Chapter One #2
At least hospital staff had given them a separate space—an oncology waiting room during the day, walls plastered with inspirational posters.
Hope is stronger than fear.
You are braver than you believe.
Jay had glanced at the slogans with barely concealed disdain as soon as they entered. It all sounded nice. He had just never known it to work that way.
“Looks like we’re officially trending on Twitter,” Riley said, eyes glued to his phone. “You see that, Lionel?”
Their manager grunted. “It broke on TMZ.” Lionel sighed, scrolling. “Of-fucking-course.”
Jay could picture the press lurking outside like flies on shit, phones already raised.
Nashville used to be a refuge, a place where artists could walk down Broadway or duck into a bar without being hunted.
That had been part of the appeal once. But the city had changed, swollen with tourism and social media.
“What’s TMZ sayin’?” Luke asked.
“For fuck’s sake…” Lionel stalked toward the door, too lost in his phone to answer. “We’re in the New York Post and The Guardian—ah, and CNN just posted.”
Jay stared at the wall. At least it had been a while since they’d made headlines like this. Progress, maybe.
Benny, their security guard, sat down beside Jay. His hulking form barely fit the chair. At six-six, Benny was one of the few people who could tower over him.
“Sorry I had to rough you up on stage,” Benny said, his southern drawl thick.
Jay nodded, throat tight. “It’s okay.”
“You hangin’ in there?”
When they first met, Jay had been surprised by Benny’s accent. Jay’s voice had stayed neutral, never shaped by his dad’s southern drawl or his mom’s lilt. Benny, however, sounded like he belonged in a classic country song.
“Not sure what to expect from here,” Jay said.
“You gotta pray. That’s all any of us can do.”
Which god was he supposed to pray to when everything went to hell?
The Christian one from his dad’s side, who’d stood by while their father’s fists flew?
The Hindu ones from his mother’s heritage, foreign and forgotten since her deportation?
He didn’t have a good answer to that. He wasn’t sure he ever would.
Benny looked over, observing Jay’s silence. “You have to hope for the best and prepare for the worst with these types of things.”
Jay didn’t know what to say to that either, and he was saved from responding when the waiting room door opened. A woman in navy scrubs walked in, holding a thick clipboard. Her dark hair was pulled back in a neat bun, her expression calm despite the pandemonium she’d walked into.
Lionel ended whatever phone call he had just started. “What’s the update?”
She cleared her throat. “Hello, everyone. I’m Dr. Roberts, and I’ve been overseeing Arihan Wyler’s case.” She glanced at her clipboard. “Mr. Wyler is critical but stable, though still unconscious. He’ll be moved to a permanent room shortly.”
Jay’s breathing grew shallow. Riley and Luke sat beside Benny, faces tight.
“Did he have a seizure or something?” Riley asked.
“I can’t reveal much more at the moment.” The doctor’s eyes moved around the room and stopped on Jay. “I’m assuming you’re Jayesh?”
He nodded, throat dry.
“Family members are allowed back. We have him in the ER until a room opens in the ICU.”
Jay cleared his throat. “I’d like to see him.”
No one spoke as he stood and followed her into the hallway.
Vanderbilt Medical Center sprawled like its own city. The walk felt endless, every corridor the same with fluorescent lights buzzing overhead, the sound drilling into the silence between their footsteps. When they finally pushed through the ER doors, shouting echoed from somewhere down the hall.
The doctor stopped at a closed door, turning to face him. “I want to reiterate that your brother’s stable, but he doesn’t look great,” she said, her tone professional but not unkind. “The CT scan showed no brain bleeds, which was good. We’re also waiting on the full tox screen to confirm levels.”
Jay swallowed. Levels. As if the number would somehow change what had happened.
She gestured to the door. “We had to intubate him…just so you’re prepared to see that.”
She waited, like she expected questions. Jay had none. Or too many. He just nodded.
“Press the call button if you need anything,” she said, turning away and disappearing down the hall.
Jay stood for a moment, listening to the distant noise from another room and steadying his breath. Behind this door was his brother, unconscious with a machine breathing for him.
And the worst part was Jay had seen it coming.
It was so much simpler back when they played shitty bars in East Nashville to crowds of thirty, maybe forty people on a good night.
Jay remembered one show when they were seventeen; his guitar strap had snapped mid-set, and without missing a beat, Ari had kept the rhythm going, nodding at him like we got this.
