Chapter One
Nick
I blinked up into the face of a middle aged man with a wide nose, who was staring down at me, a stethoscope hanging around his neck. I could see his lips moving, but my brain was slow to comprehend the words. Everything felt kind of fuzzy and far away.
“Der Blutdruck ist ein über hundert sechzig.”
“Sauerstoffwerte stabilisieren sich.”
“Mr. Carter -- Mr. Carter, can you hear me?”
“Where’s Brian?” I asked. Because even through everything, Brian was the first person I always asked for when things turned bad.
“Your friends are following us to the hospital,” he replied calmly.
“I want Brian,” I replied. And I tried to shift to sit up, but a ton of machines started freaking out and three sets of hands pushed me back down simultaneously as a ripping bolt of pain shot through my chest from one shoulder to the other, like an electric shock.
“Nein!”
I gasped, and I grabbed at where my heart would be if it was outside of my body - because it felt like it was - and found all these plastic suction cup thingies all over my chest, like I was fucking E.T. or something. “What is this? What are you doing to me?”
The irrational side of me thought I have been abducted by aliens.
“We’re taking you to the hospital, Nick,” the man with the wide nose answered. “Do you know what happened?”
I closed my eyes, squeezing them tight, trying to remember.
Stage. I’d been on stage. I’d been dancing. I’d been singing. I’d been okay. But then, I hadn’t been okay. Very quickly I went from okay to not-so-much, and I… I fell? Did I fall? I think I fell. I opened my eyes and stared up at the guy again. I must’ve passed out because I remember fans, I remember the stage, but I didn’t remember anything that would’ve brought this old guy staring down at me.
“You had a - a heart attack, Nick.”
A cannula was in my nose, I realized as my hand traveled north from my chest to my face and I felt the oxygen wires curling around my cheeks and the nubbins in my nose and I tried to pull it away because I suddenly was very afraid I was being suffocated by the tubes but the wide-nosed man pulled my hand away gently. “It’s okay,” he said, “We’re here to help, Nick.”
Tears, hot and wet, burned just behind my eyelids, threatening to escape to my face. I felt my throat getting raw, too. I felt so helpless as I was poked and prodded and I felt needles poking me and the low rumblings of doctor voices and somewhere overhead a wailing siren and the slight bumps in the road as the ambulance flew through city streets. At my feet was a couple of tiny bean-shaped windows and I could see headlights piercing the dark behind us, and the blue lights of the German ambulance reflecting off the wet pavement.
I guess it was raining.
“Fast gibt, bereiten Sie ihn zu bewegen.”
I’ve never felt so fucking terrified in my life as I did during those moments in that ambulance. Silent tears just poured over the lids of my eyes and I gripped the sheets below me and stared out the window, stared at the headlights piercing the night behind us and the flashing blue, and even though the guy with the wide nose was talking to me, I couldn’t hear a word. The German doctors speech garbled around me, all of it white noise, my mind swimming in a sea of absolute terror.
I didn’t want to die alone, in Germany, I thought.
At least let me get home to LA, I prayed.
But what good would getting to LA do? I wondered. It’s not like there was anyone waiting for me there, except Nacho. And it’s not like Nacho was going to do anything for me if I suddenly dropped dead on the living room floor. He’d probably lick my face or something. Eventually it’d be like on the news that time when that lady died and her cats ate her.
Then the ambulance was slowing down and the doctors were putting stuff around my legs on the bed and the cage-like sides of the ambulance were raised and the doctors were moving me forward, out of the ambulance, and lowering me down to the pavement and the wheels of the gurney thingie bumped the ground and then we were running, a couple drops of rain tapped against my forehead before we got under the shelter of the hospital roof. Then it was frenzy. People were everywhere, machines, noises, shouting.
I was too busy thinking of Nacho eating me one day to comprehend much of it.
“I want Brian,” I said to a petite woman who was standing to my left when I rolled my head to the side. “Where’s Brian?”
“Es tut mir leid. Ich weiß nicht Englisch,” she said, shaking her head.
I felt my lower lip tremble.
“Your friends are on the way,” I heard another voice say, heavily accented. I turned my head the other direction. A heavy-set woman was pulling on a pair of latex gloves there. She smiled sadly at me, “They’re on the way. It will be just a little bit before you can see them. We’re going to take you care, first.”
I nodded, but I didn’t really understand. I wanted them now. I always get what I want. All the times I got my way over stupid, meaningless things, like seating at restaurants and song choices on albums and fast food selections, and now - now, the one time I really, really give a damn - I can’t seem to get anyone to just give me what I god-damn want.
I clutched the sheet again as a group of doctors shifted me from the ambulance gurney onto another bed, and the guy with the wide nose leaned over me, “It’ll be okay, you’re in good hands. I am praying for you, Mr. Carter.” And then he was gone.
