Chapter Thirteen
Mackenzie
I came to in a cold sweat, feeling like I was still stuck in the dream that had awakened me – well, more of a nightmare, to be honest. The events of the previous night had thrown me for a loop and sent me into a spiral of dark memories and pain. With my dad in hospital, hooked up to all sorts of machines and tubes, and then the sickening feeling I'd experienced when I'd seen Chance with that girl in the white dress, I hadn't been able to stop my mind from going back to that dark place, back to the lowest point of my life.
I started to lift my head up from the pillow, but then dropped it back again and just lay there, feeling too weak to get up. I'd spent most of the night tossing and turning and waking up again and again. I glanced across at my clock and saw that it was only five thirty in the morning, still a little too early to get up. I didn't really want to go back to sleep. The last thing I wanted was to land right back in the middle of yet another nightmare, but soon enough my, eyelids were feeling heavier and heavier, and I drifted quickly into sleep.
The next thing I knew, I was back in that car five years ago. His car. Everything felt so real, so intense. Brad was at the wheel, laughing and joking. I was gripping the sides of the seat, my heart hammering, my hands clammy and cold.
“Slow down, Brad, please... please just slow down,” I was saying to him.
“Just relax! Jeez, you're always so damn uptight.”
“We're doing over a hundred miles an hour, Brad! Of course I’m uptight. It's dangerous! I'm scared!”
“Look, this is a BMW with some of the best safety features money can buy, Mack. Besides, I can handle this. What do you think I am, some stupid punk kid? Shit, you do remember that I was a NASCAR driver once, don't you?”
“And that's why you've got two titanium rods in your left leg! You crashed and almost killed yourself!” I reminded him.
Brad shook his head and sneered. “Whatever. Every professional driver crashes once in a while; it don't mean nothing.”
I stared at the headlight beams as they raced over the winding surface of the single lane mountain road as we barreled along it at breakneck speed.
“Brad, come on, please, please just take it down to sixty, or eighty, even. You’re scaring the hell out of me, I'm—”
I almost screamed as he threw the car into a tight corner, spinning the wheels and smoking the tires.
“See!” he exclaimed, his eyes bright in the dim interior of the car, “I still got it! I still got—”
The next thing I knew, we were airborne. Brad had lost control of the car, and it had launched off the side of the road. It couldn't have been for more than a second or two, but I felt like an eternity. And then, with a sickening crunch and a jolting impact, we hit the ground. And then all I remember was a blur of earth and sky, earth and sky, spinning again and again as we tumbled and rolled.
Then there was darkness.
I don't know how long we were there, passed out, but when I woke up, I was upside down and still strapped in the passenger seat. A slow hissing sound permeated from somewhere, and the inside of the car was full of smoke. My lower abdomen felt like it was on fire, but because I was hanging upside down, I couldn't look to see what was causing it.
“Brad...” I croaked. “Brad, are you okay? Speak to me, Brad, speak to me...”
In a split second, his silence was replaced with screams. “Help!” he yelped from next to me. “Somebody help me!”
A flashlight beam cut through the smoke, and a gruff voice spoke to me from the other side of my door. “Hang in there, young lady. We'll get you out.”
“Get me out! Get me out!” Brad screamed when he heard the voice.
“We are going to get to you, sir,” replied the voice. “But you don’t appear to be injured, and she does. We're helping her out first.”
“No! Get me out! Help! Help!” he repeated as he thrashed about, trying to break free of his seatbelt.
A big, bearded biker covered in tattoos and leather crouched in through the broken passenger window next to me.
“What’s your name?” he asked me.
“Umm...Mackenzie,” I managed to say.
A second pair of motorcycle boots appeared next to him. He introduced himself as Cal in a calm voice and tried to assure me everything was going to be okay. By the way he was trying to remain so collected, I wasn’t so sure it would be. He stood back up to talk to the man with him.
“Johnny, I’ll hold her tight while you unbuckle her seatbelt,” Cal said. “Then we'll pull her out real careful like.”
“Sure thing, Cal,” replied the biker outside, Johnny.
