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

Brian


I was terrified.

Leighanne walked slower and slower the closer we got to Nick's room. The nurse paused the wheelchair approximately seven times to douse my hands and arms with Germ-X. "I thought the fans were the only one this paranoid about the Nick Plague," I joked. I always made jokes when I was nervous. Nick would've understood. He would've joined me in joking around, or at least laughed nervously and hung back like he was trying to duck behind me or something. Neither Leighanne nor the nurse even cracked a smile, though, which only made me more nervous.

My hands were shaking by the time the nurse had wheeled me into a little room and closed the door. She made me wash my hands again with Germ-X then gave me gloves and a jacket and helped Leighanne gear up, too. She paused and took a deep breath, leaning against the door, her hand on the handle. "Just... to prepare you..." she said slowly, "He's probably not going to look a lot like himself. He's going to be swollen, from the machines and everything. And there may be a little... discoloration... in his fingers."

I nodded. I knew the drill. I'd been in plenty of hospitals, seen plenty of sick people.

The nurse pushed the door open.

I heard Leighanne gasp before I wheeled myself close enough to see him.

I lost my breath somewhere in my throat the moment my eyes rested upon him... and then I think I passed out.




Nick

"Okay. So. Where were you the last time you remember being, you know, not here?" I asked.

I was sitting at the table in Kevin's bus. I had a couple sheets of paper and some crayons of Mason's that I'd managed to scrounge up (can you believe Kevin didn't have any pens on his bus in any of the drawers?), and I was poised, ready to take notes so we could find Margo's paused-self and get on with our lives. I looked up at her. She was leaning against the counter, staring up at the ceiling, cracking her knuckles methodically.

Margo made ducklips with her mouth and breathed out her nose, then moved the pucker side to side as she thought. "It's been a long time," she said, "I think I was coming out of - of a mall. I was shopping. I got a dress." She bit her lip.

I wrote down "dress store" on the paper in purple crayon. And "mall". I looked up at her. "Then what?" I asked.

Margo stopped cracking her knuckles.

"Do you remember?"

"Yeah," she answered. She turned away and looked down at Kevin's sink. She picked up a glass that was really a Welch's jelly jar with Smurfs painted on the side of it. Kevin collected those things. He had billions of them, I swear. He'd gotten a huge portion of his collection from his father, who died a long time ago, and he'd been adding to it since. He always bought the little jars of jelly for the tour buses and he went in antique stores to get old ones. He only ever brought extras on tour. Margo turned the smurf glass in her hand and I watched her fingers move over the paintings of Papa and Blondie.

"What happened?" I asked.

Margo was quiet. "There was... this guy."

"Yeah?"

"Yeah."

In the silence that followed her yeah, the skin on my arms crawled and I realized she meant a guy. Like, a bad guy. I stared at her, and I suddenly hated the mystery guy, with every bit of me. She was so... so... well, I dunno the adjective, but she was it, whatever it was, and I couldn't picture anyone hurting her.

"I'm sorry," I said, "You don't deserve that."

Margo's breath shuddered and she shook her head, but she didn't answer outloud.

It was one of those type moments that I always feel really awkward in. Like, do girls want us guys to recognize the fact that they're crying, or would they rather be left alone? I can't ever tell. I get in more trouble because of this awkward now what type situations. Margo brought one hand up to cover her eyes, and I decided that I couldn't ignore it. I put down the crayon and slid out of the seat and moved up behind her and, after briefly hesitating about what the hell to do with my arms, I wrapped my arms around her.

It was funny because I hadn't held anyone since Lauren and... well, Margo kinda fit just right, like a puzzle piece I'd been missing and hadn't even realized I was. I was reminded of that book by that Shel Silverstein guy about the lil circle dude that's missing a triangle of himself and he goes looking and finds it and it's perfect and here she was. My triangle.

"It's gonna be okay," I whispered.

Margo turned around and she pressed her face into the crook of my neck and I closed my eyes as I felt her wet eye lashes against my skin and her breath on my throat. I ran my hands along her back and held her tight while she cried.

"It's gonna be okay," I repeated.

"I haven't thought about him since it happened," she choked out the words, "I was trying not to. I was afraid if I did..." she stopped.

I slid my fingers down her spine, "Like it'd be more real if you admitted it."

"Yes," she whispered.

I nodded.

"I just -- Didn't he take enough away from me, why did he get to take away time from me, too?" she asked.

"Life ain't fair," I replied. "Good things don't always happen to the people who deserve them, and bad things certainly don't happen to the people that deserve them either."

"But I guess there's a silver lining," she said softly.

"Is there?"

"I wouldn't have met you if we weren't here," she said. She pulled back a little bit and she looked up at me. "That's a good thing, isn't it?"

I nodded. "It is. Very good."

Margo smiled - it was a teeny smile, but it was a smile nonetheless.




Brian

I opened my eyes. I was laying on my back in bed again. Leighanne had a worried expression on her face. "Brian," she whispered, "Thank God."

"I'm okay," I said. I struggled to sit up. We were back in my hospital room. I licked my lips. "Nick - he's --"

"Upstairs," Leighanne nodded.

"How long was I out just now?"

"About ten minutes," she answered.

"We need to go back up there," I pleaded.

She shook her head, "Not until you're stronger," she answered.

"But you heard Jane," I said, "I only have just so long to talk him into waking up again before she's gonna -- give up on him." I stared into Leighanne's eyes. "Baby, I can't let that happen to him..."

Leighanne sighed, "Brian. You saw him..."

Had I ever. I felt woozy just thinking about what I'd seen, just remembering the way he'd looked so... un-Nick-like. I closed my eyes a moment, then took a deep breath, "But he's in there, I know he is. Deep down. He's just gotta be."

Leighanne frowned.

"I know he's there." I sighed. I shook my head. "Lauren must be freaking out."

"Lauren?" Leighanne looked surprised.

"Yeah, you know. Nick's fiance. Lauren."

Leighanne's eyes were concerned. "Brian..."

"What?"

"Okay how do you not know that they broke up?"

I blinked. "When?"

"Back in June... Before the tour even started. Honey, he's been moping around for months about it. How do you not know that?" Leighanne asked.

"I -- I dunno, we were fighting..."

"Yeah but, even I know that."

I felt like a complete failure of a friend. How did I miss something that huge. Why hadn't Nick mentioned it before? I stared up at Leighanne. "What happened between them?"

Leighanne shrugged, "I have no idea. He broke up with her, though. I don't know why. I heard this all second hand from Leigh, and she heard it from Howie." Leighanne was straightening some flowers in a vase on the nightstand. She carefully kept her eyes adverted from me. "You two have been fighting a long time," she commented.

I nodded.

"Is it because of me?" she asked.

I didn't want to say yes, so I didn't say anything at all. Instead I said, "I need to figure out a way to stop Jane from giving up on him."

Leighanne finished moving the flowers around and sat down in the chair beside my bed. Her hand slid across the blankets and took hold of mine. She said, "I'm sorry."

I looked over at her. "It isn't your fault, really. It's just..." I thought about it. What was it? I wondered. I stared down at the pattern of the blanket. And I realized that Nick had counted on me to be the closest thing to a father figure in his life - as the person with, basically, custody of him during tours, I'd become a sort of surrogate father figure to him and I, just like his real father, had left him behind for something else.

All this time, all these fights, and all the guy had wanted was to know that he wasn't being forgotten by a second father.

"It's just that I let him down," I said.