I probably would have collapsed, but Charles reached me before I could, throwing his arms around me and tackling me to the stage.
He used one of his Shrek-sized hands to shield the back of my head, the way someone cups the back of an infant’s soft skull to brace and protect it. I would remember that later.
“Thank God you’re okay,” he said into my ear. “We’ll get you out of here as soon as it’s safe.”
“Charles? What’s happening?”
Everything had taken on a dream-like quality, and I sounded like a sleepy child who’d just been unpleasantly woken from a sound sleep. My leg burned; my head had started to swim.
“The show’s over,” Charles said. “There’s a gunman”
“A gunman?”
He lifted himself halfway up from me, looked down at my hot, wet, aching leg. It throbbed like a second heart, like a strobe light. But in my dream-like haze, I felt no pain.
“Oh, God,” Charles said, panicked in a way I’d never heard before. “You’re hit.”
He came to his knees, probed my leg in a way that made it hurt worse. I watched, still bewildered, still trying to process the word gunman, as Charles ripped his belt from its loops.
“I don’t think it hit your femoral artery, but you’re still losing blood too fast.” He wrapped the belt around my leg and cinched it tight. “It should slow the bleeding down until I can get you out of — ”
His head exploded into a confetti mashup of color. Flecks of soft, sharp, and liquid things peppered my face. Charles slumped sideways, onto my throbbing leg. The belt around my thigh loosened.
I couldn’t comprehend what I’d just seen. Or else I didn’t want to.
And so closed my eyes, let the sounds of screaming and yelling and running grow distant.
Hands seized me, hooking beneath my armpits. Someone dragged backwards, towards the far end of the stage, the place where I’d emerged from only two songs earlier.
“Hope?” someone said.
Then a different someone: “She’s lost a lot of blood. I think she’s gone into shock.”
“Stay with us,” said the first voice. “Put pressure on it. Here — I think Charles tried to use his belt to stop the bleeding. Let’s get it back into place.”
Charles needed my help. But with what, exactly? A thought tried to emerge, tried to tell me what had happened to Charles. But I pushed it away. I didn’t want to know what had happened.
A nap still sounded good to me. My eyelids drooped.
“No, you don’t,” another voice said. A voice with a British accent. Nigel, then. “You have to stay awake, darling.”
Hands patted my cheeks. Not hard enough to be a slap, but hard enough that my eyelids floated open.
“You have to stay awake,” Nigel said again. “The ambulance is on its way; we’re taking you to hospital.”
“My leg burns,” I said. “Why does my leg burn?”
“You’ve been shot, sweetheart,” said Nigel.
“That’s good — keep her talking,” someone else said.
“You’ll be fine,” Nigel told me. “The paramedics will be here any moment.”
“Where’s Charles?” I asked. The thought tried to emerge again, the quiet whisper in my head that told me I already knew what had happened to Charles; I’d seen what happened with my own eyes. “I want to talk to Charles.”
Nigel hesitated. “I don’t know where Charles is.”
He’s lying, said the whisper in my head. But you know anyway. You saw it.
I didn’t want to be awake anymore. I didn’t want to think about Charles. I closed my eyes.
“Hope?… Hope!”
#
At first, my addled brain told me that the rhythmic beeping I heard was part of the show. I wasn’t ready to open my eyes, so I listened to the steady beeps, waiting for my cue. When my cue came, I would start my pirouette, and…
But none of my songs had this particular beeping sound. Then memory struck all at once — screams, strobe lights, my leg catching fire, Charles tackling me to the ground. Charles exploding.
I sucked in a breath as my eyes flew open.
A figure in my peripheral vision stood up.
“Welcome back.” The figure was Nigel, standing beside my bed.
“Where am I? What happened?”
I tried to sit up, found that I had something stuck to my hand, reached down to pull it out.
“No, love, don’t pull on that,” Nigel said, gently blocking my hand. “That’s your happy juice mainline.”
