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Chapter Forty-Two

Chapter Forty-Two



“Well, Nick, you are getting what you were wishing for, I just hope that everything will be okay.” Jess stated as she watched Nick brush his hair and adjust his clothes for the concert.

Nick glanced over at Jess in the mirror. “You worry too much, don’t be so silly.”

“I can’t help it, I was there when the doctor told you absolutely no concerts until next March, and here is it, only December and you are going to go out there again. I just can’t believe it.” Jess didn’t try to conceal her worry in her voice.

Nick turned and put his hands on her shoulders, “Don’t worry, okay, I will be fine, trust me.”

“I do Nick, but this is something you really don’t have any control over at all. I am scared.” Jess sighed.

Nick threw the hair brush down onto the table. “Oh, come on Jess, don’t do this to me. I gotta go, we are supposed to be in place in about three minutes and I am not out there.” Nick kissed Jessica quickly on the cheek and walked out the door.

Once out in the hallway, Nick felt a wave a dizziness overcome him. He put his hand to his head and took a faltering step backwards. He shook his head and bent over to bring the blood back up to his brain. As Nick slowly stood up, he looked right and left to make sure no one saw him do that.

“There you are, where the hell have you been?” AJ greeted Nick with a slap on the back.

Nick smiled. “Jess held me up, sorry.”

“So are you ready, now?” Brian asked.

“Yeah, just a sec, I need to get a drink of water.” Nick turned and darted towards the barrel with the water bottles. He had managed to take his valium about 30 minutes ago, but he still felt tense. Nick took an extra two pills out of his pocket and slipped them into his mouth and washed them down quickly with a gulp of water.

Nick ran back quickly to his place behind the stage and waited with the rest of the guys for the opening song to cue up.

“Man, Nick, you sure make me nervous sometimes,” Howie remarked quietly.

“Sorry, it’s just a weird habit, I need to drink when my throat is dry.” Nick shot back sarcastically.

“Guys!” Kevin growled.

Nick immediately stiffened up into postition and the machines started billowing out the smoke and the special effects were cued up.

One by one, each of the guys took their turns jumping out of the smoke onto the stage. Nick was fine when he jumped out, only to notice that his headset wasn’t working properly and the music he was to be hearing was not playing in his ear at all. In fact, he noticed right away that he missed his first cue for his part in a song.

Brian gave Nick a funny look when he noticed that Nick hadn’t started to sing when he was supposed to. Nick pointed at his ear and yelled the words “not working, can’t hear anything.” The words he was yelling were only appearing to be mouthed because of the screaming from the crowd.

Nick threw his hands up in the air to stop the band. AJ and Howie were dancing and weren’t paying attention to Nick not singing. The band stopped playing, but not at the same time, which finally stopped into an eerie beat.

Brian spoke into his headset. “Nick is having technical difficulties with his mike.” Nick had already started walking towards the side of the stage where the sound technician was at.

“Hey, there is no sound in my ear here.” Nick said to him as he pulled the defective headset off.

“Are you feeling okay, Nick? You look a little redfaced.” The tech replied as he took the headset from Nick.

“Yeah, I’m fine, it’s probably just hot under the lights.” Nick brushed the remark off.

The tech handed Nick a new headset. “Try to go easy on this one, okay?”

“Yeah, sure thing.” Nick put it on and walked towards the center stage again. “Hey! Can you guys hear me okay?” Nick asked as he was walking towards Brian. The response was a thunder of cheering. “That’s cool.” Nick turned towards the band. “Hit a few notes, please.” The band complied with a few bars of a song. “Alright! lets take it from the top!”

The band started playing Larger Than Life again and the crowd erupted into cheers and applause. The guys picked back up and started the choreography to the song. Nick felt a little dizzy during some of the steps but managed to conceal it.

Once the song was finished, the band immediately broke into playing Quit Playing Games. Nick was starting to feel a little tired and was shocked to think he felt that way and it was only the second set in the concert. He felt like he could lay down and go to sleep.

After the song ended, it was time for each of the guys to introduce themselves to the audience. Nick, as usual, was last and by the time they got to him, he was breathing quite heavily.

“Hi, I’m Nick,” he paused to catch his breath. He usually went on talking about where they were or made some small joke, but he felt he couldn’t do it.

Brian gave Nick an odd look. He leaned over to him and covering his mike, whispered, “Are you feeling okay?”

“Yeah I’m fine, okay?” Nick growled back, he didn’t bother covering his microphone.

“You look like you’re gonna get sick, that’s all.” Brian still had his hand cupped over his microphone.

Nick said the line that was usually meant for AJ after they were done with their complimentary introductions.

“Are you guys ready to rock Tampa?” Nick shouted into his mike.

The crowd responded with a thunderous ovation. The band started up the next set with Everybody. It was going to be a very strenuous number and Nick took a deep breath because he knew what he would be up against with the physical moves.

Brian kept watching Nick out the corner of his eye. He could tell that something was off with him as his face was beet red and he was sweating like he had been running a race for his life and normally Nick didn’t look that bad.

A couple of times, Nick turned and appeared to Brian to be way off balance. He thought he would fall at any time. Nick seemed to keep up the dancing pace along with the rest of the group. But there was just something about Nick that wasn’t right and Brian was going to try his best to figure out what it was.

Finally after a series of fast songs, Howie’s solo was coming on and the rest of the guys got to go backstage and take a quick rest before going on. Nick practically collapsed onto the couch in the backstage area.

“I don’t feel right,” Nick said breathlessly as he held his chest.

Unfortunately, with all of the screaming going on and the music blasting away, none of the guys heard Nick’s complaint.

