“—is going to be okay. Everything is fine. It’s over now. You’re fine. Everything is okay,” Martin recited as he rubbed her hand insistently, too hard, so she knew she was alive. The room jumped, jarring dangling cords and tubes. She lay on a stretcher in an ambulance, with Martin sitting beside her.
The siren sounded shrilly, a few chirps. She must not be important enough for the full-blown constant wail. She must be okay.
“Everything is okay,” Martin said.
She looked into his vacant eyes and wondered if he recited this litany to himself as he let the drugs take over.
“Don’t worry, kid,” he murmured, stroking a lock of hair away from her face. “I’ve got your back.”
Quentin sat behind a crash cart with a defibrillator on top. Sarah couldn’t see him, but he could hear her if something went wrong. In the last two hours, everyone he’d worked with at the hospital had walked by and made a comment: “Heard you panicked over a bee sting.” “Heard your girlfriend got stung by a bee and you lost it.” “Heard you didn’t have your shot with you in Thailand and had to go to the ICU. That was stupid.” “How come Martin wins Grammys and you don’t?”
He had a response for the last: “How many hit singles have you written?” But the rest he deserved. And although he normally would take the ribbing in the good-natured way in which it was intended, today he held his head in his hands and wished he could sink into the linoleum.
Over and over he reviewed the weird scene in his mind. He was holding an ice pack to Sarah’s shoulder, and she was there with him, perfectly sane. And then, all of a sudden, she wasn’t. She was like a racehorse that reared back at being pushed toward the starting gate, her muscles taut and strong and moving under her skin, fear and anger making her eyes wild and unseeing. Well, she seemed unseeing, up until she beaned him in the back of the head with her shoe.
He was touching the scab in his hair when Owen and Erin finally came away from Sarah’s bedside. Owen slapped his shoulder supportively and Erin rubbed his back.
Then came Martin. “She wants to see you. Hell if I know why. She was panicking. You panicked, too, and strong-armed her and made it worse. You can’t panic, Q.” He launched one of his impressive cussing performances.
“Martin, he feels bad enough already,” Owen said over the cussing. Erin put a soothing hand on Martin’s chest, to no avail.
Finally the attending hollered across the room, “Martin, get out of my emergency room if you’re going to talk like that. I’m sure Q deserves it, but you need to take it outside.”
Martin flung a few more choice words at Quentin before finishing, “Don’t you touch her again.” He stormed out of the room. Owen and Erin gave Quentin sympathetic looks, then went after Martin.
Ignoring the stares that followed him, Quentin stood up, popped his neck, and walked to Sarah’s bed. The privacy curtains were drawn on either side, leaving only the end of the bed open to the bustling room. Her knees were drawn up to her chest, her arms encircling them. She was a small spot of vibrant color in a field of white. As he sat down in the chair drawn up to the bed, he glanced at the monitor and saw that her heart rate, blood pressure, and pulse-ox were back to normal. She watched him with her poker face.
He said, “Tell me what happened in Rio.” He glanced at the monitor again. Her heart rate was going up.
“Martin told me you went into anaphylactic shock like this in Thailand,” she said quickly. “I believe you now, that you don’t do drugs, and allergies and asthma have been sending you to the hospital all along.”
“Great,” he said flatly. “Tell me what happened in Rio.”
She swallowed. “Martin told me this is what happened to your mother, too.”
Quentin nodded grimly. “Rio.”
She shook her head.
“I used to work here,” Quentin said. He moved his finger in a circle in the air. “These people are my friends. They all think I panicked when you went into shock. You don’t panic if you work in the emergency room.” He leaned close to her. “You and I know I didn’t panic. Or”—he gave a small laugh, despite himself—“I didn’t panic first. People with allergies tend to lose it the first time their throats close up, but on top of that you were having some kind of flashback, like you thought I was out to get you. Tell me what happened in Rio. For the sake of our friendship, you have to tell me.”
She put her chin on her knees and looked down at her bare feet. “I can’t tell you. I haven’t told anyone. I even lied to Wendy about the scar, because I don’t want to get her involved when she has the baby to worry about. I told her I was mugged in Rio.”
