BURIED MYSELF ALIVE
It was, so far, a pretty good day. They had just signed a major contract with Reprise Records, were ready at any moment to start work on their first record ever. Spirits were flying high –
Apparently spirits weren't the only thing.
"Bert," said Quinn, his face going blank, as his mind could not yet draw a conclusive emotion to put onto it. "Oh no…"
He ran across the vast, empty hallway, Branden and Jeph close behind him.
Bert McCracken was lying on the tile in that vast hallway, completely passed out, his eyes shut, his body sprawled where he had fallen. Quinn fell to his knees by Bert's side, grabbing him, shaking him. "Bert…no…please…what did you take today? Please, say something!" He was starting to panic just a little. Oh, God, please, let this not be happening… "Call someone," he said to Jeph. "Anyone…call 911…call John Feldmann! And find me one of those shocky things…"
"A defibrillator?" asked Branden, somewhat calmer than Quinn, perhaps because he didn't care quite as much whether Bert lived or not.
"Yes! Get me one of those," said Quinn, almost hysterically, bending over his friend on the tiles. "Bert, please tell me you're alive…" Quinn whispered, listening carefully for any sign that Bert was breathing.
Was he getting paler? Was that actually happening? "Oh, God, he's not breathing," Quinn whispered. Jeph was watching him in slight panic, his phone held to his ear. "911? Yeah, my friend is unconscious, we don't know what happened…"
Quinn shifted Bert so that he was flat on his back instead of lying in the sprawling, slightly twisted way he had before. He placed his hand cautiously on Bert's chest and started giving him compressions. One, two, three, four…five… How many are you supposed to give? Thirty? And now he had lost count, so he gave up counting as a bad job and just pumped, watching Bert's face, hoping for some reaction, hoping desperately that his friend would suddenly start breathing again.
He was afraid to push too hard on Bert's chest. Bert felt fragile, easily broken.
Quinn stopped pumping, giving his full attention to Bert's face. There was no change at all, unless you counted the chance that he had grown still paler. Maybe even slightly…no, not blue. Quinn refused to believe that. He threw himself forward, grabbed Bert by the face and pressed his mouth against his band mate's. He remembered in a rush those times when he and Bert had done this for fun, Bert's mouth on his, the random kissing, the games…
He stopped, returning to Bert's chest with both hands this time. He started another set of compressions.
He felt something give. He heard a faint cracking noise. Oh, please, not the ribs…I can't be the one who broke his ribs… He tried to be more gentle, but Bert wasn't changing. His skin was still pale, deathly pale. He…twitched? Did his mouth just move? A strangled sound came from his throat and his head fell to the side. The smallest stream of blood glistened from his mouth.
"Oh, Jepha, do something!" Quinn shouted.
Jeph stopped trying to talk to the 911 lady, just dropping his phone and running to join Quinn on Bert's other side. "What can I do?"
"Just…"
"Defibrillator," Quinn heard, and jumped up to see Branden approaching with the med box containing the defibrillator.
"Give him more compressions!" he shouted to Jepha, running to help Branden, not that Branden needed any help with the small med box.
They rushed back to Bert's side, scrambling on the floor to open the box and pull out the electronic device inside. Quinn grabbed the two pads, trying to discern the simple pictorial instructions on each of them. "Okay…we've got to get off his shirt, someone get off his shirt!"
Jeph didn't bother trying to pull it through Bert's limp arms, instead just grabbing it and tearing the cloth in two.
"Okay…" said Quinn, studying the pictures again. He ripped off the plastic covering and placed the pads accordingly on Bert's chest, sticking them to his skin. They clung awkwardly to his chest hair…he hadn't shaved in weeks. Quinn thought this was weird and wrong, but he neither had the time nor the care to worry about it right now. "Okay…" he said again, turning towards the machine, but Branden was already jacking the wire connecting the pads to the defibrillator. "Stand clear," a metallic voice issued from the box.
"That means don't touch," Jepha reminded, pushing Quinn's hands away from where they rested on Bert's chest.
"Analyzing…"
"This is taking too fucking long!" Quinn exclaimed, wringing his hands after a mere second of silence while the machine worked.
"Insufficient contact. Readjust pads."
"They don't need adjusting!" Quinn exclaimed, as he and Jepha hurriedly examined the stupid things. They were in the right places, the plastic peeled off, they were stuck to Bert's skin…
To his chest hair.
"He needs to lose the hair," said Quinn. "It can't get the reading… What have we got?"
"Um…" said Branden.
"Does anyone have a knife?" asked Jepha. "We could…"
"I think I have a razor blade," said Quinn, rising to his knees so he could reach for his wallet. He had to have one, he knew he did.
"We could use duct tape," said Branden.
"What?" said Quinn, so shocked by this statement that for a moment he lost his wild panic and could only look at Branden in surprise.
"They left us duct tape in the box," he said, proffering a roll of shiny silver duct tape. "Perhaps they meant it for this very purpose…"
"Let's try," said Quinn, grabbing the duct tape. He pulled off a strip with shaking hands and rapidly handed the roll to Jeph, who did the same as Quinn applied his strip to Bert's chest, over his heart. He pressed it down as evenly as he could with his rapidly shaking hands. "Okay, Bert," he almost whispered. "I'm sorry."
