DESPITE IT BEING the weekend, Lindy was offered a Saturday night shift at the hospital in place of a nurse who wanted to take Lindy's Tuesday shift instead. An even trade which Lindy could have probably used to get her mind off of things.
As much as she could have used the distraction, she declined the offer. She had later chided herself for refusing, wondering why she wouldn't have traded a night of racing thoughts for something more balanced.
But this weekend was an important weekend.
Kurt was to be alone in his Seattle home for the first time in weeks. Courtney had left him to travel to Los Angeles, where she planned to take part in a 'hotel detox' that would hopefully help her to kick her own addiction. Frances and her nanny had gone too, leaving Kurt alone in the house except for the presence of Cali, who Lindy had learned was one of Frances's ex-nannies.
Kurt had hinted to Lindy that he would have liked for her to join him in his home while he was alone, but she'd turned him down. It was too weird for her to enter his house as if he did not share it with another woman. Despite whatever viciousness Courtney may have shown in the past, Lindy couldn't find it in her heart to disrespect her. And bedsides, Cali was there — Kurt swore that he wouldn't rat on them as long as he was doped up, but Lindy thought it to be too risky.
She guessed that she had been stupid to imagine that they would have spent all of their free time together, holed up in her apartment just as they had done in the good old days. Kurt had his heroin to tend to and when Lindy could not reach him, she assumed with a heavy heart that he was occupied with something more perverse.
So with that in mind, she situated herself on the couch for her lonely Saturday evening with a bowl of cereal and cartoons playing. She had tried to read her pregnancy book, but the joy of being pregnant was greatly subdued by Kurt's disheartening mental and physical state.
She was going to have to tell him soon.
If Lindy wanted Kurt alive so that he would witness the birth and life of their child, she would have to confess that she was pregnant. It bothered her, as she had never wanted to use the baby as a final ultimatum, but she was soon to be left without a choice.
Beth, Jack and Trae had all called her house phone, voicing their concerns that maybe Lindy had decidedly cut things too close. They were all aware of how badly Kurt was doing no matter how hard she tried to downplay it. All of them urged her to tell him before it was too late.
"Even if it's not the reaction you expect, do you really want anything to happen to him without him knowing he had a second child?" Trae had argued, making a point that sat indifferently with Lindy. She knew he was thinking about their mother and how they had not known of the child she'd been carrying when she had passed.
As much as she didn't want to admit it, Trae was right. Even if Kurt flipped out over having brought another baby into the world, there was no way that Lindy wanted to live her whole life without having gotten the chance to share that kind of news with the man she loved.
But of course, the ultimate goal was that there be no worry of Kurt going anywhere.
Lindy spooned another a bite of Lucky Charms into her mouth and attempted to train her attention on a repeat episode of Rocko's Modern Life. She was doing her very best to enjoy what she had deemed as a cozy night in, but it was hard to do so knowing that Kurt was most likely up to no good.
She resisted calling. No matter how badly she wanted to ring him and beg for him to come over, an unspoken understanding had arisen between them that if Kurt simply wasn't with Lindy, he wouldn't be making his location known to her.
The shittiest part is I can't even blame him, Lindy thought. She had seen Kurt's eyes when he'd talked about the pains of his addiction. It no longer of consisted of willing actions, with Kurt expertly cooking his heroin in a spoon and neatly drawing it into a syringe on his own accord. The addiction now had absolute control of that. The real Kurt, regardless of how deeply buried inside he was, was screaming to get out.
Lindy set her bowl aside, no longer feeling hungry enough to eat. She'd been partaking in a mental game with herself in which she tried to brainstorm baby names that she liked. Usually, she would come up with one or two names before giving the game up. It was too sad, not being able to consult Kurt on the names. It made her all the more desolate inside.
Suddenly, the phone rang. It didn't jolt Lindy in the least bit. She was accustomed to its trill, filling the hollow sound of her empty apartment.
She answered with her usual greeting, harboring a speck of hope that it would be Kurt who had called.
"Is this Lindy?" came an anxious voice on the other end.
Lindy felt her spine stiffen. "Yes, this is she. Who's this?"
"I'm calling for Kurt. He overdid it tonight and nobody knows what to fucking do . . ."
Lindy reached instinctively for her chest, feeling her lungs become absent of air although in reality, she was still breathing. She felt her hands take over, patting the counter for her keys.
"Where are you?" Lindy clamored. "Is this some kind of a joke?"
"No, man! I'm just a dealer. Everyone else in the apartment kicked him out when he started losing it. They just dragged him to his car. But I went through his wallet looking for someone to call because he's not looking too good."
Now entirely frightened, Lindy forced herself to keep calm. If she fell apart, she would not be able to drive to him. She had to keep telling herself this. If she didn't keep it together, she couldn't save him.
"Give me your address NOW," Lindy commanded. She took down the address, knowing of it vaguely as a less-than-desirable suburb of Seattle that surely housed a plethora of dealers. She thanked her lucky stars that she had a general idea of where she was going — otherwise she would have entered a game of hide and seek with Kurt's life that she didn't want to play.
