Laughing in the Face of Death – Chapter Two
Freddy awoke to bright lights shinning above him. 'Where am I?' he thought to himself. 'Is this Heaven?' He paused and looked around for a second. 'Nope, definitely not Heaven.'
Freddy found himself lying in a bed in the hospital. He was wearing a white hospital gown, and his arm was hooked up to an intervenes. He found himself wondering why he was there when he felt a pain in his stomach. Pulling up the gown, he looked down at himself. Freddy dropped the gown down in shock. His stomach was wrapped in bandages. But why?
Suddenly, a nurse burst into Freddy's hospital room. "Bless you, you're awake!" She breathed in happily. "I'm Nina. I'll be taking care of you." She held out a hand. Freddy shook it. Nina was an old woman, with white hair that was tied into a bun in the back of her head.
"We didn't think that you were going to make it," Nina was continuing on as she straightened Freddy's bed sheets. "The doctors weren't sure that the operation was going to come out okay. They thought that it would be fatal. You had as all worried, especially that young friend of yours."
Before Freddy could inquire whom his young friend was, a phone rang on his bedside table. Nina rushed to answer it.
"Hello?" she answered. "Yes, he's awake. Yes, you may talk to him." Nina handed the phone to Freddy. "It's your parents, dear," she said. Nina left the room. Freddy put the receiver to his ear.
"Hello?" he said.
"Freddy, Freddy is that you?" a voice that belonged to Freddy's father, Mr. Jones, questioned. "What happened? Are you sure you're okay? Do you need us with you? Is there anybody with you?"
"Dad, Dad calm down!" Freddy exclaimed, laughing a little bit, into the phone. "Yes, I'm alright. I'm at the hospital. The nurses and doctors are taking good care of me."
Mr. Jones let out a sigh of relief. "Well, that's good," he said. "But I still need to know what happened. Where were you last night?"
"Uh..." Freddy replied, confused. Where was he last night? He couldn't remember a thing. Suddenly, his stomach sent pain searing through his entire body. Then he remembered everything.
The club. His beers. The bottle of pills. Someone standing next to him. Someone trying to get him out of the club. Him striding away from that someone. That someone following him out of the club. That someone spinning him around. The sound of breaking glass. A group of older men. Him walking up to the older men. Him pointing a finger. An attempted punch. Him punching one of the older men in the stomach. Him being thrust backwards.
Then there was a fired shot. A shot that had sounded so horrible to him. A shot that hit him in the stomach. Freddy remembered smelling blood and growing cold as he slipped backwards into the open arms of that someone that he couldn't remember. He did remember going all the way down until most of his lower body was touching the pavement. The cold, hard pavement. But that someone was supporting his upper body. His head was lying on that someone's shoulder. He remembered thinking about death. He remembered thinking about how happy his was to be dying in that someone's arms. Whoever that someone was...
Freddy also remembered his vision going in and out of focus. His vision growing darker, and then coming back to that someone's face.
Darker.
That someone.
Darker.
That someone.
Darker.
That someone.
Darker.
That someone.
Freddy remembered his eyes making contact with that someone's eyes. That someone had dark brown eyes.
Beautiful, dark brown eyes...
Suddenly, Freddy hit himself with his free hand. He knew who that someone was.
Zack. His sweet, beautiful Zack.
"Zack..." Freddy whispered, accidentally, into the phone.
"What?" Mr. Jones called frantically. "What did you say, Freddy?"
Freddy was jerked back into reality. "Um, nothing Dad," Freddy started in. "I was walking home from the...video store...and I was shot. In the stomach." There was silence as Freddy finished his statement. He knew that if he told his parents the real truth, of how he was drunk and picked a fight with a dangerous group of men, they may actually kill him.
"Dad?" Freddy called into the phone. "Where are you?"
"Out in California," Mr. Jones replied. "On a business trip. With your mother. Listen son, my cell phone is running out of battery. We were planning on flying back to New York today, but they delayed our flight until eleven o'clock tonight. We'll be with you as soon as we can get into the airport."
"Alright," Freddy answered. "I love you guys." Mr. Jones had hung up the phone, so Freddy didn't receive an answer.
After he had hung up his own phone, Freddy sighed loudly as he slumped back into his pillows. He began to tap his fingers on the bedside table. His ADD was acting up, but Freddy paid it no mind. Instead, he was busy thinking of something else. Or someone else, to be exact.
'What had happened to Zack?' was the only thing that Freddy had been thinking about since he had remembered that it was Zack that he had been with last night. 'Did he get away? Was it him who called the ambulance? Did he leave me there if the police had shown up? Was he arresting in thinking that he was the one who shot me?'
Then one of Freddy's worst fears crept into his mind. It was a fear that made his heart race and all of the color drain from his face.
'Or worse,' Freddy thought, 'did Zack get killed?' It was possible, Freddy knew, that the men had fired on Zack, and that those shots had been fatal. He couldn't find any reason that the men would have not shot Zack, being that he was a witness to them shooting him. The thought of Zack's dead body lying next to his was unbearable, and the next thing he knew he was screaming, "No! NO!" in terror and thrashing around in his the hospital bed. Freddy must have been louder then he thought, for Nina and five other nurses came running in. They managed to calm Freddy down until all that was left of his tantrum were tears pouring from his eyes.
"The poor thing," one of the other nurses whispered, gently stroking Freddy's hair, which was still in spikes. Freddy pushed her hand away gently. The only person he wanted to stroke his hair in a comforting way was Zack.
"What went wrong?" one of the other nurses asked him. When Freddy didn't answer, she shrugged and walked off.
"You have some visitors, dear," Nina said to him. "I was going to send them in, but you might not be able to handle all of the pressure."
