Page 12 of The Ballad of Us
The words don't make sense. They can't make sense. Rhea doesn't just disappear. She doesn't ignore calls. She's responsible and caring, everything I'm not, which is exactly why she left me.
"I'm not following." I can hear the confusion in my words.
"You don't remember her leaving you last week?"
The memory hits me like a sledgehammer to the chest. Her suitcases were by the door. Her keys are on the kitchen counter. The way she looked at me was with resignation. Like she'd finally given up on the idea that I could be saved.
Andrew doesn't give me time to fully process the memory. "You're a fucking mess, little brother. Your band is about to kick you out, your girlfriend left you, and now you've landed yourself in God knows what trouble. You were hanging on by a thread when they brought you in from the street."
The words wash over me like accusations, each one a reminder of everything I used to be. But I've got nothing left to lose now, so I shrug with a bravado I don't feel. "I'll go solo. It's not like I can't make it on my own."
The laugh that escapes Andrew is bitter and sharp. He stands abruptly, getting in my face and grabbing my hospital gown.
"Rhea is gone, Gray! Are you getting that through your thick head? Without me and her to clean up your messes, you'll never make it to the studio to record an album. She was gone one day, and you ended up in another state with alcohol poisoning. You were also mugged and beaten within an inch of your life with no memory of it. You think you can do this without us? Go right ahead!"
His words hit harder than any fist ever could. She was gone one day. One day, without her safety net, I nearly killed myself. One day without her voice reminding me to eat, to sleep, to choose life over the bottle, and I ended up broken and bleeding in an alley five hours from home.
The nurse who enters breaks up our confrontation, her presence a reminder that I'm in a place where my name and my money can't buy me the kind of help I really need.
"Is everything okay in here?"
I force a smile. "Everything's fine, ma'am. Can I get something for pain? My ribs are killing me."
"You can have ibuprofen." The nurse places a hand on her hip as if she’s challenging me to protest.
The dismissal in her voice grates against my nerves. I'm Gray Garrison. I've sold millions of albums, filled stadiums, and had presidents request private concerts. And yet none of that matters now. None of it can bring her back. "Since when?"
Her brow lifts in defiance. "Since you came in half dead with a blood alcohol content of .34 and a multitude of narcotics in your system."
The number should shock me, but it doesn't. What surprises me is that I'm still here, breathing, and hurting. Part of me has to think about whether I wanted to join my mother, if somewhere in my blackout brain I thought death might be easier than living without Rhea.
"I'd like to speak to your supervisor." The words come out automatically, my celebrity armor clicking into place even as it's cracking around the edges.
Her sardonic smile tells me she's dealt with rich, entitled, broken men who think their money can fix everything before. “Sure, let me get right on that.”
I throw the remote at her because it's the only weapon I have left, because I'm angry at the world that let Rhea walk away, and because I'm angry at myself for not being worth staying for. "Pain relief! Isn't that what I just fucking asked for?"
"Mr. Garrison, if you have another volatile outburst, I'll be forced to restrain you."
I flip her off because I'm five years old and thirty-six at the same time, because I'm too broken to care about consequences anymore.
"Go fuck yourself. Do you know who I am?” But even as I ask the question, I realize I don't know who I am either. Without Rhea, without the band, without the anchor she provided, I'm just another addict in a hospital bed, raging at the world for not caring that my heart is bleeding out onto sterile sheets.
Andrew shakes his head with disappointment so heavily I can feel it pressing down on my chest. "I'm here to issue an ultimatum. Get sober and get your affairs in order. Not only is Case in Point without our lead singer, but we're also without our personal assistant, whom we count on far more than we should. If you fail to get clean, you don't have a place in Case in Point anymore. You don't have a place with me either."
Each word is a door slamming shut, cutting off another escape route.
"Rhea is long gone, man. This is the end of the line for you, little brother. This is rock bottom. Blacking out for days and ending up almost dead isn't funny, Gray. It's fucking pathetic."
Pathetic. The word lodges in my chest like shrapnel.
"I get that bad shit happened to us when we were kids. No child should ever lose their mother, especially not the way she went right in front of us. It wasn't your responsibility to save Mom, Gray. We were too little to help. Drowning it in a bottle isn't helping you, and it's not the answer to your problems. It's keeping you in the past."
The mention of our mother opens wounds that never properly healed. I can still see her face, still hear the gurgling sound she made as the water filled her lungs while I stood frozen, seven years old and helpless. Rhea knew about that night. She was the only person I ever talked to about finding Mom in the bathtub, about the way her eyes looked when she saw me, about how I couldn't move, couldn't scream, couldn't save her.
"It's not your fault, baby. You were just a little boy. You couldn't have saved her," Rhea used to whisper when the dreams came.
But Rhea isn't here to whisper comfort anymore. She's not here to hold me when the memories get too sharp, when the guilt gets too heavy, when the bottle seems like the only way to make it stop.