“Happy juice?”
“They have you on a morphine drip. It’s the only thing keeping you from screaming in agony right now.” He glanced down at the needle taped to the back of my hand, then up at something behind me. “I could use with some of that myself right now,” he said, mostly to himself.
Nigel looked pale and drawn. He was British, so he always looked pale, but this was paleness of a different sort. This was the paleness of stress and sleeplessness, like someone with a puke-your-guts-out case of stage fright.
“Am I in the hospital?” I asked.
“Yes — you don’t remember? You were conscious for most of the ride over here.” He raised an eyebrow. “Then again, they did juice you up pretty well in the ambulance. So I suppose it’s not surprising… Do you remember your blood infusion? Going in for surgery? You were a royal pain in the arse for that whole bit.”
I thought back. I didn’t remember any of it. “The last thing I remember was someone dragging me off the stage.”
Nigel nodded. “That was Javier.”
One of my dancers. The one who’d been on my right when everything got chaotic.
“Tell me what happened,” I said.
“What happened is that this great nation of yours is fabulous when it comes to music and completely bollocks when it comes to stopping certain people from shooting all the other people,” he said.
“There was a gunman,” I said. The words left my lips numb and stomach queasy.
Nigel nodded.
“How many people got hurt?”
“We don’t know yet.” He hesitated. “There’s a lot of people throwing a lot of numbers around right now, but the truth is that no one really knows.”
“And Charles… Charles was…” I swallowed, found that my throat was desert-dry. “Charles was shot, wasn’t he?”
Nigel pressed his lips together tightly. Then he nodded.
“Did he… is he alright?”
Nigel’s eyes danced away from mine. “I’m afraid I don’t know, darling.”
He’s still lying, the same voice I’d heard inside me before whispered. No one wants to tell you the truth. Charles is gone.
I tried to sit up again, found that the effort made my head swim and the needle bite into the back of my hand.
“Easy there,” Nigel said, bending to help me. “Try to stay relaxed.”
“I can’t,” I said, even though the morphine in my bloodstream said otherwise. I could still feel my leg throbbing beneath the painkillers, but the IV in my hand made it a distant concern. I was in a world in which everything was muffled by cotton balls. But I didn’t want the soft haziness of cotton. I wanted to hear that Charles was alright. That his head hadn’t been blown off in front of me because he was trying to save me.
For a moment, it all just seemed so maddeningly ridiculous. So pointless. So incomprehensible that someone would want to bring a gun to a concert in the first place, let alone fire it, let alone put a bullet into the head of the kindest, sweetest, most loyal soul I had ever known.
“No,” I said out-loud. Then I screamed it: “No!”
“Hope. It’s going to be alright. Take a deep breath, sweetie.”
“Fuck you, it is not going to be alright!” I shouted. I reached for the needle in my hand. The cotton balls could all go to hell.
I didn’t want morphine. I wanted to feel everything — every burning sensation, every stitch in my leg, every sorrow over losing
the man who, over the past three or four years, had become the closest thing I had to a real friend.
“Hope — Hope, darling, stop — you can’t — don’t do that… Oh, bloody hell, woman.”
I clawed at the IV line, Nigel trying to stop me the whole time. He managed to hold me still and jab the call button at the same time. When a nurse didn’t appear instantaneously, he kept one hand on me and stretched a leg back to nudge open the half-closed door to my room with his foot. Nigel yelled for help.
I flailed weakly even as a stout-looking black nurse hustled into the room. She took one look at me, one look at Nigel, and the next thing I knew, there was a syringe in her hand.
“I don’t want it!” I shouted at her. “I don’t want any of it! Take it away!”
“Just relax, Miss Caldwell,” she said.
Her tone was anything but soothing and gentle. It was the tone of a nurse who’d had enough for one night, who’d used up her last bit of patience hours earlier.
“I don’t want it!” I yelled again.