“You just jacked me off and threatened me with a knife in the space of an hour and a half. I’d say that makes us close.” He raked his hands back through his hair and took a deep breath before he leaned forward to ask her the question quietly. “Did he rape you?”
“No,” she said without looking up.
“Did he try?”
“Maybe.”
He narrowed his eyes at her. “Did he give you drugs you didn’t want?”
“He put something in my drink a few times,” she murmured. Then she squared her shoulders and sat up straight, as if suddenly ready to face it. Or, not, because she told the story in the second person, distancing herself. “The high you can deal with. The bad part is that you don’t know what he’s given you, or how much. He’s high when he gives it to you. You can’t trust his dosing.
“You can’t go to the hospital, because they’ll call the police. You can’t call the police, because you’re on drugs. You can’t reach your friend in Moscow. You can’t call your pregnant friend in America, and you can’t call your mother, because what can they do? It will only wig them out. All you can do is lock your hotel room door until you’re not high anymore, expecting to OD the whole time, and passing the hours watching Bewitched reruns in Portuguese, which somewhat exacerbates a bad trip.”
“Why didn’t you leave?” he whispered.
“Oh, this stuff was later.” She waved it away with the hand stuck with the IV needle. The tube tapped gently against the monitor. She gazed vaguely at the equipment before continuing. “It was fine at first. Nine Lives and his entourage were a mess, but I kicked them into shape. He got his album written and recorded. Slowly. He’d go on a binge and I’d have to pull him back out. But we got it done.”
She slipped back into the second person. “You want to be like them, so they’ll trust you. You have to do what they do. Like I did with you guys that first night.”
Quentin nodded, though he suspected that blending in with Nine Lives meant more than tequila and strip poker.
She went on, “You have to decide what you’re going to do, and you have to decide when you’re finally going to say no. Toward the end, he wanted me to do something I wasn’t willing to do, and I said no. It was lucky that I was cool with his bodyguard and his driver. If they had to choose between us, they’d pick Nine Lives, because he was paying them. But they held him off me a couple of nights.”
Quentin stared at her, the pretty, brown-eyed woman telling this horrible story frankly, as if recounting a jog down the road. “And you still didn’t leave,” he said in disbelief.
“Well, no,” she said as if it were obvious. “You don’t understand. My husband told me he didn’t want a baby, moved out, and got a girlfriend. I dyed my hair pink and wore leather and went to whip up trouble in Rio like I was the anti-mother, you know? I couldn’t have the family life that people want. So, hell, I was going to have the opposite life, so there.
“After about a month, I realized what paradise it would be to have my job back, and my friends back, and to spend my weekends alone in my apartment, eating Cheetos and downloading romance movies and letting myself go. But I’d lose everything if I fouled up the Nine Lives album. I’d lose my job, and no one else would hire me for this kind of work after I blew such a high-profile case.”
She shifted uncomfortably on the bed and tried to stretch
her arms over her head, but the IV tube pulled taut and stopped her. She put her arms back down. “He finally finished the album, I sent it back by courier, and I was ready to get out of there. He had his people bribe the airline to cancel my flight reservation back to the States.”
“So you were stuck there with him.” Feeling sick, Quentin added, “He fell in love with you.”
“I’m not sure that’s possible, considering his mental state,” she said, so calmly. “And then he comes on to you when his bodyguard and driver are mysteriously absent, as if he’s upped their pay to get his way.”
“And then what happens?” Quentin tried to hide his horror. He needed to keep her talking.
With one finger, she traced the scar under her chin.
“With what?”
“He was wearing a skull ring. I think this was the crossbone,” she said woodenly. “So what do you do?”
“What do you do?” Quentin repeated.
“You do what you can.” She looked down at her bare toes. “You wield your shoe as a weapon.”
Quentin laughed shortly and bitterly. “You use that thing like a Chinese throwing star.”
She showed him the poker face. “Did I hurt you?”
