Chapter
18
“I got him!” Brent was barking at Kevin who
was crowding him, trying to take Nick out of his arms.
“But where are you going to take him?”
Kevin continued to stalk him to his truck. Mandy was opening the door so Brent
could put Nick inside.
“To the hospital you idiot, he’ll die
if we don’t!” Brent snapped.
“You can’t take him to a regular
hospital the media would be all over him!” Kevin yelled seizing Nick’s
limbs struggling to take him from Brent, “We have to call an arrange something
private.”
“You son of a bitch! Is that all you
care about all of a sudden?”
“Dr. K!” Howie suddenly exclaimed, he
pulled out his cell phone and began dialing a familiar number.
“Who?” Brian turned to stare at them,
he was running to help Brent pull Nick from Kevin’s invading hands.
“A family friend, he runs his own
private medical center, we can take Nicky there,” Howie said, “Hello?” he
spoke into the phone.
Mandy rolled her eyes, “I suppose
you’d want to take him there too?”
Brian shot her a hurt look. AJ
glared at them all, “Would everyone stop squabbling and pay attention to Nick,
he’s falling asleep!”
“Shit,” both Kevin and Brent cursed at
the same time. Brent shook Nick a little and began talking to him to keep
him awake.
“Come on guys,” Howie said urgently,
“Dr. K, says he’s waiting for us!” Brent and Kevin glared each other
down before Brent yielded and let Kevin lift Nick. He set him inside the
rental car, “You guys follow us.”
“London bridge is…”
“Is what Nick? Nick come on, wake up!”
AJ slapped Nick’s face gently. Nick’s drooping eyes opened slowly and
studied AJ hazily, “Mandy? You look different… I’m sorry baby, let Nicky make
you feel better.”
“Um no, Nick,” AJ said in horror, eyes
widening in shock. Brian snickered slightly beside him, “Mandy’s not here,
she’s riding behind us in Brent’s truck.”
“She’s still screwing Brent huh?” Nick
chuckled, “Good choice. I might have been mad if she had told me she was
screwing you.” He shut his eyes again.
“Nick open your eyes,” AJ said in a
loud voice. Nick grumbled something negatively, “Sleepy Bone…”
“No you’re not,” AJ gave him a shake,
“Nick come on! Shit, Nick, come on!”
“Oh damn,” Brian bit his lip, “Nick!”
He began to yell, he tried to move AJ out of his way, but AJ held his place in
the seat beside Nick firmly, “Nick!”
“We’re almost there,” Howie said
trying to calm Brian down, who was starting to freak out in the backseat, and
himself. His palms sweated as he guided the car down the narrow street.
They were 5 minutes away. Kevin sat in the passenger seat biting
his nails. The minute Howie hit the parking lot, the doors to the car
flew open, and AJ was hauling Nick out. Kevin, Brian, and Howie
immediately ran to his side. Brent’s truck roared into the parking lot.
BJ, Leslie and Mandy were out of the truck before the truck came to a
complete halt.
“Is he dead? Is he dead?” Leslie kept
screaming almost knocking AJ over as he was trying to pull Nick to his feet.
Kevin quickly grabbed him and lifted him up. He pushed inside the
clinic with everyone following. Two nurses and a gurney were already
waiting for them as they entered. Kevin laid Nick down gently and
the nurses wheeled him away, “Wait!” Kevin yelled. Another nurse appeared
and stopped their pursuit of their friend, “You are to wait here, the doctor
will help your friend. Have a seat.”
”No! No!” BJ was screaming, “He’s my
brother, you gotta let me go with him! I’m the only one he trusts! Please…” she
fell to her knees, crying loudly.
“Miss, if you do not settle down we
will have to sedate you,” the nurse hissed. Brian tried to pull her off
the floor, “NOOO!” She yelled. She bit him, “HE NEEDS ME!” Two
orderlies came in then and took the task of BJ away from Brian. They lifted her
like a rag doll, her body slumped, and the nurse rushed beside her.
Leslie screamed as she Mandy and Brent rushed forward, “BJ!”
“It’s ok, she’s fainted,” the nurse said,
“We’re going to take her to a room, where she can get some rest.”
“Can I go with you?” Leslie asked her
eyes wide and teary.
The nurse’s eyes filled with sympathy
for the girl, “Come on Honey, and while you’re there I’ll bring you some hot chocolate.”
The others watched as Leslie and BJ
Carter were taken away.
“I didn’t know BJ could yell like
that,” Brian said shakily, walking back to the couches everyone else was
sitting on.
“You’re lucky you’ve only had to hear
it once,” Mandy said bitterly, “This isn’t the first time this has
happened.”
Five heads snapped toward her, “He’s
overdosed before?”
“Well if he had that much of a problem
what was he doing on tour with us in the first place? He should have been
somewhere… getting some kind of treatment!” Kevin yelled.
“Oh easy for you to say now, Kevin!
He’s 20 years old, if he doesn’t want rehab there is nothing on this
earth that can force him to go!” Mandy yelled, “We tried!”
“Well you didn’t try hard enough… I
bet I…”
“Hey get off her case! How dare
you yell at her! She did everything in her power to help him. I’ve
done everything... What have you guys done? Nothing! And he lived right
under your stupid noses! How could you have not noticed! He was
screaming for your attention!” Brent was rising from his chair, threatening to
approach Kevin.
“He used to call me from Europe, Asia,
just crying some nights. He couldn’t sleep, and he was lonely. And
I thought to myself why should he be lonely with those four wonderful guys he
calls his brothers there to be with him… But then I found out what asshole’s
you guys actually are! He did everything to please you, and make you
happy, but you never let him know that you cared that he did,” Mandy said wiping
her eyes, “I wanted so badly to be there with him I cried too…”
“You can’t blame this on us, we were
all going through our own hell, having our own problems. We’re finally
back on track now. We told him that we appreciated him, and the way he
behaved on tour towards us…”
“So you basically went and told him,
‘Hey Nick, way to be a crack head! Keep up the good work!’” Brent grunted
sarcastically.