“This is going to help you settle down,” she said. To Nigel, she added, “Hold her arms. I don’t want her ripping out the IV line before I get it in.”
Nigel nodded and followed her instructions, pinning my hands to the mattress while I sputtered out a string of obscenities.
And then suddenly — cotton balls.
But more than cotton balls this time, deeper than that. It was a sinking sensation, a feeling that everything had suddenly gotten thicker, heavier. I was looking at the room from down a long tunnel. I didn’t shout anymore. I didn’t need to. I liked this tunnel. I would curl up here and rest.
A tune occurred to me. I tried to hum it, but I wasn’t sure if any sound came out or not. It didn’t matter. I could sing it in my head, because I knew all the words by heart. It had been another one of Uncle Billy’s favorites.
I’ve seen fire and I’ve seen rain
I’ve seen sunny days that I thought would never end
I’ve seen lonely times when I could not find a friend, but I always thought that I’d see you again.
Charles. I would never see him again.
7
Mid-November: “Tears in Heaven,” Eric Clapton
Would you know my name
If I saw you in heaven?
Their names played on a loop to the beat of primitive drums, both in my dreams and out of them:
Angela Wright
Bobby Hart
Taylor Redding
LaKeisha Harding
Gregory Wu
“Congratulations,” said my perky physical therapist. “I don’t think you need the crutches anymore.”
“Great.” The word curdled with sarcasm. “But not needing crutches isn’t the same as performing. How much longer until I can get back on tour?”
The PT’s perkiness faltered. “You have to understand the amount of damage your leg took, the complications you’re still dealing with.”
Eduardo Gomez
Quincy Holloway
Sam Holloway
“The soft tissue inside your thigh was basically obliterated. If it had hit your bone — ”
“I know, I know,” I said impatiently. The doctors had already emphasized how lucky I’d been plenty of times. “If the bullet had struck an inch higher, it would’ve shattered the femur. And probably would’ve severed the femoral artery at the same time, and I would’ve died right there on the stage. I’m lucky.”
Lucky. The two syllables were ashes in my mouth.
The PT gave me a long, appraising look, clearly trying to convey something that she wouldn’t say out-loud.
I knew that look. It was judgment.
“You are lucky,” she said, and all the false perkiness was gone. “A lot of people didn’t make it that night.”
Did she think I needed to be reminded, or did she think I needed more guilt than I already carried? All she could see when she looked at me was a spoiled pop star. She didn’t know about the drum beat of names that played in my head morning, noon, night.
Regina Slota
Bohdana Niezgoda
Leah Buglewicz
“Are we done for today?” I asked, no longer attempting to mask my irritation. “I have some studio work I want to get to.”
“Yes.” There was no mistaking it: She’d gone from perky to cold.
“You can arrange our next appointment with Nigel on your way out,” I said.
She gave me a curt nod, gathered her accoutrements of resistance bands and towels and therapy balls and left. I limped to the desk that overlooked the infinity pool and fell into the office chair. The pool below was still; a few stray leaves floated listlessly on its surface.
Would it be the same
If I saw you in heaven?
I picked up the guitar beside the desk, strummed a few cords while I tuned it. I’d lied about getting to studio work. I hadn’t played a full song since the night of the Chicago concert. But the fingers on my guitar strings took me to an Eric Clapton song anyway.
I must be strong and carry on
’Cause I know I don’t belong here in heaven.
Caleb Torres
Charles Hennessy
8
Thanksgiving Eve: “Alice’s Restaurant,” Arlo Guthrie
Melody opened the door and stood there in frozen, slack-jawed shock for at least five solid seconds before I lifted the grocery sack in my hand.
“So, uh… I brought wine,” I said. “And loaded baked potatoes. It’s kind of a strange combination, but…”
She squealed in delight and pressed both hands to her mouth while she did a happy dance on the welcome mat. Then Melody threw her arms around me and squeezed me into her rather ample chest. “You didn’t tell me you were coming!”