And he ripped off the tape, taking clumps of Bert's hair with it. Then Jeph ripped off his. Quinn rapidly tore off another strand of tape. "Just one more," he whispered, sticking tape to Bert's chest.
Branden had the defibrillator pads in his hands. Quinn and Jeph got out of his way so he could reapply them to Bert, who was definitely starting to look blue. Quinn could feel his heart beating faster than he thought it had ever done before. Vaguely he heard the machine's metallic voice stating that they should stand clear. "Analyzing…" "Shock required. Stand clear. Charging…"
"Get back, guys," Branden warned, and they drew back, careful not to touch Bert or the defibrillator.
"Delivering."
The sound was loud and electric. Bert's chest jolted violently, his arms jumping slightly, his legs seizing for the briefest of moments. But he still wasn't breathing.
"Begin CPR…"
"Ohhh," moaned Quinn, rushing back to Bert's side and starting his compressions again. Bert's chest gave a bit more than Quinn thought it should, but he persistently kept pumping. His panic was starting to die, but not in a pleasant way. Not like he had seen some sign of Bert's return to consciousness and, in fact, life, but rather that he was starting to accept what his brain refused to comprehend. That Bert was dying, was even already dead, and that he, Quinn, was not about to save him.
He stopped the compressions, shifting to the side. Branden had been brushing blood from Bert's mouth with his thumb, but Quinn was so frantic that he didn't even notice him or realize that Btanden could have done this, pushing himself in next to Bert, shifting his head, seeing blood in his mouth. He pressed his lips to Bert's, breathing into him, begging silently, begging him, begging God, please, let Bert live…
Then he felt a sudden sucking for air and heard a ragged horrid gasping sound, felt movement in the body he held in his hands. He drew back quickly, holding Bert upright as his friend suddenly coughed, blood and puke spilling from his mouth onto the tiles. Bert's hand clutched at his stomach, while his chest heaved rapidly up and down as he gasped loudly for air. He cringed suddenly, his hand grasping at his chest. "I…I…uurgggh…"
"Bert, you're gonna be fine, everything's fine," said Quinn, even though everything was not and there was no guarantee Bert would be either. A siren whined closer somewhere outside the building.
Quinn lay Bert back down on the floor, on his side, Jeph and Branden leaning in around their fallen companion, murmuring condolences and sweet promises to him. Bert groaned, a pained, whiny groan, and curled onto his side, clutching at his chest. "I may have broken your ribs," Quinn said to him fondly, rubbing his hand gently over Bert's shoulder.
The doors of the building flew open. Paramedics were coming in, carrying a stretcher. "Get back, get back," they commanded.
Bert's ribs were declared broken. He was carefully moved onto the stretcher and carried to the ambulance. He was aware enough to realize what was happening and to be less than thrilled about it. "No," he mumbled. "Don't take me. You can't take me alive!" He was starting to scream hysterically. The scream was loud and grating and full of pain and dementia. Quinn glanced at Branden and Jeph, a faint grin on his face. "See why I chose him to be our lead singer?" he asked.
Bert lay without his shirt on a hospital bed, awake and aware, injected with painkillers, waiting for the nurses to return and finish preparing him for the setting of his broken ribs. He was exhausted, his muscles ached for no obvious reason, his heart beat felt funny, he kept coughing blood, and his throat still tasted like bile. And there were two large and faintly stinging bare patches on his uncovered chest.
Quinn, Branden, and Jeph were sitting around the side of his bed. They glanced alternately between themselves, Bert, and the chaotic desk outside where they knew the nurses had disappeared to. Wondering who would be the first to start explaining what had happened.
Quinn took a breath. "Bert, what did you take?" he asked quietly, his eyes bright, eager for the answer.
Bert sat up a little straighter in bed. "I don't remember what I took," he said. "But, I won't answer any more of your questions until you tell me how…" he raised a hand awkwardly and pointed at his own chest "…I ended up losing all of this chest hair?"
So. In my CPR class, our instructor told us that once, she found a roll of duct tape in the case with a defibrillator. And the only use she could think of for it was ripping out chest hair. Which I thought was so freaking hilarious; I got this image at some point in the class of Bert not breathing and his band mates trying to resuscitate him. So I automatically went to Bert with the duct tape thing. I spent all the rest of the class trying to hold back random hysterical laughter at the thought of Bert having his chest hair ripped out (oh em gee, I almost just started laughing EVEN NOW). So. I had to write this.
Btw, I was writing pages and pages of stuff for an MCR fic right before I wrote this, and I have now been writing so long that I'm making those random and stupid spelling mistakes and stuff. Like, just the way your mind makes it sound is the way you type it, and you don't even notice you've done it till the editing. I'm going to have to edit again tomorrow. When I'm somewhat sane.
Anyway. Hope you liked it :)
Xoxo,
Rebel Rose