CH 68
Liz opened her eyes at the feeling of someone pulling on her arm and was met with a woman in pink scrubs busily unwrapping the bandages around her left hand. She shifted a little and the woman glanced at her face.
“So sorry, dear,” she whispered with a smile. “Just freeing your hands.”
Liz tried to speak, but couldn’t make the words she wanted to say come out of her mouth. She worked her jaw a little, making sure it still functioned as the nurse gathered the discarded gauze and moved around the bed to her right hand. Liz wondered why she was standing so far away, leaning over the bed at an exaggerated angle to get at her hand.
“He hasn’t moved since they brought you up six hours ago,” the nurse whispered, cutting into the gauze with shears and discarding the second set of bloody cotton in a bright red bin. “Do you think you could try some water?”
Liz nodded and began to look around the unfamiliar room while the nurse patted her leg and left, quietly closing the heavy door behind her. She narrowed her eyes at an opened Red Bull can on the table next to the bed. Who the hell would bring her Red Bull? She was trying to think when a soft muttering just to her right startled her. Carefully lifting her head she saw Dave sitting in a chair next to her with his head resting on his arms on the bed. Afraid she was hallucinating; she ran her fingers through his hair, wincing a little when the cuts on her hands stung. He moved a little and sighed, relaxing back into sleep when he suddenly bolted upright with a gasp, his eyes wide. Looking around the room in a panic, his eyes locked on hers and his shoulders slumped forward in relief. “You’re awake,” he said, quietly this time and looked her over.
She tried to smile, unable to form any words and feeling uncomfortable under his stare. She was sure she looked like a total mess.
The nurse returned with Liz’s water, surprised when she saw they were both awake. “I’ll let Dr. Michael know you’re up,” she said quietly, setting the water on the tray next to the bed. “Ring me if you need anything.”
Dave focused his attention back on Liz and looked her over. “How do you feel?”
Liz opened her mouth to speak, but once again couldn’t form words. Frustrated, she snapped her mouth shut and shrugged. She knew her head hurt, she knew she was on some sort of heavy pain med that dulled the ache, but she wasn’t able to understand much else at the moment. Just then her doctor breezed into her room looking a little tired.
“And how’s my luckiest patient holding up?” he asked, pulling a computer monitor towards him as he looked her over.
“I don’t think she can… speak?” Dave tried, feeling a whole new sense of panic when Liz nodded in agreement.
“Okay…,” her doctor said with a touch of concern. He clicked around on the computer for a moment then squinted at the screen, “Liz? Have you had any previous trauma to your skull?” Her eyes went a little wide, giving him the answer he needed. “Of course your records aren’t here yet,” he mumbled, “Good thing we did that MRI instead of just an X-ray!” he laughed a little as if Dave and Liz were in on the joke and turned back to the monitor to quietly study the pictures of her skull.
Liz stared at the ceiling, trying her hardest to get her body and brain to function together again. She could think and understand somewhat normally, but she just couldn’t get her body to do the same. Panic rose in her chest and she gripped the thin blanket covering her just as her doctor leaped from his chair, sending it rolling across the linoleum until it crashed against the wall behind him.
“I’ll be back in just a moment,” he said quickly and practically sprinted out of the room.
Liz felt Dave’s hand on hers and she weaved her fingers with his while staring up at the ceiling. She knew something was wrong, she was scared and she was confused. Two nurses hurried into the room and immediately began unhooking her from the various wires and tubes wound around her.
“What’s going on?” Dave stood up and out of the way.
“She needs an MRI,” one nurse said simply, kicking the brakes off Liz’s bed.
“She just had one though,” Dave argued and followed them as they began to wheel the bed out of the room. What the fuck was happening?
“Sir, you’ll have to wait here,” the second nurse said firmly before following Liz’s bed through a set of large doors.
He watched as the doors quietly latched behind them, leaving him alone in the harshly lit hallway next to the nurse’s station.
“Oh, honey,” an older woman in brightly colored scrubs appeared from a back room and hurried to his side. She took his hand and patted it gently. “She’s just having some imaging done, she’ll be back before you know it,” she said kindly.
