[ - ]
Table of Contents [Report This]
Printer Chapter or Story Microsoft Word Chapter or Story
- Text Size +
Chapter Sixteen

Brian


"These exercises, they keep him from losing his muscle," the nurse, whose name she'd revealed was Carrie, said. She was still flexing Nick's legs. "When patients don't move a lot, they lose muscle mass, so if we exercise them, it helps prevent that." She smiled. "I'm an LNA, still studying to be a real nurse, you know, so I get all the dirty work... bed pans, sheet changing, the like... I don't mind the exercising though. I feel like I'm really helping when I do it." She smiled sweetly. "I can't wait until I graduate and I get to be a real RN, though. Maybe I'll even study and be a doctor someday. But for now, RN will be nice."

"You'll make a very good nurse when you graduate," I said.

Carrie smiled. She put Nick's leg down.

The door banged open behind me, and the sound of a girl, screaming incoherent sentences loudly, filled the room. "Girl, we need you out here, c'mon. All hands on deck!" another LNA said, sticking her head in.

"I'll be right back," Carrie said and she hurried out the door.

She didn't close it all the way, it got caught on the edge of the chair I was sitting in, and I could hear the girl screaming, echoing off the walls of the ward.

"BUT HE PROMISED!! HE HAS TO BE HERE SOMEWHERE! HE PROMISED!! PLEASE!!! PLEASE! OH GOD, HE PROMISED!! NICK!!!!"

I reached for the door and slammed it quickly, glancing at Nick. I half expected him to wake up at the sound of a female shrieking his voice. I stared down at him. "Must be something about the name, making the ladies scream like that, huh?" I asked, trying to make light of what I'd just overheard.

The girl was now shrieking loud enough that I could hear her even with the door closed. A sedative was surely on it's way.

"Good Lord," I mumbled.

The door opened again. I looked up as the girl's screams got louder, then quiet again as the door closed behind my nurse from downstairs, who was toting a wheel chair and had her hands on her hips. She stared at me with one eyebrow raised. "I had a feeling this is where I'd find you. I should've just started my search here instead of looking around the ward downstairs. Your wife is having a panic attack over your whereabouts, you know."

"I'm sorry," I replied.

She waved at the wheel chair, and pretended to be pissed, though I could tell it was all good natured. She understood. I put my hand on Nick's hand. "I'll be back, buddy," I said, then I turned and sat down in the chair, and my nurse wheeled me out of Nick's room, being careful not to let the door slam behind us.

In the ward, the girl was still shrieking from ICU-8, and I could see her fighting and struggling against several nurses and a doctor was rushing toward her, ripping the packaging off a giant sedative needle and pulling alcohol swabs out of his deep coat pockets. "PLEASE! HE HAS TO BE HERE SOMEWHERE, HE SWORE HE WOULD COME! NICK!!! NICK, WHERE ARE YOU!"

I glanced over as my nurse pushed me around the half-moon of the station in the center toward the exit.

We were just about out of the ICU ward when ---

"BRIAN!!"

I looked up.

The young woman - the miracle coma patient that Carrie had been telling me about - was kneeling on the bed in ICU-8, staring at me over the shoulders of several doctors.




Nick

My hands were shaking and my knees were like Jell-O as I stumbled through the city streets back towards the BMW, tears soaking my face. I lingered in the intersection where we'd almost kissed and glanced back the way I'd come, a nagging feeling like I should go back eating at the edges of me. Part of me wanted to go back and just... sit there beside her, just stay by her forever, but I knew that it was futile because she wasn't there, just her paused self was and the only way to truly spend forever with her was to find myself and then get back to her in the Real World. Going back would do nothing to reunite us, not in reality.

The city seemed a thousand times bigger than I remembered it. I felt so tiny in such a huge, silent world. Everything was so much more ominous without Margo there, talking. I couldn't imagine what she'd gone through wandering through these streets by herself for years. Years, I couldn't even fathom it. I'd go crazy. The silence was oppressive, like weight was being applied to me from all sides.

I paused and looked back again, but I couldn't even see the hospital from where I was, and it gave me a hollow feeling. I kept referencing her makeshift map until I'd finally found my way back to the BMW and climbed inside. I held onto the steering wheel, flexing my fingers and took a deep breath.

It was gonna be okay, very soon it would be okay.

I had to keep reminding myself I hadn't truly lost her, I'd saved her, and now I just had to save myself and we'd be safe.

I started the car and pulled a U-turn and started maneuvering my way back out of the tightly congested streets, further and further away from Margo and the hospital, further and further out of the city until finally I was back on the Interstate, headed back toward the tour buses and my paused self.

As I drove, I started trying to imagine what I was gonna tell the guys when I woke up, how I'd get the tour buses to turn around to go back so I could find Margo at the hospital.

When I finally pulled up to the first of the tour buses, lined up along the dark street, I stopped the BMW and turned it off. I got out, running alongside the buses in excitement until I got to mine and I reached for the door and yanked it open. I climbed on board and turned on a light and rushed to the back of the bus and closed my eyes. I waited for a flash of light or a rush of sound or something to happen that would indicate I'd been unpaused, but nothing came. I reached for the shade that covered my back window and looked at the driver of the bus behind mine - Howie's bus - but he was still paused.

"Damn it," I muttered, "What'm I doing wrong?"

Then I remembered Margo had to climb on her bed before she was unpaused. Maybe I needed to figure out exactly what unpaused me would be doing if I was unpaused and get into that exact position. I turned on the TV and PlayStation and grabbed a paddle and threw myself to the floor in various positions (Indian style, flat on my belly, on my back, leaning against the couch...) but none of that worked. I furrowed my brow. I climbed onto the couch, dropping the PlayStation paddle and threw myself face down, then on my back, then a variety of other sitting positions I frequently found myself in (including the Mork from Ork). I tried the same thing in my bunk, and the food booth. I even tried opening the fridge door. But nothing. Nothing worked.

I stood in the middle of the bus, my shadow casting long across the floor, staring, dumbfounded at the empty darkness. "What the hell?" I muttered.

I'd been so sure I'd get here and just boom, snap back, that I hadn't even stopped to wonder what would happen if I got back to the tour bus only to discover that I wasn't there.

I rubbed my hands together.

"Well where the hell am I then?" I wondered.

I always played video games after the shows while we rode the buses to the next venue. There wasn't anywhere else I'd be. It's not like any of us shared tour buses anymore, and the other guys all had their kids and wives with them and ---

Brian.

I suddenly remembered.

"Of course. What an idiot I am... Of course." I rushed off the tour bus and I ran down past the line of the buses to the end. "How the hell did I forget this?" I said, shaking my head, and I ran through the still-parted rain drops that lined the street where Margo and I had been before and followed them back across the street to the hillside to the scene of the accident. I couldn't believe I'd nearly forgotten all about the accident.

I ran toward the car and crawled up onto the hood of it, crawled over the dashboard and pushed aside the shattered glass, and rolled into the front seats of the car. I moved until I was sitting in the passenger seat and I looked to my right at the grill of the eighteen-wheeler and I took a deep breath, my heart pounding in my chest as I stared at the metal, at the indents on the side of the car where the truck was about to plow through...

What if I managed to unpause myself only just in time to die? I wondered.

I closed my eyes.