I will never in my life forget the phone call I got that night.
It was just past two o'clock when the telephone's cry pierced the night. I'd rolled out of bed. The hardwood floors in our house were cool and stung my feet as I made my way out of our bedroom and into the hall where the nearest extension was. I caught it up off the cradle. "Hello?" my voice was hushed, low to keep the volume level down so as to keep from waking anyone else up.
A gasping groan echoed through the receiver, a shuddering breath.
"Hello?" We'd had a recent breakout of phone calls from fans lately because of an accident where my phone number had somehow been posted on the Internet, but this was the first we'd received at such an inappropriate time. I frowned, "Look, please don't call in the middle of the night, it's really disrespectful." I started to hang up, but I heard it only just in time.
"K-K-ev?"
I returned the receiver to my ear. "Nick?"
"Anyone?" Anna Bernard was looking from one of us to the next, none of us willing to look up from our shoes.
I'd always been the one to speak in the difficult places. I knew the other guys were all expecting me to pick up the slack here, too, but all I could hear was Nick's voice echoing in my head. My throat ached. I looked up and the stage lights eked into my retinas and I could feel tears forming somewhere in the ducts. Every bone in my body felt cold and stiff at the same time. "It's a hard topic," I told Anna Bernard.
She looked like a toad sitting on a thick purple flower of some sort. The entire set was decorated rather gaudily, like some sort of neon Spring fashion plate - what with the lime and the purple. It was awful. Figures AJ would like it, he'd always had a taste for things that I found to be nothing short of an eyesore.
"I'm sure it is," Anna replied, frowning in a way that said she expected me to tell her what happened anyways.
The other guys were staring at me. Brian's eyes were bloodshot. He looked small, smaller than he'd looked even the last time I'd seen him. Age had not treated Brian very well. There was a time we'd joked that Brian would be the next Dick Clark, what with not ever looking any older (other than the bald spot we all teased him about putting sunscreen on). But it had been a rapid and sudden transformation after his thirty-seventh birthday. He looked desperate somehow, as though he needed to hear the story, needed to hear, once again, that there wasn't a thing he could've done to help, wasn't a reason in the world that he could possibly be carrying the guilt for what had happened...
"It was... an accident..." I forced the words out of my mouth.
"There were a lot of theories," Anna Bernard pointed out, "Variances in stories..." she glanced at Brian, then at AJ, and Howie, before returning her eyes to my own. "The drunk driving charges, of course."
"Those were dropped after the autopsy," I said flatly.
"Yes, of course, but should they have been?" Anna questioned.
"The autopsy showed no blood-achohol content," I replied cooly, "So why even ask that?"
Anna Bernard shrugged. She was known for blowing the top of controversy. I remember overhearing Mason once describe her to Kristin as a real-life Rita Skeeter. "I was just curious is all," she said, equally cooly. She smiled. "How did you find out about the accident?"
I shifted my eyes downward to study my hands for a long moment. Sometimes even I was shocked by the age that they held. It seemed like just yesterday I'd been with the guys, touring the world, yelling at Nick and Howie and AJ for partying too loud. Paying off hotel charges for things like broken television sets, ripped up pillows, and ironing boards that flew out windows. Facing the reality that it had been over four decades since I'd done any of that was hard.
"He called me," I replied, looking back up.
Brian was the only one of the fellas that knew this. I felt AJ shift to look at me and Howie's sharp intake of air over my head. I pressed my fingertips together.
Anna Bernard's face contorted with confusion and concern. "But how did..."
"I was the last person he spoke to."
A heavy silence filled the studio. Not a single breath could be heard among the members of the audience. AJ's stomach made a strange, squelching sound. Brian's head hung to his chest and the unmistakable glisten of a tear rolled across his long cheek.
"What did he say?" Anna Bernard's voice was scarcely above a whisper. It didn't need to be. The camera swayed to focus on me.
"Kev..."
"Nick, you realize it's two o'clock in the morning, don't you? For Christ's sake."
"K-Kev... I - I'm sorry."
I sighed, "Don't be sorry, just tell me why your calling at this God-forsaken hour, will you?"
"H-help me..." his voice was strained.
"What?"
"H-help me K-Kevin." I could hear the tears in his voice, which shook, dangerously close to breaking or to fading out. "P-please."
"What's wrong?" I switched into parental mode. I realized suddenly that, even at two o'clock in the morning, Nick never sounded like this. Even when he'd called me that night when he'd been arrested on a DWI, he still hadn't sounded like this. "Where are you, what happened?" I moved down the hallway, headed for the stairs. I was ready to grab my jacket, kick on my shoes, and head out the door to rescue him from whatever cell he'd been haucked into now.
