Chapter Twenty-Seven

Jesse

I’d tried to get to my feet a dozen times and fallen each one. But each time, I had slightly more strength, made a little more progress, and protected myself a little more on the fall. Now as the day turned to evening, I struggled again to my knees. Progress. Just a little progress.

The heat was finally starting to die off as the sun disappeared. But the heat would simply be replaced by an encroaching darkness that was just as dangerous. I was dying of thirst, and I had lost a lot of blood. I was pretty sure I wasn’t bleeding a lot anymore, but the wound on the back of my skull was pretty bad. Bad enough that they thought they’d killed me, so bad .

My head throbbed as I tried to crawl toward a tree. If I could get to that, I could use it to rest in a sitting position and not have to struggle so much. I could also use it to help me stand. Any help was appreciated at this point.

I made it to the tree and leaned against it, letting my elbows rest and trying to will the world to stop spinning. Everything hurt. I couldn’t believe he’d gotten the drop on me like that, and what’s more, I couldn’t believe he thought he’d killed me and just dumped me in the woods. On top of being the biggest idiot I’d ever met, he was even more callous than I thought he was.

And Lacey… My God, Lacey.

She was the one pushing for him to shoot me. She was colder than ice. She led me to believe that child was mine, knowing it wasn’t, just so they could take the ranch? I wasn’t even sure I followed their logic, but then again, I had been hit in the head pretty hard, so I might just not be thinking correctly.

I felt another wave of strength and hoisted myself up on my knees. Moving one leg out from under me was painful as hell, but I got my foot planted firmly on the dirt. Step one, as it were. Reaching for the tree, I wrapped my arms around it like I was hugging a long-lost friend and leaned into it, sliding my other leg out from under me and planting that foot as well.

Then I stood.

Everything was spinning, and I felt like I might throw up, but I was upright. Knowing how close I had come to taking a dirt nap, I was going to count that as a win. Now I needed to get the hell out of here and find some help. Fast.

I stumbled a bit as I walked, reaching for the next tree to guide me as I made my way out of the thin forest area toward the road. Occasionally, I heard a car zoom by and wondered if I could flag someone down. Not after nightfall, I was sure of that. If I came out of the woods all bruised and bloody, and tried to flag someone down in their headlights, they would think I was some ghoul and likely run me over on purpose. People around here were convinced The Walking Dead wasn’t just a TV show, it was a prophecy.

Going down to one knee only once, I made it to the edge of the treeline with a little daylight left. There wasn’t much of a gap between the trees and the road itself, so I didn’t have a lot of space to stand and try to get someone’s attention. My best bet was to try to get to where I could dive back into the woods if I needed to and wave as frantically as my exhausted body would allow.

I stepped out into the space between the road and the grass and saw a car coming in the distance. I raised one arm and tried to wave. The car seemed to be completely oblivious of me until the absolute last second, when it swerved away, spun in a circle, and came to a stop facing the other direction.

“Holy shit, Jesse?”

My ears were telling me one thing, but my mind was telling me that, rationally, it wasn’t possible. I must be hallucinating. There was no way that the person coming out of that car and heading toward me, mouth agape, was Kevin. Kevin, my bandmate and brother on the road for a decade. Kevin, who should be down at the Gulf right now.

“Kev?” I asked.

“Jesus, Jesse, what happened to you?”

“I… help?”

Kevin caught me as I fell forward and dragged me as best he could toward his car. A woman got out, her voice so hysterical that I didn’t even realize it was his girlfriend, Sarah. They stuffed me into the back of their car, and I got a sick feeling at how familiar it felt.

“Hand me the phone,” Kevin said, and I heard them shuffling around in the front.

“Thank God we were here,” Sarah said. “My God, what happened to you? We were coming to spring you out of jail!”

“What?”

“I heard about you getting arrested again,” Kevin said. “We cut our vacation short to come down here and hold a little intervention. Flynn said you were causing all sorts of havoc down here and might jeopardize the whole band, so I figured we could talk some sense into you. I was going to yell at you for screwing things up, but… I guess what you were saying about the Andersons was true, huh?”

“How did you know?” I groaned.

He shook his head and looked back at me through the rear-view mirror.

“I just had a feeling. So this is a bit worse than some one-off brawl like you had a couple months ago. What happened?”

“Just drive. I’ll tell you on the way.”

“I’ll call 9-1-1,” Sarah said. “Let them know we are on the way with him.”

As Kevin drove, and after Sarah got off the call with the hospital, I tried to recount what had happened to the best of my ability. But as the car ride wore on, I kept finding myself zoning out. When I came to the last time, the car was stopped and the back door was opened. Hands reached for me and pulled me out of the car feet first and straight onto a gurney.

Voices above me were shouting instructions, and something closed over my nose and mouth. An intrusive amount of air started filling my lungs, and I coughed.

“Doctor!”

“What?”

“He coughed. Look.”

“Is that coming from the back of his skull?”

“Yes.”

“Get him into room three, right now. And flip him on his side. I need to see the back of his head.”

Further instructions were shouted out. Several CCs of this. A shot of that. Clothes were torn off of me, and a gown was draped overtop. Painful prodding was going on in the back of my head as they laid me on my side and held me there. A bandage was wrapped all the way around my skull, stopping just short of my eyes, and then taped off before I was laid back down on my back.

People came in and out of the room, a nurse coming and covering me up so I wasn’t so cold after they had washed and cleaned the wounds on my legs and hips. I hadn’t even been aware of them until they began brushing them with alcohol. Then I became very aware of them.

Eventually, things quieted down, and I dozed on and off with whatever drugs they were pumping me with. When I had moments of lucidity, I was pleased to see Amber there, working as one of the nurses and helping me out. I could trust her. Whatever was going to happen to me now, I knew I was in good hands.

As I closed my eyes again, my mind drifted to the only thing that could make me feel better.

I dreamed of a field on a cool fall afternoon. A light breeze was blowing the grass and clouds, making shapes in the sky. Lying in the grass beside me was Charlotte. She pointed to a shape above her and laughed. She curled into my arm, and I kissed the top of her head. It was a memory, one from many years before, but one I came to when I wanted to just feel that warmth again. That happiness.

For that moment, all was good in the world, and I could see a future where it would only get better.

I let myself drift to sleep thinking of that memory, letting it envelop me until it was real, all around me. Until I was lying in that grass with Charlotte’s body curled into mine. Looking up into the clouds and laughing at what we saw.