Hey guys! Thanks for the nice reviews- especially to my "guest" reviewer from the last chapter. You made my day!

Dehydration, a generous bump on the head, a sprained wrist, and a scarred psyche were the inflictions Eric immediately felt when he woke up to find himself in a hospital bed. He was sore, exhausted, and a little hungry, considering he hadn't eaten in almost 24 hours.

Groaning, he tried to sit up, but a determined pair of hands pushed him back into the inclined bed. The hands belonged to Aaron, who stared at his younger friend with a mix of concern and anger.

"Hey," Eric croaked. "What happened?"

"You don't remember?" Aaron said, both emotions increasing slightly.

Aaron had posted himself by Eric's bedside, not leaving even for a moment. He had somehow got it into his head that this was his fault; he had been the last person to have a steady grip on Eric before the teen's tumble down the stairs. Even after Joy, Ritch, Valerie, and several nurses reminded him that it wasn't even remotely his fault, he refused to move until he was sure his friend would be okay.

Even while assuring Aaron that he was not to blame, the rest of the gang couldn't help but feel a little guilty themselves. Joy blamed herself for bringing Eric around the craziness that was a concert after-party. Ritch and Val couldn't help but kick themselves for not keeping closer track of their young friend.

But none of this mattered when Eric's eyes opened, only a few hours after Ritch first carried him through the doors of the hospital, asking for assistance in the calmest voice he could muster, given his internal panic. By the time they'd made it to the hospital, Eric was writhing and thrashing in his friend's arms, frightened at whatever he was seeing.

The nurses promptly put him on a stretcher, and a doctor administered a dose of valium to calm the panicking and seizing. Then they placed him in a dim, quiet room to keep him relaxed, and after a long period of "winding-down," Eric finally passed out. He'd been asleep ever since, during which time a sweet nurse came in and bandaged the sprained wrist that was the result of his stairway accident.

Now that he was awake, Eric blinked his eyes against the horror that he'd experienced over the night. He did remember: everything up until his fall, that is. But the memory seemed to be just as vivid and frightening as the real thing.

"Yeah," Eric said finally. "I do remember."

Aaron looked on, noticing the emotions that played across his friend's face. Eric noticed Aaron's silence and realized the frustration rubbing underneath the musician's placid demeanor.

"You gave us quite the scare, man," he said. "I haven't seen anybody that spun in a while."

"What did I take?"

"We're pretty sure you were up with Purple Haze."

Eric raised his eyebrow. His mind was still too fuzzy to translate slang into english. "Huh?"

"Acid."

Eric's eyes widened at that. He remembered taking some pills, but they'd looked similar to the ones he'd taken with his friends. "I thought they were like the ones you carried around."

"Which is why you took three?" Aaron gritted his teeth. Eric once again picked up on his anger.

"What's wrong with you?"

"What's wrong with me?" Aaron began, flaring his nostrils. "You could have died. You fell down a flight of stairs- you're just lucky that you only fell down the first set, and not all the way down. You didn't know who we were. You started seizing, Eric. I've been around the block with the stuff, but I've never seen a trip that bad that didn't end in death."

Eric didn't say anything, shocked at the outburst. He'd never seen the easygoing man so upset before. Finally, he broke the silence.

"Hey…hey…I'm sorry," he said softly. "I was stupid. I should have-"

"No, no, man, I'm sorry. I didn't mean to blow up at you. We were all just worried."

The teen glanced around the room. "Where is everyone else?"

"In the cafeteria, they should be back soon."

When the three did appear, Joy launched into Eric's arms, squeezing the breath out of him. Aaron had to pull her off of him before she suffocated the Point Place native. Valerie went the more demure route, gently embracing Eric and giving him a peck on the cheek. Ritch put his hand on Eric's shoulder; a nonverbal communication of his relief at seeing Eric awake.

"If you ever do something so stupid again, I'll kill you myself," Ritch warned.

"Trust me, I won't," Eric said. Despite his lighthearted attitude, he continually had to blink and shake his head to get the images from the previous night's trip out of his mind. He felt nauseous just from thinking of the way the walls had crumbled and collapsed down upon him, how his friends looked like demons, how he was frightened of the oblivion that threatened to swallow him up. What freaked him out the most, however, was that he didn't remember coming to the hospital, didn't remember falling down the stairs. He'd been conscious at that point, but reality hadn't been visible to him at the time.

He'd heard some stories of drug use gone wrong, but ending up in the hospital?

"How much did I take? It must have been bad," he asked, almost afraid of the answer.

"Well, you said you took two or three doses, but you were still high when we asked, so who knows. My best bet is three. You'd probably still be tripping if they hadn't sedated you," Ritch informed. "One hit might have kept you up there for hours."

The teen could feel the heat rising in his cheeks and ears. A few months on his own, and he ends up in the hospital. He'd been doing so well! Eric knew, deep down, that his friends had all done something like this before, but he doubted any of them had to be sedated by a handful of nurses.

He desperately wanted to be like his friends, but the wild and exciting lives they lead all revolved around the fact that they weren't dead.

It occurred to Eric that they were all missing work to be here for him, that they were all there to support him.

"Aw, man, I missed work today. I'm sorry, guys, I'll make it up next week," he promised to Ritch and Valerie, who looked at him like he was crazy.

"Are you still high?" Valerie asked. "We just care that you're alright. Being in the hospital is a pretty good excuse for missing work."

"I feel so stupid," he confessed.

"There's no reason to," Joy comforted him gently. "Look at us, we've all done stupid things like this."

"I bet none of you wound up in the hospital because you were too busy with a girl to notice what type of drugs you were taking."

