Standing By

Kentucky Calling

(Chance) 

I laid my head back on the seat in the cab as we pulled out of the hospital and let out a long drawn out breath. Oh my God. What a day. Between having a whole new performance thrown on us, Tim's and Kirstie's run through the streets, the dinner mess, then poor Austin's predicament... and I was doing this on a grand total of three hours of sleep. Which is low even by my standards. I can usually get by on four hours; six to best get through the day. Much less than that and my voice takes on a mind of its own, usually screwing up notes and diction and dropping down into Tim's territory, which he rags on me for. I closed my eyes for a moment but got jerked back to reality when my butt started vibrating. My phone. Who the hell was calling me? I leaned forward and pulled it out of my pocket.

"Who's that?" Rob asked.

I shrugged. "Don't recognize the number." I let my finger dangle over the 'accept call' button.

Adam nodded at me. "Accept it. Could be the hospital calling about Austin."

"Kentucky are code," I mused. "We know anyone in Kentucky?"

Adam shook his head as Rob rubbed his eyes for the fiftieth time tonight.

I decided to accept it and put my phone to my ear. "Hello?"

An unfamiliar voice answered. "Ch-Chance? Is this Adam Chance?"

"Yes, it is," I answered. "Who is this?"

"Scott—Scott Hoying. Of Pentatonix."

My tired eyes popped wide open and I leaned forward. "Scott? What's up?"

Hearing Scott's name, Rob and Adam jerked to life next to me.

"Scott?" Adam asked anxiously.

"Is it about Austin?" Rob asked, swallowing thickly.

"What's going on? Where are you at? You in a cab? Were you able to catch one? Are you still at the hospital? Tim with you? Do you know anything? What's going on?" I shot rapid-fire questions into the phone. "Scott? Austin—just tell me, is it about Austin? Is Austin OK? Scott!"

"Hey, hey," Scott was saying, and I could hear Austin squawking in the background so I knew they were still at the hospital—and in his room.

"Tell me what's going on!" I ordered, Adam and Rob moving around like jumping beans next to me.

"Chance!" Scott said. "Let me talk. All the others there with you?"

"Rob and Adam are, and Tim is with you."

He sighed loudly. "Put me on speaker phone please."

Feeling teary, I gestured to Adam and Rob, who looked shaken themselves. "Scott," I told them, then pressed the button. "You're on speaker."

"What's going on?" Rob asked, already crying again as Adam's leg jiggled a million times a minute. I played my hand on his knee to hold it still.

"Sorry," he mumbled.

I leaned forward. "We're listening, Scott. What's going on with Austin?"

"It's—not Austin," he said haltingly. "It's actually Tim."

Tim? What the— "I thought he was with you!" I yelled at him.

Adam put a hand on my knee. "Tim? What's wrong with Tim?"

"He was with me, Chance. We were walking alongside each other, he made a weird noise and I turned to to look at him as he grabbed his head and passed out," he explained to me gently. "He's—"

My heart pounded and I actually squeaked. And I am not normally a squeaky person. Oh Lord. I felt my insides seem to still as I hung on to Scott's every word.

Rob trembled next to me and said the words I couldn't quite get out. "What's wrong with Tim?"

"We don't know," Austin said. Hearing his voice calmed me, even though his words scared the crap out of me. I bit my lip and tried to pull all my emotions deep inside me, like I've always done. I could deal with them later, on my own. Right now it wouldn't help either Tim or Austin to lose myself, though with the stress of the day, it was all I wanted to do, to crawl under the covers, to cry unabashedly, to just let it all out. I'd felt it boiling inside me all day and here we go again, those words bubbles on my skin. I took a deep breath and tried to focus on blowing those thoughts out, those emotions, out off my lungs and into the cold night air.

"What do you mean, you don't know?" Adam asked slowly, playing with his hair nervously.

"Come back, guys," Austin said quietly, a waver of uncertainty in his voice.

I heard Scott swallow. "They said his heart rate was—ow, Avi, what'd you do that for?"

"His heart rate was what?" Rob shrieked. "Don't you dare leave us hanging like that!"

"You don't need to scare them," Avi's deep voice rumbled at Scott.

"We're already scared, so just spit it out," I said, a lot calmer than I actually felt.

"140," Mitch answered in a small voice. "And, um, his blood pressure crashed. They're trying to stabilize him in the ER."

Adam lead forward and into the front of the cab. "Turn the cab around, please, we got to get back to the hospital."

Stabilize? Stabilize Tim? I stared straight ahead, my heart racing. Oh fuck. Oh fuck. Stabilize him. How bad off was he? Could we actually lose him?

"We just left the—," the cabbie said in heavily accented English.

"Take us back!" Rob yelled at him. "Our other friend is in serious trouble!"

"OK, OK, OK," he mumbled, then uttered something in another language. I didn't really care what he said, if he called us names, if he cursed us out, whatever. I stared ahead with wet eyes and jelly in my stomach, starting to pray silently.