They’d finished the set with Jay holding his guitar awkwardly against his chest, both of them trying not to crack up.
Afterward, they’d sat on the curb outside sharing a cigarette, Ari’s arm slung around his shoulders, talking about the day they’d play real venues and afford better guitar straps.
They’d made it to the real venues and could afford better guitar straps now…but somewhere along the way, they’d stopped being brothers who could communicate with just a look.
He pushed the door open.
The room was nothing special, only white walls and a single bed in the center.
Ari lay there, unconscious, with wires and tubes connected to him in every direction.
His skin was paler than usual, and for a brief moment, Jay wanted to make a joke about it.
Ari always bragged about having the best tan out of the three Wyler siblings.
Another task suddenly weighed on him, unwanted but inevitable.
Someone was going to have to tell Samira.
Their little sister would be devastated.
Ari was her favorite while Jay was the fuckup brother she loved anyway.
How was he supposed to tell her that the good brother might not make it? He filed it away for later.
Slowly, Jay crossed to the hospital bed.
Seeing his brother splayed out was eerie enough, but the fact that they were twins only made it more unsettling.
Jay had ended up in hospital beds like this more times than he could count because of his drinking, and he knew this was exactly what he’d look like if he slipped.
A year ago, he had asked Ari to come to rehab with him, but Ari always denied there was a problem. Jay had foolishly tried to believe him.
Ari’s questionable decisions spanned over a decade, but he’d never once ended up here.
Until now, everything had been something that could be laughed off or slept off by morning.
Jay had taken that as proof Ari was fine.
Truthfully, though, it had been easier to focus on his own sobriety than to admit his brother was sliding down the same path he had barely crawled back from.
He sat beside the hospital bed, listening to the whirr of the machines keeping Ari precariously alive.
His chest only felt heavier with each passing second, and his breath came shorter.
The panic was building, creeping up his spine like it always did, and he knew where this was going.
He recognized the pattern: his heart would start racing, and he’d feel like he was suffocating even though there was nothing physically wrong with him.
This was exactly why he used to drink—how he learned to manage the panic, until he stopped waiting for it to hit and drank preemptively to keep it at bay.
Getting rid of this feeling used to be easy: one shot to take the edge off, two to stop the panic before it could take hold, three to breathe again, four to properly loosen up, and five to stop feeling anything at all.
Though it’d been well over a year since his last drink, Jay’s first instinct was still to find a bottle to make it all stop.
His therapist assigned him breathing exercises for moments like this, but he couldn’t calm down when his breath was already constricted.
It didn’t help that every muscle tensed, and his ears throbbed to the erratic beating of his heart.
Fuck the breathing exercises.
He needed a cigarette. That was one sinful habit he was allowed to keep for now.
Jay left the ER, navigating corridors until he found a small, abandoned courtyard. A sign clearly stated that smoking was not allowed, but he didn’t really give a shit about public decorum anymore.
He walked the perimeter. Inhaled. Exhaled.
His phone was flooded with notifications from practically everyone in the scene: messages ranging from guys in bands they toured with years ago to a woman he vaguely remembered hooking up with a couple of months back.
How did she have his number? The thought flickered and died, though; he had no energy to respond to anyone.
He pocketed the phone and looked up at the sky, at nothing in particular. Smoke drifted from between his fingers, curling upward like it had somewhere better to be.
Eventually, he realized he had no idea how to get back. Signs pointed toward the children’s hospital and the ER, but the last thing he wanted was the public side of the emergency department.
One of the courtyard doors opened across the way. A blonde woman in a pair of dark green scrubs walked out, gym bag hanging off her shoulder. She dropped it and stood in place, taking a deep breath. From her posture alone, Jay could tell she was having as good a night as he was.
He continued pacing, taking another drag from his cigarette.
Then the woman moved beneath a lamp light, and his heart stuttered. He knew that posture. There was something recognizable in the way she rolled her shoulders back and the slight tilt of her head showing she was exhausted.
Jay stopped moving. Cigarette ash fell onto his hand, but he didn’t feel the sting.
She turned, and the overhead lamp carved her out of the shadows. He recognized the slope of her nose and the soft, familiar curve of her jaw.
Ava.
He’d tried for years to let her go. The second he saw her, he knew he’d never managed it. She was as beautiful as he remembered, staring out at the night, lost in whatever mess had brought her here.
He hadn’t forgiven himself for a lot of things. Walking toward her anyway made the list.