14 - Accidentally in the Middle

“What we playin’ tonight, Boss?  Anything out of the ordinary, or are we operating on the ‘same shit different day’ premise?”

A firm hand clapped Jon’s back and he cut a glance over his shoulder to find that Dave had joined him on the trek from dressing room to soundcheck stage. 

“Haven’t decided yet,” he disclosed as one of the equipment cases whizzed by them, clattering to a halt against one of the others that were waiting to be repacked.  Anybody would think the loading area was a damn roller derby with the way those things sped through here, and Jon was continually amazed that the cases stood up to the abuse.  He could only recall buying a couple of new ones this decade. 

“Harder to write a setlist without Bounce as inspiration?” the keyboardist needled.  “I still can’t believe you sent her home without a second thought.”

Oh, he’d had second thoughts – and third.  Even putting aside his inner Barbarian’s agenda, sipping wine and killing time in a hotel room with the curvy kewpie doll sounded a lot more appealing than his millionth night on the couch.  It had gotten to the point where he didn’t even bother pulling out the sleeper part of the sofa anymore.  The steel bar that dug into his lower back through the mattress was worse than just sleeping on the cushions.

He should reconsider that decision to fly home tonight instead of staying in Toronto.

You earned this shit.  Stop your bitching and do what’s right.

“She’s just a florist,” Civilized Jon reiterated as much for himself as anyone.

“What the hell ever.”  Stopping at the foot of the stage stairs, David turned to lecture, “I still say you’re wasting a perfectly good opportunity.  She’s cute, built like a brick shithouse and has a personality that doesn’t belong in a psych ward.  If you were the least bit receptive, she’d be kissing more than your maracas.  For fuck’s sake, man…  What more do ya want in a rebound girl?”

This could go on for hours, days and weeks.  Once these guys got an idea in their head, it was like a Rottweiler on a burger – they wouldn’t give it up until the last bite.  His only hope of distracting the rabid Jewish dog was to fling a tennis ball as far as possible into left field. 

“What makes you so sure I haven’t already had a rebound girl, Lema?  For all practical purposes, my ass got kicked to the curb before New Year’s.  Five months is a lotta time, and I ain’t homely.”

There.  Maybe that would shut him up. 

“Not buyin’ it.  You can’t keep that shit from me.  Never could.  Hell, I can still probably name more of the women you’ve fucked than you can.”

“Bite my ass, Bryan.  Just because you never grew up doesn’t mean I didn’t.  Some shit is just none of your goddamn business.”

“Jesus.  I sleep with the same woman every night now.  Let a guy do a little vicarious living without being a dick about it, would ya?  Fuck the rebound girl and take video!”

The ringing of his cellphone was a blessing, because it prevented him from engaging in a unwinnable battle of idiocy with the keyboardist.  What Jon – and most of the world – perceived as irrational was sound logic in Dave’s world, and no one could convince him otherwise. 

“Get the fuck outta my face,” Jon snarled good-naturedly, sending the other man up the stairs and bidding him bon voyage with the flick of a middle finger.

Still shaking his head in disbelief at the crazy man, he dug the phone out of his vibrating jacket pocket and flipped open the cover.  Dorothea’s name and picture had him frowning, and quite honestly, created a mild stab of panic.  She knew his show day schedule as well as he did, and if his wife was calling in the soundcheck timeslot, it wasn’t with good news.

He swiped the glass, answering with a terse, “Dorothea?  What’s wrong?”   

“A woman brought me flowers today.  She said she knew you.  What’s her name, Jon?”

Dorothea Hurley Bongiovi was one of the most put-together people he knew, and as the mother of four, it took a catastrophe of Armageddon proportions to rattle her.  The way she was firing her words like sniper rounds unsettled Jon and didn’t do a damn thing to quell his panic.  Drawing his brow low, he slipped into the quick-change room for some privacy to determine why she was calling him about the florist.    

“Delaney...”  Hell, he didn't even know her last name.  “Delaney.  Why?”

Her voice went muffled that information was relayed to someone on the scene, and Jon could make out a male repeating Delaney’s name to ask if she could hear him.  It was buffered by the typical New York soundtrack of traffic, yelling and an indeterminate number of strange voices.  Whatever the situation, it wasn’t happening in the Bongiovi apartment.

