Sheet Music - A Rock 'n' Roll Love Story
- Автор: Lister Ann
- Серия: Sheet Music #1
- Год: 2011
- Язык: голландский
- Год: Lulu.com
- ISBN: 9781105173578
- Жанр: Прочая древняя литература
Электронная книга - «Sheet Music - A Rock 'n' Roll Love Story». Краткое содержание книги:
The doctor rubbed at his face thoughtfully. “Is it possible she did this on purpose?”
“What do you mean?” Michael asked, his eyes locked onto the doctor. “Are you suggesting she deliberately tried to kill herself?”
The doctor nodded.
“No way!” he protested, but it was a notion he hadn’t yet considered. Then again, up until six months ago, he never would have thought it possible for Annie to become an addict either.
“I’m not saying she attempted to take her life, Michael. I’m just asking if you think the possibility was there. In any case, you saved her life. Another couple of hours and you’d be planning her funeral now and not her rehabilitation.”
The doctor gazed at Michael. “You do realize that is what she has to do now, right?”
“Yeah, I know the drill.”
“The clinic has a few beds open. If you could get her to sign herself in, we could get this started as soon as she wakes up.”
Michael nodded and shook the doctor’s hand. A few hours later, he was once again standing vigil in a hospital room waiting for Annie to wake up. The time slowly ticked by, silent as death, as she continued to sleep.
Just before dusk, she began to stir.
“Good morning,” he chirped, though it was almost night.
The sudden noise caused Annie to flinch. She groaned in protest and reached for her head. Michael stood where he was, leaning against a huge window in her room that offered an unyielding view of the Atlantic Ocean. When recognition of his voice registered in her brain she forced herself upright, seemingly in self-defense, and leaned against the headboard of the bed.
Let the games begin, he thought, taking a hearty gulp of his black coffee. How many interventions had he been apart of, trying to get friends off the drugs that were slowly killing them? He couldn’t remember, or maybe he didn’t want to.
“Where am I?” she asked, rubbing at her eyes.
“The hospital,” he answered quickly.
Annie’s shoulders stiffened. “You took me back to Boston?”
“Does that look like the city skyline to you?” he answered with sarcasm, pointing toward the receding tide.
Annie glanced above the windowsill from her bed, saw the ocean, and began to cry. “Then where am I?”
“Martha’s Vineyard Hospital. I wanted to take you to my beach house in West Chop so you wouldn’t have to wake up in another hospital, I’m thoughtful that way but, Dr. Ramos refused.”
“You own a house here?” she groaned, rolling her sore eyes. “Funny, you never mentioned that before now.”
“Sorry, I guess I never had a chance to work it into a conversation. We weren’t together long enough. But, if that omission upsets you then you really won’t want to hear that I also own the club you’ve been working in for the past several weeks.”
“You’ve got to be joking!”
“By the way, you’re fired.”
“Of all the places in the world I could have moved to get the hell away from you, I had to choose here!”
Michael smiled broadly and crossed his arms over his chest. “Fate works in mysterious ways, babe.”
“Screw you. There are plenty of other places to live and work.”
Michael moved closer and dropped himself into a chair beside her bed. “Do you remember what you did last night?” he asked, anxious to move the conversation onward.
Annie sat silent and rubbed at her eyes. “That’s none of your business.”
“Can’t remember, can you?”
“Fuck you!”
“I saved your life last night. The doctor said if you had been left alone another couple of hours, you’d be dead now. Which makes me have to ask myself, is that what your intention was?”
“Don’t flatter yourself. If I were going to kill myself, it wouldn’t be over you. Leave me alone. None of this concerns you.”
Annie staggered to her feet with her hand clasped over her mouth.
“Bathroom is in there,” he instructed. He followed and leaned against the door jam. “Don’t let that black shit scare you. It’s leftover charcoal from the emergency room. That’s what they use to induce vomiting in addicts so they don’t fucking die.”
“I’m not an addict!”
“Really? Then the ten pounds of pill bottles I removed from that dump you’ve been calling home must have been part of the room decor?”
“Why are you doing this to me? Can’t you just go away and leave me alone?”
Michael blocked her words from his mind. “You fucked up last night, Annie. In the rule book of junkies, you screwed up.”
“Stop calling me that!”
“Have you not bothered to look at yourself in the mirror lately? What do you weigh now, 90 pounds? Have you seen how dead your eyes look?”
Annie forced herself up from the floor and lunged at him, her hands lashing out wildly against his chest and face. “God, I hate you! You think you’re so high and mighty! But you’re nothing more than a lying bastard: a monster in a shiny black car!”
Michael grabbed hold of her before she slid back to the floor. Then spun her around to face the mirror above the sink. “You can deny it all you want but that won’t change the reflection staring back at you from that mirror. You’re an addict. Accept it and deal with it.”
Annie’s head dropped forward in exhaustion. “Please take me home.”
Michael kept his arms wrapped tightly around her tiny frame. “I’m sorry, but I can’t do that.”
“Why not?”
Knowing the reaction that was about to come, he strengthened his grip on her. “The only place I’m taking you is rehab.”
Then came the second assault. With every ounce of fight she had left, she physically and verbally raged on him: insulting, hateful words that cut him to the bone, and still he held on, even though his own anger was reaching the boiling point. His head ached from the attack but he knew it wasn’t her spewing the hate. It was the disease.
“You can say whatever you want, Annie,” he shouted against her neck. “It’s not you talking right now…it’s the drugs.”
He continued to hold his grip until she stopped fighting and slumped limply in his arms. “I’m doing this because I care. Someday you might even thank me.”
“Fuck you,” she screamed, and then another violent outburst followed.
After tossing her back into bed, Michael dialed the extension to the rehab wing attached to the hospital and told them to expect Annie downstairs within the hour for admission.
Just before midnight, he pushed her downstairs in a wheelchair, then stopped outside the door to the rehab wing entrance. “Go inside, they’re waiting for you,” he instructed coldly.
She looked at him in the darkness, quiet and broken, tears streaming down her pale face. He knew it would be months before he would be able to erase that image from his memory.
“I'd say I'm sorry for this but I'm not,” he stated somberly. “This has to be done, and in some small way, you know it too.”
“Yes. But why can’t I do it as an out patient on my own?”
“That isn’t how it works, Annie. I’d do it for you if I could but I can’t. This is something you have to do by yourself and it will be, by far, the hardest thing you’ll ever have to face.”
Annie shook her head in agreement and stepped away from the wheelchair.
“When you’re ready, call me. I’m a lot easier to find than you were,” he said, forcing a smile onto his tired face.
Without the will to return the smile, Annie made her way toward the clinic door. Michael watched until she disappeared. It wasn’t until he got back to his beach house that he allowed the impact of what had happened to hit him fully and then it consumed him. It would be days before he could even bring himself to share the experience with Brian.