The Night Shift

Chapter Two: Josh

A/N: Mentions of injury--kind of graphic.

It stuns me that any situation can take a turn for the worst at any given moment in time. Everything was going great, and then BOOM—disaster struck. I stared down at the bleak white tile of the Emergency Room entrance. I was currently waiting for someone, anyone, to arrive. I decided that the other room one of the hospital directors had set me up in was too lonely and way to quiet for me to in by myself. The hospital security had the entrance blocked off in cases fans came, but luckily no one showed up. I couldn't bring myself to be the one to make the phone call to Jenna, so ultimately Mark was the one to do so. He was supposed to call me when he got a hold of her, but I had yet to hear anything from him, and it was nearing three A.M. I was starting to worry about everything again. Tyler and Jenna had gotten into a huge fight about five shows ago, and she went back to Columbus. I tried to get Tyler to talk to me about it, but he shut me out, and proceeded to act like nothing happened. Neither Tyler or I had heard from her since. I feel so scared for Tyler, hell, I'm even scared for myself when his mother hears about what happened. She's going to kill me if Tyler doesn't make it out of here alive. Good thing we're at the hospital, I guess. The longer I stared at the floor, the more I replayed the scene in my head, and the more I wished this was just some sick and twisted nightmare, and not real life.

Tyler and I were almost finished with the Texas leg of the tour, and we running through one of the final sound checks and rehearsals for the final show, which was supposed to be tomorrow night. Tyler was super nervous for tomorrow's show, and I don't really blame him; I was too. We both wanted everything to be perfect; we owed that much to our fans, our crew, and even ourselves. Normally during rehearsals and sound check, we would start and end every song of our set, but that's not what Tyler had planned for tonight. He wanted to use our rehearsal time to do a full blow performance to a mostly empty venue. The only other people there were Mark and the rest of the crew. I was hesitant at first, but the look Tyler gave me made me commit to the idea in a heartbeat. I hated that he could send me on a guilt trip with just a couple of words and maybe a few sad eyes casted my way. Everything was going really well, until we got to the closing song, "Trees".

Normally, Tyler and I would be held up on platforms by our fans that were near the front of the barrier with our floor toms, but since there was no fans in the arena, I stayed behind my drum set, and played the rest of the song. I closed my eyes, letting the lyrics Tyler sang sink into my very being. When I opened my eyes, I noticed that Tyler wasn't dancing around in front of me anymore. I didn't initially start to panic, until I no longer heard Tyler's voice echoing off all of the empty stadium seats that were in front of me. I searched around for Tyler, but didn't see any sign of him. I heard him let out a blood curdling cry for help that could be heard over the background music that played from the laptop hidden on the side of the stage. My eyes snapped over to the sound to see Tyler hanging by one arm on the huge industrial stage frame that held our screens for the backdrops that we used throughout our shows. I watched as he let go of the microphone that was in his left hand, while he struggled to keep his grip with his right. I was frozen in place as I watched him struggle to get his other arm back around the frame and pull himself up. My brain finally told my body to move, and I immediately pulled my phone from my pocket and dialed 911, I'd rather the ambulance come just in case he couldn't make it back up. Mark had run up to the stage by now, after he cut the background music, and I thrusted the phone into his hands as I ran over to stand under Tyler. His left arm had made it over the edge of the frame, and he slowly started to pull himself back up to the top of it. I watched in fear as his body began to shake from the lack of energy that he no longer had to pull himself up. As soon as he threw his right leg over the frame, the frame broke. The piece Tyler was hanging onto separated from the rest of the frame, and I could tell he was starting to slip off the frame and towards the ground. I yelled up to him to keep hanging on, and he finally glanced down at me, a look of pain and uncertainty was painted on his face. I knew he was going to fall, Mark even knew he was going to fall; but what made it worse was that Tyler knew he was going to fall. I frantically looked around for anything that could possibly help break his fall, but so far I was coming up with nothing.