Chapter 21 – I Need Her

Lance craned his neck in a circular motion, feeling and hearing the joints crack underneath his skin. He sighed, shifting his weight from his right foot to his left and placing his hands in his pockets as he leaned his body against the hallway wall.

“Dude, you're making me fucking dizzy.”

Joey clamped his hand down on Justin's shoulder, stopping him in his tracks as the youngest one paced in circles a few feet away in the hospital waiting area.

“You're wearing a crop circle in the carpet,” Joey said, grasping a cup of coffee in his other hand. “Chill out.”

“Can't,” Justin said, noticing he had been biting his thumbnail.

“He's the only one of us who isn't hopped up on enough coffee to reanimate the morgue,” JC asked Joey. “How are we still dog-ass tired and he can't stop moving?”

Joey only shrugged, walking away from Justin.

“She was in my arms,” Justin said.

Even though he said it quietly, Lance caught it and glanced over at Justin, who had gone back to biting his fingernail. The youngest member looked up at him as well, meeting his eyes before looking down. Justin wouldn't say it, but Lance knew he couldn't look him in the eyes now because Justin felt a mixture of guilt and fear.

He had been the only one to look Adeline in the eyes right before she had collapsed. Lance had been on the dance floor, still dancing with AJ. They had been laughing and joking with each other before he had glanced over and saw Stephanie and Justin both catching her before she fell to the floor.

Lance glanced back, seeing AJ standing by herself behind him near a sign on the wall, still wearing her dress. Whereas Stephanie and the others went to change into more nondescript clothes from their wedding attire, Justin, Lance and AJ had all rushed to the hospital in what they had on. Lance had ditched his suit jacket in the car, but he was still wearing the tie, the light blue vest, and the cummerbund, just like Justin.

“AJ, you should go back to the hotel,” he said. “Change out of that dress. Get some sleep.”

She shook her head, not looking up at him. “I'm fine,” she said quietly.

The youngest of them all, at only 25, the bass player and Addy had kindled a friendship recently, and he knew the incident had shaken her up as much as it had the rest of them.

“She had a headache,” Justin said. “I shouldn't have made her dance with me.”

“It's not your fault, Justin,” Lance said. “She had a headache all day. She was popping Tylenol like it was candy. If anything, I should have made her go back the hotel.”

“It's nobody's fault, alright?” Joey said, looking between the two of them. “You both know Addy. Nobody makes her do anything. She would have told you to stop treating her like an invalid, and she would have told you to go fly a kite if she didn't feel like dancing.”

Stephanie lightly chuckled, even though the mood in the room was somber.

“It's true,” she said.

“I think she would have chosen different words than 'fly a kite' though,” JC said.

“Probably not repeatable ones,” Stephanie said.

“The first date we ever went on,” Lance said, and everybody turned to look at him. “That night I dragged her to the club. She made me list all the things I hated about her, every negative attribute that I hated. Then she made me tell her why.”

“As if we didn't know why,” Stephanie said.

“I told her she was obsessive-compulsive, emotional, and boring,” he said. “I said I hated all those things about her, but I didn't. I mean, yeah, it always got a little annoying when she'd insist on all the dishes being put a certain way in the dishwasher or yelling because I didn't fold my towels 'the right way', but...I loved how she'd cry at the end of a movie and bury her face in my shoulder, and then yell at me for laughing at her. I loved how she'd get so feisty when she didn't like something I did.”

“I roomed with her for one semester in college,” Stephanie said, holding up a single index finger. “One. That's how long it took for her to drive me crazy with her eccentric little compulsions. That's how long it took for me to decide that it was better to save the friendship and move out than to kill her for being a little clean freak. But God, I still love her for it.”

“She's fine,” Joey said. “We don't need to be talking about her like this. In a week, we'll all forget that any of this happened because she'll be back on the road with us, yelling at us for leaving shirts all over the couches.”

“For leaving our wet towels on the bathroom floor,” JC said.

“For folding the clean towels wrong,” Chris, silent up until now, said.

Lance cleared his throat, running his fingers over the back of his head where the short hairs prickled his hand, signaling that he needed a haircut.

“I'm going for a walk,” he said, pushing his arm off the wall.

“But,” Chris started, “the doctor--”

“I just need some air,” Lance said as he walked slowly past the chairs gathered around the room. “I won't be gone long.”

“What if--” Justin said.

“Come get me,” Lance said shortly before walking away from all of them.

He walked down the completely silent emergency room hallway, past the admittance desk where the secretary briefly looked up at him before going back to her computer. He listened to his dress shoes click too loudly against the shiny linoleum floors, avoiding every stray staff person who happened to walk past him.

