Mixtape For The End of the World

38. Pete and Gabe visit Brendon in the hospital.

38. Pete and Gabe visit Brendon in the hospital.

"We would be terrible friends if we didn't go and see Brendon," Gabe said after Mikey and Gerard had gone back into the house to figure out what to do now.

"What about the visions?" I asked. "There are only two left before you die, and we'll be making one of them come true if we go to the hospital now."

"As I said, we're Brendon's friends," Gabe said. "We have to make sure he's okay. It's not like his family is going to drive all the way here from Shermer."

Gabe was right, so the two of us climbed into the DeLorean, and Gabe pulled out a map. I put on the road trip mixtape, but the first song that came on was far too cheerful. "What else do you have?" Gabe asked. He looked through my collection and then said, "There isn't a mixtape for driving to a hospital in New Jersey to see Brendon because that idiot broke his foot from jumping out the second floor."

"I never thought that would happen," I said. I then suggested that one of my mixtapes for crying on the couch might work. Gabe put the mixtape in, and we listened to The Cure and Joy Division as Gabe navigated me through Belleville.

When Gabe and I arrived at the hospital, we had to argue with the nurses a little bit, but we were eventually allowed to see our friend. Brendon was lying on a hospital bed, and I caught a whiff of the scent of dead skin on a linoleum floor. His left foot was covered in bandages, but he looked okay otherwise. He smiled when he saw us walk in, and he said, "Hey guys."

"Hey Brendon," I said. "How are you?"

"I'm fine," Brendon said. "They just gave me an X-ray, and they called my parents. I got to call them after that, and both of them were really freaked out, but they were nice enough to hand the phone over to Ryan for a few minutes. It was great to hear from him." A lovesick smile appeared on Brendon's face. He then asked, "Did anything else happen at the Ways' house?"

"Mikey, Gerard, and I went inside," I explained. "The iDKHOW merch guy stole everything that wasn't nailed down, and a few things that were."

Brendon sighed. "I should have known that guy was evil," he said. "You're lucky that he didn't steal the DeLorean."

"He didn't steal Gerard's sketchbook either," I said.

"That's pretty odd," Brendon said. "I'm still furious that he stole my wallet."

"It's not that big of a deal," Gabe said. "My parents were here illegally for years. I think you can get by without a wallet for a few days."

"Besides, you only had, like, twenty bucks in there," I said.

"I worked hard for those twenty bucks!" Brendon exclaimed. "Besides, that's not the problem. He has my driver's license, so he knows that we live in Illinois. If the iDKHOW guy decides that he wants revenge, he'll know exactly where to go."

"Brendon, you're being paranoid," I said.

"I'm not!" Brendon exclaimed. "He's basically stolen my identity. He could go around pretending to be me if he wanted to."

"He wouldn't do that," I said.

"Why not?" Brendon said. "He robbed Mikey and Gerard!"

All of a sudden, a nurse walked into the room. "Brendon, we got your X-ray results back," she explained. She showed Brendon the X-ray of his foot and explained everything in complicated scientific jargon, but we all understood the gist of what she was saying. Brendon's foot was broken in multiple places, and he would need surgery as soon as possible.

"It looks like it must have been a bad accident," the nurse said after she was done explaining everything in an attempt to sympathize with Brendon.