Lynnsey sighed in frustration as she once again got the busy signal from Kevin’s cell phone.
“I’ve been trying to call him for two hours, who could he be talking to for that long?” Lynnsey asked her mother.
“I don’t know, honey. You can give him the good news about your dad later, OK?”
Lynnsey sighed and hung up the phone. ‘Maybe he’s talking with some girl he’s interested in,’ a little voice in her head said. A panic rose up in her chest, and Lynnsey sighed again.
“Turn on the TV, hon, I want to catch the evening news,” her mom told her. Lynnsey did as she had been told, and then sat down next to her mother on the couch.
The local news reporter’s face appeared to be solemn as she began.
“…In other news, the boy band, Backstreet Boys, were involved in an automobile accident in Toronto, Canada. The group had stopped there for a concert on their tour, and were travelling in a 1994 black Mustang when a drunk driver struck them from the side. Three members, AJ McLean, Howie Dorough, and Brian Littrell escaped unharmed, but Kevin Richardson and Nick Carter, who were apparently sitting inside the car on the side that was struck, were rushed to the local hospital in Toronto for medical attention. Their conditions as of right now are unknown. After this commercial break, we’ll bring you the latest stock market figures…”
Lynnsey shut off the TV. She looked at her mother and shook her head in disbelief, and felt tears spring to her eyes. Her father was finally doing well, but now Kevin was hurt! What if it was serious? She had to go to him! When she expressed this to her mother, her mom was not going to hold her back.
“Then go to him!” her mom said.
“But don’t you think this is a little irrational?” Lynnsey asked, unsure.
“Lynnsey, what is your heart telling you?”
“My heart… it’s telling me that if I don’t go see him I will regret it forever.”
“Then you need to go. I’ll make the flight arrangements right now,” her mom said.
Lynnsey couldn’t believe she was going through with it! Spontaneity was never one of her strong points, and she usually kept a level head!
Her mom got off the phone with the airport and told Lynnsey that a flight to Toronto left in 3 hours.
“What am I doing?!” Lynnsey exclaimed.
“You care about him, Lynn. You may even be in love with him. I almost lost the love of my life to cancer… I don’t want you to lose yours to wasted time,” her mom said earnestly.
“Mom,” Lynnsey said, hugging her. “What about Ross?”
“If he calls, I’ll tell him that you wanted to get away for a few days… and that you need to have a talk with him when you get back.”
Lynnsey nodded. “I need to pack some clothes.”
An hour and a half later, Lynnsey and her mom were on their way to the airport. After getting Lynnsey’s plane ticket and getting her baggage turned in, her mom had to leave to go back to Lynnsey’s dad.
“What if he’s hurt, mom? Badly? What if I never get the chance to tell him?”
“Don’t worry about that right now, Lynn.”
“Well, what if he’s OK, but I tell him how I feel and he gives me one of those ‘Let’s just be friends’ speeches?”
“Lynnsey… you’ll never know if you don’t go. So just go and hope for the best.”
Lynnsey hugged her mom, and they said their good-byes. Then Lynnsey sat down, and waited for her flight number to be called.
Across the country, another young woman responded to the news with the same desperateness.
“Mom, what if he’s near death or something!?” Gretchen cried over the phone.
“You need to go to Toronto. Or try to get in touch with one of the other guys to find out,” her mom said.
“I’ve tried, and no one’s answering their phones. I guess they’re concerned about fans trying to call or something. And I can’t leave, I’m finishing up recording. I don’t know if they’ll let me leave.”
“Your manager is paying them right?” her mom asked.
“Yes…”
“Then you tell them that you can finish recording when you get back.”
“I don’t care what they say, I’m going to Toronto as soon as possible,” Gretchen said.
Gretchen called the studio and let them know what was going on, and then made a plane reservation that would leave that night.
“I love Nick and I’ve never even said the words to him,” Gretchen tortured herself. “In fact, the last thing I ever told him was in anger.”
If he was seriously hurt… she didn’t know what she would do with herself.
Lynnsey walked down the corridor, hardly able to believe that she had come all the way to Toronto. The trip had taken 12 hours by plane. She was exhausted, but sleep was just not an option right now.
There had been plenty of media people stationed outside the hospital, but they were not allowed in with any equipment.
Lynnsey had gotten Kevin’s room number from the information desk, and now she nervously approached the hallway in which it was.
