MOM2! You're back! Tell me, how do you feel about Seth? (no, really, tell me before it's too late – I'm going to be dual publishing, and while I've got my sights set on a certain traitorous wretch, I could be persuaded to go back to my...er, our...primary boo.)
Thank you to everyone who read, reviewed, favorited, followed, and stopped by. Comments, questions, concerns? Leave 'em in review! I'm trying to get better about responding to people.
"An' 'ello?"
Nick curled his lip in what would have been a snarl in any other situation, but ended up being a look of complete confusion. He'd expected Brena to answer her phone, not a gravel-voiced man who sounded three cigarettes away from a terminal case of lung cancer.
"Brena – this is Brena's phone, right?"
"Yeah, an' she's a bit busy, what with the funeral reception an' all. I'll have a message from ye or else I'll be 'angin' up now."
Nick was dumbfounded. He started to speak, to try to ask where Brena was and if she was okay, but Meredith came into his room and started talking over him, something about his chart compilation so the wheels could start turning on his discharge planning. No matter how hard Nick waved his hands at her, she refused to be quiet. Nick raised his voice, which caused Meredith to raise her voice, and they shouted at each other long enough for the man on the phone to hang up, calling Nick more than a few names in the process, and telling him not to call back and bother Brena.
"Meredith, what the fuck? I was – that was – on the phone, I mean! That was Brena! It wasn't Brena, someone else answered her phone, but I was trying to call her! Like you said!"
Meredith looked like she'd been shot, then scrambled for her cell phone in her scrubs pocket – she wasn't supposed to have it on her, but like so many rules at Magee, there was an Exception For Meredith – and tried dialing Brena. The call went directly to voicemail, and Meredith slammed her phone down on Nick's bedside table, before picking it up and dialing again, with the same results.
"Just leave."
Nick's voice was dead; calling it stone would have assigned it too much emotion. Meredith looked at him, blinking hard, and opened her mouth to speak, but he waved her off, staring at his phone as though he could make Brena call him if he just thought about it hard enough.
After that, Nick decided two weeks of avoiding Meredith would be easy enough. He talked to Dr. Morgan the same day of the botched phone call and explained his request for a new lead RN as, 'Reminds me too much of Deaglan, and I'm leaving soon anyway.' Sensing something else was going on, but not willing to rock the boat more than was necessary, Dr. Morgan quietly reassigned Meredith away from Nick, giving him no lead nurse whatsoever, but leaving Meredith in charge of his chart coordination. Meredith, in turn, was beside herself – she hadn't meant to ruin Nick's phone call; really, she hadn't expected him to call Brena at all – and when she went to the pub later that night to check on Brena and explain the situation to the bartender, she found her slumped over the bar, half-asleep and half-drunk, and her phone completely cleared of messages and calls.
"What the fuck did you do? She asked you to answer her phone, not go through it!"
"Aye, an' she got a call from an arse, earlier. I took it upon m'self to rid that one from the list, an' ye should be thankful." The bartender was on the edge of irritation with the tone Meredith took in speaking to him.
"You deleted the entire list," Meredith fumed, trying to prop Brena up against the wall and get her ready to go, "And her voicemail! How the fuck did you even get in to her voicemail?"
"Lass, m'trade is taps, not technology," The bartender shrugged, and went back to wiping out glasses.
"Did you tell her she had a call?"
Annoyed, the bartender threw his towel down on the bar. "She 'ad about forty calls; I di'n't stop to get names and faces and the like. 'Ere's no sign here what reads receptionist, now is 'ere?"
Meredith groaned, pulled Brena to standing, and debated telling her about Nick's call. Part of her thought Brena deserved to know, and part of her thought Brena would just argue the point with her, that she shouldn't say Nick called because it couldn't be true, and she couldn't do anything for him anyways. Ultimately, Meredith kept quiet, figuring that Brena wouldn't be sober enough to handle the news anyway, and pushed her into the passenger seat of her car.
"Is it time to go home, Mer?" Brena had at least registered that she was going out of the bar, but as for what was next, she had no idea.
"Yep. Buckle in, we're going to be driving."
"Mer, I don't want to go back there."
Meredith puzzled for a second, sliding into traffic and coming to a stop at a light. "Go where, Bren? We're not going back to Magee, if that's what you mean."
"No, Meredith. I don't want to go home." Brena rested her head against the passenger window, looking up into the yellowy street lights. "Nobody's there."
Relenting and circling the block, Meredith changed direction, driving away from Brena's brownstone and toward her own apartment. 'I get the feeling this is going to be a few-day-long kinda gig, Bren. I guess we'll figure out clothing in the morning.'
