Every Night

Chp. 7

*Dan's POV*
I awake to a nurse unhooking some of my wires from me. She quickly apologizes for waking me up and continues with her job. I look over to my right, and there's Wayne, still fast asleep. I look back over towards the nurse, "what time is it," I ask her.

"9:00"

"When do I get to leave?"

"As soon as you're ready, you're free to go."

I turn back over to Wayne and give him a tap on the shoulder, "wake up sleepyhead," I say to him.

He slowly opens up his eyes and stretches out, then gives me another hug, telling me, "I'm so glad you're okay."

"Love you buddy." I tell him.

He gets up and stands up from the bed, and then helps me stand up after the nurse has unhooked the last of my wires. It's a little hard to walk at first, I'm still pretty dizzy. Wayne can see that and puts his arm around me and help me walk over to the chair. There I put my shoes on, and we stood up again, ready to leave.

He helps me walk outside and to the back of the parking lot, where the bus was able to find a place to park. We get on and walk up the stairs and take a seat on the couch. Just a few minutes later the others are awake. They come out and Ben asks me, "How are you doing?"

"Fine, I guess, still dizzy and my head hurts like hell."

Platz stands up and walks over to the freezer, grabbing the bag of frozen peas. Then he helps Wayne set my head down on Wayne's lap. Wayne grabs the bag of peas and carefully places it on my forehead.

"Argh!" I scream, "that hurts...."

"Sorry buddy," he tells me, "but it will help."

I just continue to lay on his lap as he holds the bag to my head and strokes my arm.

"Where are we heading," I ask, "since we've canceled three shows?"

"We're heading to Colorado."

"Long drive...."

"Yeah, so just get comfortable, I got you."

We sit as the bus gets on the highway, then Ben says, "I'm kinda bored, you guys want to take advantage of the TV on here?"

"Sure." We all agree.

"One thing though," I say.

"What?" Platz asks me.

"I can only see the ceiling right now," I say with a chuckle.

"Oh," he says, "wait just a sec."

He brings out two pillows and carefully props my head up and place the pillows on Wayne's lap, and sets my head back down. "Now I can see" I chuckle.

We surf through the channels until we finally decide on one that's running a "recently released to DVD" movie marathon. We don't have much time to get to the movies anymore so this is nice.

We settle in and begin to watch. Before we knew it, it was already 11pm. We looked to each other, but none of us were tired, so we just stayed up the rest of the night watching movies as we drive along.

Daylight breaks it's way through the tiny crack in the blinds. Ben stands up and says, "I might as well find out where we are, since we've been driving all night." He walks over to our driver and asks about our location. We can't hear what the driver says from back in the common room, but shortly Ben comes back and tells us, "our driver said we're almost out of Nebraska already."

"Wow..." I say, "already?"

"Yep," Ben replies, "but don't worry, the show isn't for another 3 days, so we've got a lot of free time here in Colorado."

"Okay." I say, and we return to watching movies.

A few hours later, the bus comes to a halt, Platz looks out the window and says, "We're at the hotel guys, 4 days we get to spend in actual beds."

We all sigh of relief, 4 days in an actual bed, it's close to a miracle.

Wayne helps me sit up, and he sets the pillows on the couch. He takes my hand and helps me stand up. All that laying down still has me a little disoriented. Wayne grabs one side of me, and Platz the other. They help me walk down the stairs and out of the bus.

We walk into the hotel lobby, and Ben walks over to the counter to check us in. Wayne and Platz take me to have a seat on a bench in the lobby, only one person ends up recognizing us, so we take a quick picture and sign their hat.

Ben walks over to us with a slightly confused face. "What's wrong?" Platz asks him.

"They must of screwed up our rooms, we got one room with two queen beds, and a second room with just one king bed...."

"We'll just have to make it work." Says Platz, because he noticed a pretty full parking lot as we walked in.

Ben and Platz start debating how we are going to make the rooms work, then Wayne pipes up and says, "Dan and I can take the one king room bed."

"Sure," Ben says, "I'm fine with that.

Wayne grabs our room key from Ben, and he helps me up and we make our way over to the elevator. Up and up we go all the way to the top floor, breathtaking floor number 3. (I never said it was a big hotel....)

We make our way down to the end of the hall and unlock the door. Ben and Platz are in the room at the other side of the hall.

Wayne walks me over to the bed and helps me lay down, "How's your head feeling buddy."

"It still hurts."

"Wait just a second." He tells me, grabs a bag from the bathroom and steps outside the room.

He comes back about five minutes later with a bottle of water, some Tylenol, and a bag of ice. I sit up just enough to take the medicine, and then he helps me lay down again on the propped up pillows, and sets the bag of ice down on my forehead.

"Ah," I exclaim, "no matter how many times I put ice on my forehead, it still stings."

"It's okay buddy."

He walks over and grabs his guitar out of his case, and brings a chair up next to me and begins to start playing.

He just strums along and I hum along with him, and we just create different melodies. A few of them I liked a lot, so we recorded them to save for later. Album 3?

We go on like this for hours, strumming and humming, when all of a sudden, my stomach makes a very loud and audible growling sound. We both have a laugh and decide we better get something to eat. Wayne calls Ben, and asks him what they're doing. They had already made their way downtown and were getting tacos, typical Ben.

We decided on getting some Chinese carry out delivered to the hotel. We ordered a whole onslaught of food, well mostly I did..... Because I haven't ate since I passed out.

A few minutes later it got to the room, and we dug in. There was so much food. By the time I was done eating, I was so full I didn't even think about my head hurting. Wayne cleans up our trash and crawls onto the other side of the bed, and hands me a fortune cookie.

"Do you want to open yours first?" He asks me.

"Sure." I say as I open up the wrapper. I break apart my cookie and pull out a small piece of paper and read it to myself. "Actually," I say, "why don't you read yours first."

"Okay." He says as he opens up his cookie. He pulls out the piece of paper and reads, "Music is an essential part to who you are." We both chuckle, "No duh," he says, "what does yours say Dan, I really want to know.

"Okay...." I say, I clear my throat and read my tiny piece of paper to him, "The best friend you'll ever have is sitting next to you right now." I can't help but smile. He leans over and gives me a hug, and I hug him back.

We then turn on the TV, settle on a music channel, and watch. We both chuckle when our own video for, "On Top of the World" comes on.

"I look so dorky." I say.

"You? Look at me, I'm a hippie for crying out loud!"

We both laugh and comment on our work. By the time the video is done, I'm asleep, but I can still hear Wayne whisper in my ear, "goodnight buddy, love you."