Dave nodded and leaned against the wall just outside Liz’s room. He took several deep breaths to calm down and focus, yelling and demanding answers wouldn’t get him anywhere right now. He slid down the wall, folding his arms over his knees and resting his head in his hands. Everything was falling apart again. He had just felt like things were back on track, like he had a future and something to look forward to, but now it was all being ripped away again. He heard some movement at the nurse’s station and looked up
“They’re taking her to surgery,” the woman in bright scrubs said as she rounded to corner to him.
“What? Why?” Dave pulled himself off the floor and looked over her shoulder as if Liz would appear in the doorway at any moment.
“Her doctor will let you know as soon as he can,” she replied, “I’m so sorry I can’t tell you any more than that, but you can wait in her room and the doctor will be in as shortly.”
“Disco!”
His legs buckled a little at the sound of Taylor’s voice and waited until he felt his arm around his shoulders before turning to him. Taylor hugged him tightly while Ally held his hand, dragging her thumb over his knuckles in a rhythmic motion. Before Dave knew what was happening, he was back in Liz’s room with Taylor while Ally pressured the nurses for any information.
“The doctor is on his way,” he looked up as Ally pulled a plastic chair next to his, immediately holding his hand again.
Dr. Michael soon appeared in the doorway looking calm. “She did great,” he said, trying his best to hide the blood smears on the front of his green paper apron. “She had some previous fractures that prevented her skull from expanding the way it would normally to let her brain swell a bit during the healing process.”
Dave put his head in his hands, the photo Krist had of Liz’s bruised face vivid in his mind. He was going to find that kid and bust his skull in, just to show him how it felt.
“So, you did what?” Ally asked, looking between Dave and the doctor.
“We opened up the healed parts around the side of her skull.”
“So you rebroke her head?” Taylor asked, resting his hand on Dave’s back when he leaned forward onto his knees.
“That’s one way of putting it,” the doctor shrugged. “But it will heal over again in time, once the swelling in her brain goes down. Normally, we would remove a plate of the skull for several months, but we feel like this is the best route for her right now.”
“When can we see her?” Ally asked.
“They should be waking her up any minute now,” Dr. Michael replied, “They’ll bring her back soon.”
**
Dave stared down at Liz’s face, trying to focus on her features and not the angry red incision that graced her hairline.
He turned suddenly towards Taylor, who was sitting in the far corner of the room. “We have to postpone the tour, cancel the festival gigs, all of it,” he said.
Taylor’s mouth dropped open as he registered what Dave was saying and he slowly stood up. “You know that’s damn near impossible, right? Silva would come completely unglued if you told him we were out.”
“Family emergency,” Dave shrugged, “Acts of god are covered under the insurance.”
“Dave, it would be one thing if this were one of the kids, or…” Taylor trailed off, his eyes landing on Ally who was asleep in her chair.
“Or a wife?” Dave finished for him.
Taylor sighed, “Yeah, if it were Andrea or Cara or Allison… but--“
“But Liz is just a girlfriend, so she doesn’t mean shit,” Dave turned away from him.
“You know we all love her,” Taylor insisted, “We all want her to be okay. It’s just that you’ve only been together for a couple months. You and I both know that isn’t good enough for the insurers. You can’t spin this one like you did your leg.”
Dave raked his hair back off his face knowing it wouldn’t do any good to argue with Taylor. The only ones against him here were the concert and festival promoters, along with their investors and insurance companies and whatever myriad of financial backers they were beholden to.
“I just can’t leave her like this, man,” he said, frustrated that tears were clouding his vision. “What the hell kind of person would I be?”
Taylor stomped forward and threw his arms around him. “We know the kind of person you are, Disco. This is the exact same hospital you should have left my dumb ass in almost twenty years ago, but you didn’t.”
Dave squeezed his eyes shut when Taylor’s voice broke, trying to force the tears back, but lost the battle almost immediately. They had been through so many heavy times together that they almost had a routine down. Cry on each other’s shoulders for as long as necessary, then shove away with an awkward laugh. It might not be the healthiest way to deal with their problems, but it worked for them. They stood together for a while when the beeping on the monitors around them picked up speed. Dave looked over Taylor’s head to Liz, who was staring up at them with her half grin.
“Fuck, Taylor. I take one little nap and you swoop in on my man.”
“He was my man first,” Taylor grumbled sarcastically as Dave rushed to her side.
