Daron's Guitar Chronicles Volume 12

1067 Pretend We're Dead

Pretend We're Dead

If she could have gotten two seats on a flight I think Carynne might have gone with me. But as it was the best option had only one seat left. The plan was to fly me to Atlanta and then I got on a puddle jumper that had only like eight rows or something? And which bounced all around in the turbulence while sounding like something from a World War II movie. For all my flight to LA had been relatively stress free thanks to me being asleep for nearly all of it, this was the most nerve-wracking flight I'd ever taken and it was only like 50 minutes long. But of course the whole flight to Atlanta I'd also been just wondering if I was going to get there in time.

Let's put it this way. A race against death is a lose-lose situation. But you still hope you'll win.

Not to keep you in suspense. I made it. The plane didn't crash and Claire was still alive, but in the hospital. I took an incredibly expensive cab ride to get there so Court wouldn't have to leave her side. Could you imagine if she had come to pick me up and Claire had expired in the hour or two she was gone? No no, she stayed put and I shelled out a pile of cash. Over a hundred bucks, but it wasn't like I cared about that. It wasn't like I was thinking to myself, shit, years from now when you're starving or trying to make a mortgage payment you're going to wish you saved that money. No, that never came into my head.

I mean, the whole point of earning money is so you have it when you need it.

When I got there, Court was waiting for me. We sat down together in a triangle shaped waiting area that looked like it had been carved out of the leftover space not being used by the rest of the hospital. The TV in one corner was off and we were the only ones there.

"I think we just had a close call," she said, looking tired and exasperated.

"Meaning what?" Cancer doesn't fire and miss.

"Meaning we're lucky she's not only alive, she's not in jail."

"Jail? What?"

"Maybe I'm exaggerating. But there was a cop and they had all kinds of questions and I didn't know shit about anything." She yawned.

"Um?" I still didn't know what she was talking about.

Court finally realized I had no idea what any of that meant. "Oh, Jeezus. You still need to be brought up to speed, don't you."

"I've been on planes for the past ten hours or something. Has something changed? Is it a bowel obstruction again? What exactly is going on?"

She sighed. "No bowel obstruction that I know of. And I'm not sure what complications might crop up because of her condition. But." She gave me an exasperated look. "She OD'd."

"On pain meds?"

"Yep." She shook her head like she still couldn't believe it. "And the police are all interested because of course she wasn't supposed to be able to get her hands on that much."

"Okay, but would that be her fault or the care facility's fault? I mean, if there's something criminal going on it shouldn't be that a terminal patient took too much medicine, right? Unless she stole the meds from someone."

"I don't know. They're going to want to talk to you. But they weren't going to hang around all night, either." She yawned. "How was your lawyer meeting?"

The change of subject startled a laugh out of me. "Fine, I guess? Digger called me a sissy and a momma's boy."

"Lovely. I would expect no less." She yawned again. "Now we get to decide who stays here and who goes back to the room to sleep."