Cal moved around and climbed into the car through the hole where the windshield had once been. I felt a pair of big, strong hands cradle around me to stabilize me as Johnny crouched down next to me from the door and unbuckled me from the seatbelt. Then, supporting me carefully, Cal and Johnny slowly and cautiously pulled me out of the wreckage and laid me gently down on the grass.
“Just hang in there, Mackenzie,” Cal said. “We've called 911; they're sending an ambulance.”
“Thank you,” I managed to whisper.
The grass beneath me was cold and sent a shiver through me. Lying there under the stars would have been beautiful, except for the smoking wreckage of the car next to me. Inside, Brad was still shrieking for help.
“We're coming. Calm down!” Johnny snapped. “What an ass,” he whispered as he squatted down next to me and took my hand in his big, tattooed paw and squeezed it gently.
“Just hang in there, Miss. We're gonna get your friend out of the car now. You stay as still as you can. The ambulance is on its way.”
As the two bikers made their way to the other side of the car to get Brad out, I lifted my head just enough to look down at my body and see what was causing me such intense pain in my lower abdomen. I almost threw up when I saw it – a big, twisted, jagged piece of plastic from the dashboard stabbing deep into my flesh. The lower half of my white dress was red and wet with blood. I started to whimper, panic rising in me. The air grew thick and heavy. I couldn't breathe, and a light grew brighter and brighter in my eyes, burning out everything...
And then I woke up with a start, sitting bolt upright in my bed.
I ripped the covers off my body, expecting to see the sheets stained with blood – but all I saw were two legs and my bare abdomen. No blood.
The long, jagged scar across my lower belly nearly glowed in the moonlight shining through my window, a permanent reminder of that awful night, a souvenir of a nightmare that I would carry with me for the rest of my days.
Five years had done little to tamp down the memory of both the accident and what had happened after, which had been just as bad only in a different way. I'd managed to move on for the most part. And while I’d struggled to forget about it, I’d at least been able to accept what had happened and get on with my life.
But after seeing Brad recently – with his new family – and especially after having witnessed Chance with the bimbo in the white dress, all of the bad memories had come flooding back with a vengeance.
This was a disaster. This was everything I didn't need my life to be. Everything I needed so desperately to forget.
I got my phone out, and I was full of sadness and anger as I typed. My message to Chance was blunt and simple. I hit send, and then put my phone on silent. If he replied or tried to call, I didn't want to hear it and wasn't about it take it.
I checked the clock again, and saw that now, after waking up from the most recent nightmare, that it was half-past six in the morning. I stretched and got out of bed – still feeling awful – and walked through to the kitchen. I felt a little better here, in my parents' house, the house where I'd grown up and had had so many great memories with my wonderful family, but with my dad being in the hospital with his scare the previous night, it wasn't possible to feel great about things.
My mom was up, sipping on a mug of coffee. I walked over to her and gave her a long, tight hug.
“Morning, dear,” she said with a warm smile.
“Morning, Mom,” I said. “How's dad doing?”
“He's fast asleep. He looks pale and weak, but that's to be expected.”
She looked pale herself, but I knew that that was from worry and lack of sleep.
“Did you get any sleep?” I asked her.
“Not enough,” she sighed. “You?”
I shook my head.
“Bad dreams. Lots of 'em.”
She sighed and hugged me again.
“It's a tough time we're going through, Mackenzie. A real tough time. Listen, though, I didn't get the chance to properly thank you, or Lilly or Jason, for finding Will last night. I'm really grateful that you guys were able to do that.”
“Luckily, it wasn't too difficult. I just wish he'd be more responsible.”
“I know. That boy is twenty-five, but still acting like an eighteen-year-old. I don't know what we're going to do with him.”
“He has grown up a little, though,” I replied. It was true – he wasn't always irresponsible. Only when he drank.
“I know, I know. And you know I love him dearly. He is my son, after all. I just wish that he could change a little.”
“I do too, Mom, believe me, I do too.”
“Has there been any progress with the kidney donor list?”
She shook her head. “No, none at all. We're still considered only medium priority, even after what happened last night.”
It was really frustrating, all this waiting. If I could have donated a kidney to my dad, I would have, as would Will, but neither of us was a match. There was no way to get to the top of the waiting list.
