When he first woke up, Howie Dorough didn’t know where he was. He definitely wasn’t home, for the bed beneath him was too hard to be his own. Hotel room, he thought vaguely, remembering that they were on the road.
As he gradually regained consciousness, he began to recall more details. He was in Chicago. With the Boys. For the radio tour. It was cold outside. Even with his eyes closed, he could picture Nicky bouncing on the balls of feet to stay warm, his hands shoved deep into the pockets of his parka. Raindrops rolling down his window. Heavy fog obscuring his view of the tall buildings, making it hard to see more than a few feet in front of the van they had ridden in on the way to the radio station. Suddenly, he remembered the sound of brakes screeching. Screaming. The sickening crunch of metal as the van crashed into the guardrail. He remembered the feeling of flying forward, his face striking the rain-soaked window. He remembered the pain in his head and the fear in his heart.
He could still feel both, but the cold was gone. The fog seemed to be swirling around inside his brain instead of outside his window. The sound of raindrops drumming on the roof of the van had been replaced by a soft and steady blip… blip… blip… that he recognized as a recording of his own heartbeat. Hospital room, he realized.
When he finally became aware of his surroundings, Howie tried to force his eyes open. It was hard work: his eyelids felt like lead weights, too heavy to lift. He only succeeded in opening the left one; the right side seemed to be swollen shut. Instinctively, he tried to reach up to feel his face, only to find that his hands had been tied to the rails of his hospital bed. He tried to call out for help, only to realize there was a tube in his throat that prevented him from speaking. He rattled the bedrails instead, until a nurse appeared at his side.
“Shh, you’re all right, Howie,” she said soothingly, running her hand over his shoulder. “Relax. You just woke up from surgery. You need to rest.”
Surgery? he wondered, his mind racing. The last thing he remembered was going for a CAT scan. His head had been hurting even worse than it was now, and he had been worried about the others. AJ. Nick. Kevin. Brian. Lou. Denise. Were they okay? He couldn’t recall having seen any of them since the accident.
“My name’s Kit,” the nurse told him. She had a kind, friendly face, framed by a tangle of frizzy, black curls. “I’m taking care of you while you’re here in the recovery room. Don’t try to talk; you still have a tube down your throat to help you breathe. Blink twice if you understand.”
Howie tried to concentrate on what she was saying, but it was a struggle. His thoughts felt scattered and strangely muddled. Still, he managed to open and close his good eye two times to show he could comprehend her words.
“Very good. Can you squeeze my hand?” she asked, coiling her fingers around his. He didn’t like the rubbery feel of her latex gloves against his skin, but he reluctantly followed her instructions and squeezed. Kit smiled. “Great job, Howie. I’m going to go call your doctor to come take a look at you. I’ll be right back.”
She left him in confusion, pulling the curtain around his bed so he couldn’t see what was beyond it. He wondered where the other guys were and whether anyone had called his family in Florida. He had never felt so scared and alone.
The curtain rattled open again a few minutes later, as a man in a white coat and blue scrubs came around it. Howie didn’t recognize him. He had been expecting to see the same doctor who had examined him in the emergency room - tall, thin, and balding, with wire-framed glasses - but this one was shorter, older, and wore no glasses.
“Hi, Mr. Dorough,” the new doctor greeted him, removing the restraints from around Howie’s wrists so he could grip his right hand. “I’m Dr. Halloran.” He took a pen light out of the front pocket of his coat and shone the bright beam into Howie’s eye. “Follow my light, please,” he said, moving it slowly back and forth. “Good. Now let me take a quick listen here.”
Reaching for the stethoscope from around his neck, he slipped the earpieces into his ears and slid the chestpiece down the front of Howie’s hospital gown, frowning in concentration. Howie felt his chest rise and fall automatically as air was forced into his lungs through the tube in his throat. It was a strange sensation, but rather than becoming accustomed to it, he was growing more and more uncomfortable. The tube felt intrusive, like it was choking him rather than helping him to breathe.
“I bet you’re ready to get rid of that tube, huh?” said Dr. Halloran, as if he could read Howie’s mind. When Howie nodded, he unhooked the thick hose that was attached to the end of the narrow tube. The feeling of choking increased as the air stopped flowing, and for a second, Howie was overwhelmed with a sense of sudden dread. “Try to take a deep breath for me,” the doctor said calmly.
I can do that, thought Howie, fighting back his panic as he concentrated on filling his lungs. It took more effort than he had expected, for it felt as if he were sucking air through a straw, but finally, he felt his chest expand as his lungs reinflated.
“Excellent,” said Dr. Halloran, smiling as he removed his stethoscope. “Looks like you’re ready to be extubated.”