"It hurts," he whispered. "Please."
I bounded down the steps two at a time. "What hurts, Nick? Where are you?"
"I think... I think I might be dying Kev," he sounded terrified.
"Stop that, where are you?"
"Brian..."
"You're in Atlanta?"
"He's at the airport."
"What airport? Where are you?"
"I-405."
"Southbound?" I continued my motion toward the front door and kicked my feet into my shoes, pulling open the coat closet.
"I'm sorry." His voice shattered as he started crying, deep sobs, the kind that shook a person from the depths of their internal organs. He hadn't sounded like this in a long time. "I'm sorry," he gasped. I could hear him struggling for oxygen. The gravity of the situation suddenly impressed upon me. He was in trouble. How grave of trouble, I couldn't tell, but it didn't sound good.
"Nick, calm down buddy," I said as strongly as I could manage as my nerves started to go haywire. "Think, what exit are you by?" I reached into my coat's pocket and pulled out my cell phone. My fingers flew over the keypad, dialing 911.
"Brian needs --"
"Brian's fine. I'm worried about you right now. What happened?"
"There's blood Kev... a whole lotta blood..."
"Breathe, Nick, it's gonna be okay. I'm calling 911 right now."
"I'm sorry."
"911, what is your emergency?" The woman that answered sounded tinny and far away.
Normally, I would've felt mildly ridiculous being on two phones at once, but given the circumstances... "I need to report an accident," I said into the cell phone.
"Are you at the scene?"
"No, my friend is involved, he's on my other line, he needs help. He's on I-405."
"Okay, we'll dispatch emergency personnel. Is he conscious?"
"Nick?" I asked, checking.
"I'm sorry, Kev," he whispered.
"Barely," I replied.
"Try to keep him talking until the medics arrive."
"I need to hang up so I can switch phones so I can talk to him while I get over there," I replied. "Thank you." I hung up on her before she could argue with me. "Nick," I commanded, "Nick, do you hear me?"
"K-Kev?" he sounded sleepy in a strangely faint sort of way.
"Nick, I need you to hang up with me so I can call you back on my cell phone, okay? I need to get over there to help you."
"No don't go away please," he begged.
"I'm not going anywhere," I promised. "I'm here."
"Don't go, I don't wanna be alone."
"I'm not going, Nick. It's going to be just a second. I'll even dial before we hang up so it only is the amount of time it takes you to hit the answer button okay?"
"K-Kev, you- you're - you're like a - a dad... to me..."
"Nick, I swear to God if you start saying goodbye to me I'm going to have to kill you," I said, trying to make light of the moment. I imagined a moment in the future when I would tease him for having gotten so dramatic on me. "It's just not allowed, Carter."
"I - I really ... I look up to... you..." he was struggling with words again.
"Nick. Please, don't do this. Just let me switch phones and we'll talk and I'll get there in a few minutes and we'll work this out and get you to the hospital. There's help coming, paramedics and everything..." I laughed, though it came out more like a nervous bark than real laughter, "Maybe the ambulance driver will even flash those lights for you, huh?"
"K- Kev..."
"You're gonna be okay. Look I'm ready to go out the door, the sooner I switch lines, the sooner I can get there."
"I love ya Kev."
My throat closed up. He'd never said those words, not with the sincerity that was filling his voice at this moment. Emotion rose up in every last nerve ending of my body. I cleared my throat as best I could. "Nick..." My hands were clenching my keys so tight that I was sure it would leave a mark, my keys forever imprinted on my palm. I bit my lips, trying to hold back the worry, the fear that was creeping up my spine one vertibrae at a time. "Nick, please, just let me call you back on my cell phone, okay?"
He uttered a noise that sounded like a weak okay.
"Okay, hold on one second."
I clicked the phone off and quickly pressed the button on my cell to call his cell phone. My hands were shaking. I raised one over my mouth, a feeling of vomit rising in my throat. I plowed my way out the front door, not even bothering to leave a note for Kris, my mind focused only on getting to Nick.
The phone rang... and rang.
But he never picked up.
"What did he say?" Anna Bernard repeated.
I looked up from my hands where I'd been staring as the conversation had repeated in my mind from start to finish. I swallowed, my heart pounding so loudly in my chest I was surprised the other fellas couldn't hear it, surprised it wasn't echoing in the studio like a pendulum.
"He said goodbye."
