Page 20 of When We Fell Again
I glanced over at the chaos that was the remainder of Idol Rev’s merchandise. It needed packing up ready to go back in the van. But I couldn’t do that, not if it meant leaving Jordan. Thinking back to Claudia’s comment, I chose to take the role of band girlfriend. Sitting down beside him on his right, I let Jordan rest his head on my shoulder and snuggle into the crook of my arm.
“Is this better?”
He mumbled something I didn’t catch and shifted again, one hand resting on my thigh. The touch felt so familiar, so intimate, like the past five years had melted away and we were the same as we once were.
But sitting on the cold floor in the foyer of a university building wasn’t where we should have been.
I had no idea how long Claudia had been gone, but when she returned alone, I knew we were in for a long night. We agreed on a plan; I’d go to the hospital with Jordan, and Claudia would pack up all the merchandise and go back to the hotel with the band. She’d told them the bare bones of the story and kept them away. Jordan didn’t need lots of questions and blame being laid at his door.
Unable to sort out an Uber, I called a taxi for us. Claudia had brought all of Jordan’s stuff from backstage, and I managed to get him into a jacket, despite him swearing at me when I went to move his arm. It took us a little over ten minutes to get from the university to the hospital, with the taxi driver warning us we’d be in for a long wait at Accident & Emergency.
Once I’d booked Jordan in, we sat down to wait, along with the hordes of other people. The illuminated board told us there was at least a four-hour wait, which I didn’t doubt for a moment. We sat in silence for God only knew how long, watching the comings and goings of the department around us. Several people came and went, others who had been waiting longer than us also being seen. For the most part, Jordan was still, barely moving so as not to aggravate his shoulder.
“I need to find the bathroom,” I said. Hours of waiting did nothing for my pea-sized bladder. I could also do with a drink. “Will you be okay on your own?”
He nodded. “Not like I’m going anywhere soon.”
Standing up, I followed the signs to the ladies’ room. After I’d used the stall, I stood and stared at my reflection in the mirror. Dark circles ringed my eyes, tiredness etched all over my face. If I didn’t have caffeine soon, I’d be dead on my feet. I took a moment to check my phone. Claudia had messaged asking how things were going, and I tapped out a reply, telling her we were still waiting. Levi’s message was more blunt, asking where the fuck I was and if I had seen Jordan. That didn’t even warrant a reply right then.
Blowing out a breath, I found my way back to the waiting room, stopping at a vending machine to buy a coffee and a bottle of water. Jordan hadn’t moved, and I sat back down next to him. Digging into my bag, I found his pills.
“Do you want some?” I offered. I’d gladly have given him anything he wanted because I was the cause of his pain.
Silently, he took them from me, swallowing them down with the coffee.
“Fuck me, that’s awful. If I wasn’t in so much pain, I’d make you go and find a proper flat white.” He grimaced.
I shrugged. “I can if you want. We’re going to be here a while.”
Jordan bent over, resting his right arm on his right thigh, head bowed. “I hate hospitals.”
“Who doesn’t?”
He turned his head to look at me. “It’s the memories that get to me.”
Frowning, I wondered what he meant. “I know you were in recently, when you first hurt your shoulder. Surely it wasn’t that bad?”
For a moment, he didn’t say anything, and I thought he would change the subject.
“You know we haven’t been on the scene for over a year, right?”
“I do. Some kind of hiatus?”
Pushing himself up onto his good elbow, Jordan stared me in the eye. “I spent time in rehab getting clean after we lost a close friend to a drug overdose.”
My body went cold. Of all the things I had suspected, that wasn’t it. “How… I mean… who… when?” I murmured, then stopped myself. “You don’t have to tell me anything if you don’t want to.”
He reached out and grabbed my hand with his good one, his skin freezing. “You deserve the truth.”
Leaning in close to me and lowering his voice, Jordan started to talk. He told me about how the band was on the up, having secured a truly lucrative support slot with one of the UK’s best-known rock bands. While the opportunity for Idol Rev was everything they had ever wanted, it came with a shit ton of pressure. Jordan’s way of dealing with the pressure initially had been to smoke and drink first, before progressing to the occasional pill or hit of cocaine. The latter had become a crutch and he found himself in a downward spiral, only being able to perform after a couple of lines. He’d become close to his dealer, Dexter, who started hanging out with them regularly. On the first night of the tour, his nerves got the better of him and he asked Dexter to sort him out. Wherever the dealer had got the supplies from had been suspect, and while Jordan came out unscathed, Dexter had overdosed.
“Do you know what it’s like being in a hospital cubicle, watching your friend fitting and choking on his own vomit?” Jordan’s nails pressed into the skin of my palm. “I couldn’t get anyone to come in time, and when they did, it was too late.”
I swallowed down the nausea that threatened to rise in my throat. What a horrific thing to have witnessed. “I’m so sorry,” I whispered.
“After we lost Dexter, we got kicked off the big tour and the others didn’t speak to me for ages. Kelvin had a very frank conversation with me. If I didn’t clean up my act, there would be no future for the band. I got given the ultimatum of rehab or the sack.” Jordan told me the story in a matter-of-fact tone, giving nothing away, but I knew how much it would have hurt him. Levi, Jude, and Robbie were like his brothers, and music meant everything. Take those two things away from him and he would be an empty shell. A void of nothingness.
Part of me wished I’d known, that someone had at least given me the heads up. Claudia for example. As the band’s publicist, she would have to have known, but I wasn’t close enough to her to have asked her outright about it. She’d also done a damn good job of keeping it out of the spotlight. With social media, it usually didn’t take long for something like this to go viral. And while I hadn’t exactly been an Idol Rev stalker, history meant I’d occasionally check up to see what they were doing.
