You know it has all been planned
The quartet of deliverance rides
A sinner once, a sinner twice
No need for confession now
’Cause now you’ve got the fight of your life

~*~

Kevin ran into the hospital as fast as he could, the cool night breeze whipping through his hair and through his clothes to brush harshly against his skin. The moon beamed down its silvery light on him as he ran past cars and ambulances like he was a bolt of lightning. He could feel his heart racing and pounding through his chest as he pushed through the doors and ran down the white linoleum corridor of the intensive care unit, all his thoughts concentrated on just one thing. And one thing only. And that one thing was Nick. Nick was hurting. Nick was hurt. He could feel it, in some weird genetic way. It was like he was feeling whatever pain that Nick felt and he knew that it was a lot and severe. But how severe, he didn’t know. All he knew was that Nick was hurt and Nick needed him there at his side. That was all Kevin knew at that moment.

Kevin had fallen asleep on the couch waiting for Nick and it sure turned out to be longer than the two hours that Nick had promised him. He tried to keep awake, he tried to keep his eyes open, but once he laid down on the couch and placed his head against a comfortable cushion, he was out cold. Fatigue had consumed him for several days and slumber quickly took Kevin in its grasp. He had been waiting with exactly what Kevin had said. Soft music, red wine, candles, a small but warm fire and himself. And so he waited. And Nick never showed up. Each sound of a car that passed their house made Kevin think that it might’ve been Nick, but when that sound faded into the distance, Kevin’s heart sunk just a little lower into his chest. He had heard about loving a job and working hard, but there was a limit and Nick had pretty much crossed that limit.

So Kevin had fallen asleep and he would’ve stayed that way if it hadn’t been for the high-pitched shrill of the phone……

“Kevin Richardson?” a melodic, male voice asked.

Kevin sat up slowly and rubbed his eyes. “Yeah, this is he,” he replied sleepily.

“Dr Louis from ICU at County hospital. Your friend, Nickolas Carter, was brought in here earlier tonight and – “

Not even a million wild horses could’ve made him run quicker out the door than he had. He dropped the phone straight away and just ran. And he knew that he had never run as fast as he had to his car in his whole entire life. His life. Nick was his life, and that made him run as fast as he did, because without Nick he knew he wouldn’t have a life, so he drove as fast as he could...

Much like the way he was running into ICU at that moment and as soon as he saw his three friends waiting there already, he knew that Nick was more hurt than he could ever have imagined. He wondered how and what had happened. A car accident. A drive-by shooting. A hit-and-run. A gang bashing. Anything. But he couldn’t stand the thought of Nick in pain, even in the slightest. The thought of it broke his heart and now he cursed himself for not making Nick leave with him when he did. But Nick was as stubborn as the next person, surely it wasn’t Kevin’s fault.

Who could’ve predicted that kind of a thing happening?

No one.

But he still felt guilty, anyhow.

By the time he reached his friends, Kevin was out of breath, his heart still pounding, his mind whirling at so many thoughts and possibilities of Nick’s injuries. “What happened?” he asked breathlessly.

A.J. looked up at Kevin with bloodshot eyes, his voice quivering as he spoke. “We spoke to a doctor and……”

“And what?” Kevin shouted, taking A.J. by the shoulders and shaking him as though he was nothing but a feather pillow. “What happened to him?!”

Brian jumped up and pushed Kevin away before staring down at A.J., who looked as though he couldn’t even feel Kevin’s strong grip on him, he just stared into space and appeared numb, lost. “Listen to me,” he said, pulling Kevin aside and speaking to him in a low, soothing voice. He sighed when he saw the tears trickling down Kevin’s cheeks. “Calm down, Kevin. Stop crying and be strong. If you stop crying, I’ll tell you what we’ve been told.”

Kevin immediately lost all of his composure and broke down into a shaking, heart-wrenching sob of guilt, sadness and anguish. “I should’ve made him leave with me! I shouldn’t have let him stay! I should’ve made him come home with me! This wouldn’t have happened if I did! And then he wouldn’t be here, hanging onto his life! He would’ve been at home, safe with me...”

Brian felt tears pooling in the corners of his eyes as he watched Kevin crying. He gently took Kevin by the shoulders and spoke more sternly to him. “Stop it. Now. He doesn’t need you crying right now, okay? When he wakes up, he doesn’t want to see any of us crying! He’ll want to see us smiling and being happy! He needs positivity right now, okay?”