Thinking that one of the visitors might be Zack, Freddy reassured Nina that everything was okay, and that he would be cheered up if he saw people that he knew. So Nina left the room, only to come back a minute later with a group of people. Zack wasn't part of the group. Instead it was...
Dewey Finn, Summer, Lawrence, Frankie, Gordon, and Billy. Freddy cringed slightly. He hadn't seen half these people since they graduated from the eight grade, since everyone decided to go to different high schools except for him and Zack. They were inseparable. Until now.
"Shit, Freddy, you're alive!" Billy shrieked in his high tone of a voice. Freddy smirked. Some things never changed.
"Billy, watch your tongue," Summer scolded. She waved a finger in Billy's face, and all of his reaction was an eye roll and the folding of his arms. If Summer was waving a finger in his face, Freddy assumed, he would have punched her. But Billy was still a little bit of a wuss.
"Yo, chill out everyone. We didn't come here to fight. We came here to check on Spazzy McGee," Dewey said, silencing any further talk. Freddy sighed loudly. The only person that he allowed to call him Spazzy McGee was Zack.
"How are you doing?" Gordon asked anxiously.
"Yeah, dude, spill everything!" Frankie added.
Freddy sighed, and told them the same thing that he told Mr. Jones. He was walking home from the video store last night when he was shot in the stomach. Of course, they seemed to believe every single word that he had said. Summer and Billy both had had disgusted looks on there faces when Freddy talked about smelling blood and what it felt like to be shot.
His talking led to further discussion about many other things, and soon enough Nina came in to tell the group that they had to go. She seemed to think that Freddy needed some rest.
As the group began to leave, Dewey tossed some music magazines into his lap. "Enjoy those while you're here," he said. As he began to exit the room Freddy called out a question to him.
"Hey Dewey! Have you seen Zack?"
Dewey shrugged and shook his head to say "No".
Freddy moaned loudly, tossed the magazines to the floor, and then pulled the covers up over his head. He curled himself up into a ball as his tears began to slip slowly down his face. 'Then it might as well be true,' Freddy thought. 'If Zack were still alive, he would have been here by now. He must really be...'
But Freddy refused to continue the thought. Continuing to cry silently, he was vaguely aware when the door to his hospital room opened and then closed. He heard, however, footsteps that stopped at, what Freddy believed, was the edge of his bed. Thinking that it might be Nina or one of the other nurses, he said, in one of his coldest voice tones,
"I don't need anything Nina. Just go away!"
"It's not Nina," a voice answered back in a calm tone.
Freddy paused for a moment. He knew that voice. Could it be? He sat up and threw the covers away from his face. Yes, it could be.
Freddy's face split into a huge grin.
"Zack!" he exclaimed. The dark haired guitarist smiled at him, blushing a deep red. He was wearing the same clothes that he had had on the previous night, and looked rather tired.
"Oh Zack!" Freddy continued on. "I thought the worst thing had happened to you! I thought you had been shot! I thought they had killed you!" He paused for a moment, realizing that he wasn't acting much like he normally did. Zack, however, broke the silence.
"I'm alright," he reassured Freddy. "Enough about me. How are you feeling? I was up all night, worrying that you were dead!"
Freddy smiled to himself. It seemed that he had found out whom his young friend was that Nina had mentioned earlier.
"I'm feeling better, thanks," Freddy answered. "Zack, tell me. What happened after I passed out last night?"
Zack frowned, and looked around for a place to sit. Seeing that there were no chairs, Zack looked to Freddy. Freddy patted the edge of his bed. Zack sat down, blushing a crimson red. Smiling to himself, Freddy crawled over his bed sheets to were Zack was sitting. He ended up behind the guitarist, so he leaned in a little bit and rested his chin of Zack's shoulder. Zack's eyes snapped shut and Freddy could hear his heart beat quicken.
"Go on," Freddy whispered into Zack's ear. "I'm waiting."
"Well," Zack started up after a moment. "I was holding you in my arms when an ambulance came. A woman who was looking outside her window saw you get shot, and she panicked and called 9-1-1. So the doctor in the ambulance hooked you up to life support. They let me come a long, but maybe that was because I was in tears and hyperventilating. The men who shot you fled right after they did that, and the police department was busy questioning the woman. They wouldn't question me. So when we got to the hospital they ran you straight to the emergency room, and I heard from Nina that they were operating to get the bullet out of your stomach. I spent my night in the hospital. I tried sleeping, but I only managed to for about two hours."
"Shit," Freddy said in surprise. "No wonder you look like you've been to hell and back!"
Zack laughed nervously. There was a pause between the two. Freddy sighed loudly. He could feel his ADD acting up again. He was tempted to use the hand that wasn't hooked up to the intervenes to gently stroke Zack, but he wasn't sure if it was a good idea.
"Freddy?" Zack whispered nervously.
"Yes?"
"Out of curiosity, did you hear me say anything last night that would be...interesting?"
Freddy frowned for a moment as he thought back to last night. "I remember you saying something to me about not dying before you started crying in my face. Otherwise I can't remember hearing anything else at all. Why?"
Zack gulped nervously. "I told you something that I've wanted to tell you for awhile."
"What was that?" Freddy asked, his curiosity getting the better of him. "Tell me now."
Zack paused.
"Come on," Freddy said. "It can't be that bad!"
Zack sighed. "I said..." he started off.
"What?"
"I said..."
"What!"
"Oh gosh, I don't think I can do this!"
"Zachary Thomas Mooneyham, you either tell me what you said or I'll shove the intervenes down your throat!"
"I said..."
"Tell me!"
"I love you, Freddy!"
Xxxxxxxx {tbc}