When he took out the breathing tube, it felt like he was pulling Howie’s lungs along with it. For the first few seconds afterwards, Howie coughed uncontrollably, tears streaming from his eyes, until he was finally able to catch his breath. Holding his hand to his heaving chest, he tried to relax back against the bed, already exhausted by the coughing fit. His throat felt raw and sore. He swallowed hard before he tried to speak. “What happened to me?” he asked in a whisper, wincing at the hoarseness of his voice.
Dr. Halloran sat down next to his bed and took his hand once more. “You were involved in a serious car accident this morning.”
This morning… Having no sense of how long he had slept, Howie was relieved to hear he had only been out for a matter of hours rather than days. “I know that,” he rasped, “but the last thing I remember was being in the emergency room. How did I get here?”
The doctor gave him a grim smile. “You took a turn for the worse while you were getting scans done. Besides a fractured eye socket, the results showed an epidural hematoma - a collection of blood between your brain and skull caused by the head injury you sustained in the accident. We had to rush you into emergency surgery. Fortunately, we were able to control the bleeding before it put too much pressure on your brain and caused permanent damage. You’re going to be just fine, Mr. Dorough.”
Howie gaped at him in disbelief. “I had brain surgery??” It wasn’t until he reached up and felt the gauze dressing taped to the tender right side of his head that he realized Dr. Halloran was telling him the truth.
The neurosurgeon nodded. “You’ll need to take it easy for a few weeks while you heal, but you should make a full recovery.”
Howie wasn’t sure whether to feel relieved or horrified.
“What’s your pain level, Howie?” his nurse, Kit, wanted to know. “How would you rate it on a scale of one to ten, ten being the worst pain you could imagine?”
He paused to consider this. “I dunno… four?” His neck was stiff, and he could feel a dull ache radiating from somewhere behind his swollen right eye, but whatever painkillers they had given him were keeping it under control for now.
She nodded. “Okay. Let me know if it gets worse. We can always give you more morphine.”
“Thanks,” said Howie, but he wasn’t concerned about pain management at the moment. Now that he knew what had happened to him, his thoughts had turned back to his bandmates. “Do you know how my friends are doing?”
Kit glanced at Dr. Halloran. “Why don’t we let someone else finish filling him in?” she suggested with a wry smile, pulling back the curtain surrounding his bed.
Howie felt confused at first, until the nurse stepped aside so he could see who was lying in the next bed.
“Hey, sleepyhead,” said Kevin in his slow drawl, flashing him a loopy smile. “I been wondering when you were gonna wake up.” He looked tired and heavily medicated, but it was a relief to see at least one of the guys awake and talking.
“We’ll give you two a chance to catch up,” said Dr. Halloran, standing up. “I’ll be back to check on you later, but in the meantime, let Kit here know if you need anything.”
Howie nodded gratefully. “Thanks, Doc.” Once the surgeon left, he turned his attention back to Kevin. “You okay, Kev?”
Kevin gave a brief nod, grimacing as he looked at his right leg, which was elevated and wrapped in a thick layer of bandages. “I will be… in a few months or so. I’ve got a metal rod running through the middle of my leg now. Broke both bones below my knee.”
“Ouch.” Howie cringed. “That’s one way to get out of dance rehearsals for a while.”
Kevin chuckled. “If only I hated them as much as Brian does. I bet he…” But he trailed off before he could finish, his smile fading along with his voice.
Cold chills shot down Howie’s spine. He frowned, suddenly overcome with fear. “Kevin, what about the other guys?” he asked. “Are they… all right?” He was almost afraid to hear the answer. Based on the look on Kevin’s face, he could already tell it wasn’t going to be good.
Tears had welled up in Kevin’s green eyes, and his voice trembled when he said, “Brian’s in bad shape. We almost lost him, Howie.”
Howie listened in horror as Kevin recounted what he had witnessed in the emergency room. “Oh my god… Kev…”
“They brought him back,” Kevin continued shakily, wiping his eyes, “but nobody knows if he’s ever going to be… you know… ‘normal’ again. He could have brain damage. He might never wake up.”
Howie shook his head slowly, ignoring the throbbing sensation inside his skull. “But he could be fine, right?” he countered, refusing to consider the frightening possibility that Brian could remain comatose for the rest of his life. “He could wake up from this and make a full recovery. We have to have faith and hope for the best. That’s what Brian would want us to do.”
Kevin nodded, offering him a watery smile.
“How about Nicky and AJ?” Howie asked next.
“Last I heard, they were both still in surgery,” Kevin replied. He raked a hand through his dark hair, looking like he would rather start ripping it out. “They let Denise in to visit me for a few minutes after I woke up, since my mom hasn’t made it here yet. She’s on her way, but it’s like a six hour drive. Your folks are flying in from Florida. Denise called all our families.”
