Sad_Girl
Blue Crack Supplier
Disclaimer: 100% pure fantasy. Use discretion when reading; mature themes
You ready for this? Hold on tight!
************************************************************
Part 7: Stealing time
The rain started to fall around Howe street. It was just a light drizzle, but it was enough to make Cat’s hair cling to her cheeks and forehead and her clothes grow damp and uncomfortable. Her chest hurt, she was physically weak and more emotionally raw and vulnerable than she’d allowed herself to become in a long, long time. Still, she would not cry. Not over something so stupid and pointless as a crush. On a rock star, no less. Her throat ached from choking back the sorrow, but she had not spilled a tear since her fathers funeral nearly two years ago. She’d promised herself she would be strong, there was no room for tears in her life. Not anymore. If she’d learned anything from the misery that was her childhood, it was that tears never made things better.
She simply picked up her pace and made it to the hospital before the thunder began and the sky really opened up. The rain poured down, slapping against the windows and doors of the lobby just as she entered, and in her heart it felt like the sky was crying for her. **If that’s true** she thought **I better start building my arc, ‘cuz it’s gonna be raining for a long time.**
There was a strange heaviness in the air at the hospital as Cat entered Charlene’s hall. It was almost like being underwater, the rain outside making the inside feel smaller. The walls were closing in around her. As soon as she saw Alex and Krash standing in the hallway outside Charlene’s room, everything seemed to stop. She as if gravity had doubled, an unseen force trying desperately to drag her down, down, until she could not move at all. Doom settled in her chest.
“Here she is!” Alex announced, rushing to embrace Cat. He wasn’t much taller than she was, and no heavier. Still, when he hit her at full force it nearly sent her tumbling. He held tight to her, and she closed her eyes. “We’ve been trying to get a hold of you. Your bike was still at work, where were you?” He asked, his face buried against her shoulder.
“I went to dinner.” She told him numbly. It didn’t feel real. It didn’t even feel like a dream; it felt more like a bad movie. The type that you leave with a churning stomach and a sense of mourning for the time you wasted watching it.
“She’s gone, Cat. Like, an hour ago…” He told her, and she could feel his hot tears against her neck. His body shook with sobs and she held him. Charlene had been around for most of Alex’s life. It wasn’t like losing a friend, but a sibling. “Gunnar…” he sniffed, stepping back from her and wiping his nose on his sleeve. “He’s still in there, he won’t let them take her to the…” his voice cracked and his face twisted up in pain. “Morgue.” He finally spit out, the word barely a squeak.
Cat closed her eyes and leaned back against the wall. She felt like she might throw up again for a moment. After a few deep breaths, she opened her eyes again and gestured to Krash.
“Do you have the jeep?” She asked, and he nodded silently. “I’m going in to talk to Gunnar. In a few minutes, I’ll let you know if I can talk him down. Either way, I need you to take Alex home, and stay with him. Can you do that?” She asked, and although Krash had pain in his eyes, she knew he was strong enough. He nodded again, wrapping an arm around Alex’s shoulder and guiding him out of Cat’s path.
How long had it been since this morning? Was it only thirteen or fourteen hours ago? It seemed impossible that so much had changed. Everything had changed, her life was not going to ever be as it had been. There wasn’t a damned thing she could do about it, either.
She stepped into the room. It had been full of sunlight this morning, but tonight it was in layers of darkness. There was a light on in the bathroom, but the door was almost closed. No other light burned, and the lights outside were muted by the heavy rain. Gunnar sat beside Charlene’s bed in the uncomfortable visitors chair they had all spent too many hours in. He was slumped forward, his head resting on Charlene’s chest, both of his hands clasping desperately to one of hers.
Other than the rain and the usual hospital noises drifting in from the hallway, the room was silent. There were no machines whirring, taking blood pressures or regulating the flow of IV medicine. It was the sort of silence everyone always said came with death, though Cat had never heard it before. Death had always come with sirens and screams in her experience. She wasn’t sure, at the moment, which was worse.
