Chapter 15
The four of us—me, Braden, Cy, and Mick—arrived at the hospital not too long after we watched the ambulance take off with Zack.
It hadn’t been difficult getting there because traffic was lighter than usual due to the early morning hour.
The whole way there, Braden had held my hand while I worried about every possible outcome.
Sure, Zack might escape unscathed, but there were so many other possibilities.
What if he was braindead—or suffered some sort of brain damage?
What if he never woke up…if he became a vegetable, living only because he was hooked up to machines?
What if he recovered but was never able to play again?
Those and so many other what ifs plagued my brain, and although my anguish was silent, the tears couldn’t be contained.
In those agonizing moments in the Uber car with Cy, Braden, and me crammed in the back and Mick in the passenger seat next to the twenty-something driver, I prayed silently that Zack would come through.
Did he know we weren’t there with him? Did he feel alone? Or did he know that we were near…that we cared?
I thought back over all the horrible things we’d said to each other in the past, the way our relationship had malfunctioned…
and I knew we were wrong for each other.
I’d pushed it and he’d finally relented, but it was clear we didn’t belong together.
But that didn’t change the fact that I loved him to the bottom of my heart, would do anything for him.
I would even give up my life if it meant he could live.
Looking back over the past couple of years, I could see it all in sharp focus like never before.
Zack was suffering. He had been but had rarely voiced it, hadn’t known how to cope with it.
Even in high school something had been eating at him, and I knew now that that was why he’d taken to alcohol so early.
He’d learned even back then that he seemed to feel better when he could numb the voices, drown out the pain.
But alcohol and drugs could only do so much.
Even writing seemed to help him, laying his soul bare on the stage night after night, but I wondered now if that just made it worse.
Seeing fans sing his words that reflected his torment with a smile on their faces, not actually feeling what he had when he’d written them, might simply underscore how alone he was in the world.
Oh, Zack. How could we assure him we were there with him, that we cared for him? That we wanted him to be healthy and free from his demons?
Braden let go of my hand and put his arm around my shoulders, pulling me to him. Oh…he knew I was crying and he wanted to comfort me. Sweet, sweet Braden, caring for me like no one ever had before, even while I was crying over my past love.
No—that wasn’t entirely true. I was crying because our friend—our friend—was in danger of losing his life.
I was grateful that the driver wasn’t trying to make conversation, and pop music played softly on the radio, just enough to keep the silence from feeling awkward.
Fortunately, Mick said something to him once in a while until he dropped us off at the emergency room.
I was thankful that Mick took care of all the talking, telling the person at the desk who we were and who we were there for.
I went to the restroom so I could blow my nose and splash water on my face.
My tears weren’t helping Zack…and I needed to be strong for my bandmates.
Looking in the mirror at my splotched face and red-rimmed eyes, I silently told myself that I’d had time to let it all out.
Now I had to pull myself together and try to support my friends, these men who had become part of my family, for better or worse.
By the time I left the restroom, I felt a little shaky but completely sober and surprisingly dry-eyed. Mick was talking to Cy and Braden near the sliding glass doors as I joined them, but he looked at me as I approached. “You okay, kid?”
I gave a slight nod of my head. “Yeah.” When Braden’s hand touched mine, I took it.
“I was just bringing the guys up to speed. They’re apparently trying to stabilize him—and they won’t let us see him until they move him to a regular room.”
“How long will that be?”
“I don’t know. The nurse didn’t seem to know either—or maybe she wasn’t telling me. But she said the cafeteria is open until two. Coffee’s on me for anyone who wants it.”
“But what if Zack wakes up while we’re gone?”
The expression on Mick’s face frightened me—because it said oh, so much while trying to hide what he was thinking. “We won’t be able to see him for a while. It’ll be at least an hour.”
“I don’t think—”
“Would it make you feel better if I let them know where we were?”
“Yes.”
Mick nodded, giving me the kindest expression, before going back to the desk. Braden asked Cy, “How you holdin’ up?”
“I’m okay. You guys?”
“I don’t know. I won’t know till…later,” Braden said, squeezing my hand.
I squeezed his back, hoping he felt my support.
When we got to the cafeteria, Mick offered to buy food too, but I couldn’t eat. I sipped at the coffee, grateful to have it warming my belly, but I felt raw and my entire body felt tense with worry.
“I need to call Zack’s mother, but I’m going to wait until morning,” Mick said as he put his cup down on the table.
Cy said, “Shouldn’t we tell her now? If he—”
My mind filled in the blank: If he dies.
But Mick cut him off before he could say it.
“There’s nothing she can do to help him, and there’s no sense disturbing her sleep.
I’ll call her in the morning. By then, we should have more information to give her.
Right now, there’s very little to communicate, and the last thing she needs is to be speeding in the dark, worried sick, only to come here and pace the floor with the rest of us.
” Mick let out a long sigh. “We’ll wait. ”
Cy seemed to be satisfied with his answer. His logic seemed sound to me, and I knew I had to trust him, because I was a bundle of nerves and I didn’t trust my judgment.
Braden asked, “Has this ever happened to you before?”
“What?” Mick asked. “Somebody’s OD’ing?”
The person who’d been working behind the counter was using a Swiffer-type mop to clean the floor, but she kept her distance. I wondered how many stories of grief she’d heard from families who’d taken a few minutes of refuge here.
Braden said, “Yeah.”