“That’s good,” said Howie, relieved to hear that his parents were coming. At twenty-two, he may have been an adult, but he still wanted his mom and dad with him while he was in the hospital. “So Denise is okay?”
“Yeah, she’s a little banged up, but nothing too bad.”
“How bad were the boys hurt?”
Kevin shook his head. “I dunno… I saw Nick in the ER when he came in with Brian. He seemed okay, but Denise said he collapsed after they took me away to get X-rays. They thought he had some internal bleeding.”
“Damn… that sounds serious,” said Howie, swallowing hard. Poor Nicky… he was so young compared to the rest of them, still just a kid. He had to have been scared, undergoing emergency surgery without his parents or “big brothers” around. They were all protective of him, and Howie wished he or Kevin could have been there to hold his hand and offer him some words of comfort before he went under the knife.
Kevin sighed. “I know... and meanwhile, AJ might be paralyzed.”
“What?!” Howie gasped, his heart plummeting into his stomach.
Fresh tears had filled Kevin’s eyes. “Denise said he has no feeling below the waist,” he said grimly. “The scans showed some broken vertebrae compressing his spinal cord. They took him into surgery to try to repair it, but the doctor said they may not be able to reverse the nerve damage.”
“Oh my god.” Howie shook his head. He couldn’t imagine someone like AJ being confined to a wheelchair for the rest of his life. AJ had been the original Backstreet Boy and was arguably the most talented one of them all. This could ruin his dreams of being a star and end his career before it had even really begun.
He was still reeling over the possibility that AJ would be rendered a paraplegic when he heard Kevin say, “There’s something else...”
Howie’s heart skipped a beat. Kevin’s tone told him he was about to receive more bad news... perhaps the worst news of all. “What?” he whispered, looking up in trepidation.
“Lou’s dead.”
All the air rushed out of Howie’s lungs, leaving him feeling completely deflated. “No...” He shook his head, not wanting to believe it. Not Big Poppa, the man who had brought them together, helped them get their record deal, and made their dreams come true. It couldn’t be.
Kevin didn’t have to say anything else. The tears trickling freely down his cheeks confirmed he was telling the truth. He and Lou had always seemed especially close; since Kevin’s dad had died four years earlier, Howie knew he had looked to Lou almost like a second father. For Kevin, losing Lou must feel like he was losing his real father all over again. Howie hated that he had to relive something like that.
“I’m so sorry, bro,” he murmured, knowing there was nothing he could say to take away the pain. He wished he could reach across and squeeze Kevin’s hand, but the gap between their beds was too wide, and he was too woozy to try getting up. The throbbing inside his head had intensified, but Howie couldn’t tell whether it was true, physical pain or just a manifestation of his emotional turmoil.
“Mr. Richardson?” A couple of orderlies had come up alongside Kevin’s bed. “We’re ready to move you to your regular room now,” one of them announced, unlocking the wheels so the bed would roll smoothly across the tiled floor.
Kevin looked back anxiously at Howie. “Can you keep the two of us together?” he asked.
The orderly checked the chart hanging on the end of Howie’s bed before he shook his head. “Sorry, but no. You’re heading to one of the general floors, but Mr. Dorough here has to go to the ICU first.”
Howie swallowed hard. The intensive care unit? The mere mention of it made his blood run cold, as if icy fingers had wrapped around his heart and squeezed. It sounded frightening - not the sort of place he wanted to be. He wished he could go with Kevin instead, but knew there was no point in begging. He didn’t want to sound like a baby.
“Hang in there, bro,” said Kevin, wiping his eyes as they wheeled him away.
When Kit came back to check on him, Howie asked her for more morphine, hoping it would help numb the pain in his heart as well as his head. He drifted into a drug-induced haze, dozing until another team of nurses and orderlies came to transport him to his new room, too.
He was relieved to see that the ICU was not nearly as scary as he had imagined it to be. It looked like a typical hospital room, just with more monitors and equipment around each bed. He was slightly disappointed, though not surprised, to discover that he had a roommate. The bed next to his was already occupied, a privacy curtain pulled closed around it.
Not long after the nurses had helped him settle in, he heard a knock at his door. He looked up to see a lanky, balding man leaning in the doorway. Beside him was a young woman with dark blonde hair cut into a short bob. “Hi, Howie. Are you up for a visitor?”
“Uh… sure,” Howie replied uncertainly. He didn’t recognize either one of them until he noticed the man’s round, wire-rimmed glasses and suddenly realized who he was. “How are you, Dr. Greene?”
The emergency room physician smiled as he walked into the room. “I was just about to ask you the same question. Your memory seems to be intact. That’s a good sign.” He had traded his white coat for a gray jacket, which he wore over his green scrubs. “This is my friend Dr. Lewis,” he introduced the woman with him. “We were on our way out when I realized I never got a chance to talk to you about your friends like I said I would. Sorry about that - things got pretty hectic there for a while.”