“Gunnar.” She said, but it came out so softly that she her own ears could not hear it. She cleared her throat and tried again. “Gunnar.” She said, more firmly this time. He didn’t move. She moved to his side and knelt next to him. Maybe he had cried himself to sleep, she thought, but for some reason when she reached out to touch him she hesitated. She laid a hand on his shoulder and shook him. Gently, at first, but then harder. Her heart was racing, her throat closing in on itself with fear.
“Gunnar!” She called his name, loud this time. His hands fell away from Charlene’s limply, and his weight shifted back in the chair. His eyes stared up at Cat blindly, the pupils nearly as wide as the blue.
“No!” She screamed. “No!” She shook him again, and again, but there was no point. The staff appeared at the doorway at a run, investigating her screams. They moved quickly to asses him, lifting him up onto the empty bed next to Charlene’s. Alex and Krash stood in the doorway.
Cat clutched her hair in both hands, desperate for something she could do. There was nothing, though, in her power. She stood and watched as they poked and prodded him, trying to figure out what had happened. They pumped air into his lungs, they pumped on his chest. It seemed a grotesque mockery of life, that they were trying to resuscitate him in a way that would have been torturous if he could feel it.
“AZT.” A nurse said, stepping out of the bathroom with several empty pill bottles she’d found in the trash. “And ____. All AIDS drugs.” She announced. “He overdosed on the prescriptions that were supposed to be buying him more time.”
“He didn’t just want more time.” Cat informed her numbly. She felt like a Zombie. “He wanted more time with her.” Cat could not even imagine what it was like to love another person so completely as Gunnar and Charlene had. She’d learned to rely on herself and not trust others at a young age. When you loved a person so completely, she realized, they became a basic need. Air, food, water, shelter, and their love. Without it, there was no life.
One of the Doctors had taken Alex and Krash into the waiting room, and part of Cat knew she should go to them. They needed her to be there. But she needed something else. She didn’t know what, really, but she knew she didn’t have the strength to be their support. Not tonight. She wandered out of the hospital in a daze, paying no mind to the rain or to where she was walking. She just needed to move and keep moving. If she stopped now, she was afraid she would never get back up.
***********************************************************
Adam stood at the curb next to her motorcycle for over an hour, waiting for her to come back. He felt like a total arse for not stopping her in the first place. He hadn’t meant to lead her on, he genuinely felt something for her. He just couldn’t see how it would work out for the best, in the long run. It was too complicated. Finally, he used his mobile to call a cab because he was soaking wet from the rain and had a feeling if she saw him standing there, she would simply turn and walk the other way, anyway.
*************************************************************
She hadn’t really thought about where she was going, she’d just followed her feet all over town. She hadn’t intended on going anywhere in particular, but somehow she’d ended up at the hotel. She knew she looked like a drowned rat, walking in out of the rain. They would most likely mistake her for a vagrant and throw her out, she thought as she slipped through the elegant lobby. The Peabody was ranked right up there with the Ritz and other such world class hotels; people flocked there daily just to see the ducks that swam in the massive fountain in the grand lobby.
She fully expected security to drag her away as she waited for the elevator, but this late at night, it seemed, nobody was around. They must’ve been patrolling or something, she thought as she stepped into the fancy elevator with the marble flooring. She knew they were in the penthouse, but realized with dismay that she needed a special key card to access the floor. She pushed the button for the tenth floor, just one below the penthouse and hoped if she could just buy some time maybe she’d come up with an answer.
“Hold the doors!” Someone called, and she instinctively reached out and interrupted the doors. It didn’t occur to her until after they were sliding back open that it might have been that security officer coming to drag her away. To her relief, it was a familiar face.
“Cat! What are you doing here? Look at you, you been out walking in this rain?” Jimmy asked, his face full of genuine concern. Cat forced a smile and nodded.
“Yeah, I uh… I’ve been looking for the keys to my bike but couldn’t find ‘em. I think maybe one of the guys picked them up by mistake.” She lied through her chattering teeth.
“Well it’s a good thing you caught me, otherwise you would never have gotten in. The concierge is a stickler, and he wouldn’t have let you ring any of their rooms this late.” He told her, and she wrapped her arms around herself, shivering.
“Thanks.” She told him softly as he used his key to open the elevator doors when they reached the eleventh floor. He placed one hand on the doors to hold them open for her and she stepped out. There was a voice in the back of her mind asking her just what the hell she was thinking, but she couldn’t hear it over the static of grief that was overwhelming her brain.
