The legal stuff: This story is sexually-explicit, involving homosexuality. Do not continue if this will offend you. If accessing this story causes you to break local laws (village, town, city, county, province, state, or country, etc.), please leave now. By continuing, you implicitly declare and affirm under penalties of perjury that you are not a minor or in the company of a minor and are entitled to have access to sexually-explicit material. The content and opinions expressed in this story do not imply anything with regards to the sexual preference of any member of 98 Degrees or any other celebrities named herein. It is a work of fiction entirely. Aargh! I really didn't mean for this to take this long to write. But, I can blame it on technology. My computer got a virus that literally wiped everything off both of my hard drives. Yikes! I lost a lot of data but I did have a backup copy of the story. Still, I was without a computer for over a week while I got it fixed. Oh, and I was out of town part of last week, too.
I know a couple of people had sent me emails that I never was able to respond to. Sorry about that but I lost all my saved emails. If you were waiting on a response from me, just send me a new email.
Thank you for Jase for putting up with me. And, "you're welcome" for me putting up with you. LOL. To the new guy in my life, I hope things work out between us. I still can't believe you want to spend time with me.
And now...on with the show.
Thack
The first thing I did was open my eyes but everything was black. I took a deep breath and felt pain race through my chest. I coughed and the sound echoed back, as if I were in a canyon. I tasted something metallic on my tongue. Suddenly remembering where I was, I reached down and unbuckled the seatbelt. Only then did I realize I was upside down. I went crashing, landing square against the roll bar of the Jeep and then hitting the ground. I heard a loud crunch as I feel onto the rough surface of the lava rock.
"Fuck!" I said out loud, suddenly fully aware of what had just happened.
As my eyes became adjusted to the light I blinked the dirt out of my eyes. They watered and I couldn't tell if I was crying or not. Reaching out to where I knew he would be, I gasped when I saw the empty drivers seat above my head.
"Drew!" I screamed.
I waited a long second and heard nothing. My mind replayed the scene when he picked me up in Kona. I agonized over whether he had his seatbelt on but I simply couldn't remember.
"Drew!"
Trying to compose myself, I reached down into my pocket to grab my phone. We needed help.
"Damn it!"
It all was swirling through my head but I remembered exactly where I had left my phone. It was sitting on the table back at the hotel. Then I reran the image of me smashing Drew's phone against the blacktop back in Kona. We were alone.
I needed to find Drew. I needed to help him. Looking around, I saw the barren surface of the moon. There were white rocks scattered about the black lava. I crawled out from beneath the remnants of the Jeep. As I pulled myself through the window, I felt a searing pain in my right leg. I screamed out in pain. Seconds later I heard a muffled call.
"Drew!" I called, once again.
I heard a low moaning and turned my head. I tried to stand but found I couldn't put any weight on my right leg. I struggled to ignore the pain as I crawled toward Drew.
"Hang on," I called.
Moving as quickly as I could, I inched my way across the sharp edges of the lava. I spit out a mouthful of what I guessed was blood. Behind me in the distance, I heard the sound of a car flying by and I saw just the slightest glimpse of headlights. I weighed the option of finding Drew or turning and crawling to the road to get help. Then I heard a cough and more moaning and I knew Drew needed me. I continued on, feeling the sharp edges of the ancient lava rock cutting my skin. I couldn't have traveled more than five or six feet from the wrecked vehicle when I came across a ditch in the lava field. He was about three down and he was motionless.
"Drew!"
I slid down the small embankment, wincing in the intense pain I felt as I came to rest next to him. He was lying on his back, with his head turned away from me. I reached out and gently touched his face. When his eyes opened I felt a wave of relief pass through me.
"Alex?" he asked, looking up at me with dull eyes.
"Yes, baby. I'm here."
"I don't think I'm gonna." His voice trailed off into nothing.
Then I saw the blood. I first noticed it on his khaki pants. Blood had soaked the waist all the way down to his knees. It was forming into a pool beneath him. I pulled up his shirt and saw the red gash that had sliced across his abdomen. I shuddered, wanting to throw up. I swallowed hard and looked up at his eyes rolling back into his head.
"Oh, God! Drew! Stay with me."
I reached down with both hands and grabbed his face. He blinked sharply, suddenly coming back to me. I needed him. I knew that on so many different levels. But, the most important one was I needed Drew the EMT.
