Sophie's Encore (The Rock Star Romance Series)

by Nicky Wells

  “Hey, you,” I started after a moment. “Afternoon! Well, it is afternoon although you probably don’t know that. You gave me quite a fright, you know.”

  I paused. The ventilator continued swooshing and the heart monitor beeped.

  “You’ve got pneumonia, the doctor says. That’s why you’ve been feeling so poorly and why you had that fever. I hope you got through the gig at that party all right, somehow.”

  My God, the pre-launch party—I had no idea how that had gone. I hadn’t been on the Internet or listened to the news. I hadn’t even seen the papers. I had no idea what had happened. A finger of dread lodged in my tummy. Was his poor state all over the news? Would there be a massive media circus about this? And Jack—did he even know? So many questions… There was only one way to find out.

  I rose to my feet and walked over to the window, keeping up my chatter with Dan while I fumbled for my mobile phone in my handbag. I knew I was probably not supposed to use it in here, but that hadn’t stopped me in the past, and the doctors seemed to be carrying mobiles, too. If I put some distance between me and Dan’s monitors and did the quickest of Internet searches…

  My fingers flew over the buttons while I prattled on. “So, that party…was it good? You never told me. Ah, here, look, I found something on the Internet about it.”

  Trusty Google, shortcut to all desired information. I scanned the search results.

  “It was a success, it seems. You all got rave reviews. Look, there’s a photo of Tuscq performing. Don’t you look dashing…”

  I petered out as my heart caught in my throat. From the looks of it, no one could ever have known how poorly the front man and lead singer of Tuscq had been that night.

  “Oh, there’s a YouTube video here, too.” I carried on my one-sided conversation. “Shall we have a teensy look? And I’ll switch the phone off before I get into trouble. Yeah?”

  There was no response, of course, but I clicked play anyway. On the tiny screen, Dan sprang into song. He was excellent, his voice as strong and powerful as ever. The beads of sweat on his forehead could easily have been due to the exertion of performing, although I suspected otherwise. But there was no indication for the world to see that Dan Hunter had been on the brink of collapse. Or, indeed, that Dan had taken drugs. Small mercies, right?

  I interrupted the clip and switched off my phone. It had only been the quickest of searches, but bad news and gossip traveled faster and more extensively than positive publicity, so I was fairly certain Dan was in the clear. Pulling the chair closer to his bed, I sat down again.

  “That was awesome. I wish I could have been there. I love the new songs.” Of course, I had been mixing quite a few of them, so I was intimately familiar with every key change, every riff, every drum roll.

  And on I prattled. “Do you know, I wonder how different it is to mix sound for a live concert. I mean, I know the effort that went into making the songs sound as they do in the studio… How does Richard replicate that on stage? How does he figure out room modes in such a big venue with such poor sound conductivity? The sound must be bouncing and breaking every which way from the ceilings and the windows and the tables… I really must ask Richard about that some time.”

  There was a twitch in Dan’s fingers. It was a tiny movement. It could have been a reflex, and I very nearly missed it, but nonetheless, there was a twitch. I held his hand tighter still and kept talking.

  “Oh ho, I felt that, my friend. Are you trying to tell me something? It was nice—”

  My words dried up when I saw Dan’s eyes flutter open. Thank goodness, he was conscious. I rose and bent over him slightly so my face would be in his field of vision, pulling down the mask to reveal my face properly, never mind the risk.

  “Hi,” I whispered.

  Dan’s eyes roamed and tried to focus on me. I wasn’t sure he could see clearly, so I gave him a little reminder.

  “It’s me, Sophie.” That got another twitchy reaction from his hand, and my heart soared. I was confident he was responding to my voice.

  His eyes rolled some more, and he was having trouble focusing. Was I supposed to do anything here? Raise his head up, perhaps, or call a nurse? But oh—there, Dan held my eyes with his. I smiled.

  “Hi, you,” I said again. “Fancy meeting you here.”

  Dan rolled his head from side to side, and his right hand came up to his face. He feebly clawed at the tube in his mouth with a look of panic in his eyes, the blood-oxygen clip-thing clunking hard against the tube and frightening him further. I grabbed hold of his hand, drip, clip, and all, and stroked it gently.

