Secrets

Part Four: THP -- Boundaries

January 21, 2015

Everything was not fine.

Mike was sitting in the waiting room, across from Talinda, jiggling his foot restlessly. He'd caught her looking at him twice, and this time when their eyes met, he felt his cheeks color pink with embarrassed warmth.

"Why don't you walk around a bit, Mike?" she said quietly, glancing around the empty waiting area on the sixth floor of the surgical wing before turning her attention back to the magazine she was flipping through.

"I'm sorry," he apologized immediately, standing up to walk toward the wall of windows on the far side of the room. He paced for a few minutes before he stopped and looked out over the city, a thin veil of smog hanging about the tops of the buildings. Anxiety had been gripping his heart since they'd arrived at the hospital that morning for Chester's ankle surgery. He'd been the one to drive them all to the hospital, Talinda deciding yesterday that she'd be too nervous to drive. Mike hadn't thought twice when asked to come along about being at the hospital while Chester had the surgery, but now that he was here, he couldn't shake the sense of dread.

Even though it was a fairly routine procedure, the placing of plates and screws in Chester's leg, Mike knew he wouldn't relax until the nurse came to tell them that the vocalist was out of anesthesia. Something about Chester being put under made Mike's heart beat faster and his palms sweat. Logically he knew that complications due to general anesthesia were statistically unlikely, but Chester always seemed to be the exception to the rules. Every rule.

He rested his forearm against the glass window and then dropped his forehead to his arm, looking down six stories to the ground below. They'd been back in LA less than forty-eight hours, and the unfortunate reality of canceling the rest of the North American tour hadn't really sunk in for any of them yet. Maybe it had for Chester, who was already saying troubling things about being broken, and being home and once again the cause for canceling performances. He'd started in the very night he broke his ankle, berating himself in the bathroom of the hotel room as he and Mike tried to figure out how to get him showered before bed.

"I'm such an idiot, Mike. I can't believe I didn't see that bottle." He held onto Mike, one arm slung over his shoulders in an attempt to steady himself.

"It was an accident, Chester. We can't do anything about it now. And I know you don't want to hear it, but going back to LA and getting this set is important. You have to get your ankle repaired or we won't be missing just this one part of the tour. We'll be finished." Mike stopped when they got into the bathroom and looked at Chester meaningfully. "Better to miss a little than be finished forever, don't you think?"

Chester dropped his head and looked down at his bandaged foot. "Doesn't change the fact that if I wasn't so clumsy we wouldn't even be in this position."

"Ches... stop it. I know what you're doing. Don't let your head tell you this is your fault. It was an accident. Here, can you sit up on the counter?" Mike backed Chester up to the granite in the bathroom and helped him sit down, both legs dangling over the side. They looked at each other for a moment before Chester looked back at the floor as though he couldn't bear to hold the emcee's gaze for very long.

With one hand, Mike reached out to tilt Chester's chin up, taking in the disappointment clear in his sad expression. "C'mon, Ches, it's gonna be okay. We'll get you home and fixed up, and things will be fine." His thumb stroked lightly over Chester's cheek for a moment and he watched the vocalist's eyes close, then slow tears drip from under his lashes.

Mike watched one slide toward his thumb, and he caught it, wiping it gently away, then catching another before he raised his other hand to wipe the tears on his other cheek away. "Are you hurting?" Mike asked softly, his body hovering between Chester's knees as the vocalist sat on the counter.