by Cari Quinn
She didn’t want to examine why that hurt her on a basic level. All she could focus on was getting inside and getting to Simon’s bedside.
Lila swore at what awaited them. The waiting room was full of people. Some were for their own emergency needs, but the bulk of the crowd was clearly reporters.
Margo gasped as even Kim Forrester from Music Life was there. How the hell had they gotten there so fast?
Kim spotted Lila and advanced on them like a tsunami on the coast. Margo stumbled back as two other reporters with cameras zeroed in on them.
“Is it true Simon Kagan collapsed onstage at the end of a sold-out show?”
“We were advised that it was laryngitis, but it seems far more serious than that.”
“Was it drug related?”
“Was he stabbed?”
Margo pushed her way out of the crush. What the hell? She understood it was big news, but not to this level. Oblivion was one of the largest bands around right now, and especially here on their home turf, but they weren’t quite the Beatles.
Not yet.
“Did he collapse because of the news of Snake’s death?”
Margo whirled around. Kim’s intelligent and gleefully bright gaze met hers, then moved onto Lila.
Lila stopped moving. “What did you say?”
Kim Forrester was the center of attention now. “William Scotsman was found dead this afternoon, an apparent accidental drowning. Or suicide.”
The reporters doubled their efforts and Lila grabbed Margo’s hand again. A small anchor in the center of insanity.
Nick and Deacon pushed their way through. Seeing fresh blood, Kim arrowed her microphone and her camera at Nick.
“Did Simon collapse at the news of William Scotsman’s death?”
Nick’s gold eyes widened as he advanced on the reporter. “What did you say?”
“William Scotsman, otherwise known as Snake, was found dead at the Santa Monica Pier this morning. He’d washed up with the afternoon tide. It’s unclear if it was a suicide or accidental.”
At Nick’s horrified face, Kim’s gleeful eyes lost a little of their sparkle.
Deacon pushed Nick through the throng of reporters and gawkers. Lila hooked her arm through Nick’s and they powered their way to the back of the waiting room.
Security muscled into the room and shouts of first amendment rights were drowned out by the swift and precise orders of very large orderlies and three officers.
Margo was jostled into a hallway and an eerie silence fell around her. People were rushing around a glassed-in room. She couldn’t stop herself from walking toward it.
Somehow she knew it was him.
Three men in lab coats and a woman with red hair and surgical scrubs surrounded Simon. His concert clothes had been removed and the cotton johnny coat sagged around his shoulders.
The redheaded doctor was shouting, but Margo couldn’t hear her above the white noise filling her head. The woman jerked the gurney away from the wall and shoved at one of the men in the lab coats.
Two nurses and the doctor in scrubs wheeled him into the hallway and Margo finally snapped out of it.
“Move!” The redheaded doctor’s blue eyes blazed.
“Please, he’s my…” Margo swallowed. What was he to her?
Just hers.
Mine.
He was so pale and that tube down his throat made her ache. She reached over the side railing and ghosted her fingers through his dark hair.
“We have to go, Miss.”
Margo blew out a breath. “You take care of him.”
The doctor nodded. “I’m the best.”
Then they were gone and the elevator doors closed after him.
Consumed
Lost in Oblivion Book 6
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Consumed
© 2015 Cari Quinn & Taryn Elliott
Rainbow Rage Publishing
Cover by LateNite Designs
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First ebook edition: August 2015
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ISBN: 978-1-940346-26-7
One
Simon Kagan came into consciousness, fists swinging. He gasped as someone held him down. He tried to open his mouth, tried to tell whoever was pressing down on him to get the fuck off.
He couldn’t get air into his lungs.
“Mr. Kagan, please calm down. It’s okay. You’re in the recovery room. You’re fine.”
His muscles shook and his head spun as his gaze crashed around the room, not settling on any one thing. Too many lights, too many windows, too much white and blue.
Too many faces.
Worried ones, blank ones, tear streaked ones.
Then her.
Just her. Violin girl. His violin girl.
Margo.
She stepped forward from where she stood on the side with the ridiculously large dude in scrubs. She touched the guy’s arm and he shot her a harried look. Long, elegant fingers swiped down his almond skin and he backed up.
“Hush.” Her fingers feathered over Simon’s brow and down his cheek. The tiny callused tips were as soothing as silk. “There you are. We’ve been waiting for you to wake up.”
He struggled to sit up, but she rested her hand on his chest and he stilled. Her huge dark eyes were trained on him. Nothing but him.
Breathing under water seemed a helluva lot easier than coming out of anesthesia. The fact that it felt more like he’d swallowed gasoline than spit may have had something to do with that.
Surely he had to be pre-surgery.
This couldn’t be what fixed felt like.
She tucked a hank of hair behind his ear and ran the backs of her fingers along his jaw. “The doctor will be in soon.”
