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Chapter Four


The thing about dying is you start getting kinda desperate for ways to live through whatever it is you're dying from. In my case, it's liver disease... something totally avoidable, but once brought on pretty much irreversible. (Thanks Mom and Dad for all those great alcohol-fused life tips.) What I have is called Cirrhosis and I guess I waited too long to get it checked because by the time I went I had developed a few complications that I'd overlooked so long they'd intensified my problem. Things like Edema and Ascites - basically swelling because my kidneys were over compensating for my liver - and Varices - which is increased blood pressure in weird places around the body because of the liver not pumping blood right. And finally I managed to develop myself a pretty mean case of Spontaneous Bacterial Peritonitis, which is basically a bunch of bacteria-filled fluid hanging out around my stomach and esophagus. That's what caused the pains and vomiting and everything I had and was what made me collapse at Aaron's birthday party back in December. Oh and apparently we're in the middle of this liver donor crisis in which everyone and their grandmother is over drinking, getting liver transplants, and using up all the good livers of the planet. And have I mentioned my blood type is the hardest to find livers for even on a good day?

So yeah I was pretty much living on an IV in the hospital at this point until by some miracle someone with a good liver with my blood type kicked the bucket and donated it to me. Which I wasn't even top of the list and for once my status as a Backstreet Boy was gonna do absolutely nothing for me. Celebrities, it turns out, do not get any kind of preferential treatment when it comes to organ donations. They join the heap of people waiting the same as everybody else. So it was probably going to be awhile. And in the meantime there was a good chance that the bacteria crawling around in my blood would kill me.

And to think, Brian wanted me to think positively.

Oh speaking of Brian.

So like I was saying, when you got all that shit going on, you tend to get desperate for a way to keep on living. Or, if and when you finally give up having believed you've reached the end of all your options, your friends get desperate for you. Which is the point Brian was at. And like I said before... he was trying like hell to make the past ten years up to me and all.

"Hey Nick! It's Brian. I'm glad you answered, I was starting to wonder... I know you're weird about numbers you don't know... I'm calling from my friend's phone -- his name is Carl. And man do I gotta tell you about this thing he's working on, you're gonna shit when you hear it... Seriously, man. You're not going to believe it."

I was staring at Meira as he said the words exactly like she'd just told me he was going to... as proof that she was from my future. My head was spinning. What was she, a psychic of some sort? I wondered. How did she know what Brian was going to say? Or that it was Brian at all? I was so perplexed by Meira, who was smirking knowingly at me, that I barely could focus on the words that Brian himself was saying, so I stammered out, "What?"

"I'm visiting my ma back home in Kentucky, and I go to the Home Depot to get some eggshell paint for her 'cos we were painting her garden fence over the weekend and I run into this guy I went to school with, Carl Pritchett. You remember me talkin' about Carl, right? He's he one I told you about, we played ball together, he used to take apart old radio control trucks and build things with 'em? Like robots? Remember I told'ja about the R2D2 we won the science fair with in eighth grade?"

No, I didn't remember. But then again, all I could think about were this big brown, almost almond shaped eyes that were staring back at me as I listened to him talking. "Yeah," I muttered. "What about him?"

"Well I run into him and he's buying all this weird stuff at the Home Depot and he told me he's working on this project and he's real excited, right, and he says it's gonna change everything we think about science. Come to find he went to MIT and he's got all these degrees and everything from all these schools since I last saw him. He's a real engineer and he's got this crazy project he's working on and Nick, by jimminey, I saw him test it. It's insane. I couldn't believe it. He said I couldn't tell anybody but I had to tell you because, Nick, I think it could help you."

"Help me? An R2D2 robot?" I asked, confused.

"No man, the project he's working on now. Nick, I saw it with my own two eyes. I saw it or I wouldn't believe it. I'm telling you either the guy is Houdini or it worked."

"What worked?"

"His time machine."

I blinked several times in a row in disbelief. Brian's voice was so level for such a stupid joke. He should've been snickering or cackling or something by now. Meira was biting her lips, eyebrows raised as she watched me digest the words Brian had just spoken. I snorted. "Brian, please."

"No, Nick, I'm for real about this," Brian said. "It's not like some Doctor Who crap or anything, Nick, this is the real honest to God thing."

I laughed. "Brian you sound insane."

"Maybe I am, but Nick, for real. I watched him test it. He's tested it before he said and he made it to another time and there was another version of him still working on the time machine that was really surprised to find out he actually does it in the past and the two of them were passing objects back and forth through the time machine. He'd send forward an apple, say, and the other guy sends back a pear. Nick, they exchanged notes and everything else while I was watching. While I was watching, Nick."

I shifted my weight in the bed.

"Nick, what if he sends you forward and you get a liver transplant in another time when it's more abundant and then you can come back and be cured? Or hell he sends you forward and they have some kind of medication you can get on that cures it altogether? Or some crazy synthetic cyborg liver that can run forever? Nick, he could save you with this thing. Maybe faster than the doctors can."

I shook my head, "This is mental."

Meira sat down on the chair beside my bed. She picked up the Nerf basket ball and studied it while she waited for me to conclude the phone call. Brian and Meira would make a great pair in the padded rooms on the fourth floor, I thought to myself.

Brian's voice was serious. "Nick, I wouldn't have believed it if I hadn't seen it with my own two eyes, but I'm telling you, it's for real. I saw it, man."

"Maybe you need glasses," I said.

"You need to see it to believe it," he said. "I get it. Nick you need to come to see it."

I laughed, "Brian, aren't you forgetting something? I'm tethered to an IV in a bed at a hospital until I get a liver. Even if I believed you enough to drag my ass all the way to Kentucky I wouldn't be able to right now because last I checked IVs don't exactly go on field trips to crazy best friends' friends houses to check out trick machines they claim send you to the future."

The words that next came out of Brian's mouth were the ones that solidified the fact that he'd gone absolutely batshit crazy: "You can sign an affidavit, releasing the hospital from responsibility if you die after you leave and go at any time, Nick. I did it once for a Backstreet Boys tour with my heart. You just sign the form, they give you the meds they think you'll need to have a fighting chance, and you're a free man. You can get up here and we can get you to the future to fix this mess once and for all and the next thing you know we're back on the road with the fellas makin' music again."

"And what happens when I sign this form thing and I get up there and it turns out your friend is full of crap and I can't go to the future to get a new liver?" I asked, "I die and you spend the rest of your life blaming yourself for me dying 'cos you went and lost your mind and believed in a time machine?"

"I won't blame myself, Nick."

"Of course you will."

"No I won't, Nick. Because it's going to work."

"How do you know?" I demanded, "How could you possibly know that some ghetto ass time machine that your high school buddy built - probably in his momma's garage with spare parts from whatever tinker toys he's got laying around - is gonna transport my dying ass to the future where I get a new liver and live happily ever after touring with you and the Boys? How do you know that?"

"Because, Nick, Carl saw it. He saw it in the future."

I pressed my hands to my face. "I'm sure he did."

"Nick. I have a copy of People Magazine dated five years in the future with a news story about an album we haven't released yet having been released and us going on tour and you - you're in it - and they ask you about the liver transplant - and you say you had one. Nick. I have the magazine in my hands. Right now. Right now."

I shook my head, "You're insane."

"Nick. I'll show it to you. I'll bring it down. I'll be there in a few hours." He hung up the phone.

I put the phone down on the rolley table and turned to Meira. "He thinks he's found a Time Machine," I laughed.

Her face was perfectly straight. "He did," she answered.

I laughed again and leaned back into the pillows. "Jesus, everyone is going insane. Every-fucking-one." I closed my eyes.

"You'll see," she said.