When You Need Vodka as Life Support

I'll just make this clear now. I rarely listen to people when they bitch and complain about their relationship with their parents. Especially since my relationship with my parents is so awesome. Their unconditional love, especially in the time when I couldn't deal with life was amazing. They brought me to therapists (even when I said I didn't need to see one), they stuck food down my throat so I wouldn't starve (even when I thought I would vomit it back up a second later), and they stayed by my bed for days (even when I told them I wanted to be alone). That is why I was skeptical when Mac told me that Danny and his father didn't get along. I mean, what child doesn't get along with his or her father?

At the hospital waiting for his parents I look at Danny through the window of his room. The harsh florescent lighting makes him look weaker than he probably is. At the moment he is curled into a ball and moaning in pain. Doctors have hooked him up to a morphine drip, although they have no idea what has happened to him. I feel so helpless. Not only were my teenage best friends brutally attacked, but now Danny, possibly my something more has been too. And now, all I can do is wait.

"Lindsay?" Mac takes my shoulder, "How's he doing?"

A single tear falls down my cheek and I whisper, "Whoever did this to him hurt him pretty badly."

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"Daniel Messer's room please," asks a middle-aged woman wearing faux fur. The coat is much too big for her and it looks like she is swallowed by it. She manages to lift the hem up and search for her son's room. She had called Danny's father but his reply is that if he got into trouble it was his own damn fault. He watched too many of his sons end up in juvie or beaten to death to bear to watch another son do the same. He was tired of the same old routine, even if Danny was his favourite, and not that he would ever admit it.

Danny's mother approaches his room and sees a young woman and Danny's boss in an embrace. She thought at first that it wasn't innocent until she saw the worry etched on both their faces. Danny means a lot to them and she is glad that he has friends to watch out for him. She guesses that the woman is Lindsay, his Montana, the girl that he talks so much about, and the man is his boss Mac Taylor, whom she met briefly earlier a couple years before.

"I just wish I could do something. Danny looks so helpless, and I hate that. He shouldn't be like this," Danny's mother overhears Lindsay say to her boss.

"I know, I know," Mac says as he rubs her shoulders. "Maybe it's because you're really tense."

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His mother clears her throat and I look behind me to wear she's standing. "Are you Lindsay?" she asks, as if she is expecting someone else.

"Yes. You must be his mother, Elaine."

"Is your husband coming as well?"

Mac looks at me as if I'm crazy for asking and I'll soon find out why

"Well…" she shrugs. "He is a little busy with work and everything."

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"Messer!" he bellows into the halls. "Where the hell is the room for Danny Messer!"