Road Doc

Chapter 36

Kevin laid on the bed of his hotel room, numb. His mind was numb, his body was numb, and that had become the way he liked it. When he was stoned, numb beyond imagination by a handful of whatever type of narcotics he could get his hands on, he felt relaxed, something he couldn’t feel when he was straight. It had started out innocently enough with a prescription for pain killers following his knee surgery. It crept up on him during the months of rehabilitation, slowly easing from a means of numbing the physical pain to a means of numbing the emotional pain. Lately it seemed that no amount of pills was doing the job though, and Kevin, desperate to seek out that escape, that numbness, had began to seek out alternatives.

Opium had been easy to come by. The dealer who had been supplying him with
prescription pain meds had simply nodded and gave Kevin a knowing smile when he’d asked for something a little stronger. The first night Kevin tried smoking the opium, he couldn’t believe the incredible sense of euphoria that hit him. He had sworn to himself that it would only be an occasional thing, smoking the opium, but it hadn’t taken long before he was smoking it every night after their shows.

Kevin rolled over and reached for his vintage opium pipe, a gift from his dealer, and took a long draw of the pungent smoke. He laid back and feel into a deep sleep.

In his dreams he was flying, flying high above a large crowd of people. Looking closer, he realized the crowd was made up of screaming fans. He swooped down to get a closer look, their faces were contorted in tear streaked screams as they reached out for him, yet no sound came from them. He flew up high again, far from their grasp and soared into the clouds. But just as he was about to move through the clouds, out of the sight of the still screaming fans, he began to fall. He fell downward towards the crowd. As he fell closer to them he realized that they were no longer screaming and reaching out for him, but laughing and pointing at him.

Kevin awoke with a jerk, so startled that he would have jumped up to standing had he not been strapped in by the airplane’s seatbelt.

“What the hell?” he gasped, looking around. The first class cabin was empty and Kevin had no idea why, how, or when he had boarded the plane. He opened the hard blind covering the window and peered outside. It was pitch-black, save the bright white moon that lit the clouds below him, making them look like a blanket of pale blue.

“Nice of you to finally wake up and join us” a voice from beside him startled him.

Kevin turned to see Beth standing in the aisle, her hands on her hips, a foul look on her face. He couldn’t seem to grasp the words he was searching for to ask her what was going on.

“You were completely out of it when I came to get you. It took me and Carlos both to carry you to the airport. Imagine the bizarre looks we got, dragging a drugged out of his mind Backstreet Boy through the terminal. It wasn’t a pretty sight”

Kevin looked away, ashamed. “Where are we going?”

“I’m taking you somewhere to hopefully snap you out of this bullshit, Kevin”

“I’m not going to rehab” Kevin snapped.

“No, you’re not. You’re going to get a reality check.” Beth snapped back.

“You know, you need to just mind your own damn business” Kevin said, heartlessly.

“You know, YOU need to just shut the fuck up and quit being so damn stupid” Beth
hissed at him.

“Ladies and gentlemen” a voice came over the airplane’s intercom “This is Captain
Moore again. We’ll be landing in Lexington in approximately ten minutes. The weather there is 72 degrees, with light rain.”

Kevin snapped around and stared at Beth.

“Why are you taking me home? Does my mom know about....” his words trailed off.

“About what, Kevin? About you being addicted to pain killers? About you stealing
Nick’s medicine? About you smoking opium??”

Kevin glared at her.

“No. She doesn’t. Whether you tell her or not is totally up to you”

“Then why are you taking me home?” he asked again.

“You need a wake up call, Kevin. You need to get your shit together. You won’t listen to anyone. Everyone who works for you and around you is so far up your ass that they’d never tell you that you’ve obviously got a problem.”

Kevin shook his head in disgust. He was so angry he was shaking.

“Well I for one and sick and tired of your shit. I’m not going to sit by and watch you kill yourself”

“I’m fine...just leave it alone” he hissed.

“You shut up” Beth said, pointing her finger right in his face. “I don’t want to hear
another word out of your mouth until I tell you that you can speak. I’ve got someone I want you to talk to when we land. Until then, not a word”

“Very f..”

“Not a word” Beth said, cutting him off.

Their plane landed in Lexington just as the sun began to warm the sky in the east. As they got in their rented car, Kevin remember that Brian had mentioned coming home too. An intervention was not high on his list of things he wanted to go through right now, and he knew that was what Beth had planned. He shook his head, determined to block them all out. He was fine, in his mind. He didn’t have a problem as far as he was concerned. They were the ones who didn’t understand, and they would just be wasting their time with some impromptu intervention. But the intervention that Beth had planned was far from what Kevin imagined was about to happen. He could lie and deny his problems all he wanted to the people around him, but there was no way he could lie to the person he was about to face.