  “Shh,” I soothed. “It’s all right. That’s a tube in your mouth. It’s a ventilator to help you breathe.”

  Dan shook his head to the extent he could. It looked as though he was trying to evade an angry insect. Confusion and fear were written all over his face.

  “You’re in hospital,” I explained, in case the past twelve hours were a black hole in his memory. “You have pneumonia, but you’ll be fine, just fine.”

  Damn that bloody tube. I knew it served a purpose, but right now, it was making Dan extremely anxious. The beep rate of the heart monitor was speeding up steadily, indicating Dan’s stress. “Do you know, I think I’ll call for a nurse. Maybe she can tell us if we can get rid of this thing now. What do you think?”

  Amazingly, Dan’s grip on my hand tightened, and his eyes opened wide with concern. I understood his meaning, or at least, I thought I understood his meaning.

  “Don’t worry. I’m not going,” I reassured him, and his face relaxed immediately. “I need to press that red button there. Hold on a sec.”

  I let go of his hand and reached for the call button. Immediately, a bell went off outside Dan’s room, and I could see a red light flashing above the door. I hoped I had done the right thing.

  “I bet there’ll be a nurse here any second now,” I issued as though we were sharing a secret. On impulse, I smoothed the matted hair away from his forehead and stroked his face. He tried to grunt, and it sounded painful.

  “Don’t speak,” I interrupted. “You can’t speak around this thing. Let’s see if they think they can take it out now. Hold on, and be brave.” I spoke as I would to my children, but it worked. He relaxed and stopped trying to speak.

  Brisk footsteps announced somebody was coming, and within a few seconds, Dr. Smith himself appeared in the doorway. He took in the scene quickly.

  “Mr. Hunter,” he greeted Dan. “Good to see you’re awake. I’m Dr. Smith, your doctor.”

  Dan made a weird sound again, and Dr. Smith cut him off. “No, don’t try to speak. Let me see if we can take you off this ventilator now.”

  He walked across to the bank of monitors at the head of Dan’s bed and tapped a few buttons. “Well, your blood oxygen levels are up,” he informed Dan. “I’m willing to have the tube taken out. I’m going to ask one of the PACU nurses to do that for you now.”

  Dan opened his eyes wide to indicate his agreement. My heart bled for him. This had to be torture for someone who relied on his voice for a living. He waved his free hand about until he caught hold of mine, and he held on tight. Dr. Smith saw the gesture and smiled.

  “It’s a little unusual, but Mrs. Jones may stay if it puts you at ease. If she wants to, that is. It may be a little disconcerting to watch,” he addressed me.

  “Of course I’ll stay,” I informed both men, and Dan squeezed my hand again.

  “Okay. The nurse will be with you shortly, and I’ll check on you again later.” He left, and a few minutes later, a cheerful nurse entered the room.

  “Good afternoon, Mr. Hunter,” she greeted Dan. “I’m Nurse Margaret. I’m a PACU nurse. That means I work in the post anesthesia care unit. I’m here to extubate you and make sure you’re okay without your ventilator.” She paused for a moment to allow Dan and me to absorb this information before she continued with her friendly chatter.

  “Isn’t it nice to see you awake. But let me get yo
u off this thing, first of all.” She indicated for me to take a seat on the other side of Dan’s bed, and I moved the chair there and sat down. Even though it wasn’t me who was affected, my heart was hammering hard in my chest, and I could only imagine how Dan would be feeling.

  The nurse busied herself with the tube in Dan’s mouth. “I’m suctioning the tube before I remove the tape holding it,” she explained, following through swiftly. Dan squirmed uncomfortably and looked at me with frightened eyes.

  “Right, there we are,” the nurse continued. “I’m going to disconnect you from the machine, then give you a few big breaths, okay?” She worked as she spoke, and once the tube was no longer connected to the ventilator, she attached what looked like a bellows to it. “Here we go…and one…and two… Good.” She squeezed on every count, supporting Dan’s his first few breaths. “Here, let’s deflate the cuff…and…”

  She stood behind Dan’s head, looking at his face while she addressed him. “I need you to breathe out as hard as you can, all right? Ready…go.” Dan’s chest rose and fell as he exhaled, and the tube slid out in one fluid motion. I breathed out, too. I hadn’t been aware I was even holding my breath.

