Eyes Like Sky ⚣ ✓

8.

It felt like I worked every weekend, but because of my struggle to compose damn near anything, I had almost nothing to show for those countless hours, and Hendrix refused to acknowledge my shortcomings as work.

It was a miracle I even got a few minutes of music composed by now- I had woken up in the middle of the night with a new melody from my dream, and got to work. Somewhere between then and this evening, I must've dozed off back to the dream world.

I couldn't have been out for long because I didn't really fall into deep enough sleep to actually enter the dream world again.

The sheet music was out of order now, and sprawled all over my bed. I noticed a few pages had fallen to the hardwood floors when I got up so abruptly.

Great, I thought to myself. It was truly a gift at how well I self sabotaged. I had only numbered about half the pages, so from then on, I had to read every bar to try and piece it all back together.

Luckily the call with Atlas had done the trick to wake me up. I clenched the now arranged sheets of music against my chest as I quickly but carefully scrambled back to my piano in the living room. The only thing that could really send me into a fit of range, would've been dropping these pages right after arranging them again.

My beautiful Steinway Semi- Concert Grand Piano was awaiting me, like she always was. She was one of the most consistent things in my life, and an incredible gift from my mum and dad for my seventeenth birthday. She was one of my most prized processions, this Ol' Bess. It'll be ten years around the sun together with my upcoming birthday at the end of this year, and she's as perfect as when I got her.

Never turning her back on me even when all I could do was stare at her in frustration. It wasn't her fault that she wouldn't lower her standards for me. That was the beauty of the keys. It was on me to fix whatever was going on that was messing with my performance.

"I think I finally got something for ya," I spoke to the jet black piano, giving her a light pat on the hood. "Been a while, I know. I'm working on cutting back the drinking and stuff so I'm feeling pretty optimistic."

I'd swear on my life that me and this piano could communicate. How else would one explain the incredibly judgmental vibes I got from her just moments later?

I set the beginning pages of the sheet music out on the holder in front of me, then took a seat on the large extended bench, and started to play.

Hendrix managed to call an additional three times during the course of my weekend. Two of those calls came around midnight on Saturday and Sunday night. Hendrix said she was just checking on my progress, but she wasn't slick enough  for me.

This was really her way of guaranteeing that I kept my ass planted on this piano bench and not in some nighclub surrounded by distractions. The way Hendrix's attitude was set up, she wouldve taken it upon herself to come drag me out of whatever club I found myself in anyways. It wasn't worth the humiliation of being taken down by a five foot something woman with a background in wrestling.

Instead I did what was expected of me, cranking out another few pages of music before the new week rolled around. By the time I called it quits, which was early into the wee hours of the morning, my hand was aching with cramps. The doctors had told me to take it easy, but that was easier said than done when my future with the company was at stake.

It wasn't like the company was heartless. As soon as I told the director of my situation, they immediately granted bereavement hours, and an extension on my paid leave. They even offered to cover a portion of my mother's funeral, but dear old dad wasn't having that. My father told me it was his responsibility to lay his wife to rest, which at the time I was still too in shock to bother to argue with. At that time, I was still in the hospital getting ready for the first of many surgeries.

The time off that the company gave me post surgeries, I spent going out and getting drunk. At first, my father and Hendrix allowed it... I mean, who was going to check a person who just lost their mum? Let alone, lost her in a crash that they themselves were in?  Yeah it didn't take much to get my dad and my manager off my back. After a few more months, my injuries healed and I was cleared to play again... But by then, my alcoholism and depression had taken a turn for the worse.

The many surgeries I underwent after the crash still haunted me, all the feelings that came with the uncertainty of not being able to play again. I never wanted to see another hospital room, or feel another prick for nerve damage analysis. I never wanted to feel those itchy and stiff hand braces that stopped my tendons from healing incorrectly.

And fuck Doctor Brown at that. How was it I managed to get the father of one of my biggest competitors, as my doctor? Like seriously, If I had had even a shred of consciousness when I was rushed into the emergency room, I would've never let that idiot touch my hands.

Hendrix assured me that Doctor Cambridge Brown was in fact one of the best surgeons in the state, but I reminded Hendrix of the insanity levels parents could go to, to ensure the successes of their children.

All I knew was that Kieron Brown composed a Sundance project last year that he had almost no credentials or talent for, and I could've sworn I saw the director of the film and Doctor Cambridge Brown all buddy buddy during the release party. Cambridge and I made eye contact for just a moment at the event, and the doctor gave me a smile.

It was a smile that almost felt disrespectful, like he knew that I knew that he had finessed this deal out from under the table. The table I held the most prominent seat at.

I tried to tell Hendrix all of this after my first round of surgery, but she just told me to shut the hell up and stop acting like an idiot... so I guess that was the end of that...

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