“Lucky,” I say. “I’m sure he’d prefer blindness right about now.”
“You had to get eight stitches on your eyelid and along the brow, which is why we’ve got it bandaged. We need to limit the movement for a bit, that’s all.”
“Great. And what about this pounding in my right ear… and the fun ringing sound I’m getting now?” I ask him. “Because my hearing’s kind of important, too.”
“We took all of your senses into consideration upon admittance, Mr. Scott. Your friends described what they saw, and said you were kicked in the head. We did a CT scan and everything looks fine. I don’t believe you have a concussion. And your ear looks good. We’re looking at some bruising, and you’re probably going to have a bit of a headache for a few days. We’ll get you something for the pain.”
“Soon, I hope.”
“Ron’s coming back momentarily, and then we’ll keep you until morning for observation. Also, your friends didn’t think we needed to get the cops involved… for assault cases, we like to ask.”
“No, he’s my bandmate. I guess we just keep it in the family. Hey, can we see about my phone?”
“Why don’t I send your friends in for a minute to help? Before we knock you out…”
“Cool. Thanks, doc. Oh, but if there’s a guy named Ben out there, I don’t want to see him.”
“Okay.”
The ringing subsides as I wait for the guys. In the back of my mind, I hope Shea’s with them, too. When Peron and Damon walk in, my heart sinks, but I try to smile at them anyway. I’m not only hindered by my disappointment, but by my swollen face, too.
“Fuck.” Damon puts his hands over his mouth.
“Oh, shit,” Peron says.
“Probably looks worse than it is.”
“Why’s your eye bandaged?”
“Cut on my eyelid. I have stitches, so they’re limiting the movement.”
“For how long?”
“I didn’t ask.”
“And what’s that?” Peron asks, pointing at my right side.
“Bruised ribs. Nothing’s broken. And no concussion, either. No vision damage. No hearing damage. Just a lot of superficial stuff, apparently. Like I said, it looks worse than it is.”
“You feel okay?”
“No, I feel like hell. I’m waiting for the morphine.”
“Yeah, yeah. Good,” Damon says. “Man, what happened?”
“Have you heard from Shea?” I interrupt him. He shakes his head. “Can you check my pockets for my phone?
“Dude, your phone’s toast,” Peron says. “He chunked it at you.”
Now that he mentioned it, I can see it all happening in slow motion. “Fuck. Like, you’re sure it’s gone?”
Damon pulls the mangled device out of his jacket pocket. “Pretty sure.” It looks as if Ben took his aggression out on it after he was finished with me.
“You have Shea’s number?” I ask him. He shakes his head. I realize the irony of that after I ask. “Well, she split. She met us at the bus. We sat down to eat and we all started talking. Ben asked me, like, how Shea was programmed into my phone or some bullshit, and took it from me, just messing around. But, uh… Lola’s number was in there.”
When I don’t say anything, Peron finally asks me why.
“Remember when I disappeared after the Chicago show to go call my brother? And I was gone for about a half hour? Well, the security guard took me to this massage place… and Lola was there. It was a set-up sort of thing. Something that they apparently do with bands, according to the bouncer-guy. Nothing I asked for; it was nothing I turned down, either.”
Damon raises his brows, waiting to hear more–waiting to hear how much of a hypocrite I’d been. “It was just head,” I say, closing my right eye. “And it was before Ben had even met her. Before any of you had, if you’ll remember.”
I look up to see Peron listening intently. “I came up to the club with you guys, and she was introduced to you all shortly after. Ben took off with her, and that was that. I got drunk, and the next time I saw him was after he’d slept with her. They were together from that moment on. What would you have done, you know?”
“Why’d you have her number?” Damon asks.
“She put it in there after we’d hooked up... It was a momentary afterthought that I literally never gave another thought.”
“So Shea knows you two hooked up?”
“I... I don’t remember when Shea left exactly, but I don’t think she heard the details. I’d never told her before, so who the fuck knows what’s going on in her head right now? I’m more worried about where she is. She was apparently running on empty when she left. I just want to know that she made it somewhere.”
“Man, I don’t even know where to start looking...”
“You know what? Email my brother. It’s Jon dot Scott at hscd arch dot com. I think he has her number. Just do me a favor and don’t tell him anything.”
“Mr. Scott, I’ve got your morphine for you,” the nurse says.
“I’ll find Shea,” Damon says. “The doctor says you need rest more than anything else, so don’t worry about her. I’ll find her and try to make things right. If nothing else, I’ll get her here.”
“Thanks, man.”
“You look sexy,” Peron tells me on his way out, running his hand down his chest. I’m fully capable of flipping him off with both hands, so I do.
“He’s waking up.” I know Damon’s voice when he’s been up all night, and it’s obvious he has been. He sounds as beat-up as I feel.
“Need more morphine,” I plead. “Hurts like hell.”
“We’ll get the nurse for you.”
“Mother fucker…” Everything hurts five times as badly as it did last night. “Damon?” I blink open my eye and search for him in the new, unfamiliar room. Finally, he steps into my field of vision and smiles, putting his hand on my right arm.
“Yeah, man?”