“Unfortunately, in my line of business, I have. I’ve gotten lucky, though. No one’s died on my watch, and Zack’s gonna pull through.”
For the first time since finding Zack, I felt an ounce of hope spring up inside my chest like a flower emerging from the early spring soil to greet the sun. “He is?”
“Yeah, kid. He’ll probably be a little worse for the wear, but he’s in good hands here.”
God, I wanted to ask so many questions…I wanted to understand how much Mick knew about the process, and I wanted to ask if he’d learned more from the nurse than he’d let on.
But I was afraid of the answers. This little glimmer of hope, that was what I needed.
I blinked back fresh tears and sent a silent message to Zack to let him know I was pulling for him.
Mick’s voice caused me to focus again. “I’m gonna have to let the suits know.”
Cy asked, “Know what?”
“About Zack.”
“Why should they care?”
The way Mick shook his head made me for just an instant see his real age.
The man put up a strong, vigorous front, but this shit had shaken him far more than he was letting on.
I’d often thought his remarks about needing to retire were just something he said—but now I suspected he meant it, and I felt bad for all the times I’d made his job harder.
“Where do I start? You guys are their artists—they’ve invested heavily in you.
They need to know what happened tonight because Zack came close to dying.
If this happens again and I didn’t tell them about this, my ass is on the line.
And if he can’t perform as planned, that hits ‘em in the wallet. And then there’s the insurance—”
“Zack has insurance,” Braden said.
“He doesn’t have tour insurance. That pays out if something happens and you guys can’t perform for whatever reason. And something like this? They could refuse to cover another tour. There’s a lot of shit you guys don’t know about.”
I let go of Braden’s hand. “What if Zack’s okay? What if he pulls out of this like nothing ever happened?”
“We still gotta tell ‘em, kid. If the label found out and I didn’t tell them, who knows what the hell would happen? They’d probably fire me without a second thought—and I don’t even want to think about what they’d do with you guys. They’d probably end your tour without a second thought.”
That would devastate us all—but it would kill Zack. This was probably the only thing he lived for.
Mick looked each one of us in the eyes before picking up his cup and speaking again.
“Labels don’t like to be blindsided. Like it or not, I’ll be calling them in the morning too.
We’ll get ahead of it, and they can decide what to do publicity wise.
It’s possible this shit’ll never get out, but they need to know so they can make the decision—it’s not ours to make.
” With that, he took a long drink from his cup.
Braden said, “Yeah, but—”
“Look…I know you guys want to protect Zack. I do too. But we can’t hide this shit from the label. We just can’t. They need to know what happened so they can control the narrative. If they heard about this from somewhere else, we’d all be fucked—and I promise you you don’t want that.”
Cy had mostly been quiet up until that point and, even with his occasional input, I had no idea what he’d been thinking or feeling—until now.
“I just wanna know why the hell he did it. I get that he wants to play the rock star—but heroin? That’s such a fucking cliché—and out of everything he wants, that’s not it. ”
“You know he’s suffering,” I offered.
“Yeah? Well, so are we. Every time he decides to placate his wounded soul, we’re caught in the wake of it. And I’m sick of it. The so-called intervention we did didn’t do shit. We need to lay it all on the line.”
“Why don’t you let me do that?” Mick said. “I’m not saying you’re wrong, son—but there’s a better chance he’ll listen to me. I can lay out all the stakes in a way you can’t.”
Cy’s mouth curled downward—but he said, “Okay. As long as you’ll do it.”
“I will.”
“Hey, um,” the girl with the mop said, approaching the table, “I hate to bother you but—”
“You gotta close,” Mick said, nodding. “Yeah, we’ll get out of your hair.”
“Thanks.”
And, with that, we rose from the table and headed back to the stark emergency room to bide our time.
Although I drifted off from time to time, it was hard—not only because I was worried, but sitting in those vinyl chairs with my head leaned against Braden’s shoulder wasn’t conducive to sleep.
There were also a handful of other people and patients, a steady drip of people coming in and out.
There was a parent with a sick teenager, a woman with what looked like a nasty break on her wrist, another man with his hand covered in a bloody towel, and another person in a wheelchair who was taken back and then brought back out—and so many other souls in need of medical attention.
Finally, around eight that morning, a nurse came out to talk to us to let us know they’d moved Zack to a regular room. “We need to continue monitoring him for the next twenty-four to forty-eight hours until everything’s out of his system.”
“Can we visit him?” I asked.
“Yes. He’s stabilized. He’s not fully alert yet, so he might seem tired or confused.
He’ll probably be sleeping a lot, but he might appreciate seeing you.
Two at a time, of course.” Mick asked for the room number and directions and we started to leave the area, but the nurse’s voice stopped us.
“If he becomes nervous or agitated, be sure to let the nurse know right away. We’ll have a counselor speak to him before he’s discharged, but not until he’s fully awake and completely stable. ”
A counselor? As we walked out, I realized that maybe that would be the best outcome—maybe that meant he’d hear about the dangers of his behavior from someone neutral…and that meant he might take the message better than he would hearing it from all of us.
As we headed to the floor where Zack was staying, Braden said, “I can call Zack’s mom so you don’t have to, Mick.”
For the first time in a while, Mick’s brows seemed to relax. “That would be great. Thanks, son. I’ll call the label while you do that—but let’s check on Zack first.”
Walking out of the elevator, I felt like the four of us were united, closer than ever…and we were about to become whole again.