It was Brian Littrell, and the girl he was hugging Lynnsey recognized as Gretchen Jones, the famous singer who was going out with Nick.
Brian eyed her suspiciously. “What’s your name?”
“Lynnsey Parker. I’m a friend of his…” Brian’s eyes lit up.
“From Tampa?” he asked.
“Yes. My father is the mayor there…” Brian smiled.
“I’ve heard a lot about you,” he said. “I’m Brian. Kevin’s room is right over there. He’s not awake, just sleeping, but when he wakes up he’ll be thrilled to see you. He has a broken rib and a minor head concussion, as well as some bruises and cuts, but other than that, he’s doing fine,” Brian told her. “Go on in.”
“Wait,” Lynnsey said. “Why is she crying?” Lynnsey asked, nodding towards Gretchen, who had smiled at her and then started to walk back to the waiting room at the end of the hall.
“That’s Nick Carter’s girlfriend, Gretchen Jones, and see, Nick’s not… he’s not doing as well as Kevin is. He’s in a coma right now.” Brian’s eyes seemed to mist up. “The doctors say that he’s going to wake up real soon though, and be OK, but you know how girls get… Well, you should go see Kevin. He’ll be awake any minute now, he went to sleep a few hours ago.”
Lynnsey nodded. “I hope Nick is okay,” she said.
She turned and walked into the hospital room. Kevin was sleeping peacefully, and the second Lynnsey saw him she knew that she loved him. No question about it.
She sat down in the chair next to the bed, and watched him as he slept. Every now and then, she’d caress his forehead, or smooth back a piece of hair, or squeeze his hand. She didn’t know it, but Brian and Howie would watch her from time to time.
“Who is that?” Howie asked.
‘The girl Kevin is crazy about,” Brian replied. “She came all the way up here from Florida when she heard that he was hurt.”
“Is she in love with him then?”
Brian raised an eyebrow. “Well, obviously. Kevin doesn’t know it though. She probably didn’t even know it until she heard that he was injured.”
“That’s awesome then. Kevin finally gets what he deserves.”
“Who’s that girl?” a female voice asked from behind Brian and Howie. It was Kayla.
“A friend of Kevin’s,” Brian replied.
“I don’t want to sound rude or anything, but how come you told me to wait a while to visit with Kevin, but you let her go in there?”
“Because, Kayla, she traveled over 10 hours to be here, and there’s more to those two than friendship.”
Kayla angrily walked away.
A half-hour later, Kevin awoke.
It took him a minute to remember where he was and open his eyes fully. When he saw Lynnsey, he practically jumped out of his skin.
“Lynnsey!! How- when- …?” he was at a loss for words.
“I heard about what happened, and so I got a flight here and arrived in Toronto about 30 minutes ago.”
“You didn’t have to do that,” Kevin told her sincerely.
“I wanted to. I, uh, wanted to tell you that my dad’s doing much better. The doctors found out that the prognosis that he had been given was inaccurate. They have this medication they decided to give him, and his survival chances are much higher.”
“That… that is so great, Lynnsey. You don’t know how happy I am to hear that,” Kevin said. As Kevin smiled at her, Lynnsey decided she couldn’t hold it in any longer.
“Kevin, I did come here for a reason, though, and it’s kind of hard for me to tell you. When I heard about the accident… I was scared out of my mind that you wouldn’t make it, and just imagining that, I began to realize how empty I would be without you. I’ve been thinking a lot about you lately, Kev, and with the help of my mom… I have found that I have… fallen in love with you. So much, I did something completely out of character and traveled 12 hours to a country I’ve never been to before. If that doesn’t show you how much I love you…” Lynnsey peered into his eyes, searching for a response.
Kevin let out a deep breath. “Do you know how long I have been waiting to hear you say that?”
Lynnsey smiled and Kevin took her face in his hands.
“Do I have permission to kiss you?” he asked.
“No. I’m the one who’s going to kiss you.”
She leaned towards him and kissed him, and he kissed back with the love that had been building up inside of him for the past 5 months.
When they finally stopped, she just laid her head on his chest.
“By the way,” he said. “I love you too.”
Gretchen watched Nick as he lay in his bed. He looked like a little blonde angel. She had been praying for the past hour that he would wake up. She had heard somewhere that if you talked or sang to people in a coma, they could hear you.