“Not sure how I’m gonna be able to be civil to that guy anymore.”
“I take it we’re not talking about the nurse.”
“Mm-mmm,” I answer in the negative. “Ben.”
“I don’t give a shit. He’s stranded at the airport right now, waiting for a flight back to New York, for all I know. I fired him, Will. On sight. No way was I keeping him around.”
“I’m not afraid of him,” I clarify.
“Oh, I know. I’m afraid of what you could do to him, and I don’t need you following in your daddy’s footsteps. It’s better for us all this way.”
“Thanks.”
“Will?” Peron says from the doorway. “You have a visitor.”
I think of my girlfriend immediately. “Shea?”
“She’s safe,” Damon responds.
“What does that mean?”
“You were worried she was stranded somewhere, but she’s safe. She wanted you to know.”
“She’s not here?”
“No.” He takes a few steps back as I keep my eye trained on him. I know someone else is in the room with us, but I have no peripheral vision with the bandage on, and I don’t really care to see who’s here if it’s not Shea. So what if Tavo came to see me? He’s the only one left in town.
“What’d she say?”
“She wouldn’t answer my call. After I left her a voicemail, she just texted me to say she was safe. That’s all.”
“Hey, kid.” Jon stands in front of me, looking at me as if I’ve grown a third arm out of my chest.
“Oh, fuck, Damon, I asked you not to tell him anything.”
“And I knew better than that.”
“You’d keep this from me? Shit, Will, clearly you’re not thinking straight. Are you feeling okay? You look awful,” my brother says.
“I’ve been better, Jon. I’m pretty banged up.”
“I can see that. Why the hell did he beat you up?”
“You didn’t bother to tell him that part?”
Damon shakes his head.
“Great.”
Before I begin, a new doctor and nurse come in to give me a once-over and tell me I’m free to go, which shocks the hell out of me since I feel so much worse. After I get a few prescriptions for painkillers, Jon drives all of us to the pharmacy and then back to the bus in his rental car.
I tell him about the hotel I’d booked for me and Shea, so he helps me pack up a few things and takes me there, deciding it’s the best place for me to get peace and quiet, which was one of the things that was recommended to me by the physician. The rest of the guys had plans to rehearse with a replacement guitarist that the label had arranged for as soon as Damon had told them about the fight. A part of me had wanted to stay and listen, but that part was soon overtaken by numbness and drowsiness once the meds started to work their way into my bloodstream.
“Will?”
“Yeah, Jon,” I say to him as he tucks blankets around me carefully.
“Going back to what you told me in the car,” he starts. I had a feeling he was waiting to continue the conversation until we were alone. “You swear nothing happened between you and Lola after you met Shea?”
“Swear,” I say simply, wishing that hadn’t been the question he asked. I really thought he knew me better than that.
“Okay. Get some sleep, kid.”
“Jon, I need you to go get me a new phone. I can’t not have a phone. What if she’s trying to get in touch with me?”
“You sleep. There’ll be a phone waiting for you when you wake up, hopefully with a message from her, all right?”
“Make that happen,” I say, having a hard time keeping my eye open.
“I’ll do my best.”
It’s dusk by the time Jon wakes me up. “What?” I mumble sleepily.
“You should get up and eat something, or else you’re going to wake up starving in the middle of the night,” he says. “You haven’t eaten all day.”
“Phone?”
“It’s right next to you.” I stare at him with my one good eye, literally helpless. I can’t turn my body to be able to see the night stand where the device may or may not sit. “Sorry, sorry.”
He helps me up and puts the phone in my hand.
“Does this have my same number?” I ask when I notice there are no missed calls and no texts.
“Yeah,” he says solemnly, sensing my disappointment. In the contacts, he’s gone through and added our family, Shea’s information–which he got from her when she found him online before Christmas–and Damon’s number. Aside from that, the phone’s completely empty. I set up my email account so I can at least check for messages from my former boss and coworkers. “There’s a burger place across the street. I’ll go pick something up. Sound good?”
“That’s fine. Anything’s fine, I’m not that hungry.”
“Okay. I’ll be back in a half-hour. Call me if you think of anything you need while I’m out.”
“Thanks.”
The second after he leaves, I realize I should have asked him for help getting out of bed and going to the bathroom. Instead of calling him back, I cringe through the excruciating pain of my bruised ribs and limp to the restroom, not even bothering to lift up the seat to take a piss. The relief I get from that makes the suffering worthwhile.
I pick up the Van Halen shirt I’d been wearing yesterday and frown as I sit down on the bed to mourn the loss of it. The paramedics in the ambulance decided to cut the damn thing off of me to check out my injuries. There’s no way to save it. It was an original concert tee that I’d stumbled across at a thrift store back in college. The thing was priceless to me.
Tossing it in the plastic trash can, I return to the bed and try to lie down again without doing any more damage to myself. Once I’m as comfortable as I’m going to get, I see the pills sitting on the dresser across the room. At this point, I’ll wait for Jon.
