Fall From Grace
Chapter 29
By Danielle
"ALEX! GET NICK ON THE PHONE NOW!!!!!!"
He was instantly awake and running down the hallway towards Nick's room before his brain had comprehended that he had even left the bed. Something about the desperation in Brian's voice told him not to question, only to run as fast as he could to Nick's room.
He banged open the door and skidded across the bed, yanking the still sleeping Nick up enough that he could put the phone to his friend's ear.
Nick was startled awake, struggling against the fever fog to comprehend what was going on.
"Nick! Oh God! He's having a fit! I don't know what to do! God, Help me!!!"
The tone in Brian's voice cut through the fog like a beam from a lighthouse and instantly he was focused.
"Brian? What's wrong?"
"It's Kevin…he's….so much pain…he's twitching, Nick. That can't be good!"
Nick ran his fingers through his sweat damp hair, wishing with everything he had that he was there with Kevin right now. "Can he talk?"
There wasn't an answer, only the sound of the phone being fumbled.
"Nickers?"
Nick smiled, feeling the welcome warmth of hearing Kevin's voice spread all the way through him, "Hey Bumpkin. How bad is it? On the Nick scale. Not yours, mine."
He heard Kevin grunt as a flash of pain went through him, "Five." He heard Kevin take a deep breath, "It's starting to leave. I'll just take my regular pill, I'm due in fifteen minutes, I should be fine."
Nick knew by the sound of Kevin's voice that he was telling the truth. There was still an edge to it, but Nick knew if it was really a bad attack, that speaking would be nearly impossible.
He yawned and snuggled down in the covers, chuckling when a thought occurred to him, "Brian better not have kids."
Kevin scrunched his brows together, trying to figure out the change in topic. He knew it had something to do with what just happened, the hard part was thinking like Nick and making the connection. After a minute, he figured his brain was just not meant to bend that way and he gave up. "Huh?" He mentally slapped himself. Yeah, that sounded intelligent. Ugh.
Nick chuckled. That "Huh?" was a patented bumpkinism in his eyes and he could picture perfectly the confused look on Kevin's face right now, with his brows crinkled together, almost touching, a la Bert from Sesame Street. "I know, I know. I need turning signals when I'm going to change topics like that." He gave a mock glare at Alex who was nodding his head up and down so fast, agreeing with him, that he did a pretty passable impression of Dylan hopped up on gummi bears.
"What I mean is….look at how completely panicked he got at a 'five'. You probably weren't doing anything more than staying very still while your muscles twitched right? And he pretty much an aneurism. Now, can you imagine the chaos, not to mention carnage, that is going to happen when Leigh goes into labor someday?"
Nick heard a snort and looked towards the foot of the bed and saw Alex lying there stifling his laughter in the bedspread. The giggle he heard on the phone too let him know that they both could see it as clearly as he could.
The fact that Nick could hear Brian going "What? What are you laughing at? What's so funny? You are laughing at me aren't you?" in the background just was icing on the cake to Nick. He could hardly breathe he was laughing so much.
"He's going to be the type that is going to run around like a maniac when she says it's time and throw the suitcase in the car, forget to come back for her and tear off the hospital only wearing his drawers."
Both AJ and Kevin were nearly howling with laughter at this point.
"By the time he circles back for Leigh, she'll be waiting in the driveway with his pants and a shirt, color coordinated of course, she does have a reputation to uphold. And while he gets dressed and undoubtably tangled up in them, she will calmly get into the car, buckle herself in, time a contraction or two and drive them calmly, safely, to the hospital when Brian slays the evil clothing monster and gets into the car."
AJ, by this point, was gasping for air while applauding. Kevin was just as wrecked, both of them seeing it so clearly it was scary.
Brian was still in the background asking what the hell was going on and between bouts of laughter, Kevin explained it, conveniently nudging the speaker phone on. Nick did the same thing and motioned to Alex that Kevin was telling Brian what Nick had said.
There was silence on the line and then Brian's voice coming through, "That is just SO WRONG in SO MANY ways! That was low. I'm hurt. I'm really hurt….I would at least be wearing shoes I'll have you know!"
"Well let's bring this to an impartial judge, shall we?" Alex wiggled his eyebrows up and down and grabbed the cordless from Nick and dialed the appropriate numbers for a three-way call.
" H'lo?"
"D, it's Alex. We have something to run by you. We have Kev, Rok and Junior on the phone too. Junior's going to tell ya his theory and then Brian's going to give his and you'll be the judge of whose version it would be, k?"
Howie was used to Alex's tangents and had given up questioning them years ago, it was just easier to flow with the current, or craziness in this case, than to swim against it. "Ok. Go ahead Nicky, I'm listening."
Nick went through the whole story again and Howie was gasping for air by the end of it. "Oh Rok, that's so you!"
Brian scoffed, "I don't argue that. What I argue with is me going out in only my drawers! I think I would at least have shoes on."
There was a pause as Howie considered this. "Well Rok, that would all depend on one thing."
They all leaned forward to hear what Howie was about to say.
"Does Leigh still keep those red high heels by the door?"
TBC…..