We never really talked much about his life as an EMT back in New York. It was the job he had just before Nick called him to join the band in LA. The only thing he ever told me was that he had "lost a few" patients. That is all he would say and I never pushed him to elaborate. Suddenly, faced with losing him I understood why he never talked about it.
"Drew!" I said urgently. "I need you to tell me what to do. I need you to remember and tell me what to do. Think back to your days in New York. You're bleeding and I'm not sure how to make it stop."
He looked up at me and smiled. It seemed like an odd reaction at first but he seemed to understand. With a shaking hand, he grabbed my arm and placed it on his wound.
"Press hard," he whispered, still trying to smile.
I did as he asked. As I pressed he started to scream and I quickly stopped.
"No," he coughed. "That's the only way."
I saw the tears forming and I thought of how brave he was being. I bit down on my lip and pressed down on his stomach. He gasped for air, trying not to scream again. As I continued to apply pressure I leaned down, our faces just inches from each other.
"I love you," he sung as he slipped away.
Scene 131
The next thing I knew I was being hoisted onto a stretcher. I saw the flashing lights and heard voices but couldn't make out what they were saying. Everything seemed to be happening twice as fast as it should have and I was struggling to keep up. I closed my eyes, wishing it would all go away but when I opened them I saw the entire scene once again.
I blinked hard, trying to get the grit and dust out of my eyes. There was a flurry of activity around me. There were flashing lights and people yelling. I even thought I heard the sound of a helicopter in the distance.
"You with me, bro?"
It took a second, but I realized he was talking to me. I don't know how I could have missed him. Standing right above me was a Hawaiian man who looked like a linebacker in the NFL. All at once he was intimidating but there was gentleness in his eyes.
"I asked if you could hear me."
I nodded, trying to figure out exactly what was going on.
"I'm Iakona. I need you to tell me where things hurt, okay?"
I felt the stretcher being moved and noticed I was being loaded onto the ambulance. Once inside I stupidly thought that Drew would be in there right beside me. Then it all became clear.
"Drew!" I practically screamed.
"Whoa!" the EMT yelled. "Do you mind not doing that when I got the stethoscope on you?"
I looked up at him and I thought I caught a wink.
"Listen, bro. What's your name?"
"Alex."
"Listen, Alex. Your friend Drew is in good hands. The guys taking care of him, well, I taught them everything they know." He smiled and winked again. "They are going to do the absolute best to make sure he gets out of this mess okay." I think he noticed the fear in my face because he quickly added, "I mean that. And what you did saved his life. If you hadn't have applied that pressure he would have bled out."
Iakona began to check me over and I tried to piece together the time from when I last saw Drew to when I was lying in the stretcher. The last thing I remember was Drew's screams as I pressed down against his stomach. Then he said he loved me. After that, everything was a blank. In my head, I knew it must have been bad if I had already blocked it from my memory. I involuntarily shuddered, almost afraid to ask.
"Is he dead?" I whispered.
"Not that I know," was the grim response as the ambulance started to leave the scene of the accident.
I felt the tears begin to fall and I reached up to brush them away. When I did that I saw my hands and noticed they were covered in blood. I didn't know for certain, but I imagined it was Drew's. Then I made the mistake of sitting up slightly in the gurney. I looked down and noticed my right leg was at an odd angle. Blinking to clear away the tears, I then recognized that one of the bones in my leg was sticking out through a major gash in my skin.
It was too much for me to take. I began coughing and seconds later I started throwing up. I did my best to stop it but it was no use. I turned my head, but it was not a pretty scene. Iakona tried to make sure I wasn't choking but I still began to cough.
"Hey, bro," I heard him yell up to the driver. "This one's going into shock. It's not looking good. He's got multiple lacerations, a major compound fracture in the femur, and I'm guessing at massive internal bleeding. If we want to keep this one you'd better floor it and call for a chopper."
When I was finished throwing up, I looked up at Iakona. He tried to smile but I knew things didn't look good. I closed my eyes and just drifted away.
Scene 132
I opened my eyes only to be greeted by what I thought was the brightest light I'd ever seen. I quickly closed them and tried to reach over to what should have been the lamp beside the bed. At that point, I realized I wasn't in my own bed and there was something horribly wrong. Every breath I took seemed labored and I felt as though a ten- pound weight was lying on my chest. I struggled to move and regretted it instantly when I felt the pain shoot throughout my body.
"Look who is back in the land of the living," I heard a voice from across the room.
I carefully opened my eyes, hoping to see who I thought it was.