“I gotta take these Pizza’s to Edge and Larry.” Jimmy informed her. “That’s B.’s room, but he’s probably already in bed. Adam’s is the last one on the left.” She nodded in understanding and watched the man disappear into the massive hotel room. When he was out of sight, she made her way to the door and held her hand up, although it took her a few seconds to actually knock. She didn’t hear anything moving, so she knocked again. Finally, she turned to go, deciding it was foolish for her to be here anyway.
“Hey. What’s going on?” She heard his voice ask as the door swung open behind her. She froze like a criminal caught in the act, her mind racing through every possible scenario that could play out within the next few moments. “Cat?” He urged, and she turned to face him.
“Look at you, you’re soaked! What’s …” He started to ask, but he could see the pain in her eyes. He stood there in the doorway, a hotel robe hanging loose from his shoulders. He hadn’t bothered to tie it tightly and it gaped open to reveal a broad chest spattered with coarse, dark hair. A cross dangled from a chain around his neck, and her eyes locked on it, as if for some reason fascinated by it.
Finally she looked up into his eyes, those sweet blue eyes. His long, dark hair was messy, and she knew she had woken him. She wanted to apologize and to tell him to go back to bed. Why was it she was drawn to him? It was an eternal question, wasn’t it? Just about every woman on earth was drawn to Bono. She opened her mouth to speak, then closed it without saying a word. He stepped out of his room and rested his big, warm hands on her shoulders firmly.
“Cat, what is it?” He asked. She looked up at him, and suddenly she knew what she needed. The only thing that might help chase away the emptiness she felt eating her up inside. Something to warm her inside and out. No matter what she had intended to say when she opened her mouth again, this realization was what spilled out.
“I need someone to hold me.” She said, and before she could consider taking the words back he had enveloped her in his arms. She clung to him desperatley, suddenly feeling as if she would not be able to stand on her own two feet. He leaned back and looked down at her, smoothing her hair back with one hand.
“Come in.” He said, nodding toward the door.
Chapter 8 ... sometime in the next twenty four!
You ready for this? Hold on tight!
************************************************************
Part 7: Stealing time
The rain started to fall around Howe street. It was just a light drizzle, but it was enough to make Cat’s hair cling to her cheeks and forehead and her clothes grow damp and uncomfortable. Her chest hurt, she was physically weak and more emotionally raw and vulnerable than she’d allowed herself to become in a long, long time. Still, she would not cry. Not over something so stupid and pointless as a crush. On a rock star, no less. Her throat ached from choking back the sorrow, but she had not spilled a tear since her fathers funeral nearly two years ago. She’d promised herself she would be strong, there was no room for tears in her life. Not anymore. If she’d learned anything from the misery that was her childhood, it was that tears never made things better.
She simply picked up her pace and made it to the hospital before the thunder began and the sky really opened up. The rain poured down, slapping against the windows and doors of the lobby just as she entered, and in her heart it felt like the sky was crying for her. **If that’s true** she thought **I better start building my arc, ‘cuz it’s gonna be raining for a long time.**
There was a strange heaviness in the air at the hospital as Cat entered Charlene’s hall. It was almost like being underwater, the rain outside making the inside feel smaller. The walls were closing in around her. As soon as she saw Alex and Krash standing in the hallway outside Charlene’s room, everything seemed to stop. She as if gravity had doubled, an unseen force trying desperately to drag her down, down, until she could not move at all. Doom settled in her chest.
“Here she is!” Alex announced, rushing to embrace Cat. He wasn’t much taller than she was, and no heavier. Still, when he hit her at full force it nearly sent her tumbling. He held tight to her, and she closed her eyes. “We’ve been trying to get a hold of you. Your bike was still at work, where were you?” He asked, his face buried against her shoulder.
“I went to dinner.” She told him numbly. It didn’t feel real. It didn’t even feel like a dream; it felt more like a bad movie. The type that you leave with a churning stomach and a sense of mourning for the time you wasted watching it.