“I know, I… hey, watch the potatoes. I wanted to surprise you.”
“It worked — you surprised me!” Mel drew back from the hug but kept her hands on my arms as if I might try to run off if she didn’t hold on. She looked me up and down. “You look good. How are you feeling? Wait — how did you get here?”
“Well,” I said slowly, “there are these things called ‘airplanes,’ and these other things called ‘rental cars’ — ”
Melody slapped my shoulder playfully. “You’re such a smartass.” She took the grocery bag out of my hand. “Come on in. The kids are going to be so excited to see you.”
#
Melody’s house was spacious, and I’m not bragging, but it was all thanks to me. When I first made it big, the first thing I did was to make sure Mel, Aunt Tina, and Uncle Billy were taken care of. For life. Sudden wealth was still exciting back then; overnight, I became everyone’s fairy godmother. In Melody’s case, I quietly bought up the land and the old mobile home she and Andrew were renting and built them a spacious, two-story house in its place, complete with a bedroom that I told her would be mine for when I visited.
I dropped the backpack just inside the door of “my” bedroom; Andrew followed me up the stairs with the carry-on roller bag.
He set it down next to my backpack, then put his hands on bony hips and turned a toothy grin in my direction. “Got anything else you need help with?”
“No,” I said. “Thanks.”
He glanced at the backpack and the carry-on. “You didn’t bring much.”
“I’m not staying long.”
He cocked his head to the side, handlebar mustache twitching.
Andrew was a good enough man, I supposed. He and Mel had been together since shortly after Mel graduated high school, and as far as I knew, he’d always treated her right. But I had never much cared for him; I always thought Mel could’ve done better than the gangly, dull man with the ridiculous mustache and awkward, toothy grin.
“How long you plannin’ to stay?” he asked.
“I’ll probably head back to L.A. next week sometime,” I said.
I’d bought a one-way ticket — not because I planned on staying but because I wanted to have
some flexibility about when I flew back. No one needed me in Los Angeles for a while; even there, the holidays slowed everything down. And this year, of all years, I’d decided I didn’t want to be alone in my too-big mansion for Thanksgiving. Not that I didn’t have people to spend Thanksgiving with, but I needed home. I needed family. I needed the scent of wet pine needles and the sounds of Southern accents, I needed two-lane asphalt highways where the paint marking the shoulders had worn off. I would go back to Los Angeles once the South had eased that feeling of homesickness.
“Mel’s thrilled you’re here,” Andrew said. “We all are. So stay a while. Through Christmas, maybe. You know we’d love to have you.”
“I can’t stay that long,” I said.
“Sure you can. You’re not — ” He hesitated. “You’re not on tour right now.”
I guess that was his polite way of reminding me that I couldn’t perform, given the state of my leg.
“I would, but…” I searched for an excuse. “I started recording a new album recently. And I’m technically still doing physical therapy a couple times a week. So I have to get back to L.A. to keep working on my leg.”
The mustache wriggled back up his face as he flashed that ugly, toothy grin. “So find a physical therapist here. You know Mel would be over the moon if you stayed. Heck, why not stay through New Year’s?”
We went back and forth on the subject for a few more minutes, with Andrew unwilling to let it go, continuing to press me to stay in Georgia and rehabilitate there. Since arguing didn’t get me anywhere, I finally gave him a “we’ll see” that managed to shut him up.
But even though I got Andrew to stop hounding me about it, the subject came back up again after dinner, when Melody asked how long I’d be staying.
“Just through the weekend,” I answered. “Maybe a day or two longer, if it’s okay.”
“Of course it’s okay,” Melody said, reaching across the table to squeeze my hand. “Stay as long as you can.”
“I told her she should just stay through New Year’s,” Andrew put in.
Not again. I almost rolled my eyes but managed to repress it.
Winter Love Songs Page 4