"We have to stop meeting up like this, Alex. It's not healthy," Mike said, trying to smile as he stood above me.
I tried to speak and realized I had a tube coming out of my mouth. I quickly realized it was a breathing tube and began to panic. Mike saw it in my eyes and grabbed my left hand.
"Relax," he commanded. "I'm going to call for a nurse, okay?"
I blinked, not knowing how else to communicate.
"I will be right back, I promise."
I carefully nodded my head every so slightly and he dashed out of the room to get a nurse. Somewhere in my mind I took that as a good sign. Clearly I couldn't be in that bad a shape if they weren't monitoring my condition that closely. I glanced around, trying to figure out where I was. The hospital room looked remarkably like the one in Minneapolis but despite Mike's presence I new I was still in Hawaii.
In just a few seconds, Mike returned with the nurse. She smiled at me and then I noticed she had a needle in her hand.
"This will let you rest," she explained as she administered the drug into my IV.
I couldn't say anything because of the breathing tube, but at that point I didn't need to rest. I needed answers.
She turned and walked out after Mike thanked her. He walked over and gently sat down on the bed next to me. He grabbed my hand again, squeezing it tight.
"I know you're confused, Alex. I can see it in your eyes. You need to get some rest. Go back to sleep. I promise you that you will be fine."
I blinked and carefully nodded.
"Chances are you're not going to remember what I tell you," he began. "You and Drew were in a car accident two days ago. You've been drifting in and out of consciousness since then. I won't get into the details right now. But, you're in a hospital in Honolulu. They airlifted both of you here."
At that point I was struggling to stay awake but the medicine was taking over. It wasn't until he said his name that I remembered about Drew. I felt tears slipping down the side of my face. The last thing I remember is Mike gently brushing them away as I drifted back into the dark world of my dreams.
Scene 133
I woke up again and guessed it was sometime in the middle of the night. There was no sunlight from the small window across the room. Without thinking, I took a deep breath and quickly realized the breathing tube was gone. I tried to speak but my voice faltered, obviously still sore from having the tube down my throat. I glanced around the room and saw flowers and plants everywhere. There was a stack of cards on the small table next to the bed. Then I noticed that my leg was in a huge cast and it was in traction, elevated above the bed.
I struggled to clear my thoughts, trying to escape from the grogginess of the medicine I was on. My first attempt to sit up was my last because tremendous pain shot through my body. All at once I felt my leg begin to throb and the right side of my abdomen felt as though it had been kicked several times. Just as I was about to attempt to get to the call button to find a nurse I heard voices outside my room.
"Damn it, Nick! I can't take your money."
"Why, Mike?"
For some reason it stuck me as funny that they addressed each other by name. Honestly, I was so drugged up at that point I may not have been able to recognize the voices if they hadn't.
"For starters, you've already paid for my plane ticket. I'm afraid to ask how much a last minute ticket to Honolulu in the middle of winter costs. Let alone a first class ticket."
"Don't worry about that," Nick replied.
"Don't worry about it?" Mike responded, raising his voice slightly. "I can't afford that."
"That's the point. And you can't afford being here and not working, can you?" There was a moment of silence. "That didn't come out right, Mike. I'm not trying to make you feel bad. It's just I know that you can't afford to not work. As a trainer, you're probably not getting much unless you actually have clients. Right?"
"True."
"And we both know he needs you here. So, that means you take the money and be able to pay your bills while you are here. You're not going to lose your job if you don't go back right away, are you?"
"No, I'm fine."
"Then it's settled. Just take the money and help me. I don't think you realize how much of a help you've been over the last day."
"I haven't really done much."
"You have, Mike, even if you don't realize it."
"Thanks. Alex is like family to me."
"And that makes you part of my family, even with all the problems he's been having with Drew. That's why I'm glad you're here. I'm just not sure how well he is going to take the news about Drew. I'm scared, actually."
"We'll handle it. Alex is one of the strongest people I know."
"He's going to have to be," Nick said so quietly I almost didn't hear him.
"Why did this have to happen?" Mike asked. "Out of anyone, why did this have to happen to Alex? Hasn't he been through enough?"
I laid there motionless for what seemed like an eternity. I didn't know if I should try to use my voice again but I was paralyzed with fear. Seconds later Mike and Nick walked in through the open door. They both saw the look on my face and froze. In the dim lighting I saw tears start to role down Mike's face.
"He's gone, isn't he?" I whispered.
To be continued.
Feedback to: thack98@mindspring.com