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Chapter Six

Brian


Leighanne had fallen asleep leaning against the bed, her hair sprawled behind her, eyes closed, lids fluttering ever so slightly as she dreamed. I slid my hand out of hers and pushed the blankets back as slowly as humanly possible, glancing at her periodically to make sure she wasn't waking up. This venture would most definitely not be Leighanne-approved. Or nurse-approved for that matter. I'd been asking all day and into the night for them to bring me to see Nick and they'd been saying no. I couldn't wait for them to decide when it was safe for me to go see him. I needed to see him now.

I didn't fully believe them that he was in a coma.

I'd heard him, damn it. I'd heard him talking to me, leaning over me on the hill by the accident.

I slid wobbly knees over the side of the bed, and with one last glance at Leighanne, I slid off the edge. My feet hit the tile and for one quavering moment I managed to stay up. Then my knees buckled and I went down hard and fast and I landed on the floor, my body slamming into it with a smarting pain that shot through my body.

Leighanne was up and at my side faster than I could've spelled her name. "What in the name of God do you think you're doing?" she gasped.

I winced and grabbed at my shoulder. I couldn't believe how fast I'd dropped. "I just - I wanted to --"

"You were going to see Nick, weren't you?" she asked in a disapproving voice.

"I need to see him," I said.

Leighanne sighed. "Brian..." she shook her head, and reached up to press the nurse's call button, then settled next to me again. She rubbed my shoulder for me and I lay there staring up at her, feeling weak. I couldn't even walk across a damn room. I closed my eyes. "He isn't even awake, sweetheart," she whispered.

"He has to be," I argued. "I heard him talking to me. We were... we were on a hill, overlooking the accident scene, and he was talking to me. He had my head on his knees and he said my name a lot and he was glad I was alive, and --" I thought about it, trying hard to recall Nick's exact words, but they were hazy. "Leighanne, he was right there, right next to me and --"

"Brian," Leighanne had nervous eyes, "Brian, there's no way."

"Of course there is, I'm telling you I --"

"Brian they pulled both of you out of the car. I was there. Kevin saw the whole thing from the tour buses, his driver saw you guys had to stop at the light and the bus pulled over, and Kevin was reading on the couch in the back and he heard the 18-wheeler lay on his horn. He called 911. The only reason y'all are alive at all is because at the last possible second you put your foot on the gas and managed to move enough that it wasn't a completely direct hit on Nick's door." Leighanne stared at me, her eyes serious. "You were never on the hillside. Nick was never awake. For that matter, neither were you until this morning."

I shook my head, "We had to have been, you just didn't see it, I heard --"

"It was a dream, or - or - or something," Leighanne stammered. "Brian, they had the jaws of life. They pulled apart that car trying to get you two out of it. They had to."

I felt sick to my stomach. I could still see the way Nick had looked at me, the way his eyes had burned into mine with relief and desperation and -- and now to find out it was all just a dream? I couldn't believe it. I felt... devastated.

Leighanne sighed. "You aren't going to relax until you see him, are you?"

I shook my head.

The nurse came in the room and saw me on the floor and a look of exasperate horror fluttered across her face and she hurried to help me up, latching her arms under mine. She grunted with the effort of lifting me up and moving with me as I got back onto the bed. Leighanne helped, too, and once they'd gotten me up, she turned to the nurse and said, "He's not going to relax until we bring him upstairs."

The nurse looked uncomfortable, but she sighed in the same way Leighanne had before - the sigh of caving in. "I'll go get a wheel chair," she said.




Nick


I sat there on the hill next to Brian, staring at the remote control at the bottom of the hill. If I'd managed to unpause quicker, would Brian still be alive? Had I fucked up and killed him? These were things going through my head. I wondered what it was like being dead in a paused world, then what it was like being dead at all, and I pressed my eyes against my forearm, staring down at the grass between my legs.

"Nick," Margo's voice was quiet.

"Leave me alone," I said.