Brian rushed at him arms outstretched.
AJ and Howie jumped on him and held him back, “What the hell gives you
the right to talk Brent… Mandy? I heard what Nick said about you two in
the car. He asked us if you, Mandy, were still screwing Brent!
What’s with that, huh?”
Mandy’s face flushed with
embarrassment, as Brent’s face paled with pure shock. One look at their
faces let Howie, Brian, Kevin, and AJ know that Nick, out-of-it as he had been,
was telling the truth.
“How could you? He loves you!” now
Brian was on the attack, “He has your number on speed dial…even at my house!
Now that’s commitment! I bet your little indiscretions didn’t help
the situation out much either!”
Mandy sighed and reached for Brent’s
hand, “It didn’t. In fact, tonight is the first night he’s spoken to us
in a while. The last time he talked to us was the last night at the
courtroom, the night Nick’s mother won her lawsuit against Nick’s father, and
Nick had testified. Bob might as well have just disowned him with the way
he treated him, Nick’s grandparents on his father’s side were the same way
to him. He lost it. He went berserk and called wanting me to pick
him up from the airport. When I did he was already high, and then he
wanted to drink, and I couldn’t stop him alone, so I called Brent. We
were both so scared about him, and we liked to talk about it with each
other. And before either of us knew it, there was an attraction… and Nick
saw it. He accused us of cheating, and we didn’t lie. That was the
last time we heard from him… We’re sorry, we didn’t want it to
happen, it just did. We tried to stop it, we didn’t even see each other
for a while…”
Brian glared at them condemningly,
“It’s no excuse… But I can’t yell at you about it, I wasn’t much better.
He needed me and I wasn’t there, I’m a great best friend.”
They were silent then Howie broke the
silence, “Brent, Mandy… Do Nick’s parents… er… or does Nick’s mother know about
this? Nick told us she sent him to a therapist. Do we need to
notify her?”
Both Brent and Mandy looked up in
surprise, “Man, you guys really don’t know anything!”
“Thanks for clearing that fact up to
us…” AJ muttered with a sigh, he was itching for a cigarette.
“Nick’s mother thought he was
suicidal… and believe me, he wasn’t doing anything to make her think otherwise.
He would sleep all day or stay up all night, and he was starving himself.
This was long before any drugs came into the picture,” Brent said with a
shrug, “I was the one who called and told her he wasn’t eating. Somehow
he got it in his mind that people would like him better if he was thinner.
She sent him to this really expensive guy, and all he did was give him
drugs…”
“Once Nick discovered if you took more
than you were supposed to it would give him this euphoric feeling, so he made
it routine. Next thing I knew he was taking me to weird clubs and
experimenting with all sorts of things. He never tried needles… but
everything else required his attention…” Mandy said sadly.
“And how do BJ and Leslie come into
this?” asked AJ.
“Leslie doesn’t. She must have
caught BJ sneaking out. BJ and Nick have a bond between them. When
he went nuts, so did she. BJ liked clubs and drinks too, but she never
tried drugs. She, Nick and I, happened to be at the same club one night.
I could never stop Nick from going to the clubs, but I never let him go
alone when I could. That night it was really bad, he’d done some stuff
that made him really sick. I was trying to get him back to the hotel I
was staying at, his mother despises me, and BJ came over to help. That’s
how she found out,” Mandy said, “Leslie only knew about his depression…
She found out about Nick’s real problem tonight.”
“Poor kid,” Brian commented. A
doctor suddenly appeared in front of them, “Hello?”
“Dr. Karebyn,” Howie stood to shake
the doctor’s hand and embrace him briefly, “How is he?”
“Your young friend is alright, for
now. We used charcoal to absorb as much of substances as we could.
Then we went through with an epigastric lavage.”
“The what?” Brian’s face was 3 shades
paler than earlier.
“Stomach pump,” Dr. Karebyn
simplified.
“Oh,” Brian nodded, “And?”
“Your friend has a drug problem. We
have found traces of amphetamines, cocaine, tranquilizers, antidepressants, and
alcohol in his body,” Dr. K. continued.
“Are you going to send him to rehab or
something?” Kevin asked wringing his hands together.
“I don’t have the power to order him
to rehabilitation. The boy’s not a minor, from the charts you’ve filled
out it lets me know he’s 20. Unless he’s been arrested and ordered by the
court to go to rehab, he doesn’t have to go anywhere.”
Brent and Mandy glared an “I told you
so” at Kevin.
“But Dr. K, what can we do? He needs
help and he won’t listen to reason!” Howie said rubbing his face roughly.
“You can be his friends. You’re
what he really needs right now. I’m going to discharge him tomorrow.
He’s going to be weak and maybe a little disoriented. Take him home
with you, take care of him. Talk to him, let him know how much you care.
He’ll come around. Once he actually says the words “I need help” is
when his recovery will truly begin. Now I’m not going to disillusion you,
this is not going to be fun, or pleasant. Withdrawal symptoms are a
beast. He’s gonna shake, and cry, and beg, be cranky and irritable, and
throw up everywhere. He’s gonna hate you, and you’re gonna hate him.
Are you willing to take on that challenge?”
AJ, Brian, Howie, and Kevin all
glanced at each other, then nodded, “Of course, anything for Nick.”
Brent and Mandy also agreed, “Anything
for Nick.”
Dr. Karebyn smiled, “That’s great to
hear. Ok, now you can see him.”
***
