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 herdistance. 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—”
“Zackhasinsurance,” Braden said.
“He doesn’t havetourinsurance. 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 Ididn’ttell 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 callingthemin 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 sotheycan 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—butheroin? 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 letmedo 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.”