My phone in hand, I tell it to dial Shea’s number. Not surprisingly, my call goes to voicemail after one ring, which means she’s avoiding me. I’m not really prepared for what I want to say, so I just start rambling:
“Shea, I am so sorry. And I don’t know how much you heard last night. Shit happened after you left and I don’t remember everything clearly. I didn’t cheat on you with Lola, Shea, if that’s what you’re thinking. I wouldn’t do that. I, uh…” Do I tell her what happened over voicemail? Does she already know? Am I making things worse? What does she want to hear? What will get her to call me back, or take my calls?
“Thank you for your message. Goodbye.”
“Fuck.” I send her a text message, simply asking her to call me. After five minutes, I try her number again, and am rerouted to voicemail a second time. I speak quickly. “I met Lola in Chicago, like, three-and-a-half weeks before I met you. I met her before Ben met her. I mean, not long before he did, but still. It was after our show, I was amped up, and she, uh… it felt like some kind of a set-up, honestly, but she said she saw me at the show and wanted to do something nice for me. She gave me a blow jo–”
“Thank you for your message. Goodbye.”
“Fuck!”
I call back. “A blow job. I didn’t reciprocate. She didn’t want me to. I left, and then a few minutes later, she showed up to the bar we were at where she met Ben. Like, literally, from that moment on, Lola and Ben were an item. I had no opportunity to make things right. It’s like I was fucked from the start, and for what? I didn’t do anything wrong. She didn’t either. We were both single at the time.” I hang up before I get cut off, and call back one last time. “Shea, nothing was going on between me and Lola. Nothing at all. I love you. I need you to call me, Shea. I love you.”
After Jon and I finish eating, I take another Percocet and settle in for the night. I look over at my brother, pretty disappointed that I’m sharing the king-sized bed with him. He certainly wasn’t who I’d been planning for. Still, I’m glad he’s with me, and that there’s someone here taking care of me.
I try Shea one last time. “Shea, if you’re still in Colorado, please do not leave. Give me a chance to work this out with you, please? I love you. Try to sleep. My only hope is medication. I need you.”
“She’ll come around,” Jon says, looking up from his book. “It’s only been a day.”
“I hope so. If my phone rings and I don’t hear it because of the drugs, will you answer it?”
“Of course.”
I smile at him and hand him my phone, grateful. “Thanks for coming, Jon.”
“Love ya, kid.”
Chapter 22
The pain in my side is even worse the next morning. It hurts to breathe, but one of the things I’m supposed to do is take deep breaths. Fuck that today.
“Jon?” Slowly, I move my hand to the other side of the bed, only to find it empty. “Jon?” I yell louder, not that the small hotel room really warrants it. He’s clearly not here.
Prying my eye open, I glance around me. The light dispersed through the sheer curtains makes my head throb. I spot my phone on Jon’s pillow. It takes about thirty seconds and considerable suffering to finally get it in my hand, and when I finally look at it, I realize it was a fucking waste of my energy. The only other thing I want is my next dose of painkillers, but the pill bottle isn’t where it was last night. I don’t see it anywhere around.
Someone knocks on the door. I glare at it for a few seconds, thinking that now’s a good time for either the X-ray or telekinetic powers that I’ve wished for since I was a boy to show up. The handle clicks, though, and my brother appears with a tray full of all of my favorite breakfast foods in hand.
“Surely your appetite’s back now,” he says, referring to the fact that I only ate three bites of the burger he’d bought me before I’d put it aside, opting for sleep instead of sustenance.
“You know where my meds are?”
“Yes. How about some breakfast?”
“How about some pills?”
He sighs and sets the tray down next to me on the bed. “You’ve gotta do us a big favor today.”
/>
“I don’t think I do. And who’s us?”
“Me and your band.”
“What’s going on?”
“Damon texted me late last night. Apparently this Bradley kid is struggling.”
“Bradley-my-replacement-for-tonight’s-show-Bradley?”
“He’s replacing you for all the Colorado shows, Will. You’re out for the week, at least.”
“Fuck, man, no way.”
“You can barely get up by yourself, Will. How the hell are you going to hold a guitar against your ribs, much less play it? Not to mention how you probably look under that bandage… it’s not Halloween, you know? It’s a week before Valentine’s Day, and Frankenstein’s not really that holiday’s spokesman, if you know what I mean.”
“Who gives a shit what I look like?”
“I get that you don’t, but I think your fans do. You don’t want to worry them. And if you want to argue with someone about this, don’t argue with me. I’m just the messenger.”
“So what’s the favor? You said I have to do you guys a favor.”
“Lay off the meds today and help Bradley.”
“You’re shitting me.”
“I’m not. I just had breakfast with the rest of the band. The kid’s young–”
“How young?! I’m young!”
“Younger. He just turned twenty-two, and he’s clearly in over his head.”
“Can’t we get someone else?”
“Damon talked to the label yesterday. He’s the best studio musician they had available on such short notice who actually knows most of the songs already. They only recently started looking for your permanent replacement for the European tour, so they’re not exactly prepared,” he explains.
“This sounds like their problem, not mine.”
“You have to do this for Damon. He’s your best friend.”
“Do you have any idea how much fucking pain I’m in right now?”
“Maybe some food will get your mind off it. Let me help you up.”