Kevin nodded, wiping away his tears with the back of his hand. “Okay,” he whispered. “What happened to him, Brian?”

“A police officer found him in the alley behind the building where we’re recording,” Brian began softly. “Apparently he’d been beaten up, not too sure of how many there were. The officer found Nick unconscious.”

Kevin’s lower lip quivered and he couldn’t stop himself from bursting into tears again. He let them run freely down his cheeks, streaking his face with little watery lines. He imagined Nick trying to get away, to save himself, and Nick on the cold, hard ground in an unconscious heap, waiting for death to take him, or for someone to save him, and just the fact that he wasn’t there to help him made Kevin feel dizzy.

“Who would do this? Why? Why Nick? He’s done nothing to nobody! Why?” Kevin cried.

Brian shrugged. “I don’t know why. That’s what we’ll have to ask Nick when he wakes up. The officer told us that it was most likely a gang. But again, not too sure of the number.”

“Why did he assume it was a gang?” Kevin questioned. When Brian refused to answer and looked away, he narrowed his eyes. “Why did he think it was a gang?! Why, Brian? Tell me!”

Brian lowered his head. “Because the damage was too much to be done by one person,” he murmured.

Kevin felt his heart stop. Or so he thought. Damage? Too much damage? Too much damage done to him? Did that mean that Nick had been hurt far more than any one of them could’ve expected? It did, he was sure of it and suddenly, he saw all the stages of their relationship flash before his eyes. The first time that he and Nick had gone out on an official “date”. He distinctly remembered Nick’s scent and what he had been wearing. He also remembered how he realized that he had begun to see Nick differently.

He remembered their first kiss, how it had been the most sweetest and most innocent moment of his life. He remembered the first time he realized he was in love with Nick. He remembered just staring at him, thinking, “I really do love you.” And then he remembered how they had finally closed the gap between them, making their relationship completely intimate once and for all, and how he had never felt so loved and alive in his entire life...

Kevin held his head in his hands. “This can’t be happening. This isn’t happening. I can’t lose him! What if I do? What will I do? I can’t live without him, Brian! He’s my whole life! He’s the reason I’m alive, and if he dies...”

“He won’t,” Brian insisted firmly. “I know he won’t. He’s a fighter and he’ll get through. I know he will. I can feel it.”

Kevin rolled his eyes skyward. “Right,” he replied in a disbelieving voice. “Like you know."

Brian lowered his head and pursed his lips together. “I was just trying to help. You’re not the only one going through this, you know,” he answered quietly and turned his back on Kevin to slowly return to his seat and when he sat down, he refused to make eye contact with Kevin.

The guy was acting like he was the only one on the planet who loved and cared about Nick. Sure, Brian’s love for Nick was different than Kevin’s, but hell, he still loved and cared about him a whole lot, and he still felt that if he lost his friend, he’d want to die. So really, they were no different in feelings and emotions, and Brian resented Kevin for thinking that they were.

Kevin stood standing and moved slowly back against the wall, to steady himself in case he felt the need to faint at anytime, which he did. He was beginning to feel light-headed and dizzy and he had a strange, uncomfortable feeling in his stomach. It was like a dull ache. And it was also in his heart, too, which was still beating furiously. He didn’t look at his friends, who remained quiet, and he didn’t utter a single word to any of them. He fell into a lapse of anguished silence.

His eyes came into contact with a clock and it was as though his hearing was acute that he could hear the ticking of it. And he felt dizzy again, and time still moved slowly. Still, he thought about how he should’ve made Nick leave when he had. He shouldn’t have taken no for an answer, but he never thought something like this would happen, not to any one of them, and now that it did...

Kevin felt lost, and he was uncertain as to whether he could ever be found again.

A reasonably tall female doctor made her way over to the three of them, a long white coat billowing against her legs and unbuttoned to reveal thin white pants and a plain white shirt, a stethoscope slung around her neck. Her badge read: neurosurgeon.  Her green eyes stared at them all in a tired manner. Obviously she’d been working too long hours.

“Hi, I’m Doctor Simpson, I’ve been administering your friend’s case.”