“I guess all we can do now is wait and pray. Eventually, we'll find a donor, I'm sure of it. Eventually, we will. I just hope it'll happen sooner rather than later.”
“Believe me, Mackenzie, I hope so too. I really do.”
We sat down and ate a simple breakfast of cereal and fruit, and then I went off to shower. I felt refreshed after showering, and then, for the first time since sending the message to Chance, I picked up my phone to check it. There were a couple of missed calls from him, which of course I wasn't going to bother to return, and a text message. I was almost tempted to open and read it, but I didn't. I'd been through enough of that with Brad. I'm sure Chance would try to tell me that I'd just “been mistaken” or that “I'd misunderstood what I'd seen.” Yeah, right. That's exactly the sort of thing Brad had told me, both before and after the accident, when I'd caught him flirting with girls on Facebook. It had taken me actually catching him in bed with another girl to finally make me accept the truth and stop falling for his lies, and I sure as hell wasn't going to be that dumb again with Chance. My eyes had told me everything I needed to know about him last night when I'd seen that skank in a white dress hanging all over him outside The Basement. And, of course, they'd been going off to his place, or hers, or some gross motel somewhere in his truck to... well yeah, I knew what they had gone to do together.
My phone rang, and a moment of lurching dread made me think that it was Chance calling me again, but when I picked up the phone, I saw that it was Lilly. Relieved, I answered the call.
“Hey Lil,” I said.
“Hey, girl, how are you feeling this morning?”
“Not too great, to be honest.”
“Oh no, I'm sorry to hear that.”
“Yeah... I couldn't sleep last night. Kept on having nightmares.”
“About... the accident?”
“Yeah. I thought I was over it, you know, five years on, but what we saw last night with that asshole Chance made it all come rushing back.”
I heard her sigh on the other end of the line.
“I'm so sorry, Mackenzie. I really thought he was different. I guess maybe he is just like Brad.”
“I thought he was different too, Lil, and that's what makes it so hard, so painful.”
“I know. Well, chin up girl, you're strong, stronger than ever. No loser like that is gonna get you down.”
I smiled. Lilly was always good at lifting my spirits.
“Thanks, Lil.”
“So, how's your dad doing this morning?”
“He's all right, I guess. I haven't seen him yet, he's still sleeping, but Mom thinks he's going to be all right, despite how he was last night.”
“That's good to hear. Listen, I just got a call from the manager at The Six-Shooter. He wants to know if you and I can play a show there next Friday night. I'm down with it if you are. And he promised us a twenty percent increase in the door cut, which ain't too bad.”
“That sounds good,” I replied. “Sure, we can do that. We're rehearsing hard enough for the festival, so it's not like it's gonna add on any extra practice time.”
“Great. I'll let him know we're in. So are you coming over to the studio to practice this morning?”
“I sure am. I'll see you in around an hour if that's all right?”
“Sure, that suits me.”
“Cool. Well, I'll see you in a bit then.”
“See you soon, Lil. Bye.”
I smiled. It would be good to get into the studio and jam out some songs. Playing music always helped to distract me from the harsh realities of life, and God knows that there was a lot I needed to be distracted from at this point in my life.
I put my phone down but then picked it up again. That message from Chance was making me really curious, if only to find out what lame excuse he was going to try to come up with about the woman in white.
I opened it and read it.
“Dear Mackenzie, I think there's been a terrible misunderstanding between us. What you saw last night was definitely not what you think it was. The woman in white is an employee of mine. She's a DJ at my station, and she asked if I could help her out with a ride home as she was too drunk to drive. Yes, she did try to put some moves on me – but if you'd really been watching carefully, you would have seen that I put a quick end to that. Absolutely nothing happened between her and I. Nothing at all. Like I said, she's just an employee, nothing else. Mackenzie, I think you are amazing and beautiful, and I have only one woman on my mind these days. You. Please call me when you read this so that we can talk about it. Please.
Chance.”
I shook my head. Did he really think I'd fall for those lies? Really? I put my phone away and did my best to force any and all thoughts of him out of my head.