He mimed writing and she reached for the small marker board on his bedside.
Am I fixed?
Her fingertip brushed over his lower lip. “The doctor will explain it better, but essentially you had a cyst on your vocal cords.”
He stiffened.
“They were able to get it without doing more damage.”
More damage? So that meant there was already some. He sagged against the mattress and looked away from her. His gaze tripped over Jazz, her huge blue eyes swimming, Deacon with his forced smile, and finally Gray, the bottom half of his face lost in the wild of Jazz’s hair as he stood behind her. He didn’t give anything away.
Like a heat seeking missile, he narrowed his focus on Nick Crandall. Nick was his barometer. Nick’s no bullshit meter was stuck on high at all times.
He was sitting on a chair hunched over with his elbows on his knees and his hands clenched in front of his mouth and nose.
His eyes were in shadow, his hair disheveled from countless swipes of his fingers and hands. Simon couldn’t read his best friend, but Nick’s blank face spoke volumes.
No further damage.
But there was damage.
Damage he’d brought on himself.
He remembered falling. Remembered all the blood flooding his tongue and throat. Remembered drowning in the sounds of the crowd and the bright red splashed across the stage. The one girl’s screams.
Why did he remember that one girl?
“Mr. Kagan, welcome back. I’m Dr. Connor.”
Simon couldn’t even dredge up a winning smile from that little pocket that always remained inside of him.
No matter how pissed off or tired he was, he kept that pocket alive for fans. They didn’t want to know he was having a shitty day.
Today had gone so far beyond shitty that he should probably sew up that fucking pocket. It would be empty for the foreseeable future.
The doc, a redhead that made even blue scrubs look good, pulled over a chair to sit by him.
Guess that meant it was heart-to-heart chat time. So she could tell him definitively that he couldn’t sing again.
Fucking wonderful.
Margo’s fingers curled over his hand and held on. He tightened around hers and a little bit of calm seemed to flow in from her touch. If he dragged her on top of him, could he find the rest of it?
Probably would cause another problem.
“So, you probably have questions and since you’re a captive audience right now, I’m going to run through a few things and whatever I don’t cover, you can use your handy dandy whiteboard to ask, all right?”
Simon nodded.
What the hell else could he do?
“I’m not going to sugarcoat it.”
Redhead logic. Seemed like that was exactly what he deserved after his stunt. C’mon, red, give me all of the bad news.
Do it.
Tell me my career is over.
I dare you.
“You have vocal chord damage. It’s too soon to tell just how bad it is until the swelling goes down after the surgery. I removed a cyst that was slowly growing over the last few months. That itch in the back of your throat?”
Simon’s grip tightened on Margo’s hand. He nodded.
“Yeah, that’s one of those things you should have been listening to. It was telling you that something wasn’t right.”
He opened his mouth and pounded his other fist on the bed and reached for the marker board.
The doctor stilled his hand. “Nope. Listen now. I can see how angry you are. And yes, you probably thought it was allergies or just that you were singing too much. And in eighty-nine percent of cases, that’s true. But what makes it different is the persistent tickle. Was it every day?”
Simon looked around at everyone. The urge to shrink down in his bed was strong, but he didn’t. He’d fucked up. He nodded.
“Dammit, Simon. Why didn’t you tell us?”
His gaze shifted to Deacon. Saint Deacon who did everything right. Saint Deacon who probably would have had a million specialists out on the tour.
Saint Deacon would have made better choices.
But he wasn’t Saint Deacon. He was Simon the Super Slut Good Time Charlie.
His gaze slid back to the doctor.
“In the good column, you’re young and healthy and you don’t smoke. In the bad…you beat the crap out of your chords.”
He pointed to the board. The doctor sighed and nodded. He picked up a marker and pulled off the cap with his teeth.
Is that a technical term?
The doctor smiled. “Sometimes a spade is a spade, Mr. Kagan. I got in there and removed the cyst. I sent a tissue sample down for testing just to be sure, but I’m fairly certain it’s not cancer.”
“Oh, God.” Jazz’s voice came out in a sob. She rushed to his bed. “No way, Simon. That’s not possible.”
The doctor held up her hand. “It is possible. It’s my job to make sure that I cover all the bases. From the looks of the cyst, it wasn’t. It was very isolated and not overly large. But you’ve probably had it for a while. The more you talked and sang, the more irritated it got.”
She held up two fingers together. “Vocal chords work like this.” She held them apart and then tapped them together. “When you’re singing they come together to make the notes and such. Each time yours touched, the cyst irritated them and vice versa. Along with the swelling, the cyst continued to get harder and larger. Finally, you had that episode a few nights ago when they were just too swollen.”
“And when we had the ENT doctor come out, why didn’t he find this?” Lila asked.
“Simon’s tissues were way too swollen to find it unless he was scoped with a camera. Which they would have found when he did the follow-up visit. But unfortunately, he—”
“Sang that song,” Nick finished.
