Seeing Kevin fall apart was disturbing. I'd always thought of Kev as the strong one of us, the dependable one. Fuck, he'd all but raised Nick and I. I dropped a nervous hand on his back. Even years of being a father to a daddy's-girl hadn't given me the balls to deal with a crying Kevin. His tears spilled between the gaps in his fingers and I felt my stomach start doing somersaults. It was serious shit when Kev cried.
The audience let out a gasp that echoed through the hollow studio and I turned, looking over Brian's hunkered down form, at the video screen that hung behind us. Photographs taken for the police report that night filled the screen. Nick's sleek white Escalade had hydroplaned, they said, hit the K-rail, and flipped over the top of it into the northbound side of I-405 on it's roof. It had skid into the center of the four lanes of traffic and been hit in the passanger side by a UPS truck, which sent it back into the K-rail nose-first, where it had come to a stop. Nick had undone his seat belt - a detail that the medics later said was probably the mistake that had ultimately cost his life - and landed on the roof of the car, where he'd been laying when the paramedics arrived.
The UPS delivery man, a guy named Carl Lopez, walked away unscratched. A detail that was both happy and mind-numbingly painful to think about.
Brian turned and looked up at the picture, then turned away again quickly.
The pictures of Nick's car faded into one another slowly, followed by images of the papers announcing the wreck, and those telling the tale of Nick's month-long comatose state. A chilling-to-the-bone image faded into focus on the screen of him laying in a hospital bed. The focus was close on his face, his eyes closed and features peaceful as he lay there. I knew the picture well. It had plastered the TV screen and newspapers for months on end - the last picture of Nick Carter. The picture was featured on the cover of People magazine in this particular shot of it, with the headlin below it in dark blue font reading "The Battle for the Power of Attourney comes to a shocking end". A picture of Nick's mom, Jane, and one of his father, Bob, book-ended the cover, neither person looking anything less than pissed off.
"Let's talk about the custody battle for a moment," Anna Bernard suggested. "What happened exactly?"
"Like there's any details that wasn't on the cover of every fuckin' magazine in the country," I snapped.
Anna's eyes shifted to me and I wished to God I'd kept my mouth shut. It was a good thing I'd had going, staying out of her focus - why hadn't I been smart enough to keep it that way? "Were there any details kept off the cover of every magazine in the country?" she asked, editing my strong language. I could almost picture Calliopie, whose tone was always disapproving when I spoke strongly, shaking her head as she watched this on TV.
"Well nobody ever really had the balls to say that his mum's a douchebag, but other than that..." I shrugged.
"Jay..." Brian's voice wasn't even strong enough to really call it a defense for Jane's name, more a disapproval for my choice to continue on with the strong words. He was probably picturing Baylee's kids watching the appearance on TV or something.
"Well it's true."
"So why was there a battle to begin with?" Anna Bernard questioned, "Wasn't there an appointment of power of attourney in his will?"
"He didn't have a will," Howie replied, "At least not a verified one."
"It wasn't a legal document, persay," Kevin clarified, piping back up, "See, he wrote some stuff in his journal."
"Diary," I corrected out of habit. Nick and I had dueled verbally many a time over whether the leather covered sketchbook that he scribbled doodles, notes, and long critiques of his day in was a journal or a diary. I hadn't meant to be annoying, but I could tell by the look on Kevin's face that my persistence of the matter was anything but welcomed, though.
Anna Bernard raised an eyebrow.
"I had posession of the journal," Kevin said slowly, "When Jane and Bob started heading off on the matter, I went and got the journal from Nick's condo, hoping to settle matters and... well, as you know I only managed to complicate things."
Complicate was an understatement - the understatement of the goddamned century, to be certain.
"Are you sure you're okay to go in alone?" Rochelle asked. Our car was idling in the fire lane out front of the visitor's entrance of the hospital. I stared out the window at the ornate front doors. I could already smell the old people and the vomit and the cleaning product mixture that I had come to equate with the interiors of hospitals. As I watched a weak looking woman walked down the steps with a man that clung too protectively to her to be anything shy of her husband. Her head was bald, clearly from Chemotherapy treatments. Her hands shook as she held onto his arm. I hated hospitals. "Let's park, I'll come in with you."