She darted to her front door and slid her feet hurriedly into the first pair of shoes that she spotted, grabbing her jacket along the way and stuffing her arms into it.
In the midst of her panic, Lindy found it laughable that she still became so petrified when dealing with Kurt's lilting dance between life and death. She would have thought that by then, she would have been more than used to almost losing him.
_________
As she had predicted, the apartment that the address led Lindy to was grimy and in despicable condition. She drove around the entire place once, trying to find the apartment number that the stranger on the phone had given her — the darkness made it hard to see.
"Come on, dammit!" Lindy seethed, banging her hands against the steering wheel in desperation as she glared into the night. Her heart was racing, seeming to keep time with all the seconds that passed. All the seconds that were wasted while Kurt suffered.
What caught Lindy's attention was Kurt's Valiant, parked outside the furthest apartment building in the back of the complex. It sparked a moment of confusion, as she had been under the impression that Kurt had sold the Valiant and replaced it with his new powder blue Dodge Dart.
Her chest tightened. He was there.
Lindy sped her car forwards, practically flying over a speed bump before she came to a stop behind the Valiant. A man was standing next to it, the backdoor opened so that he could peer inside the car.
As nervous as she may have been to be in such a place, Lindy didn't think twice about the possibility of danger. She leaped out of her car and slammed the door, bolting straight for the mystery man standing next to Kurt's lonely Valiant.
"Where is he?" she snapped immediately. The man stumbled backwards but held out a limp finger, pointing to the backseat of the car where he'd been standing.
Lindy looked in and felt her heart plummet past her stomach, all the way to her knees and then straight into the ground and into the earth.
Kurt was spread across the backseat, his chest lurching every time that he gasped for air. Even in the dark, Lindy could see the ghostly pale that his face had turned, and when she saw the shade of blue on his lips, the same shade she had once seen in her bathroom, she cursed.
"I'm pretty sure he overdosed," the man behind Lindy explained nervously. Lindy didn't respond. She climbed halfway into the Valiant and hovered over Kurt's body. His eyes were rolling, but when they landed on her, they grew in size.
"Why didn't you call the police?" Lindy barked over her shoulder. She was beginning to hyperventilate; in her earlier fit of distress, she had been so eager to leave her apartment that she had not even checked the supply of Narcan in her dresser drawer before leaving.
"He said no. He shook his head when I insisted. Listen, no one wants Kurt Cobain to wind up dead in their apartment."
"Least of all me," Lindy hissed coldly. She didn't look at the man though, despite wanting more than anything to attack him with her bare hands. She devoted her attention to a sparsely breathing Kurt, warming his face with her palms.
"I thought he might be better off with you. Hopefully he'll be okay. I found this in his wallet."
Lindy whipped around, wondering what this stranger may have divulged from Kurt's personal things, but she was taken aback to see what he held in his hand.
It was a photo of her. She could tell by the edges that it been cut to fit into a wallet. It was taken forever ago, back when she had been in college and pouring over textbooks every single night. Kurt must have snapped the shot himself — she was looking up at the camera with her hand tucked under her chin, a knowing smile on her face. Her dark hair fell over her book and gave her the appearance of shyness.
"This was on the back," the man added, flipping the photo over. In Kurt's handwriting was her number, jotted across the top of the photo. She couldn't decipher when or why Kurt may have written her number on the photo, but it had turned out to be useful.
Lindy took the photo in her hands, turning it over once more. She felt a fleeting since of nostalgia before slipping the photo into her pocket and turning back to Kurt, closing her fingers around his wrist to check his pulse. It was slow, but still there.
"I didn't know what to do," the man rambled, obviously scarred by what he'd witnessed. "They were just going to leave him there. I freaked out and dug through his wallet, looking for something that would give me a clue on who could help him. And then I found that."
She wanted to thank him but she couldn't, not when she was so zeroed in on ensuring that Kurt kept breathing. Even though the sound was wrenched from his throat in choked wheezes, it was still a sign of life.
With the man's help, Lindy slung one of Kurt's arms around her shoulders and towed him out the Valiant, leading him to her car. Together they sat him down in the backseat, where he could sprawl out. Lindy moved hastily, wanting to get Kurt safely back to her place where she could search for the Narcan, or at least call Jack if things got worse.
"I'm really sorry," the man said helplessly, standing by as Lindy threw herself into the driver's seat and jammed her keys into the ignition.
"Thanks for calling," Lindy replied. What else was she supposed to say? 'It's okay?' That was unlikely to happen. She slammed the door shut and began to pull away from the apartment building, figuring that she and Kurt together would retrieve the Valiant the next day. It had a for sale sign sticking out of its back window — with their luck, someone would just take it off of their hands.
As the man standing outside faded into the inky darkness, Lindy looked at him, wondering if his presence at the apartment that night had been a curse or blessing. The more she looked, she saw that this supposed dealer was hardly a man at all with his soft eyes and mop of messy brown hair.
He was only a boy.