“Wh-what?” I ask, swallowing hard. My tongue feels thick and foreign in my mouth, while my stomach rumbles.
My dad shakes his head. “I’ve called for a chartered flight. Your mom… they’re on their way from the Bahamas now on the band’s plane.”
“Harrison?”
“Chartered a flight with Elle, Quinn, JD and Eden. They’re all coming.”
“I’m coming with you,” I say. My dad doesn’t say anything because he already knows that is where I need to be.
“Noah?” Dessie says my name quietly. I look at her and she shakes her head. “We have plans.”
I close my eyes and process what she’s saying. “My best friend has been in an accident. I have to go to her.” I look deep into Dessie’s eyes, looking for any sign that she understands what I’m saying.
“…It’s always about Peyton.”
She’s right. It is. She’s all I’m going to think about because this can’t be happening to her. It’s all I can think about as I storm out of the suite when I was ten and my uncle Mason was killed. This can’t happen to Elle and Katelyn, not again.
3
Peyton
There I am, on a gurney with eight, nine or maybe it’s ten people working frantically to save my life. They yell loudly and demand things that don’t make sense to me all while machines constantly beep and my blood pools on the floor as someone screams that they have a bleeder. I have a tube coming out of my mouth and my eyes are taped shut, except I can see everything that is happening and I seem to be breathing okay. The clothes I wore are tattered and some pieces lay haphazardly on the floor with shards of glass embedded in the fabric while my chest is open and exposing my organs, yet I seem to be dressed. My brown hair is now jet-black and half my scalp’s missing. Consciously, I reach up to feel my hair, but everything seems to be normal. So why am I there on the table, bleeding, broken and dying when I’m standing here watching everything happening.
“She’s crashing!” the doctor yells as someone hands him two wands. They look like drumsticks with small symbols on the end. If my dad saw them, he would have a fit. He would never allow me to play his drums with something like those. His drums are precious to him, at least the ones that stay in the spare bedroom at my parents’ house, that I’m allowed to play when I visit. When they moved to Los Angeles, I cried. I felt like I no longer belonged anywhere. My brother Quinn was already there and Elle was far too excited to leave me by myself in Chicago.
But they’re not drumsticks because the doctor puts them into that gaping hole where my breasts used to be. Whatever he does, they cause me to jerk off the table. My body on the table feels it, but I don’t. He does it again and again, barking out orders as if he’s in charge. After each jerk, everyone pauses and watches one of the monitors.
“She’s back,” one of the nurses says. Where do they think I went? Do they not realize that I am on the table, waiting for them to fix me up so I can go to dinner with Kyle?
Where is Kyle? He was with me in the car, smiling at me as we pulled out of the parking lot. But where did he go. I look at the door and see people running by and I’m curious to know where Kyle is.
Out in the hall, the noise is different and the lights seem brighter. There is more yelling and alarms continue to beep. In the room next to mine, someone lays on the table with a sheet pulled over their face. I hate sleeping like that because I feel like I can’t breathe.
The nurses are all wearing blue and green, but none of them stop and ask me what I’m doing or ask me if I’m hungry. I am, hungry that is because Kyle promised me dinner but somehow we’re here. I don’t think this was his idea of a good time. It’s definitely not mine.
The room across from me is empty, but there’s blood on the floor. A man brushes by me, whistling and pushing a mop bucket. He slops the wet threads onto the floor and pushes the puddles around, repeating the process until all the blood is gone then he’s breezing by me again.
I go back to my room and now there are fewer people by me. A few of them leave the room with their hands and gowns covered in my blood, while the others filter around me.
“Let’s stitch her up and get her to ICU. Has anyone contacted her parents?”
“They’re on their way.”
They are? My parents are coming to Chicago? But it’s cold and snowing. My parents hate the snow. I can’t imagine that they would want to come here when I could easily go see them at the beach house.
A big burly man comes in and the nurses pile wires onto of my bed as the man pushes me out the room. I follow behind because I need to know where they’re taking me. The room is small but with a very large window. After the nurse plugs everything back in, she pauses at my bedside and runs her hands through my hair, picking out more shards of glass. Each piece tings as it hits the stainless pan that is resting on my chest.
“You’re going to be okay, sweet girl,” she says.
“How do you know?” I ask, but she doesn’t respond. She doesn’t even look at me. She just keeps running her hand through my hair.
“Your parents will be here soon. As soon as they get here, we’ll let them right in so they can see you. I bet your mom will spend the night because if you were my daughter, that is what I’d do. I’ll make sure she has a blanket and pillow.”
“Do you know my mom?”
She still doesn’t answer me.
“What about my dad? He’s famous, ya know. I bet if you ask him, he’ll give you his autograph.”