I nodded.
Rochelle drove around the semi-circular drive to the parking garage and up three levels before she found a space. She had to pull forward and back up about eight times before she got the car into the tiny space, but she'd finally managed it, and we crawled out the car. I appreciated the fact that Ro-Ro slid her hand in mine as we walked, and I instinctively wriggled my fingers against her wedding ring, reassuring myself that she was there, that she was mine, that we were us. It was easy to forget shit like that when you're at a place like this for a reason like we were.
"Are you scared?" Ro asked as we walked. Her shoes echoed on the cement.
"To fuckin' death," I answered bluntly.
"Me too," she admitted. She squeezed my hand reassuringly.
Just as I'd suspected, the hospital smelled like its usual self. We passed about ten people with ailments that frightened the crap out of me on the way through the main lobby - one of them was a four year old kid with a cast on his arm that was almost as big as he was - and I chose to divert my attention to the bright red of Rochelle's lips as they moved, asking the receptionist the way to the Intensive Care Unit, informing her that we were there to visit Nick. The woman had given us directions and Ro led me away from her desk, toward the bay of elevators.
I felt a bit like a child. I usually did in places like hospitals, though. Something about them just takes away my manhood. I feel tiny and helpless. I always have.
In the elevator, Rochelle leaned against the wall opposite of me and stared at me. She sighed, "AJ..." her voice was full of a heaviness that told me that what she was about to say was A) hard for her to say, and B) something that I probably didn't really want to hear. "Monkee," she added, trying to soften the blow - something that confirmed both points A and B in my mind.
"If this is gonna be some pep talk," I said stubbornly, "I don't wanna hear it. Alls I want to hear is that Nick's going to be fine, okay? that's it. That's all I wanna hear. That's all I'll accept right now."
"So Nick's going to be fine," Ro said flatly.
"Don't patronize me."
"Hear me out, Alex," she requested, her level voice pleading. "Just listen a second okay? If something happens --" I winced. "-- I'm not saying it will but if something, God-forbid-it, happens, I just need you to promise me that you're going to stay with me."
My eyes met hers. She had foregone her usual layers of mascara and eyeliner today. Her eyes were just her eyes, and as sexy as she looked all made up I have to admit that there was something super sexy and appealing about the sheer vulnerability that was her eyes in the raw. I shook my head, "Wild horses couldn't drag me off from you, Monkee," I said.
"I don't mean divorce," she said slowly, "I mean, don't relapse, don't go back to drugs or drinking. Please. Nick wouldn't want that."
It was like she'd been reading my mind before. I'd been just thinking how grand a couple shots of Jack would've been to lighten the pressure in my chest before going in the ICU.
I nodded. "I'll stay clean." Even as I said the words though I wondered if I'd be able to keep that promise, if, in the heat of it, those words would mean anything to me other than an innane babbling.
"Thank you," she said as the elevator doors dinged open.
Normally, there might be some question about whether we were in the right place or not when the doors opened. I mean neither of us knew our way around in that hospital for jackshit, and every floor looked identical in these type places, but the moment the doors opened, Jane Carter had come hurtling in the door, her face red in blotchy patches, steam practically rising from her ears. She slammed the heel of her hand into the lobby button and glowered at me. "AJ," she said, her voice sharp, "I suppose you're here to fucking back up Kevin in his ridiculous claims?"
I blinked in surprise and Rochelle raised her eyebrow, looking at me over Jane's shoulder.
"I - I dunno," I stammered. "I didn't know Kevin was here," I added.
But I don't think Jane even heard me. She was fuming, practically foaming at the mouth. "He thinks Nick would've wanted us to give up," she spat, "Would've wanted us to let him go, like he's some sort of god that can decide such things." Jane turned to pace and walked into Rochelle. She gave her a once-over, which ended with a disapproving air, and turned back to me. "Is this your girlfriend?" she asked.
