Those Bloody Tears

Chapter Eight

   After I stormed off the stage, I locked myself in my dressing room. I needed to be alone. As mad as I was I could have seriously hurt someone. But I had had time to cool down since then. Too bad my anger hadn’t really ebbed. I was still mad.

            I was mad at Andy. I hated Andy. I hated him for making me feel like this. I hated him for making me care. I hated that he was so tiny and fragile. And I hated him most of all for making me scared s***less. I hated that he made my stomach do flips when scarlet tinged his cheeks. I hated that he was so innocent. I hated that he had so much control of me. I hated that he had changed me. I hated that he made me less of a one-night stand kind of guy.

            I hated not hearing from Andy. It made me sick. He never picked up his phone or answered a text. I only saw him at the shows and then he kept it strictly professional. It had been almost two months since I dedicated that song to him and he had dropped weight like crazy.

            XxXx

           He ambled into the dressing room. He had been working slower and slower as of late and took forever to get to me. I looked at him. His skin was stretched so d*** tight over his tiny bones. His face was gaunt, his eyes had dark circles under them, and his glossy dark hair had lost its sheen.

            I wanted to jump up and scream at him. I wanted to force him to eat something. I wanted to convince him that he wasn't fat. But I couldn't do any of that. He would just stand there shaking and trembling like a f******* scolded Chihuahua.

            "Quit looking at me like that please," he requested barely audible. His voice was scratchy.

            My heart shattered into a thousand teeny tiny pieces, right then and there. I dropped my eyes to his feet and balled up my fists to hold in the feelings bubbling up inside of me. "I can't help it you’re getting worse. Have you been eating at all?"

            "No. I can't even hold down food long enough to make it to the bathroom. So I quit trying, but I do drink water."

            "For how long? Why won't you get any help?"

            "A couple of days. And I don’t-"

            "Can you please hurry? I have to get to wardrobe," I cut him off in a numb voice.

            He tried his best to quicken his pace, but it wasn't much faster to be honest. It was pathetic. He was wasting away right in front of me. No one that sick should go a couple days eating nothing and only drinking water. I couldn’t ignore it any longer. After the show I was going to throw him in the back of my car and take him to get help whether he liked it or not.

XxXx

            I was belting out the lyrics to Voice Unheard with little feeling behind it, due to my racing mind making plans for after the show, when I saw Andy slip into the room at the back of the crowd. I locked eyes with him and finished the song with the most amount of emotion possible. Letting him know how I felt. He dropped my gaze and moved to the other side of the room. The crowd cheered when the song was over excited by my sudden burst of energy.

            I tried to block Andy from my mind in order to do my best for the fans. It was just starting to work when I saw Andy's wasting away form hit the ground. I waited for about two point two seconds for him to get up and when he didn't I stopped singing all together. I dropped the microphone and leapt off the stage and over the barrierscareful not to land on anyone. I forced myself through the crowd of shocked people, parting it like the red sea. I finally made it to Andy.

            "Don't f****** just stand there call a freaking ambulance!" I shouted.

I knelt down grabbing Andy's wrist to check his pulse, and was relieved to find that it thumped away persistently. He wasn’t dead, just unconscious. When he got better, I was going to kill him.

            But for now, I picked him up trying not to jostle him, and carried him out of the hot sweaty room. I pushed my way outside and put him down on the cold snow covered pavement to cool him down. Then I just sat there waiting for an ambulance to show up. It took ten minutes for one to get there. Ten precious minutes. Precious time that could have caused Andy to die. When they pulled in, they raced over to us with a gurney in tow. They lifted the limp boy beside me onto the stretcher and began firing off questions. I answered them the best I could, but everything was moving in slow motion. It was like when you slow down a movie and everything sounds all wonky. After they got all of the information they could from me, they wheeled him to the back of the vehicle and loaded him in. They tried excluding me, but when I went into hysterics, they let me ride in the back.

            I gripped his tiny hand and rubbed small circles on the back of it. I murmured reassuring words to myself. Because I knew he couldn't hear me while unconscious. The EMT that rode in the back with us was doing the standard things to keep his heart beating, stuff I didn’t know anything about, but I didn't pay any attention to it. I just kept clutching onto his hand. As if somehow that would make him wake up. But it never did.

            It was utter chaos once we got to the hospital. They jerked the doors open, ripping him from my grip, and rushed him inside. I jumped out of the ambulance and ran after them like Satan himself was chasing me. I only got as far as the ER doors before I was stopped by a doctor coming out. He told me I wasn’t authorized to go back there. As soon as he left I tried getting by the nurse, but it only resulted in me being escorted to the tiny white waiting room by security.

            One by one the band started showing up offering their support. Because apparently everyone but me knew how much I cared about Andy. I never uttered a word to them. I couldn’t talk. I was in knots thinking and worrying about Andy. They got all their information from the nurse at the front desk. I just took turns staring from the door to the clock waiting for a doctor to say something, f*** to say anything.

            After hours of waiting, eventually, everyone filtered out stating their various obligations and uttering very similar apologies, leaving me alone. I couldn’t decide whether it was better that way or not. I just kept doing the same thing over and over again, staring at the clock and then starting at the door. Waiting Room was the perfect f****** name for this God awful place. 

            After a few hours I must have dozed off because the next thing I knew an older man was shaking me awake. I sprung up fully awake realizing that he was a doctor. Fear and hope churned in my gut as I awaited the news I was about to receive.

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Sad I know, but it will get a little tiny bit better soonish.

This song fits too right?