He thought of all the times he’d been in pain. One instance stood out from the rest. He was eight years old, and he had fallen out of the tree at his Grandmother’s house. He had been leaping from branch to branch to branch, then suddenly to nothing. He didn’t remember the fall, but he did remember the pain. The pain that enveloped him like a thorny cocoon. Every bone, every nerve, every inch of skin screamed in protest, and all he could do was lay there and surrender to it.

That’s what he wished he could do now. But they wouldn’t let him. True, he couldn’t feel anything below his belly button anyway but he could still feel the influence of the last Percocet. There were no rough edges to this world. Everything was fuzzy and dreamlike. The doctors insisted that the drugs would make him forget his pain for now but all they really did was bring it back sharper and clearer. No, it didn’t bring back the physical pain. But the guilt and the heartache struck him like daggers, even in parts of him that could no longer feel.

“You look like hell,” he said to the young man lying in the hospital bed. He waited for a response, a blink of an eye, a twitch of the mouth. But there was nothing. Only beeps, and buzzes, and the whoosh of a respirator. He sighed and fumbled for the boom box on the table next to him. “Typical,” he huffed. “Not gonna talk cause I didn’t play your favorite song.” He depressed the play button and the music poured over them like they were still in the car and the road was rolling beneath them.

Come up to meet you
Tell you I’ m sorry
Don’t know how lovely you are…

Nobody said it was easy
It’s such a shame for us to part…

“Coldplay,” he whispered. “This is the one we like,” he closed his eyes. He really felt it this time. Rolling. Rolling and weaving too fast, too recklessly. Somewhere in the depths of his subconscious a small voice was crying out, trying to make him slow down, to take a break, to take a rest. They’d been driving like this for an hour. But Justin didn’t want to hear it. This was New York City, a reckless place, full of speeding cars, and loud noises. It felt good to be acting like this…carefree. It was fun. The music was loud, blaring. A group of girls traveled beside them in a pink convertible. So fine. Triplets. Drop dead gorgeous, “daddy had a dick of gold” triplets. It was just like that friggin’ old movie, American Graffiti, except the mighty team of Ayala and Timberlake was so much cooler than any of those people ever were. So cool, that they hardly had to pay attention to anything else besides the girls and the half empty bottle of whiskey that had been full just moments before.

“Hey girls,” Trace leaned over Justin, his elbow jabbing him in the stomach. “Y’all got some room in ’dose jeans fer me?” he slurred.

“That’s depends,” The driver smiled. “Will your friend join in?”

“Say sumthin’,” Trace chuckled with drunken glee, and nudged his friend hard, knocking their precious bottle to the floor.

“Aw, damn it Trace, I just had this shit detailed,” Justin moaned. He immediately bent down to try to stop the flow of liquor from ruining his interior. He never had a chance to see the road roll away beneath them. It was like a crazy tilt-a-whirl ride, a tumble of arms, legs, blood, and cries of fear and pain.

They never had a chance.

He was pulled back to reality by a noise that almost sounded like the high-pitched wail of an ambulance siren. But it wasn’t, it was something else. Something was causing a great commotion. There were doctors and nurse rushing around, pulling curtains around Trace’s bed and talking in low, urgent tones. “What’s goin’ on?” he yelled. He got no answer, instead he was rushed out into the hallway. He wheeled himself forward in protest and banged through the door before it could shut in his face. Nobody seemed to notice. The movements of the people behind the curtain were telling him that they were too busy to notice. Too busy because something had gone terribly wrong. “Clear,” a mans voice shouted. Then a sharp sound like a thunderclap boomed across the room.

“Again…”

“Clear…”

Boom.

Then there was that beep again. It wouldn’t stop. It went on and on, and then stopped suddenly. The silence was loud. Louder than the beep had been. He wished the beep would start up again. Maybe it was broken…yes, that had to be it. It would start up again in a moment. Just like when he was in the studio, and they had to redo a track. They could go back and do it again…maybe he could help.

The curtain parted, and all Justin could see were grim faces and…and Trace covered with a sheet. The idea was insane. Trace was in a coma. How could he be expected to breathe under there? Maybe the doctors simply hadn’t noticed that the sheet had fallen over Trace’s face. Well, he would fix that. He rolled forward, trying to break through the barricade of doctors and nurses that were separating him from his friend.

“Take it easy son,“ a gentle voice said.

He held up one finger. “You know,” he said, matter-of-factly. “He can’t breathe under there.”

The doctor smiled down at him and whispered something to the nurse next to him. She nodded in turn, and began to prepare a syringe. “Just relax. Everything will better in a minute.”

His bottom lip quivered. “But he can’t breath under there, can’t you see? There’s a sheet,” he informed them. “He can’t breathe.”

“Shh,” the nurse said, giving him a gentle rub on the shoulder and squirting a small amount of liquid out of the needle and into the air. “It’s alright now.”

He felt a sharp pinch in his upper arm seconds later. Then everything went white. As white as the sheet that had been placed over his friend’s body.

Chapter Two