“She’s gone, Cat. Like, an hour ago…” He told her, and she could feel his hot tears against her neck. His body shook with sobs and she held him. Charlene had been around for most of Alex’s life. It wasn’t like losing a friend, but a sibling. “Gunnar…” he sniffed, stepping back from her and wiping his nose on his sleeve. “He’s still in there, he won’t let them take her to the…” his voice cracked and his face twisted up in pain. “Morgue.” He finally spit out, the word barely a squeak.
Cat closed her eyes and leaned back against the wall. She felt like she might throw up again for a moment. After a few deep breaths, she opened her eyes again and gestured to Krash.
“Do you have the jeep?” She asked, and he nodded silently. “I’m going in to talk to Gunnar. In a few minutes, I’ll let you know if I can talk him down. Either way, I need you to take Alex home, and stay with him. Can you do that?” She asked, and although Krash had pain in his eyes, she knew he was strong enough. He nodded again, wrapping an arm around Alex’s shoulder and guiding him out of Cat’s path.
How long had it been since this morning? Was it only thirteen or fourteen hours ago? It seemed impossible that so much had changed. Everything had changed, her life was not going to ever be as it had been. There wasn’t a damned thing she could do about it, either.
She stepped into the room. It had been full of sunlight this morning, but tonight it was in layers of darkness. There was a light on in the bathroom, but the door was almost closed. No other light burned, and the lights outside were muted by the heavy rain. Gunnar sat beside Charlene’s bed in the uncomfortable visitors chair they had all spent too many hours in. He was slumped forward, his head resting on Charlene’s chest, both of his hands clasping desperately to one of hers.
Other than the rain and the usual hospital noises drifting in from the hallway, the room was silent. There were no machines whirring, taking blood pressures or regulating the flow of IV medicine. It was the sort of silence everyone always said came with death, though Cat had never heard it before. Death had always come with sirens and screams in her experience. She wasn’t sure, at the moment, which was worse.
“Gunnar.” She said, but it came out so softly that she her own ears could not hear it. She cleared her throat and tried again. “Gunnar.” She said, more firmly this time. He didn’t move. She moved to his side and knelt next to him. Maybe he had cried himself to sleep, she thought, but for some reason when she reached out to touch him she hesitated. She laid a hand on his shoulder and shook him. Gently, at first, but then harder. Her heart was racing, her throat closing in on itself with fear.
“Gunnar!” She called his name, loud this time. His hands fell away from Charlene’s limply, and his weight shifted back in the chair. His eyes stared up at Cat blindly, the pupils nearly as wide as the blue.
“No!” She screamed. “No!” She shook him again, and again, but there was no point. The staff appeared at the doorway at a run, investigating her screams. They moved quickly to asses him, lifting him up onto the empty bed next to Charlene’s. Alex and Krash stood in the doorway.
Cat clutched her hair in both hands, desperate for something she could do. There was nothing, though, in her power. She stood and watched as they poked and prodded him, trying to figure out what had happened. They pumped air into his lungs, they pumped on his chest. It seemed a grotesque mockery of life, that they were trying to resuscitate him in a way that would have been torturous if he could feel it.
“AZT.” A nurse said, stepping out of the bathroom with several empty pill bottles she’d found in the trash. “And ____. All AIDS drugs.” She announced. “He overdosed on the prescriptions that were supposed to be buying him more time.”
“He didn’t just want more time.” Cat informed her numbly. She felt like a Zombie. “He wanted more time with her.” Cat could not even imagine what it was like to love another person so completely as Gunnar and Charlene had. She’d learned to rely on herself and not trust others at a young age. When you loved a person so completely, she realized, they became a basic need. Air, food, water, shelter, and their love. Without it, there was no life.
One of the Doctors had taken Alex and Krash into the waiting room, and part of Cat knew she should go to them. They needed her to be there. But she needed something else. She didn’t know what, really, but she knew she didn’t have the strength to be their support. Not tonight. She wandered out of the hospital in a daze, paying no mind to the rain or to where she was walking. She just needed to move and keep moving. If she stopped now, she was afraid she would never get back up.