“Rio,” he said. He would not allow her to change the subject before he got the whole story.
“Rio,” she agreed. “The hotel hears the commotion and calls the police. Of course, it’s your job to go with Nine Lives and get him out of jail. But you’re not going to take this, right?”
“Right,” Quentin said.
“And you can’t stay trapped in Rio, right?”
“Right.”
“You know he can have all the charges against him dropped with a bribe and come after you again.” She looked at Quentin with her dark-fringed eyes. “But not if you bribe first.”
Quentin blinked. “You used your money to bribe the police in Rio to keep him in jail?”
“No,” she said. “I used his money. I had access to his bank accounts because he gave me power of attorney one of the times he went to rehab. I set up payments so the police would keep him in jail indefinitely.”
She embraced her knees, curling into a ball again. “If he gets back to New York and tells Manhattan Music what I did, I’ll be fired from Stargazer for sure. And if Wendy knew about the whole thing, she’d try to cover for me. I can’t ask her to do that. The truth would come out eventually, and she’d go down along with me.
“But if I get your album first, and your concert goes smoothly, I’ll have enough clout at Manhattan Music that they’ll believe me over him. I can threaten to have him dropped from the label if he crosses me. He doesn’t have a lot of friends there.” Her chin went back down onto her knees. “And now he’s out of jail.”
Quentin frowned. “You don’t know he’s out, do you?”
She shrugged.
“Is there someone in Rio you could ask?”
She shook her head. “I don’t want to make a call like that from the States. His lawyers might trace it and use it to blackmail me. I’m acquainted with his lawyers.”
“It’s a good thing you have a lot of hair,” a passing nurse remarked to Quentin. By the time he turned around, the nurse was gone. He realized he had his hands in his hair again. He extracted his fingers with some difficulty.
Then he sat on the edge of the bed and hugged Sarah around the IV tube and the monitor cable. She didn’t hug him back, but that was okay. He held her in his arms and kissed the top of her head.
“Sarah, I’m sorry,” he whispered. “I’m sorry for being rough with you. When I worked here, I saw a lot of things that human beings shouldn’t have to see. But today was the first time I ever panicked. Martin’s so pissed at me. You can’t panic in this line of work.” He hugged her harder. “People do die of shock from bee stings. Not often, but it happens. And I saw you were about to pass out . . . ” He pressed his lips to her silky pink locks again and tried to appreciate the reality of Sarah, and breathing, and Sarah breathing.
“I’m sorry, too,” she said into his shirt. “I’m sure being threatened with a knife was an unpleasant surprise, especially juxtaposed with the hand job.” Something in his face prompted her to add, “Don’t you dare ask me what juxtaposed means.”
“Sarah.” He rubbed her knee, trying to rub some of the life back into her. “You’re not alone anymore. If something like this ever happens to you again, you can always call me, wherever you are in the world, and I’ll come get you.”
“That’s sweet, Quentin,” she said sincerely, looking into his eyes. “But you’ll move on. You’ll get married and have kids and forget all about this day.”
Not likely, Quentin thought. He said, “So will you. But if it’s another one like that Harold Fawn jackass, how much good is he going to do you? I mean it. If you ever need help, call me. I’ll bring Owen and Martin and Mad ‘Red’ Mud if I have to, and we’ll come get you.”
He turned at a rattling behind him. The attending leaned past him with a tin, offering Sarah a homemade cookie.
“No, thanks,” Sarah said, putting a hand to her stomach.
“You should eat something,” said the attending.
“Kind of queasy,” Sarah murmured.
The attending offered the tin to Quentin as an afterthought.
“Do they have nuts in them?” Quentin asked.
“What do you think I’m trying to do, kill you?” the attending asked. “Don’t answer that.” She moved around the curtain to the next bed.
Sarah stared after the attending, then turned to Quentin. “Tell me what happened in Thailand.”