After that, time started, stopped, passed in jerking shards and fragments, and Nick found himself standing on the curb outside Magee like a prisoner released on parole, duffel bag in hand, waiting for a cab. 'Okay. I can do this. Get to the airport, the ticket is preloaded to my phone, get on the plane, get to the gym. Here we go.' He figured it'd all be simple enough, but then found himself asking the cab driver if he knew anyone named Brena.
"Common enough name, what's her last name?"
Nick stammered – he was caught, and he knew it. "I...I don't know. She's Irish...I..."
Roaring with laughter, the cabbie shifted gears and stomped on the gas pedal, tossing Nick back into the seat. "Hoo, well, there's a way to narrow it down. Y'know that ninety percent of the people 'round here are Irish?"
The rest of the ride to the airport was silent.
Claudio was thrilled to see Nick performing again, as was a majority of the other performers and crew members, but Nick couldn't muster up anything that felt like real happiness. Plenty of other feelings, to be sure, like the eager glee and then wrenching hate that filled him when a caterer brought out tiny gingersnap cookies midway through a pre-event meal setup. They weren't anything special; just a pre-stamped, frozen dough cutout, and Nick flicked one off the display plate, bouncing it along the table, crumbs sprinkling along as it went. The outward change in Nick was subtle, nearly impossible to notice if you didn't know what you were looking for – it could just as easily be assumed Nick didn't like the cookies, or was goofing around – but Claudio slid up to him, knowing that something was off.
"Come, my friend. You look unwell. Perhaps it is the creamed mushroom soup? It also looks...unwell."
"Christmas, C," Nick mumbled, letting Claudio lead him off by the elbow, "She smells like Christmas."
Claudio only shook his head. "Nick, my friend, call her."
"Nah, man. If Bren wanted to talk to me, she would have by now. Meredith knows I tried to talk to her. If nobody's called me back by now...then nobody's gonna call."
'If you will not remedy this situation, then I will. Or at least, I must try. You are much improved in every way except for your ability with women. Well, with this woman.' Claudio shook his head and deposited Nick at a table in catering, telling him to wait for CJ – which earned another string of mumbled words, none of them pleasant.
Plotlines that Nick prayed were forgotten were instead seized upon with vigor. He and CJ were always friendly, her ability with accents never failed to impress, and her turn as 'Lana' was garnering some stunning crowd reactions. He didn't think their new angle would work, though, and he wasn't eager to have fake feelings chase his real ones. As much as Nick wanted Brena to be watching him, to know that she hadn't forgotten him, he absolutely didn't want her to watch him kiss someone, and he knew this angle would be months long – the WWE did always love a good romance.
If Nick was being truly honest with himself, he hadn't wanted to leave Philadelphia til he found Brena. He wanted to demand that his cab driver take him from street to street, looking for bakeries under brownstones that were across from florist shops, so he could fold up in her ginger and smoke one more time. The loneliness made him, in turns, brokenhearted and furious. Nick felt she had both no reason to leave and every reason to leave, wondered if he imagined his level of importance to her, hated himself for getting so caught up in someone who couldn't possibly fit into his life – not its current incarnation, anyway – and then wrapped both of her quilts around him every night, opting to pay the extra baggage fee it took to accommodate the second suitcase required to travel the quilts with him on the road.
Honesty didn't warm his bed at night, and to stave off the loneliness that usually came with nightfall, Nick decided to get back in on the proverbial horse. He started to drown himself in whatever drinks were put in front of him at hotel bars – which were usually accompanied by a hopeful woman or two. Eventually he became bored with the hotel bars, and so Nick's overindulgent drinking eventually turned into near-total alcoholic binges at clubs, and even Claudio couldn't save him from himself.
Claudio had continued to room next to Nick at their hotels, thinking it would be better to hover and offer advice from a distance rather than demand him as a roommate and meddle outright. He noticed that, despite Nick's ridiculously risky behavior, there was an initial hesitance to bring anyone back to the room. Well, back in to the room – plenty of women had made it to the door, only to be turned away at the last second and taken back downstairs by security. On those nights, Nick would rage around in his room, slamming doors and banging furniture around, until Claudio would pound on the wall and Nick would quiet down.
Eventually, his self-control wore out, and Nick started letting the ring-rats and bar-whores into his bed – all of them, without fail, bearing some resemblance to Brena. At first, it was only once or twice a week that Claudio was treated to the sounds of Nick drinking too much, fucking too much, and then missing Brena too much, before kicking out a thoroughly unimpressed woman, but that increased over time until his indiscretions were near-nightly, a pattern that continued for months. Clearly he wasn't enjoying himself, but he persisted where any other man with common sense might have stopped. When Nick couldn't perform well or satisfy his partner, he compensated by screaming at them, blaming them, ranting about not coming home for his holidays, until they let themselves out the door. Nick would then let himself into the mini-bar, drinking double-shot bottles til he was numb enough to find his predicament tolerably irksome, instead of depressingly tiring.