She sighed and I heard her footsteps on the grass as she descended the hill. Part of me hoped she'd go away completely, that I'd be left here alone in this hell for the rest of my days. I deserved to die alone, I thought. It's not like there was much of anything to live for. I closed my eyes and waited for the loneliness to seep into my pores.

"What kind of remote is this thing anyways? It's got enough buttons it could be from freaking Star Trek or something," Margo's voice carried up the hill.

"It's a universal remote," I said without looking up, my voice muffled by my knees, "It controls my PlayStation, the TV, cable box, and stereo on my tour bus."

"Your tour bus?"

"I'm a singer. A Backstreet Boy. We're on tour."

"The Backstreet Boys are still around? Jesus."

I looked up. I hated that question - almost (but not quite) as much as I hated the question is that the band with Justin Timberlake? Margo was inspecting the remote control, turning it over in her hands. I stood up and walked down the hill and snapped it out of her hands. "You've heard of us, then?" I asked.

Margo looked surprised that I'd taken the remote. But she was quick. She snapped it back out of my grasp. She stared at me right in the eyes, "I'd have to live in a cave in Somalia not to, wouldn't I?"

"We're pretty big in Somalia."

"Do you even know where Somalia is?" she asked.

"Of course I do, it's --" I had no fucking clue. I hesitated. "It's just South of um, Russia."

Margo rolled her eyes.

I reached for the remote and she turned, taking it out of my reach. "Maybe you fucked up the wires in this thing," she suggested, and she popped the battery compartment cap off and shook the batteries out.

"Be careful with that," I commanded, "If you break it we're stuck here forever."

"We're already stuck here forever," she said.

"Not if I can fix that." I stretched, trying to get it away from her. She danced out of my grasp. "C'mon, stop it. I'm serious. It's mine."

"What are you? Four?" Margo asked, she backed away, wobbling the remote at me tauntingly, "Didn't you ever learn to share?"

I glowered. "You're gonna break it."

"I'm not going to break your remote, relax. Such a typical man, doesn't wanna share the remote control." Margo rolled her eyes again. This was apparently a signature motion of hers, the eye rolling. I wondered how she'd managed not to get them permanently stuck up inside her head or something. I watched with annoyance as she inspected the inside of the compartment and blew into it like she was messing with a Nintendo game cartridge.

"C'mon that doesn't do anything except get your spit in it," I argued.

Margo looked up, "Do you have problems with my spit?"

"When it's going into an electronic device that is quite possibly the only hope of me getting everything back to normal - yes, yes I do."

Margo made a disgusting honking noise as she hacked up some spit which she puckered her lips to show me.

"Stop that," I demanded as she pretended to aim at the remote. "You're not funny."

She turned and spit onto the ground, her eyes twinkling, "C'mon. I'm a little funny."

"You aren't funny at all. Gimme that thing." I hustled and took it out of her hands, though she really didn't put up a fight at all that time. "Of all the damn people in the entire fricking world for me to get stuck in a whole paused universe with and it had to be the most annoying girl ever..."

Margo's face lost the twinkle. She stared at me. "You don't mean that."

"Yeah I do," I said meanly. It felt good to be mean. I was frustrated, I was hurting, and she was annoying me and she didn't seem to care that I was hurting, so it felt extra good to be mean to her. So I said the meanest thing I could think of -- "I bet someone paused you just to make you shut the hell up. That's why you can't get unpaused. Cos whoever paused you is making damn sure you don't wake up."

Margo's eyes filled with tears.

Okay now I felt a little shitty.

"I'm sorry," I said.

"Fuck you," she said, and she stormed away into the dark.

I sighed. Damn, even paused I was a complete tool. I looked back at the hill, at Brian laying there, and I realized that the same spiteful, mean streak that I'd just acted out on Margo had been peppering Brian for the past ten years. No wonder he was being such an ass to me, he had to be just to deal with me. I'd been acting like a jealous kid for years - ever since he'd gone and gotten married and forgotten about me.

Now I really needed to get unpaused.

I looked at the remote and realized Margo still had the batteries and the compartment door.

"MARGO WAIT!" I ran after her.