“I know,” I say.
“Watched what?” Dean asks.
“Watched him stroke out.” Mark says. He looks out the window and continues. “He said he had a headache earlier in the day. He took an Advil and was going to wait it out. We were mid-song. And he starts stumbling over his words. And I thought maybe he had a drink for once—he doesn’t drink often so when he does, it really goes to his head, you know…he was slurring his words. He dropped the guitar. And then he fell.”
“And didn’t get back up,” I say. Dean nods and squeezes my knee.
“We didn’t know what was happening at first. You know, we’re musicians. We don’t know what this stuff looks like, so we didn’t call the ambulance right away. We tried to get him up, you know, we didn’t want to scare the crowd,” Mark tells Dean. “He was still talking, but it wasn’t making sense, so we called the EMS.”
“He died in the ambulance bay at the hospital,” I finish the story. He died in the ambulance bay, surrounded by paramedics and doctors who didn’t know him.
“I’m sorry,” Dean says, and I don’t know if he’s telling me or Mark.
“Yeah, it was crazy, man, and I always have Allison, like, check me for symptoms and stuff.” Mark wipes a tear from his eye, and I remain stoic. Of course, Allison checks him for symptoms. She comes over with a box of tissues and sits on the arm of the chair Mark is sitting in. “I’m doing this tonight for him. He has been my best friend since kindergarten. I owe it to him. One last hurrah.”
I grit my teeth and it makes my headache worse. Mark’s telling this story like we haven’t heard it a million times before. I guess Dean hasn’t. But I know it by heart, like the back of my own hand. The surgeon calling me, saying they couldn’t get him back, there was too much bleeding, and they could have him transferred to a morgue near me. Nothing could ever compare to the feeling of dread hearing that he was dead and there wasn’t a damn thing I could do about it because it had happened an hour ago. Not like I could do a thing about it anyway, I’m not a doctor.
Wringing my hands in my lap, I can’t say a thing. I’ve owed him one last hurrah for five years now. Dean clears his throat, setting his empty coffee mug on the table. Allison stands up, clapping her hands. “Let’s eat now.”
Once we’re seated at the table, Dean persistently quiet, puts a large scoop of beef pot roast on my plate. I poke at a gravycovered carrot with my fork. It’s so quiet in here you can hear the snow softly falling outside. Daisy whines in the corner, nipping at Mark’s feet.
“I want you to come on stage with me,” Mark says after a few minutes of silence and eating.
“Huh?” I ask. “And do what?”
“Sing. Dance. Play the tambourine. I don’t really care. Just come on stage. I’ll call you up and introduce you. Or I don’t even have to introduce you. Stay as long as you want. The set is 90 minutes.”
I know the letter is sitting in my tote bag, but I see Andy’s handwriting in my head, a floating graphic spiraling in my mind.
I hope you get to experience something like this someday.
This is more than the moment he wanted me to have. This is my chance. As sudden as a bolt of lightning, a startling image comes into my head. Me: on stage. A dizzying headache the same day, slurring my words, falling off stage. Me: bleeding out in an ambulance bay, far from home. Me: with no one who loves me nearby.
The pounding in the back of my head intensifies, and my heart rate shoots up. My watch buzzes with a notification for it, and I stand up abruptly. “Where is your bathroom?” I ask, leaving the table, not even listening to what directions Allison is telling me. I stumble towards the coat closet door, opening it, grabbing my tote bag, hoping it magically turns into a bathroom.
“To the right, Madeline,” Dean calls.
I turn to the right, and sure enough, there’s another door. I open it and am greeted with a baby blue powder room. Flipping on the light switch, I slam the door closed. I struggle to turn this strange, unfamiliar sink on, my vision blurred from tears or a stroke waiting to happen, I don’t know.
Rifling through my tote bag, I look foranythingthat might fix what’s happening to me right now. Aspirin. Pepto. Advil.That’s what Andy took, and it didn’t do a wretched thing. Except, I don’t know what’s happening to me right now. I take a deep breath and force myself to drop it.
This isn’t what I came here to do. This anxiety isn’t me. I take hold of myself with an iron-clad clamp. Get a fucking grip,Madeline.I turn the water off right in time to hear the others talking. I quiet myself and listen to what they are talking about.
“Is she okay?” Mark asks, his voice ultra-serious.
“She’s fine,” Dean explains, as if this happens all the time. “She’ll be back in a few minutes.”
“Are you sure?” Allison asks. “TMZ and some guy who works at the pharmacy she goes to seem to think otherwise.”
TMZ has a piece on me? The guy who works at the pharmacy? What does that even mean? I ask myself a million questions. I take my phone out and try to Google myself, but I can’t type the words out. Tears fall from my eyes onto my phone screen, blurring the screen and my vision.
“What are you talking about?” I hear Dean ask. He sounds just as confused as I am.
“There’s video footage of her freaking out at a bar earlier this week,” She remarks. “It’s got like four million views online.”
“Allison,” Mark silences her. “I’m sure they know.”
“That bastard,” Dean’s chair shuffles. “I can’t believe they put it online.”