Everything has a breaking point. It happened that Nick's came sooner than Claudio expected, but he was glad to see it – something had to force the issue. Nick brought a thin, likely coked-out, dark haired waif back to his room, banging the door against the slide-bolt on his way into the room. He'd wanted it propped open in case the girl decided to leave when they were done – generally, it was easier that way, and the exit wouldn't wake him up. Claudio considered banging on the wall as a signal to Nick that he was still awake, but he could hear Nick drunkenly bellow that he'd be back, he just wanted to take a shower. Thankful for small favors and the temporary respite they offered, Claudio could hear the bathroom door bang open, slam shut, and be followed by the sound of screaming pipes as Nick set the shower to hot, and hot only. The girl was strangely silent – no requests to join him in the shower, no turning on the TV – and Claudio began to wonder if she really was strung out or sick, as so many of Nick's other recent conquests were. Brena came by her thinness somewhat naturally through dance and stress; these girls were addicts, desperate, or both.
The bathroom door reversed the process minutes later, slamming open and banging shut, with Nick's heavy footfalls rattling the floor all the way in Claudio's room. It sll seemed normal – seedy, yet normal – until Nick started screaming and slurring at the girl. Then, Claudio couldn't get his shoes on fast enough, gave up on a shirt entirely, and was unable to understand what the girl was saying, only that it was through sobs. Nick, however, was perfectly clear, despite his intoxication.
"What the fuck are you doing? What the fuck do you think you're doing?" Nick hadn't even bothered to start at angry; he'd launched directly into fury and somehow flew from the doorway of the bathroom into the girl's face, grabbing her by the shoulders and shaking her.
"I don't know! I'm doing what you want, right?" The girl, scared, was trying to backpedal anywhere her feet would take her, but Nick was holding her and she was tripping over one of the quilts. Not the hotel quilt, of course, but Brena's quilt. She'd stripped completely while Nick was in the shower and had not only put the peacock quilt on the floor – in part for them to fuck on, so the bed wouldn't bang into the wall, but mostly so it was comfortable while she looked out the window. The view was spectacular, and if she wasn't in a position to be looking at Nick, she figured she may as well have something to look at – but had then also wrapped herself in the quilt Brena gave to Nick on his first night at Magee. Her naked, unwashed, intoxicated, drug-addled self.
Nick kept moving backwards, first holding the girl by her shoulders, then her neck, her balance compromised not only by the sickness brought on from her fading high, but by the corners of the quilt tangled through her ankles. He didn't realize the other quilt was on the floor until he tripped over it, hearing a tragically loud ripping sound in the process, and then followed that tragedy by slamming the girl's back into the window, the glass echoing with a warning thump that indicated a full break and long drop wasn't far behind if Nick tried that again.
"No! No, you're not! What the fuck are you doing?" Nick shook her again, banging her head into the window. "Who fucking told you to touch those?"
"Nobody!" The girl shook her head, starting to cry from fear and confusion, "No – I mean, you – you didn't say to do anything, but I thought I should, like, be...be..."
"Be what?" Nick spat, his fingers digging into her neck and arm. He knew he was going to leave marks, he knew that was not going to go over well with corporate, and he knew he didn't care.
"Be ready," The girl whispered, "I thought we were gonna, like..."
"Get out!" Nick roared, his volume setting his neighbors on one side of his room to pounding on the walls, "Get the fuck out! You weren't supposed to touch those! They're not yours! Those are from her, they're for me, they're not for you, they're...they're..."
The girl was trying to worm her way out of Nick's hands, sensing he was lost in his rant and she might not get another opportunity. Successful, she dropped the quilt from around her and scrambled for the towel Nick deposited on the floor as he rushed from the bathroom. She managed to wrap it around herself as he shoved her down; neither one of them knew why he'd want to bother slowing her exit from the room, at this point.
"Leave! Get out!" Nick was pinning her to the floor; she couldn't move to leave with his weight over her, and he'd latched solidly into her shoulders again. The door to Nick's room somehow slammed open, and then from between her fingers – she'd at least had the good sense to cover her face – she could see a second set of legs appear, pushing Nick away from her. Unconcerned with saving her dress, the girl paused only long enough to get her clutch from the edge of the bed before she ran from the room in her towel and directly into the arms of security. Babbling incoherently, the security staff nodded sympathetically as they led her down the hall and into the elevator, leaving everyone involved – which was now half the floor, as the girl screamed that Nick had lost his mind – wondering how this would be covered up and played down.