“That’s okay,” said Howie, the side of his face hurting as he forced a smile back. “I saw Kevin in the recovery room earlier; he filled me in. He said Nick and AJ were still in surgery. Do you know anything else about them?”
Dr. Greene gave a nod. “I just checked with the OR and was told they’re both out of surgery and resting comfortably in the pediatric intensive care unit.”
Howie felt a rush of relief. “That’s good to hear,” he replied, grateful for the update. “Thanks.”
“I treated Kevin in the ER,” the female doctor inserted before he could ask any more questions. “He was concerned about you all, too. You guys must be pretty close, huh?”
Howie nodded. “We’re like brothers.” As he looked up at Dr. Lewis, another thought occurred to him. “Hey, are you the one who took care of Brian, too?” He remembered Kevin describing the doctor who had refused to give up on his cousin, even when the rest of the staff seemed to have written him off as a lost cause.
Dr. Lewis flashed him a tight smile. “That’s me.”
“Kevin told me what you did… how you wouldn’t give up until you got his heart beating again.” Howie’s eyes filled with tears as it hit him again how close they had come to losing Brian. “Thank you… thank you for saving his life.”
“It was a team effort,” Dr. Lewis replied humbly, glancing at Dr. Greene, “but you’re welcome. I hope he’ll be all right. He still has a long road ahead of him.”
The hesitant tone of her voice told Howie she wasn’t too optimistic about Brian’s odds of recovery. He swallowed hard, his throat dry. “Have you heard anything about how he’s doing?”
“I just came up here to check on him before I headed home, actually,” said Dr. Lewis. And to Howie’s astonishment, she pulled back the curtain between the two beds to reveal…
“Brian?!” he cried in disbelief, hoisting himself up onto his elbow for a better look at his roommate.
It was Brian, all right, but he was barely recognizable. His blue eyes were closed, the rest of his face half-hidden behind a pair of hoses that were hooked to the breathing tube protruding from his mouth. There was a nasty bruise on his forehead, and his neck was wrapped in a bulky brace that went from his chin to his chest. His small body appeared lost within a maze of tubes and wires that wound their way to the assemblage of machines surrounding his bed.
“I told them to put you two together if possible,” said Dr. Greene, looking pleased with himself.
Meanwhile, Dr. Lewis was bent over Brian, listening to his bare chest with a stethoscope. “His lungs sound mostly clear,” she said after a moment, “and his color looks a little better.” She seemed encouraged by this observation.
Howie cleared his throat. “B-Rok!” he called across the room. “It’s me, Howie D. I’m right here with you, man.”
He waited, watching hopefully for some sign that Brian had heard him and recognized his voice, but there was no response. Brian remained unconscious, his body still except for the steady rise and fall of his chest as a ventilator pumped oxygen into his lungs. Howie remembered how uncomfortable he had felt being on the breathing machine, but Brian didn’t seem bothered by it. His pale face looked blank, but peaceful. At least he didn’t appear to be in any pain.
“He’s been put into a drug-induced coma,” Dr. Lewis explained. “It’s a new technique that’s supposed to help protect his brain from further damage and give it time to heal.”
Howie frowned. “How long will the coma last?”
“They’ll start reducing his dose of sedatives sometime in the next few days and see how he responds, but there’s no guarantee he’ll regain consciousness,” she replied grimly. “At this point, we just have to wait and see.”
He followed her gaze back to his friend. It was weird seeing someone as active and energetic as Brian suddenly rendered so lifeless. Howie remembered what Kevin had told him: “Nobody knows if he’s ever going to be… you know… ‘normal’ again. He might never wake up.”
As much as Howie didn’t want to imagine a world without Brian in it, he couldn’t help but worry about what the future would hold for his bandmates and him. They had worked so hard to make their dreams come true, and just when it seemed that all the blood, sweat, and tears they had put in were about to pay off, everything had fallen apart. After spending so much time together over the past few years, the five of them had become a family. There had been a Backstreet Boys before Brian, but Howie didn’t see how they could go on as a group without him. He was the missing piece they had been looking for to complete their quintet, and if they lost him, they would never be whole again. The same could be said for Nick and AJ, who had been with Howie since the beginning, and for Kevin. Their five voices and personalities complimented each other perfectly.
Yet, even if Brian managed to pull through and make a miraculous recovery, they would still be missing an integral part of what had made them the Backstreet Boys. Lou, their founder and fearless leader, was gone. They had always joked that Lou was like the sixth Backstreet Boy. Without him at the helm, Howie had no idea where the group would go from here.
His head pounded as tears prickled in the corners of his eyes, blurring his vision. Brains and bones could heal... but suddenly, the Backstreet Boys seemed broken beyond repair.
***