"Kid, when I was your age, I hitchhiked across the country to go to a rock concert," Ritch reminded him.

"So did I," Valerie chimed in.

"What you did was very, very stupid," Aaron grinned. "But as far as maturity goes, you've still got us beat, no contest."

Eric laughed in spite of himself, and Joy pulled out her polaroid camera from her bag.

"A souvenir from this experience," she explained, snapping a picture of Eric in the bed.

"I think I'm just gonna try and forget this ever happened," Eric said.

Joy nodded in understanding, but grinned. "Then this is going in my photo album."

"So you're really feeling alright?" Valerie asked in concern.

Eric nodded. "So, can I go home now?" Being in the hospital around all of these doctors and nurses made him uncomfortable; they made him think of his mother. He didn't even want to consider her horror if she ever learned that he was in the hospital- and for drug use, no less. And Red's fury would be unyielding- the "cracking down" that occurred after Hyde had been busted with a little bit of weed would be nothing compared to this. Eric resolved to make sure they never found out.

"Let me get a nurse or someone, and we can ask if you're free to go," she said, turning and walking out the room, her husband on her heels.

Now that he was left alone with Aaron and Joy, Eric sighed. "So I think this is the second time you guys saved my life."

"I don't think so, kid," Aaron said. "All we did was take you to the hospital."

"Actually, I took you to the party, so this is indirectly my fault," Joy said. "I should have warned you not to get involved with anyone I don't know personally. Some of the girls can get pretty wild."

"I'm not a kid, I should have known not to-"

"See, but you didn't know. I give you those friggin' pills, tell you they're harmless, then leave you alone at a party where there are dozens of different types of pills that look just like them," Aaron says. "You're still new to this scene, man, and I should have warned you."

"Really, it's okay," Eric insisted. "And trust me, I'll never make that mistake again."

Valerie and Ritch returned. "A doctor's coming to make sure everything's alright, then you can go."

"Thank god," Eric said. "I'm hungry."

…..

The staff at the hospital was very accustomed to dealing with accidental overdoses, and everyone was surprisingly friendly to the teen, despite the condition he had been checked in for. Eric knew that if this had happened in Point Place, the nurses wouldn't have been so understanding.

The doctor released Eric on the grounds that he would take it easy- both in drug use and physical activity. The teen assured the doctor that the whole thing had been an accident, and that he was pretty sure he'd never touch something that strong again.

Physically, he felt okay. His friends accompanied him to a diner for lunch, then they all returned to the record shop to hang out.

However, the mental effects of the trip stuck with the teen.

Even after he laid back in his hotel bed (he had to assure his friends that he was absolutely fine before they let him go home for the night) he wouldn't get to sleep. Actually, he didn't want to sleep, because he knew that nightmares were just waiting to sneak up on his mind, Helter-Skelter style. It would take quite a while to get rid of the mental block his bad trip inflicted on him.

Nevertheless, his eyes did close, and he was lucky enough to slip into a mostly dreamless sleep.

….

It's amazing how the mind can heal itself, even after coming to the brink of chaos. Over the next few days, Eric got over the whole Electric Kool-Aid experience as best as he could. He got nightmares, and thinking too hard on that night sent him into a fretful tailspin, but it stopped affecting his day-to-day life. The reality of his possible death no longer bothered him, since he knew he hadn't been all that close to the end. But during his trip, he had been fairly certain life was over for him, and leftover emotions from that sensation creeped up on him from time to time. Despite that, he didn't fear death the way he had at first. He was all the wiser for the experience, if not all the more weathered and aged. The fact that his life might have been shortened now ensured that he would be much more careful, ironically lengthening his life considerably.

Also, his wrist healed up within the week, and getting back to work at the store took his mind off of the whole thing, and his focus gradually shifted to other concerns.

It was the middle of July, and while school didn't start again until the beginning of September, Eric knew that he was running out of time.

He didn't want to leave Chicago- he desperately wanted to stay and start a real life here with his friends. He saw no reason to return, he would be eighteen soon, and he could tell his parents where he was without the fear of them rushing to the city and dragging him back to Point Place. It was sort of nice to think that they wouldn't have any legal power over him after that. But he knew he would miss them, and if he broke his mother's heart by never returning to Point Place (he wasn't sure that it wouldn't kill her) then he knew there was a good chance he wouldn't be welcome there ever again, even for holidays. But would he even be welcome back there now? With his new hair, new clothes, and new outlook on life, he wasn't so confident that Red would tolerate this grown-up young man living under their roof. And after such a pivotal summer, Eric couldn't handle the mere thought of tolerating his senior year of high school. He was smart, so it would hardly be a matter of passing. But how can you listen to a bunch of middle-aged blowhards teach you about the real world, when most of them had never gone any further from Point Place than Kenosha?

Eric would have been much more willing to return to school if he had teachers like Aaron around.

Still, school was only a small part of his life, and he did miss his mom's cooking, his bedroom, his basement, his friends, and even the Vista Cruiser. One more year really couldn't hurt, right? It's not like Red was intending on keeping him around after graduation. One more year of domesticity, and he was free to do whatever he wanted.

The conflict raged on for days. Did he dare stay for the rest of high school? He was fairly sure he could get in to a local high school in Chicago, provided his friends would help him forge some paperwork. Then, with a high school diploma, he could go on to any college or university in Chicago. His grades were always good- perhaps he could get a scholarship; he knew that if he never returned, there was no way Red and Kitty would help fund his college education.

But even if he did take advantage of this jumpstart, there was a good chance he would never see his friends or family again. Well, that was dramatic, but he knew he wouldn't see them for a long time.

No matter how much thought he put in to it, he couldn't come up with a definitive answer.