, which she hardly touched despite her hunger. She looked at the thick bowl of gelatinous clam chowder and thought about every little calorie it represented.
Raoul offered a sympathetic smile as he put down his fork that was making work of a plate of hash browns, and said, "I'm sorry. I'm not that hungry either. To be honest, these potatoes taste like shit right now. I can't stop worrying about Papa Viktor." He placed his napkin down over his plate. "Do you want to get out of here?"
She shook her head.
They went to his home, sleek and clean and minimalist, but he kept those framed photos of the two of them together as children.
"Why do you have these up?" She suddenly asked.
"Oh," he breathed a laugh that was husky and boyish while running a hand through his hair, which he said was longer than his brother deemed professional. "Because they're important memories." He grew a bit serious and sighed, "You are important, Christine. Probably more than I usually let on."
She didn't know how to take that confession, or what it meant, because he was important to her too, but in a different way than strictly as chosen family. But she blushed all the same. Special. It made her feel special.
Raoul walked over to the fridge in his open plan kitchen and pulled out half consumed bottle of white wine. He shrugged when she raised an eyebrow and said, "You know, me, Christine, I like sweeter wine. Will you have a glass with me at," he looked at his watch, "Almost Ten in the morning? I promise this isn't my standard procedure, but I think we need it."
He looked so helplessly endearing, standing there with his chilled wine bottle and his unorthodox invitation that she couldn't help but agree. They sat together sipping their respective glasses of wine while he took her mind off the troubles she faced with fluffy and frivolous tales about his brother's recent dating disasters. The wine had worked its way past her empty stomach and into her system far too quickly because she felt quite warm and loose with the single glass.
"Why did you stop dating the ballerina?" she asked suddenly, surprising even herself by her words.
He set his empty glass down, which he had been fiddling with between his long, strong fingers for several minutes. Clearing his throat, he adjusted himself in his seat and said carefully, "Lots of reason. But mostly, I had in mind the person I wanted to be with and it wasn't her."
"Like a list of traits?" she pressed, not knowing why she was veering into this subject matter.
"Something like that," he said evasively, "I have someone very special in mind."
Special. She deflated.
"I'm sure you'll find her someday," she said around an uncomfortable pressure in her chest.
"I know I will," he said seriously. "In fact, I've found her."
"Oh," the word came out in a rush of pain, but she schooled her features. After so many years of loving him in secret, she had learned how to hide behind a wall as thick as concrete.
"Yes," he said thoughtfully, his eyes didn't meet hers but found themselves landing on the table before them. "It's like discovering a dream."
She suddenly felt very light headed, like she was falling off a very tall ladder. Her stomach was twisting upon itself and she felt her throat grow tight as it fought more tears. How much more was she to suffer today?
"I'm feeling a bit unwell," she admitted more forcefully than she intended. I think I should go home and lie down.
Raoul appeared flustered by her tiny outburst and looked about himself as though he were trying to place a thought as though it were a dropped pen.
"Did I say something wrong?" He asked softly.
"No," she said hurriedly, "It's just been a lot today."
"Yes," he nodded, "I'm sorry, I should have thought this through. Please, though, stay here. I have some things to do in the office, I could go there and you can stay—"
"I need to go home. Papa would probably need some of his favorite books since he'll be staying longer." The fib slid from her easily, despite her tender and bruised heart.
He looked like a puppy who had just been kicked, almost cowering before her in the wake of her small lie and she thought it must be the morning glass of wine affecting him too.
"Of course," he murmured, "You're always welcome here, Christine—if you change your mind." With that he stood and collected the wine glasses. For a moment he stood there, his expression one of someone with something heavy and important on his mind, but he gave a soft shake of his head and gifted her a smile that was too wan that it failed to reach his eyes.
Twenty minutes later he was depositing her before her apartment, the drive was quiet and uncomfortable. Before she left the confines of his car, he reached over and tucked her hair behind her ear. It was an act that felt so right and familiar, but foreign.
"I'll always be here for you, Christine."
The words felt like painful lashes, making it impossible for her to accept them, but instead, she inwardly flinched from them. She wondered if she had finally reached the limits of her tolerance for heartbreak. It was too much—far too much for one day. She stumbled into her shabby little shack of an apartment and prostrated herself on the dull and scratched hardwood floor in a fit of tears. Hours passed that way, a cycle of crying and sleeping, until she could do nothing more but stare empty eyed at the ugly water stain on the ceiling.
When Erik appeared, the sun was just exiting the sky. He came through his strange little magic door and he seemed older. His previously rigid posture was slouched, he seemed to curl in on himself like a wilting black orchid. There was a vacancy in his own eyes that could match her own.
"You came," she whispered, still fearful she was talking to a creation of her own mind.
"I said I would," he replied somewhat forlornly. His beautiful voice was filled with impotent rain clouds, the thunder of it long vanquished by some unknown ordeal.
"My father is dying, isn't he?" She asked, as she lay there feeling thin as an empty corn husk upon the floor, but her eyes bore accusations into him. "It's true, isn't it?" She gritted out between her teeth. Her lips quivered with a clash of grief and rage. "When did you know?"
He carried himself on three disjointed strides to lean against the wall, beside the portrait of her dead mother, while the door he entered dissolved like a fading mirage.
"Not until today," he said in a three ton sigh. "Not until I last spoke with him. These things happen, you know, people must die or they would all be like me."
It seemed impossible that she had any tears left, but she sat up to glare at the horrifying man who stood before her. The threadbare suit he wore seemed to hang off his bones like a flag on a pole lacking wind, it was tattered in places and turning brown from exposure to light and elements—God only knew how long he had worn it. If she saw him on the street she would feel sorry for him, but not now.
"How can you be so cruel?" She demanded. "Don't you know what this is like?"
He only sighed and flicked the mask that covered the lower half of his face with a flash of twiggy fingers, tossing it to the other side of the room. She didn't flinch at the sight of it. Every inch of that face matched the personality of its bearer—ugly and missing its crucial parts. The center of his face was as cavernous as his empathy. It was likely how the face of Dorian Gray's portrait looked towards the end of the novel.
"I don't know what you mean, Christine," he tiredly responded, and the tone was one of supreme annoyance, like he was inconvenienced by a gnat in his jam.
"Have you never lost someone who meant everything to you?" She asked thickly as the tears dropped from the soft edge of her jaw like rain from roof shingles. Her shoulders shuddered as she struggled to draw a breath through ribs clenched in sorrow.
He stood there stone silent for an eternal three seconds.
"Yes," he admitted with a brittle voice that crumbled in the air between them. "I lost him. Twice." Then he slid to the floor as though his legs had finally given up the ghost. He gave a sad little moan that befitted the tragedy of his face.
She stared at him through the hazy filter of her tears. He looked so broken there on the floor, no longer the frightening ghoul of a creature that had waltzed into her shambles life. Now he just seemed like a lonely, and tired man.
They sat like that for quite a long time, the silence growing unusually comfortable as they fought their personal demons. For what must have been hours, she refused to look at him, but she could hear the sounds of his own despair—the cause of which she had no idea, but it blunted the edges of her rage until it was as smooth as sea glass.
Eventually, the sniffling and labored breaking of sobs subsided and she looked over to see her odd visitor, made of all limbs, slumped against the wall of her apartment fast asleep. She didn't think he could sleep.
Resigning herself to his presence, she crawled into her sad little bed, bones tender from such a long time on the hardwood floor, and closed her eyes, not bothering to shut out the single light that filtered through the apartment from the tiny kichenette.
They had a lot to talk about when she woke.