“No. Actually, just talking could have ruptured it. He was really torn up at that point. So, while it wasn’t advisable to sing tonight, it could have happened at any time.”
Simon slumped back against the pillows. One brick of guilt he didn’t have to carry, imagine that?
Margo rested her other hand on his shoulder. He wasn’t sure what to think there. Was it just that she felt bad for him in his hour of need? She never touched him in front of people. Not like the others didn’t know they were bouncing on one another, but she never owned up to it.
“So, what are our next steps?” Lila asked in her manager-of-all-things way. All business as always.
“I’ll know more in a few weeks.”
“Weeks?” Lila’s arms fell to her sides.
Simon shot up in the bed.
The doctor pointed at him. “Don’t you dare. You are on complete vocal rest for ten days—no talking, no humming, no whispering. I want you back here for a follow-up after that.”
He opened his mouth and she made a zipping sound.
“Nada. After that, we’ll see.”
“That seems excessive. I’ve been doing research.” Lila folded her arms.
“You can second opinion all you want, Ms. Shawcross. And I encourage you to do so. I’m a vocal specialist in California and my resume speaks for itself. The treatment I’m setting up will get him singing again within six months.”
Simon’s vision grew hazy. Six months. She kept talking about coaches and gave Lila names of people to talk to as well as a host of treatment particulars. The only thing he could focus on was no talking for almost two weeks.
No singing for so much longer.
None.
Margo’s hand moved up to the back of his neck as she touched her forehead to his. “It’s going to be okay. I’m here. We’re all here for you.”
He slipped down and turned away from the doctor. Voices around him rose and fell in degrees of hushed whispers and shouts. The one voice he didn’t hear.
Nick’s.
He was afraid to look. Afraid to see if he’d walked out.
Nick’s precious band. Their precious band—and the voice was gone. Just as they were climbing into the stratosphere. There was no way to soften that blow. It was a baseball to the head.
Because that’s what it felt like to him.
It had to be ten times worse for Nick. He opened his eyes and found dark brown eyes staring back at him. Sympathy was there. So much that he wanted to shut down and shut it out. He didn’t want to hear I’m sorry. He didn’t want pity.
That was always next.
No matter what people tried to do to prevent it, there was always pity.
He couldn’t take their pity. So he closed his eyes again.
Margo pressed her lips to his forehead. His inky black hair was disheveled and his skin was pale. Not the normal Scottish heritage hot rocker look he sported. His light skin was more wan and his beautiful blue eyes were red rimmed with shock and sadness.
And now he was just gone. He’d locked out the world and the bad news coming his way. Much like he’d been doing for the tour. Only this time he couldn’t hide behind a grin and wave off their concern.
This time it was real.
She looked at the doctor. “What can I do?”
The conversation slowly came to a halt. Nick stood up. “What exactly do you think you can do, Violin Girl?”
Nerves jumped to life in her belly. “Simon and I are…involved.”
“How hard was that to say?” Nick asked. His golden eyes were back to that frozen-in-time amber. No warmth, just a blank mirror. He was so much like Simon and yet completely the opposite. It was a strange and fascinating dichotomy. Neither of them would let people in.
Nick deflected with sarcasm and a
shitty attitude. Simon used his sexuality to draw people in, but hid behind the physical act. At least that’s how she’d been reading him for months.
Until last night.
She laced her fingers around his relaxed ones. Until last night when he’d told her he loved her. Blindsided with a single one word.
Margo wasn’t exactly looking for that. Simon was supposed to be the perfect man for no strings, no love. And now…nothing made sense.
Everything felt heavy and too real. This was a job, nothing else. Simon was the cherry on top. Outrageous sex and finding out that she had a sexual side hidden away. Finding out she wasn’t a prude lost in the chamber music that had ruled her life for so long.
Funny that at twenty-five, she learned that sex was amazing and that lust came in more forms than skin on skin. That his music—their music together—had been just as eye-opening as the rest of her time with Simon.
But now it was different. They were different. And now she found herself standing up for him.
Oh yeah, this definitely wasn’t in her job description.
“Yeah, you can’t even answer me,” Nick said. “And you think you can take care of him?”
Margo’s chin lifted as she turned toward the doctor. “What does vocal rest entail? After the initial ten days.”
“Most of the time it’s a gradual introduction to talking, but I’ve found that if they limit talking as long as possible, the patient has less recovery time to deal with.”
Deflated, Lila shut her mouth.
“I realize he’s in the middle of a tour, but this is non-negotiable. If he wants a prayer of keeping his career on track, then he isn’t going on the road for six months. And even then, it’ll be a lot of vocal coaches in his future. He’s going to need to relearn how to sing.”
“It’s not like he’s lost his knowledge base,” Deacon said.