  Dan gurgled and rasped, and the nurse stroked his forehead soothingly. “Concentrate on breathing for now. You can speak in a moment. Let me listen to your lungs a minute.” She placed a stethoscope on Dan’s chest, first the left side, then the right. Next, she listened to his throat and checked the blood oxygen readings on the monitor. “You’re doing really well.” She smiled.

  Dan breathed and swallowed and prepared to speak.

  “Sophie,” he eventually rasped. He sounded hoarse and in pain.

  “Hi,” I said for the third time in half an hour. “It’s nice to hear your voice.”

  The nurse checked various monitors and turned to speak to Dan. “I agree, it’s lovely to hear your voice and it’s good to see you awake and breathing unaided.”

  Dan gave a wan smile. He still looked every bit as pale and poorly, but without the tube in his mouth, he looked more like himself. The nurse filled him in on his condition, explaining his course of treatment, outlining that he would likely need to stay in hospital for another few days, and reassuring him that his voice would be perfectly fine in a couple of days.

  “But take it easy on the talking for now, and definitely no singing,” she joked. “I know all about you!”

  Dan smiled again. “I’ll be good,” he croaked. “May I have a drink?”

  “Of course,” the nurse agreed. “I’ll get you some water.” She bustled out.

  Dan turned to me. “Sophie,” he grated once more, and we both gave a little laugh at the sound of his scratchy voice.

  “Don’t talk,” I admonished him. “You heard the nurse. I’m so glad to see you awake. I was terribly frightened.”

  “What happened?” Dan issued. “How did I get here?”

  “I’ll tell you,” I offered, “but you mustn’t speak. Nod or shake your head, okay?”

  Nurse Margaret returned with water, and Dan took a few eager sips.

  “I’ll leave the water here, but go easy,” she advised. Addressing me, she continued. “Ten minutes, and then Mr. Hunter needs to rest, yes?”

  I nodded.

  Once alone, I gave Dan an edited version of events. I left out the drugs. I figured we could address those some other time. Also I wanted to see if he brought them up on his own, and now was not the time to go there. Dan held my hand as we spoke, and his eyes were full of emotion. He was still very hot to the touch, and even in the ten short minutes that we ‘talked’—or rather, that I talked at him—I could see his face drooping with exhaustion. I wrapped up my tale and gave him a kiss on the cheek.

  “You’ll be better soon. You’ll see. I’ve got to go now, but I’ll be back soon. I promise.”

  “Today?” The single word cost him a lot of effort.

  “If I may. I’ll check with the nurse. Else I’ll see you first thing tomorrow. I promise. Cross my heart and all that…” I smiled my biggest smile, hoping to reassure him.

  He smiled back, barely managing to lift the corners of his mouth. He was one exhausted patient.

  Thus, it was with mixed emotions that I made my way to Rachel’s house to collect the kids. I was massively relieved to see Dan awake and talking, sort of. Yet I was deeply disturbed to see him so weak, so worn out after barely half an hour of being awake. He would recover. I felt sure of that, but it would take a long time.

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Rachel, Alex, and my kids were all greatly relieved to hear of the small improvement in Dan’s condition. I put a more cheery spin on the situation for the kids than was perhaps warranted, but even in the more truthful update for Rach, I couldn’t deny I felt cautiously optimistic. Being the star friend that she was, Rachel hadn’t only entertained my brood while I visited Dan, she had also knocked together a quick dinner for all of us, and so it was bedtime by the time the kids and I returned home.

  Amid much protest, I put the children to bed as swiftly as I could and rang the hospital to check up on Dan’s status—stable, and improving slowly—before crawling under the covers myself. Breathing in the scent of fresh laundry, I blessed Rachel from the bottom of my heart. Apart from the faintest whiff of wet carpet, there was no trace of the violent sickness that had taken place in my bedroom a mere eighteen hours earlier. She had washed and dried the bedding and remade the bed, and she had sponged and disinfected the carpet and tidied up all the debris. A friend, indeed.