He turned a couple of corners before he heard the silence turn to crying, and he came up on his mother, holding a fussy Liam, trying to console him.

Her head perked from the baby when she saw her son walk toward her.

“Any--”

“No,” Lance said, interrupting her before she could ask. “I'm going crazy.”

Her face fell, but she looked back at Liam when he started fussing again.

“He's cranky,” she said, bouncing gently with him. “He's not hungry, I've changed him twice, and I can't even get him to lay his head down on my shoulder.”

“He's not the only one who's cranky,” Lance said. “Give him to me.”

Lance held his arms out as his mother handed the baby over. Liam, tears in his eyes and a pacifier in his mouth, only whined for a moment and rubbed his hands over his tired eyes before he settled into his father's arms and laid his head on his shoulder.

“I'm going outside to get some air,” Lance said as he took the sippy cup and the ever-present sock monkey from his mother's hand.

“I'll go back and sit with the boys,” Diane said.

“Do me a favor,” Lance said, maneuvering to reach into his pocket and pull out his wallet. He handed it to his mom. “Get Jace and Joe some coffee – and get Justin to sit down before he wears a hole in the carpet.”

Diane smiled. “I'll try.”

“Thanks, mom.”

“No problem, sweetie,” she said, rubbing his back before walking away down the hall, her heels clicking louder against the hard floors.

He watched her disappear around the corner before he looked to his shoulder, seeing his son staring up at him with big, tired green eyes.

“Oh, hey buddy,” he said softly. “Let's go outside.”

He walked the rest of the way down the hallway before he reached the emergency room doors that automatically slid open for him. He walked a few feet away from the doorway before sliding down to sit against the brick wall of the building, sitting Indian-style with Liam on his leg, hugging him to his body.

“It's been a long night, bud,” he said with a sigh.

He watched as Liam reached down for the sock monkey, grabbing it out of his hand. As his son clasped his toy to his chest, Lance ran a hand through his son's hair.

“What are you doing with this?” he said, touching the pacifier in Liam's mouth. “Didn't mama take that away from you?”

Liam whined and turned his head, pushing Lance's hand away when he tried to pop the pacifier out of his mouth.

“Okay, okay,” Lance said, giving up. “You can keep it. But don't tell mama, or she might hurt us.”

Not making a sound, Liam went on with the pacifier in his mouth and holding the sock monkey up to himself.

“I don't blame you,” Lance said. “I wouldn't want to give it up either. Sometimes I wish it was that simple for me, too – I guess, to be a kid again.”

He ran his hand through Liam's hair again, watching the blonde strands pop back into their places.

“But then I guess if I was a kid again, I wouldn't know your mama – and I wouldn't have you.”

As Liam dropped the sock monkey out of his hands and into Lance's lap, and Lance reached down to pick it up and hand it back to his son, he realized, suddenly, how overwhelmingly sad he was. He hadn't felt this way since the night at his apartment he had tried to drown his sorrows in a bottle of vodka and ended up on his bedroom floor, armed with only a phone number and a single bad decision.

It was that feeling that, even though he rarely cried and could usually hold his emotions in pretty well, was so overwhelming that he couldn't keep it inside.

This time it was him who buried his face in his son's shoulder, biting his lip and trying to will those tears to go away.

“Five?”

Adeline swallowed the newly-brewed coffee she had just tipped back into her mouth, wincing slightly at the temperature.

“Mmm,” she mumbled as she swallowed. “Yeah, five.”

“I can't do five,” Lance said, turning his head to look at her from the counter, where he was stirring sugar into his own mug.

“Why not?” she asked.

“I have an interview.”

“You don't have an interview,” she said, glancing over at him before looking back at her appointment book. “You just don't want to go.”

He turned around to face her, leaning his back side up against the counter.

“Do you blame me?” he asked before lifting the mug to his lips.

She looked at him and smiled. He had barely woken up. He was standing in front of her wearing the lounge pants he had slept in, with no shirt. His blonde hair spiked crazily all over his head, because he had rolled out of bed and went immediately to the caffeine, without even running a hand through his hair. His green eyes were still tired.

“I can't get you out of it,” she said.

“Yes you can,” he said, smiling at her. “You're Adeline James. Miracle worker. You can get me out of anything if you really want to.”

“And you assume I want to,” she said.

“You want to,” he said. “Because you'd much rather change back into your pajamas, curl up on the couch with a blanket, and spend the day watching movies with me.”