“Hey, Nicky, you gotta go and change for the next set, what the hell are you doing?” AJ hissed at him.

Nick rolled off the couch onto the floor and dragged himself up using the couch. It seemed like his room was hours away instead of a few quick footsteps away.

“Nick?” Brian called out to him. Nick kept going into his dressing room and closed the door behind him. “Is it just me, or does Nick look sick?” Brian asked AJ.

“Well, he don’t look like he feels very well, his face is as red as I have ever seen it. I think he knew he bit off more than he could chew doing this concert and he is not gonna say anything to anyone of us. I’ll keep an eye on him too while we’re out there.” AJ replied.

“Well, he better hurry up, he should be doing his solo in about 10 more minutes.” Brian said as he left to go out to do his solo and brushed past Howie coming in offstage.

In his dressing room, Nick caught a glimpse of his reflection in the mirror. His face was bright red and his hair was drenched in sweat. Nick grabbed a towel and soaked it in cold water. He put the towel to his face and sat back in his seat. Nick felt his heart racing, it almost felt like it would explode out of his chest. He was gasping every breath he took in and it was feeling like he wasn’t getting enough oxygen with the air he was breathing. Nick threw the towel over the back of his head and neck. He bent over in the chair hoping this would help him breathe better and get rid of the dizziness he was feeling.

A knock on the dressing room door told Nick he was to be ready to go out for his solo in two minutes. He hadn’t even changed his wardrobe yet. Nick slowly got out of his chair and decided he was going to go out there dressed the way he was, he didn’t feel like he could change his clothes if he wanted to.

Nick slowly opened the door and walked out of the room. AJ was watching Nick from across the room and was puzzled when it looked to him as if Nick was staggering like he was drunk. Before AJ could get to Nick, he was already out onstage.

“Shit! Something’s definately not right with the boy!” AJ yelled exasperated.

Nick laughed into his headset. The band was playing I Need You Tonight and Nick had missed his cue twice. “S-s-sorry a-b-bout that.” Nick stammered. His speech was sounding slurred. Nick bent over as if to catch his breath. He was getting scared at how weird he was starting to feel. He was dangerously close to the edge of the stage. Fans were reaching out to Nick for him to touch their hands.

Nick looked off to the side of the stage and saw AJ and Brian rushing up towards him with a look of worry on their faces. Nick blacked out and fell off the stage onto the floor.

Suddenly there was complete silence in the auditorium. Panicked fans were crowding Nick. AJ and Brian’s presence didn’t make the matters any better. Brian started yelling at the fans to stand back so Nick could get some air. There was a press of the excited fans, that it shoved Brian and AJ into the side of the stage. Brian couldn’t catch his breath because of the crowd surge. The security was trying to contain the crowd. People were stepping on Nick and pushing AJ and Brian harder and harder. Brian suddenly slumped to the floor as he became unconscious.

As the panic was starting to intensify, Howie, Kevin and Jessica could only stand offstage watching in horror. They were helpless in the situation and were praying that this would end. Jess couldn’t stand there anymore, she ran to the side of the stage where Nick had fallen and was hoping to help by dragging one of the guys onto the stage out of harms way. Kevin and Howie realized what Jess was trying to do and they ran to her side.

A muscular security guard pulled Brian’s lifeless body up out of the sea of fans and Kev and Howie grabbed him and pulled him onto the stage. Next, the guard got ahold of AJ and he was hurt, but conscious. The guard hoisted AJ up towards Kevin, and Kevin dragged AJ to safety.

The guard was frantically looking for Nick. He was starting to push girls back hard and some of them fell down onto the floor. People were stepping on Nick, he was getting trampled.

Jess was so worried about Nick, she didn’t notice that the paramedics were attending to Brian by performing CPR on him. Finally, what seemed to take forever, a guard grabbed Nick by his arms and pulled on him and took his limp body and placed him onto the stage. Another group of paramedics started immediate attention to Nick.

It was then that Jess realized that Brian was in critical condition also. She cupped her hand over her mouth to supress the scream she could feel rising in her throat.

Brian’s lips were blue and his eyes were open and staring straight at the ceiling. Nick didn’t appear any better. He was cut and bleeding from the fall and bruised from all of the people stepping on him. The paramedics had ripped his shirt open and were placing heart devices to his chest. When they turned the machine on, Jessica could feel her heart sink when the bumpy rythmn that should be on the monitor was nothing but a flat green line.

“They have to have this thing not hooked up right.” Jess thought to herself. She watched in horror as they pulled shock paddles out of a box and hooked them up to a power charger. As they placed them onto Nick’s chest, and zapped him with the voltage, his body arched in reflex from the shock. The crowd screamed as they witnessed the drama unfold. Jess looked at the monitor anticipating Nick’s heart to respond to the shock. She was disappointed when it was still a flat line.

“Dammit, Nick, don’t do this to me.” Jess yelled at him.

The paramedics tried to start his heart a second time, with the same results as the first. Finally, on the third try, Nick’s heart jumped to life. They had tubes already placed down his throat and were manually giving him oxygen.

Jess looked over towards where Brian laid. They had an oxygen mask on him, but they were no longer performing cpr. They had an IV going and Brian was still unconscious but appeared to be alive.

Jess looked at AJ. He was being attended to by two paramedics and it looked as if his arm was in a splint.

The crowd was silent. You could hear people crying and some where screaming, “No, no.”

The paramedics came back with a stretcher and Nick was the first one to leave the auditorium. Jessica was told that she could ride along with Nick in the ambulance.

Chapter 43

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