"Fuck! Fuck!" Nick was livid; he'd grabbed another towel from the bathroom to cover himself and was on the floor next to the quilt he'd tripped over. It was Deaglan's peacock quilt, now sporting a large tear through the left of the bird's fanned tail. The fabric was fragile enough from age that Nick's momentum and stomping had destroyed a large section of Hazel's stitching. "What the fuck! What the fuck! How do I fix this? What the fuck do I do to this? I can't fix this!" He wrung the fabric back and forth in his hands, eventually spinning on his knees to face Claudio. "What do I do now, C?"
Claudio, having heard the commotion and come running, made it into the room in time to shove Nick backwards, off the girl, letting her up from the floor and hopefully knocking some sense into his friend at the same time. It hadn't seemed to work; Nick went from rage at the girl to rage at himself, locking his fingers so firmly around the torn fabric that Claudio feared he'd damage it further.
"My friend, I am glad you do not lock doors. And, the quilt is not what you should be concerned with."
"What? No! The quilt! I fucked up her quilt!"
"Nick, you must..." Trailing off, Claudio looked at the shreds of fabric dangling from his friend's hands, "Come. Up on the bed. Nothing more to drink, and I will handle management. But – Nick, you must understand. This is the last time I will do this for you. You must do something about this situation. It is poison to you."
Nick was silent for a few minutes, fiddling with the cap to a mini-bar bottle of Stoli he'd found on the nightstand, and then downing the beverage as though it was water. "She's just gone. Brena, I mean. I don't want her to see this shit, anyway. You know...see what I'm doing," He rubbed his feet back and forth on the carpet, as if he was looking for something, sighed, and spoke again, "I called her, C, before I left the hospital. Meredith knows. Either Brena didn't get the message, or she doesn't care, but..." He pinched the cap from the bottle between his fingers, hard, and the metal folded into sharp edges. His voice was ragged, and the metal dug into his fingers.
"But?" Claudio wanted Nick to think it through, to figure out what was ruining him over Brena's lack of attention, but wasn't sure if this night's events would be enough, though they were certainly enough for Claudio. 'You will not find Brena in an addict. You will not find Brena in a hotel room. But you should go find her, Nick. It will help you. And I cannot continue to help you hide.'
"But nothing," Nick spat, "She didn't call back, so she's just over it. Not that there's anything to be over, that would mean she gave a shit in the first place."
Sighing, Claudio pulled Deaglan's ripped quilt from Nick's hands and folded it, then placed Brena's quilt on the bed. "Rest, my friend. You will have some decisions to make in the morning."
"Yeah, like what bar I'm going to, tomorrow night." Nick's tone was more hurt than sarcastic, and Claudio could only shake his head.
"No, my friend. Like what you are going to do with your potential time off. You know this incident will not go unaddressed. Perhaps..." Nick rolled with his back to Claudio as he spoke, so he wisely let it go. Pulling an ottoman up near the loveseat, Claudio put his feet up and settled in, watching Nick's ragged breathing hover somewhere between rage and despair before he fell into an uneasy sleep. Claudio, however, found sleep to be impossible, so he texted Meredith.
'Kostbarkeit, is it possible for someone to live and yet be dead?'
'I dunno, Switzerland. Why? Someone get hurt?'
Smiling at Meredith's pet name for him, and glancing at Nick, he texted back. 'Yes, no, and nearly. I will speak with you soon.'
Claudio figured he had time to come up with a plan, but Nick torpedoed that idea without any real effort. The next day, Nick was ordered to report to Talent Relations, where he blamed hotel security for not stopping him from taking the girl to his room. Then, when he was taken to task about his drinking, he blamed booking for giving him an unrelenting schedule with no time to unwind. The end result was that Nick found his TV time cut significantly, though he wasn't given any explicit time off, and was ordered to sober up and give drastic reconsideration to the company he kept – and to adjust it to exclude junkies, alcoholics, and hookers. Claudio was unsurprised with Talent Relations' demands, or with Nick's tantrum-style reaction, but was surprised – and grateful – to hear his phone trill out Meredith's ringtone later that night.
"Here's hoping your idiot is doing better than my idiot," Meredith whispered. The phone didn't have long to ring before Claudio picked up.
"Meredith? Thank God, kostbarkeit, it is you." Claudio sounded drained, and Meredith wondered what Nick had put him through on that particular night.