  I was drifting off to sleep when a phone rang. It was neither the soft, ululating trill of my landline, nor the piercing three-tone shrill that heralded a call on my mobile. Disorientated, I switched on my bedside light and surveyed the bedroom. There, a strange mobile lay on the far bedside table, ringing incessantly. I scooched across the bed to make a dive for it. Caller display read, Jack. It had to be Dan’s. Presumably, it had fallen out of his pocket somewhere in the house, and Rachel had put it in a safe place.

  I answered it without a second thought. “Hey, Jack.”

  There was a surprised silence, which I felt obliged to fill. “It’s Sophie here.”

  “Sophie,” Jack repeated. “Hey. What’s up? Can I speak with Dan? I’ve been ringing him for hours.”

  For somebody who couldn’t know about Dan’s illness, Jack sounded terribly agitated, and I got that heavy sense of foreboding in my tummy. “Dan is—” I began, but Jack talked right over me.

  “What was he thinking?” he bellowed. “It’s all over the bloody Internet. Facebook, Twitter, everywhere.”

  My tired brain struggled to follow what he was saying. “What is all over the Internet?”

  Last I checked, it had been all good news. What had I missed?

  “‘Rock star collapses with drug overdose after party at Hyde Star Inn’,” Jack intoned. “That’s one of the headlines. ‘What happened to the squeaky clean Dan Hunter?’ is another. Where on earth is he?”

  The bottom fell out of my world, but only temporarily. My mind raced. There had been no press at the hospital. Nobody knew what had happened to Dan apart from me, Rachel, and the staff. Had there been a leak at the hospital, there would have been reporters outside when I got there this afternoon. God, how I hated the press sometimes. Right at that moment, I was embarrassed to have been a member of that profession. I cleared my throat.

  “Dan’s in St. George’s. He—”

  “What?” Jack exploded. “Don’t tell me this is true!”

  “It’s not true,” I shot back. “Will you let me explain? He has pneumonia. He came to my house last night and collapsed. I had him admitted to hospital because I was so scared for him, but nobody there has even told the press he’s there, or why. I swear. I was there this afternoon again, and the place was calm.”

  I could hear Jack taking deep breaths at the other end. “You’d better start at the beginning,” he invited, sounding calmer and more reasonable.

  So I explained,
starting with the cold Dan caught a few weeks ago and leaving nothing out, not even the E’s. Jack listened in silence and remained quiet for a few moments after I finished.

  “This is a disaster,” he mumbled. “How could he have been so stupid?”

  “It’s hardly a disaster,” I disagreed, and a thought popped into my head. “It’s a setup, that’s what this is. Somebody gave Dan those drugs, hoping he’d do something stupid, like taking them for everyone to see, or passing them on, or collapsing at the party. And when he didn’t, they fed the story to the press and the social media anyway. There is no earthly way anyone could have substantiated the story because there’s nothing much to substantiate. It’s all a lot of hot air. He didn’t even take a lot, certainly not enough to collapse. And!” I pounced onto this last detail with gusto, recalling something Dr. Smith had said and holding onto it for dear life. “We don’t even know if he knew what the pills were. We haven’t had a chance to ask him yet.”

  “Oh, he knew,” Jack said darkly. “Regardless of what you say about him being ill, he would have known. He’s not dumb. The band gets offered stuff all the time. They don’t take it. They know I’d eat them alive.”

  The sentence hung between us for a second before I jumped to Dan’s defense again. “Be that as it may, he was in very bad shape when he came out for the concert that night. I shouldn’t have let him go. I feel bad about it. Can you honestly say whether he was in his right mind afterwards? With a raging fever and a painful set of lungs, do you think he was capable of rational thought? And whatever happened, this drug story is a setup. It has to be. Dan didn’t take an overdose. He collapsed with a fever and because he was desperately ill.”

  “Hm,” Jack replied. “You must be right. It doesn’t make sense. So many years in the business, so many temptations…I was shocked and horrified to think Dan would have gone off the deep end last night. And disappointed.”