He’d known this was coming. “Tit for tat,” he muttered. “Well, it was the end of the tour. We were tired. We wanted a vacation. I should have known better, because everything went wrong that day. Martin found some heroin right away. Karen and I were getting on each other’s nerves. I’m supposed to keep an asthma inhaler and an adrenaline shot—that shot Martin gave you—with me all the time. They were in Erin’s purse. But Erin went in a market by herself and got her purse stolen. Owen and I tried to kill us a Thai guy, but he’d already passed her purse to somebody else. I didn’t think anything about the inhaler and the shot, which were probably halfway to Udon Thani by then.
“We gave up and went to the beach. It was this beautiful beach. Let’s just say it put spring break at Panama City to shame. There were these enormous rocks jutting out of the ocean.”
“Like Chimney Rock?” Sarah asked.
“No. And then I felt myself start to pass out. I try to be careful what I eat, but sometimes when we’re on tour, I slip up, because I don’t know where all the ingredients are coming from.
“I passed out. Then there was a motorcycle with a cab on the back for passengers. They use them as taxis. A ride in that thing would’ve shocked anybody back into consciousness. At the hospital, I remember there were cats running down the halls, and the medical equipment looked like the computers in the first Star Trek TV series, very sixties.
“I was glad I’d had a nice day at the beach, because I was about to die. It got hairy in the ICU in Oklahoma City last January, but I never thought I was going to die. This time was different. This was it. The doctor told me they were inducing a coma until my lungs recovered. The way I felt, I did not expect to wake up. Erin will tell you that it got very weird. I took her hand, and then Martin’s hand, and Owen’s hand, and Karen’s hand, and said good-bye to them one last time.”
He was back in the ICU. Karen clung to one hand and wailed, as if he was supposed to be strong for her, even though he couldn’t breathe. Erin held his other hand firmly and chewed gum. That’s what he concentrated on as they were putting him to sleep: the grip of Erin’s hand, the sound of her gum smacking, and the strange concentric square pattern of the foreign ceiling tiles.
“And then, a few days later, I did wake up.”
Sarah pulled at him. She wanted him to lie down with her. He tried to settle beside her on the bed, but the IV tube
and the monitor cable got in the way. He moved to her other side and lay behind her, his front to her back. Careful not to touch her stung shoulder, he put his arm across her chest. He inhaled the scent of her hair: shampoo and Sarah.
She asked him, “Were you beckoned by the light?”
“Are you making fun of me for being near death?” he demanded. “Why does everybody make fun of me for being on a ventilator?”
“Because you love it. It helps you cope.” She looked back over her shoulder to show him a genuine smile. “Just trying to lighten the mood here.”
“Oh.” He forced a laugh. “No, I was under heavy sedation. The propofol pretty much took care of anything like that.”
She smoothed her hand up and down his arm. He felt his hair stand on end, and the IV tube swayed. She asked, “Why’d you fire Karen?”
The excuse he’d given himself was that he didn’t want her to find out about Martin’s drug use. There was more to it than that. “I fired her because I broke up with her. I didn’t think I could break up with her and still have her as a manager, because hell hath no fury.” Instantly he was sorry for quoting Shakespeare. But idiot Quentin didn’t have to read Shakespeare. It was a common expression. Albeit probably not one idiot Quentin would use.
Sarah let it slide. “Why’d you break up with her?”
“Because . . . ” He wasn’t sure of the answer himself. “I don’t know. I’ve been sick a lot. But before this, I never really expected to die at thirty. I thought I’d finish school and have kids. I thought I’d change the world with the research foundation we started. And I thought that when I died, I’d be with somebody I was in love with.”
Sarah’s hand halted on his arm. “What about Erin?”
He was able to stop himself from saying, “What about Erin?” He’d made enough mistakes today. He said truthfully, “When Erin and I are together, we don’t get along. We argue.”
“Do you love her?”
He wished Sarah would move her hand on his arm again, but there was no chance of that now. He was damned either way. If he said he didn’t love Erin, Sarah would leave him. She would think she’d gotten too close to him and he had chosen her over Erin, wrecking her plan to keep the band together. If he lied and said he was in love with Erin, that would ruin any slim chance he might have at a real relationship with Sarah later, if he ever figured out how to swing it.