She sighed, glancing out his patio window just outside his living room. It had been raining since she woke up that morning, at least an hour and a half ago, and it had not let up any. Luckily, it was still warm enough that the rain hadn't turned to snow, but if the weatherman's predictions were correct, within a couple hours, the temperature would drop below the freezing threshold and they would be in for a small snowstorm.

“What we want to do and what our jobs require us to do are two different things,” she said, standing up and walking toward him. “And you...” She poked his chest with her index finger. “Your job requires you to actually make public appearances.”

“Need I bring up JC again?” he asked.

“Need I bring up the fact that you're not JC again?” she asked. “JC gets away with burying his head in his hidey-hole and being a hermit, and it works for him. The rest of us...well, we actually have to go outside and be social with people, fans – or they don't give us money for being famous.”

“Famous, schmamous,” he said. “It's raining. Nobody cares, Addy.”

She rolled her eyes and opened the fridge door, grabbing the cream cheese for the bagel she was planning to make herself. As she shut the door, she felt his hand grab her arm.

Looking up in surprise, she was met with his eyes looking down at her.

“I need this day with you,” he said softly.

She looked into his eyes, swallowing as she listened to the rain ping against his kitchen window.

“You're like a kid trying to get out of going to school,” she said with a slight smile and chuckle.

He smiled, pulling her closer to him.

“I guess I could call and tell them you have a bad case of pink eye,” she said, feeling softened as she felt his hand on her skin. “Nobody will want to be around you then.”

He fake coughed twice, then cleared his throat loudly. “I do feel a little something coming on...”

She laughed as his hand moved up to her forearm. She closed her eyes and sighed as his fingertips brushed against her skin softly.

“Lance,” she whispered.

“Adeline,” he said, moving his fingertips softly from her arm to her back.

“I need to hear you say it,” she said.

“That I'm sick and can't go to work today?” he whispered, moving his other arm around to her waist.

“That,” she said, “and that you need me.”

“I need her,” he said to thin air, lifting his head from his son's shoulder and wiping the stray tears away with his thumb and index finger. “I need her in my life as bad today as I needed her that day.”

He took a few minutes to recover, and after a few more, the tears were forgotten as he watched Liam drop the monkey and continue to pick it up from his lap. Eventually, he grew more weary in his arms, rubbing his eyes and eventually settling down to lay his head on Lance's shoulder and close his eyes.

Lance was leaning his head against his sleeping son's head on his shoulder when the automatic doors opened.

“Lance?”

He looked up to see Stephanie walking toward them, her arms crossed against her chest.

“She's okay,” she said softly, seeing that Liam was asleep. “They want to keep her overnight though, to make sure she stays off her feet and gets some rest.”

“Where is she?” he asked, already fumbling to his feet, trying not to wake the sleeping boy in his arms.

“Room 302,” Stephanie said, taking Liam from him gently as he handed him over to her.

He didn't wait for another response. As soon as he was sure Liam was safe in Stephanie's arms, he ran straight through the sliding doors, all the way down the hallway. He avoided the waiting room, running down every hallway, past every sign with an arrow that promised the elevator would soon appear.

He slipped inside as an empty elevator was closing and slammed his finger on the “3” button. By the time the door opened to the third floor, the slowest elevator ride of his life was forgotten as he ran out the doors and past the nurse's station to the second door on his left, ignoring their protests that it was past visiting hours.

He opened the door softly and stepped inside, preparing himself for whatever he would see.

He was surprised to see her propped up in bed, fixing her hair that was in a disarray from her wedding updo, with the TV playing softly.

“Ad,” he said softly.

She looked up from plucking a bobby pin out of her hair and smiled.

“I ruin every party we try to have,” she said.

He laughed, for the first time that night.

“God, honey, I'm so sorry,” she said. She pulled the last pin out of her and ran her hands through her blonde hair, quickly pulling it into a pseudo-bun and securing it with a ponytail holder. “I ruined the reception.”

“No one cares about that,” he said, walking over to her bedside. “All we care about is that you're okay.”

“I'm fine,” she said, pulling him into a hug when he came to sit beside her.

He leaned his nose into her neck, smelling her body wash.

“I'm sure that once Steph knows that I'm okay, she'll have her jabs about me ending up in the ER by the end of her wedding,” she said.

Lance only chuckled.

“I never got to talk to the doctor,” he said. “Did he say what happened?”

She paused. “Actually, he did.”

He watched the corners of her lips turn into a smile.

“Well?” he said, slightly chuckling. “I waited in the room for two hours about to have a heart attack, now all you can do is smile.”

She placed her hands over his and squeezed them, clearing her throat.

“Lance, I'm pregnant.”