So maybe even if he… if he never woke up… she would still have been able to tell him how she felt.
“Nick…” she said to his blank face. “You have told me that you are in love with me, but I have never said it back, and I regret that so badly because I do. I love you Nick Carter, and not because you’re a Backstreet Boy, not because you’re gorgeous, but because you are a wonderful human being.”
Gretchen sighed as a tear slipped down her cheek. She sat down in the chair next to the bed and tried to go to sleep.
An hour later…
“Gretchen?” a weak voice said.
Gretchen woke up with a start. “Nick? You’re awake!?”
Nick’s eyes had opened, and he was utterly confused.
“I’m going to go get the doctor!” she said excitedly.
As the memory of the car accident came back to Nick, so did the memory of the beautiful voice he had heard.
“Wait…” he said.
Gretchen stopped with her hand on the doorknob.
“What?”
“I heard you,” he said.
“What do you mean?”
“You said that you loved me. I heard you,” Nick said.
Gretchen turned around and walked back to the bed. “You really heard me?” she asked.
“Yes. And I love you too,” he replied.
Then he kissed her, and then some more, because even after a brush with death, Nick Carter was still the make-out king.
“So everyone’s going to be OK?” Michelle asked Brian over the phone.
“Yes,” Brian said.
AJ and his new girlfriend, Jen, sat in the waiting room cuddling, and Howie was on the phone with a worried Kara.
“I’m fine, Kara. So are the rest of the guys. There’s nothing to worry about. By the way, how are you doing?” Howie asked.
“OK, I guess. I’ve been feeling fatigued lately, and I have to go back to the doctor in two weeks.”
“Everything will be fine,” Howie tried to assure her.
“Maybe…” she replied.
“It will, Kara. Now you should go and get some rest. OK?”
“OK. Bye, Howie.”
Howie hung up the phone, and sat down next to Brian, who had just hung up his phone.
“Michelle will be visiting with us when we go back to New York in a month. She’s going to be there promoting her new movie, so she’s going to come out to dinner with all of us, and hang out for a few days.”
“Do you miss her?” Howie asked.
“Yeah, I do. We try to talk on the phone once a day, but sometimes we don’t even get that much contact.”
“How long have you two been together now?” Howie asked.
“Uh, a little over 5 months. Hard to believe, isn’t it?”
“Time has flown by since September,” Howie replied.
They were interrupted by Gretchen.
“Nick went back to sleep,” she said.
“Come talk to us,” Howie replied.
Gretchen put on her sweater and took a seat next to Brian and Howie.
“So, how are you and Nicky doing?” Brian asked, playfully.
“Really good,” she replied. “I was scared half to death when I heard about the accident. If anything had happened to him… The last time we talked before it happened had ended in an argument.”
“About what?”
“Some stupid tabloid story. It was nonsense, really. So… what’s up with the girl who was here to see Kevin?” Gretchen asked, changing the subject.
“Kevin met her when he was down in Florida doing a fundraiser for the Tampa Bay Hospital. Her dad was there suffering from lung cancer. The two bonded, and he went back to see her a second time before the tour started. He basically fell for her, but she already had a boyfriend, who she had been with for about 4 years. She traveled here from Florida when she heard about the accident. She hasn’t left his room since she got here, but we’re guessing that they are having a ‘heart-to-heart’ as we speak,” Brian explained.
“Did you get in touch with Michelle?” Gretchen asked.
“Yes, and she was worried, but I put her at ease. I’ll be able to see her in a month when we go back to New York. The movie that AJ and I saw her filming the day I met her is about to be released, so she’s going to New York to promote it.”
“She’s really sweet. I’m glad she was there for the camping trip,” Gretchen said.
“She is sweet,” Brian replied. “A little feisty too. Almost my opposite, but I really like her a lot.”
“That’s good,” Gretchen said.
Just then, Gretchen’s cell phone rang, and she answered it.
“Hey Gretchen, this is David.”
“Hey!”
“I just wanted to know if your boyfriend was all right.”
“Yeah, he’s good. He was in a coma, but he woke up, and the doctors took a look at him, and he’s going to be OK.”
“That’s really great, Gretchy. I just wanted to make sure.”
“Bye, David.”
“Bye.”
David hung up his phone and sighed. Even though he was in love with her, he wanted her to be happy. And if that Backstreet Boy kept her happy, well… he’d just have to live with it.