"Wife," I answered.
Rochelle crossed the width of the elevator and slid her hand into mine.
Jane turned away.
"I'm his mother for Christ's sake, does that count for nothing?"
Nick's annoyance with Jane had never been that big a mystery to me. Jane had always been one of those people that grated on my last nerve, like the way I pictured one of those training whistles to grate on a St. Bernard's last nerves. "It's not like he's a nothing, not like he's a nobody, not like he's some hobo off the street that nobody gives a damn about," she plowed on, her voice rising and falling with a passionate anger. "He's my son, goddamnit."
I felt like pointing out that she only ever referred to him as that when it benefitted her. Otherwise, he was just shit under her feet. That's how it had always been. It kind of pissed me off that she was here at all.
The elevator dinged on the lobby floor again and Jane looked at me with heated eyes as the doors slid open. She stepped up closer to me, stuck her finger in my face, and said, in a low and threatening voice, "And I plan to do whatever it takes to make sure that I get my way in this matter." With that, she stormed out of the elevator.
"Well that was... intense..." Rochelle commented when the doors closed again.
"Yeah," I nodded in agreement, "Ridiculously so."
"So what did the journal say?" Anna Bernard questioned, her eyes locked on Kevin.
"Well Nick had spent a lot of time thinking about things like what if's and all that and one of the things that he'd detailed was what he wanted if something happened to him," Kevin explained. "Nick had told me once, a long time ago, where he'd kept these things written so that someone knew, so when the issue came up... Well, I knew what I was looking for, you know?" Kev sighed. "But it wasn't a legally verified document, so the state wouldn't accept it as sufficient proof of Nick's wishes."
"So the legal battle began."
Howie piped up, "Nick was all but the poster child for getting a will professionally drawn up, even if you don't think you need one." He smiled sadly.
I looked at Brian. Brian was still doubled over, still crying. I patted his back and he glanced over at me, misery and guilt etched into every line on his wrinkled face. He shuddered with a deep breath.
Having takn the floor, Howie continued, "Jane and Bob each wanted custody. Jane wanted to keep him on life support indefinitely and Bob wanted to pull the plug and have him creamated when Nick had clearly written that he wanted to be buried..."
"At sea," Kevin injected.
"Typical Nick," hiccuped Brian from his bent-forward position. "Buried at sea. G'Lord."
"So how did Nick end up cryrogenetically frozen?"
"It was the compromise, of sorts," Kevin explained, "Traditionally, cryronics was used to preserve a person's body who was dying of an incurable disease in the hopes that science of the future would find a cure and be able to heal them and restore their life. Basically, cryronics is where they freeze the body to negative 320 degrees farenheit. Body cells stop functioning at that temperature, so if they're suspended like that in liquid nitrogen, they stay preserved, just like they were at the time of the freezing. It's like stopping time, in a sense. So the hope is that they'll be awakened when their medical issues can be cured and they'll be able to live a normal life. In Nick's case, he had already... passed away. People thought Jane was crazy for wanting to preserve him like that. Which she was, really, but I guess she had more faith in science and medicine than the rest of us ever dreamed. I mean Miracle is...well, a miracle."
"I think she just wanted to use Nick's DNA, sell it on fucking eBay or something," I said, rolling my eyes, "Sick, twisted bitch just wanted to keep making money off him, even if he was nothing but a fucking corpse. Why the hell would she care if he's stuck in a bottle of whatever-the-fuck like a goddamn 14-year old's biology lab frog? It's not like she ever gave a fuck what he wanted before, why would she once he was dead?"
Nobody bothered to reprimand me.
"So when Nick died, he was added to a list of over 200 people to be cryrogenetically frozen, suspended in liquid nitrogen," Anna Bernard summarized, "In hopes that one day science would find a way to heal the incurable... heal even death."
Kevin nodded. "Which, at the time was entirely ridiculous... but now... with Miracle..." he took a deep breath. "Well." He looked nervous. "I guess we'll see just how ridiculous it really is, won't we?"