Kevin rushed over to her amid the other’s standing up. “How is he?” he asked in a rushed tone. “What happened? How is he? Is he going to be all right? What happened to him?”

“He’s in a critical condition and sleeping on morphine right now,” the doctor answered, “but he’s suffered some brain injury. Now, don’t be alarmed because there wasn’t a necessity to go forth with surgery. Luckily, we've ceased the bleeding. We thought he might’ve had some broken ribs, a punctured lung or some other broken limbs but after extensive observing, he hasn’t. It’s quite remarkable, considering the bruising he has to show for the severity of what has happened.”

Howie looked at her with hopeful eyes. “So...he’ll be all right? He’s going to be fine?” 

The doctor pursed her lips together thoughtfully. “That’s what I wanted to talk to you all about. Before we took Nick into surgery, he woke up for a few moments. Because of the brain injury we thought was extremely probable, I asked Nick if he knew what his name was. He didn’t answer for several moments.”

Kevin frowned. “Why not? Why didn’t he answer? He knows his name!”

The doctor shook her head. “Apparently that’s not so. I asked him again and he said that his name was Tchaikovsky.”

“The composer?” Brian asked, also frowning. “That makes no sense!”

“Actually, it does,” she replied, looking at all of them randomly. “I asked him again and this time he said his name was Tsar Nickolas the second of Imperial Russia.”

“But he died seventy-five years ago!” Kevin cried. “What does all this mean? Why did he say all those things?”

But the doctor didn’t answer Kevin’s question, she continued on trying to make her point. “When I asked him for the last time, he said that his name was Nickolas. That was all he said. When I asked him how old he was, he only said ‘old’. Because I noticed the lapse in brain memory, I asked a neuro-psychologist to take a look at him and he identified some cognitive side effects of the injuries. This means that Nick is suffering from post-traumatic amnesia. Memory loss, in basic terms. But this is treated as a mild case, as seventy-five percent of them are. Now, some other cognitive side effects include personality changes..."

Kevin felt as though he were in another world. He felt as thought this wasn’t reality. He couldn’t believe that one person could suffer from all of that. And he couldn’t believe that all of this could happen to Nick. Nick didn’t deserve this. Nick didn’t deserve to have all this happening to him. Nick did nothing to deserve this. This wasn’t right, this wasn’t justified, for no matter what Nick had done in the past, even the wrong things he had done, weren’t severe enough to have this happen to him. And Kevin felt ready for murder. He felt as though he wanted to scream, yell, punch something, kill someone, and not necessarily in that order. Just have all this justified in some way or form. But it wasn’t, and it never would be. He knew that.

“But...” Kevin’s voice was soft and weak, and tears created themselves on their own accord in the corner of his eyes. “But is he going to be all right?”

“Will he ever be the same?” A.J. asked dully. “Will he ever be the normal Nick that we knew and loved?”

The doctor nodded. “We’re treating this as a temporary lapse in memory, and most cases are. I’ve treated numerous patients who’ve regained their memory and identity quite quickly and remarkably. Basically his brain is suffering from shock and some medication which will be prescribed will gently bring him out of that. When he wakes up again, I’ll question him once more and if he still responds in the same manner, I’ll run tests to examine the severity of the injury and go from there. But I’ll inform you every step of the way.”

“When can we see him?” Kevin whispered, his whole body numb.

“Not for a while,” the doctor replied. “Once he wakes up, it’s imperative that we examine the patient and give him as little to digest at one time. But once he shows some improvement, I’ll let you know. But don’t worry. We’re doing everything we can for him, and I’m sure he’ll be fine.”

Kevin watched her walk away, his eyes riveted on her every move as she hurried down the corridor, until she finally disappeared out of the waiting room. He felt so guilty, as though it were all his fault. And it was. He knew that. He let Nick stay back that night. He allowed Nick to stay behind and finish working, when what Kevin really should’ve done was forced Nick to leave with him.

A little voice inside his head told him: who was to know that this would happen? But still, guilt ran through his entire body at lightning speed, making him tingle and shudder all over. And now that Nick didn’t know who he was, there was a good chance that he wouldn’t remember who Kevin was, and what Kevin was to him, and how special, loving and sweet their relationship was.

And that would leave Kevin with exactly what he had feared.

Nothing.

~**~

Lyrics: The Four Horsemen - Metallica