“Dorothea, what the hell’s going on?”    

“Just a minute.”  Using her sternest mommy voice, she flatly informed someone that they were just going to have to bend the rules this time.  There was no pause for an answer before she returned to him at full-volume.  “There’s been an accident.  She’s unconscious and isn’t carrying identification.”

“Jesus,” he breathed, the mild stab of panic becoming sharper. 

For all practical purposes, Jon didn’t know the woman beyond being attracted to her, but he still knew her.  As a decent human being, that made him immediately concerned about her well-being and the details of what was happening.  That concern had him bypassing the details in favor of finding an advocate to make Delaney’s medical decisions and hold her hand. 

“Find out where they’re taking her, Dorothea.  I think I still have her sister’s number.”

There was only a brief exchange with the male voice still trying to rouse Delaney before she returned to announce, “We’re going to Mount Sinai Beth Israel.”

“What do you mean, ‘we’?” 

“I don’t have time to explain,” she responded curtly. “Call the sister.  Or text me the number.  I’ve got to go.”

The line went dead, leaving Jon with no choice but to start looking back through texts.  He couldn’t think about bloody and broken body parts.  There wasn’t time to do anything but act, and he scrolled impatiently through the phone’s history to find the message with Petra’s number.  It only took about three swipes before he was tapping the number, hoping to God he could come up with the right words to do this. 

Or maybe there weren’t “right” words, he conceded as the phone rang over and over.  Less-wrong might be the best possible scenario, but he still had to come up with something.

“Answer the damn phone.”

“Hello.  This is Petra and I’m so very sorry to have missed your call.  Feel free to leave a message and I’ll-“

Jon stabbed the red icon that aborted the recorded greeting, followed by the one that would dial again.  He didn’t want to leave a fucking voicemail, he wanted a live body at the other end who would haul ass to be with her sister.  God only knew what kind of a state Delaney was in, but at least some bizarre twist of circumstance had Dorothea on hand.  His wife was a protector of the unprotected and would do what she could until Petra showed up.

If I ever get ahold of her.

Roaming the small quickchange area like a caged animal, he pushed wide-spread fingers into his hair with a muttered, “Pick up, dammit.”

“Hello.  This is Petra-”

The full-length mirror reflected the flare of Jon’s nostrils when he blew out a harsh breath of frustration.  She had to answer.  Wasn’t there some sort of psychic power between twins or something?  Shouldn’t she know Delaney was in trouble?

“Jon?”  With the phone ringing anew at his ear, he spun to find Matt had folded back the doorway flap and was peeking in.  “The guys are waiting.”

Soundcheck.  Fuck. 

He was hit with round three of Petra’s canned voice as he flipped his wrist to check the time.  Ten minutes past their usual starting time, and while straying from the pre-show ritual went against his very grain, it couldn’t be helped today. 

“I need ten more minutes.”

“Everything okay?”

Jon avoided meeting his brother’s troubled gaze to again tap the screen in search of Delaney’s sister.  If she didn’t answer this time, he was going to call the flower shop.  What was the name?  Daydreams?  Daffodil Dreams?  Maybe the card was still in his phone case.

“Ten minutes,” he repeated shortly.  When the tinny ringing resumed through the phone’s ear speaker, Jon gave Matt his back to put a hand on an edge of the equipment case that doubled as a dressing table. 

Answer the motherfucking phone.

Of all the magical words in fairy tales, voodoo and witchery, “motherfucking” must’ve been the key to Petra’s world.  On his fourth attempt, he was finally rewarded with a real, live, “Hello?”

“Petra, it’s Jon Bon Jovi,” he greeted briskly over her breathy annoyance.  “Delaney’s been in an accident.  They’re taking her to the Mount Sinai above East Village.”

Her quiet gasp was the first audible indication that she’d dropped her annoyance like a hot potato.  The second followed swiftly in the form of an alarmed, “Oh, sweet Jesus!  What happened?”

“All I know is that she’s unconscious and doesn’t have ID.” 

“Of course she doesn’t,” the upset sister growled as a door slammed, and the sudden presence of traffic noise indicated that she was on the move.  “She never has any fucking thing.  Thinks all she needs to get by in the world is her charm.”