***********************************************************
Adam stood at the curb next to her motorcycle for over an hour, waiting for her to come back. He felt like a total arse for not stopping her in the first place. He hadn’t meant to lead her on, he genuinely felt something for her. He just couldn’t see how it would work out for the best, in the long run. It was too complicated. Finally, he used his mobile to call a cab because he was soaking wet from the rain and had a feeling if she saw him standing there, she would simply turn and walk the other way, anyway.
*************************************************************
She hadn’t really thought about where she was going, she’d just followed her feet all over town. She hadn’t intended on going anywhere in particular, but somehow she’d ended up at the hotel. She knew she looked like a drowned rat, walking in out of the rain. They would most likely mistake her for a vagrant and throw her out, she thought as she slipped through the elegant lobby. The Peabody was ranked right up there with the Ritz and other such world class hotels; people flocked there daily just to see the ducks that swam in the massive fountain in the grand lobby.
She fully expected security to drag her away as she waited for the elevator, but this late at night, it seemed, nobody was around. They must’ve been patrolling or something, she thought as she stepped into the fancy elevator with the marble flooring. She knew they were in the penthouse, but realized with dismay that she needed a special key card to access the floor. She pushed the button for the tenth floor, just one below the penthouse and hoped if she could just buy some time maybe she’d come up with an answer.
“Hold the doors!” Someone called, and she instinctively reached out and interrupted the doors. It didn’t occur to her until after they were sliding back open that it might have been that security officer coming to drag her away. To her relief, it was a familiar face.
“Cat! What are you doing here? Look at you, you been out walking in this rain?” Jimmy asked, his face full of genuine concern. Cat forced a smile and nodded.
“Yeah, I uh… I’ve been looking for the keys to my bike but couldn’t find ‘em. I think maybe one of the guys picked them up by mistake.” She lied through her chattering teeth.
“Well it’s a good thing you caught me, otherwise you would never have gotten in. The concierge is a stickler, and he wouldn’t have let you ring any of their rooms this late.” He told her, and she wrapped her arms around herself, shivering.
“Thanks.” She told him softly as he used his key to open the elevator doors when they reached the eleventh floor. He placed one hand on the doors to hold them open for her and she stepped out. There was a voice in the back of her mind asking her just what the hell she was thinking, but she couldn’t hear it over the static of grief that was overwhelming her brain.
“I gotta take these Pizza’s to Edge and Larry.” Jimmy informed her. “That’s B.’s room, but he’s probably already in bed. Adam’s is the last one on the left.” She nodded in understanding and watched the man disappear into the massive hotel room. When he was out of sight, she made her way to the door and held her hand up, although it took her a few seconds to actually knock. She didn’t hear anything moving, so she knocked again. Finally, she turned to go, deciding it was foolish for her to be here anyway.
“Hey. What’s going on?” She heard his voice ask as the door swung open behind her. She froze like a criminal caught in the act, her mind racing through every possible scenario that could play out within the next few moments. “Cat?” He urged, and she turned to face him.
“Look at you, you’re soaked! What’s …” He started to ask, but he could see the pain in her eyes. He stood there in the doorway, a hotel robe hanging loose from his shoulders. He hadn’t bothered to tie it tightly and it gaped open to reveal a broad chest spattered with coarse, dark hair. A cross dangled from a chain around his neck, and her eyes locked on it, as if for some reason fascinated by it.
Finally she looked up into his eyes, those sweet blue eyes. His long, dark hair was messy, and she knew she had woken him. She wanted to apologize and to tell him to go back to bed. Why was it she was drawn to him? It was an eternal question, wasn’t it? Just about every woman on earth was drawn to Bono. She opened her mouth to speak, then closed it without saying a word. He stepped out of his room and rested his big, warm hands on her shoulders firmly.
“Cat, what is it?” He asked. She looked up at him, and suddenly she knew what she needed. The only thing that might help chase away the emptiness she felt eating her up inside. Something to warm her inside and out. No matter what she had intended to say when she opened her mouth again, this realization was what spilled out.
“I need someone to hold me.” She said, and before she could consider taking the words back he had enveloped her in his arms. She clung to him desperatley, suddenly feeling as if she would not be able to stand on her own two feet. He leaned back and looked down at her, smoothing her hair back with one hand.
“Come in.” He said, nodding toward the door.
Chapter 8 ... sometime in the next twenty four!
