Fall From Grace: The Dance Thriller, Part 2

Maybe I Am Calmer Now

Cedars-Sinai Medical Center
Los Angeles, California
Sunday, January 11, 1997
(8:00 pm)
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Sunday evening traffic had been merciless getting to the hospital.

Lindsey had calmly woven his way through lanes while Stevie sat in the passenger's seat, a sleeping, milk-drunk and blissful infant in the car seat behind them, bundled up in the white knit blanket embroidered with Think pink! by her Grandma Barbara. Stevie had fiddled with the radio and found a song she'd loved during the Rock A Little tour and played over and over again until Lori and Sharon wanted to kill her. It was by the band Survivor, and it was called "The Search Is Over". She sang along softly as Lindsey's Mercedes crawled through the traffic on the 1-10, looking occasionally back at her sleeping daughter, her hand on her husband's thigh.

"I was living for a dream, loving for the moment...taking on the world, that was just my style...Now I look into your eyes, I can see forever...The search is over, you were with me all the while..."

"You know, this new-and-improved Lindsey Buckingham who doesn't fly off the handle..." She squeezed his thigh affectionately in his faded jeans. "He comes in handy on the 1-10 in Sunday evening traffic." She giggled at her own joke.

"I'm carrying precious cargo here." He turned from the road just long enough to kiss her temple. "I've got my two sweet girls in the car, Mrs. Buckingham. No need for road rage."

"I like this Lindsey," she said, just as she had that night on tour when he's confessed to his situation with Kristen.

"I'm pretty fond of this Stevie myself," he said with a wink, neither of them needing words to acknowledge their old ways, the things that had kept them apart and made evenings like this impossible. Stevie sat back in her seat after a protective glance at Baby Robin, who was sleeping soundly behind them. They listened to the rest of the song, Stevie letting the lead singer of Survivor do the singing now.

"Now the miles stretch out behind me, loves that I have lost, broken hearts like victims of the game...Then good luck, it finally struck like lightning from the blue...Every highway's leading me back to you..."

The sign for the exit to Cedars-Sinai was up ahead. Stevie looked over at Lindsey who looked into her eyes as the car stopped to prepare to merge into the right lane, and they held a knowing look for a moment until he had to turn back to the road. Every highway, even the one to see his unplanned baby boy, would always lead them back to each other, and they both knew it. The car advanced towards the exit.

"Now at last I hold you, now all is said and done, the search has come full circle, our destinies are one...So if you ever loved me, show me that you give a damn; you'll know for certain the man I really am...I was living for a dream, loving for the moment...taking on the world, that was just my style...Then I touched your hand, I could hear you whisper...The search is over...Love was right before my eyes..."

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"I'm Lindsey Buckingham. This is my wife, Stevie Nicks, and our daughter Robin."

Lindsey shook hands with a slim, blonde woman in her mid fifties in a black Prada coat who looked like an older Kristen and actually a lot like Barbara Nicks, when he looked closer. They were in the hallway of the Pediatric Unit of the hospital, where his son lay in a plastic incubator in the nursery with the other babies born that day. Stevie stood behind him, Robin asleep and burrowed into her shoulder. Lindsey carried a diaper bag over his shoulder and an infant seat in his hands like a picnic basket.

"I'm Carolyn Messner," the women. "Kristen is recovering from it all...sleeping right now. There's a policewoman stationed at the door of her room, and she goes back to the psychiatric unit in forty-eight hours when she's released. My husband and I will be taking our grandson home."