I closed my eyes.
Jaymie
I watched as my father’s car drove away from the house, ducking low in Nick’s car so he wouldn’t see me. I stared at the rear-view mirror overhead until I saw his taillights turn the corner at the end of the street after stopping at the sign. Then I leaped out of the car and ran across the street, my sneakers scuffing on the sidewalk. I glanced around for neighbors that might see me, but there wasn’t much of anyone around, so I jumped over the gate to the backyard, ignoring the Beware of Dog sign, and made my way around back of the house.
A German shepherd came running from the porch the moment I turned the corner. I knelt down and Rusty bounded up and licked my face with excitement. “Hey,” I whispered, kneading my fingers through his fur, “Hey, boy.” I pressed my face against his neck, his big tongue trying to lick me was leaving drool all over my back. I could feel it sloshing around on my shoulder. “Shit, I missed you,” I kissed his furry cheek and then stood up and laughed as he pressed his big wet nose against my knee.
I walked up the steps to the back porch and glanced around one more time, but the high stockade fence provided enough privacy that I could easily pick the lock without any observers. “Sit,” I commanded Rusty, and he dropped to his haunches. “Stay,” I added, pressing a quiet finger to my lips as I backed into the house.
Inside, the house had been redecorated within an inch of being recognizable. Any personal touches that had been my mother’s were completely vanished, replaced by her, my stepmother, my father’s new wife with a twenty-seven inch waistline and an even smaller brain. I mean, her name was Pilates, like the exercise. Who the fuck names their kid Pilates, you ask? Nobody. She legally had it changed to Pilates. This woman literally purposely gave herself the stupidest name ever.
I snuck through the living room, being careful not to bump into anything. Pilates was famous for ordering thousand dollar vases on the Internet and putting them in various locations where they were certain to be knocked over by Rusty, which is why he’d been confined to the backyard, to a doghouse in the far back by the old shed. The house was like a minefield.
I thought of this game Nick and I play a lot on Steam where you have to navigate yourself through a pretty intense minefield without getting blown up. He never made it very far, but I was excellent at the game, and he always insisted I was cheating.
I made it to the stairs and I took a deep breath, looking back across the room I’d traversed. I could see Rusty, pressing his nose to the glass, watching me from the other side of the sliding glass doors.
Upstairs, I slid down the hallway toward what had once been my bedroom, the room Pilates always made a big deal of calling the guest room, as though I’d never existed there. I pushed the door opened. Of course she’d redecorated it, I knew that had long ago happened. She’d painted the walls and boxed up whatever was left of mine and donated it to the Goodwill and rearranged and covered the bed with a duvet.
Luckily, what I needed was hidden in a place she’d never find it.
I knelt down, pushing aside a braided rug, rolling it so it stayed out of my way, and I expertly punched in just the right place, loosening a floorboard, which I lifted away to reveal my secret hiding place.
Inside were some of my most important worldly treasures. A really old stuffed pig, a couple diaries, a mix-tape of all the music they’d deemed banned from the house, a pack of cigarettes, a bag of weed, and a cigar box, held closed by several rubber bands. I lifted out the cigar box and the weed (because, seriously, why not?) and slid the floorboard back into place, making sure to push it down really well so it wouldn’t come loose accidentally, and rolled the rug back over it.
Tucking the weed into my bra where it would be safe, I clutched the old cigar box, a lump rising in my throat.
Then I heard Rusty barking.
I peered through the window, down to the driveway, where Pilates was just climbing out of her white BMW, her hair all wrapped up in a stupid flowery scarf like she was from the 1960s or something. She pulled a bag from Victoria’s Secret out of the passenger side and clicked the remote lock on the key chain, heading into the house.
I didn’t have time to go back downstairs.
I pushed the window open. I held tightly, protectively, to the cigar box, and crawled out onto the roof below the bedroom window, carefully closing the window behind me. I inched close to the edge of the roof and reached for the thick branches of the tree. I’d done this a thousand times before when I was younger, but somehow it felt more terrifying now that I was grown up and being caught meant less grounded for a week and more charges of breaking and entering.
I carefully pulled myself into the branches and slid down the trunk of the tree to the ground below like it was a fireman’s pole. Then I ran, off to one side so I wasn’t immediately visible from any of the front windows, and crossed the street quickly. I made my way back more tediously, ducking behind other cars parked on the pavement until I reached my own car, where I slithered across the passenger seat and drove away.
My only regret was not getting to say bye to Rusty.
I was at a stoplight a couple blocks away when my phone vibed on the dashboard.
It was AJ.
Chapter End Notes:
*Please excuse any poor German, I was using Google translate. Got a better translation? Let me know. :)