Jon would’ve said that last statement applied to Petra as much as Delaney, but it was none of his business.  He didn’t know either sister that well and would take the high road by assuming Petra was just venting her worry.

“Listen, I’m gonna text you my wife’s cell number.  Dorothea is with Delaney and can give you the story, okay?”

“Your wife?  How did she get involved?” she quizzed as a car door slammed.  Moving her mouth away from the phone, she gave the hospital’s name to what he assumed was a driver before coming back to him.  “Nevermind, I’ll have to find out later.  I need to get in touch with my parents.  Thanks for calling, Jon.”

“Yeah.  Let me know how she is, will ya?”

“Of course,” came the succinct agreement before she disconnected.

With Petra, Dorothea and Delaney all en route to the hospital, there were only two things left for Jon to do.  He promptly did the first in texting the promised number to Petra, but the second wasn’t quite that easy. 

Curiosity ate at him, making it tough to power off his phone, close the case and stow it in his jacket pocket.   He found it even harder to step out of quick-change and climb the stairs, but there wasn’t a choice to be made here.  It was time to go to work, and when work was over…  Then he could find out what the fuck was going on back in New York.

{{{

The noise was deafening, and Delaney scrunched her eyes more tightly shut in an attempt to escape.  Why wasn’t the siren getting any quieter?  It should’ve passed by and faded by now, since it had been squealing for at least an hour.  Just her luck to fall asleep and have some joker parked in front of her building with a fake siren.

“C’mon, Delaney.  Show me those beautiful eyes,” a man’s voice cajoled from above, confusing her even more than the unrelenting siren.  What was a man doing in her bedroom?  And why had her bedroom just hit a pothole? 

A sharp stab in her forearm brought Delaney’s eyes open with a yelp before she narrowed them at the bald, goateed man.  “That hurt.”

“Sorry, sweetheart.”  His grin was anything but apologetic when taping an IV needle to her skin.  “You were lookin’ a little dehydrated, there, so I thought I’d buy you a drink.  Can you tell me your name?”

There was something very wrong with this scene, but her head hurt too badly to figure out what it was.  Just having her eyes open was enough to make her whimper with discomfort, so she let them drift shut again.  When was the last time she’d been this hung over?  Ever? 

“You already know my name,” she muttered.  “You just said it.”

“That’s one point in your favor,” he praised while puttering around with some plastic wrapped supplies that were unbearably loud.  “What we don’t know is your last name.  Wanna tell us?”

She risked slitting her eyes open again to find the source of the mysterious ‘we’, because there was definitely more than one person in this moving bedroom.  While Hugo rustled around on one side of her, a light hand rested on her other forearm, and it belonged to a dark-haired woman who was vaguely familiar. 

“Do I know you?”

“Yes and no.”  Delaney registered kind brown eyes before her own had to take another rest.  “My name’s Dorothea, and I’m just keeping you company until Petra comes.”

“Freep, no.  Not Petra.”

Her head pounded like waves crashing on the rocks.  Whatever was wrong would be Delaney’s fault and she was not in the mood for a tongue-lashing.  The only thing she was in the mood for was a really long nap.  It would be so easy to just slip back into that soft darkness for a couple more hours…

“Delaney.  Sweetheart.”  God, Hugo was loud.  Where had he come from, anyway?  And why was he squeezing her hand so hard?  “Stay with me.  Tell us your last name.”

“Mm.  Gardener.”

“Good girl.  Now do you remember what happened?”

“What happened?”  Compressing her eyelids wasn’t doing a thing to help the pain or her understanding of what was going on.  “Feels like a Fireball hangover.  Wine wouldn’t do this to me.  Wine’s my friend.”

His chuckle was louder than the sirens that refused to silence as he pulled one of her eyelids up and flashed a light in it. 

“Hey!  Cut it out.” 

She fought to retreat from the blinding pinpoint but found herself unable to move.  After trying again, it finally registered that Delaney was not only immobilized by a huge plastic neck collar, but her head was strapped to a hard surface.  An unforgiving band dug into her brow, creating a legitimate reason for the insufferable headache. 

Unhappy with both the pain and being rendered helpless, she demanded that Hugo unleash her. 

Or at least that’s what she meant to do.  With the world going gradually black around her, she couldn’t really be sure if it happened or not.