She-Rox: A Rock & Roll Novel (39 page)

Still shaking, Raven felt helpless. She gave a good hard slap that jerked Eddie’s head. Eddie came to, sucking in air and coughing. Raven held her head in her lap. An overwhelming wave of nausea overcame Eddie, making her lean over and vomit. Raven said, “Thank God.”

The siren was getting stronger and eventually it stopped as the white cube van pulled into the parking lot of the rehearsal hall.

“Gretchen, run outside and bring the paramedics in here,” ordered Raven.

Gretchen waved down a man in the appropriate white shirt, and yelled, “She’s in here!”

The man, holding a small first aid kit, followed Gretchen with a jog. “Is she still out?” he asked.

“No, but she’s throwing up.”

“Good—that’s good,” he answered. The black and white keys of the riser looked like a large pile of dominos. Seeing Eddie still on the floor, her head in Raven’s lap, the paramedic pushed the button of the small walkie-talkie on his shoulder and reported, “Patient conscious, we need a gurney in here right away.”

He crouched down and grabbed a pair of surgical gloves from his shirt pocket. Opening a first aid kit, he took some square gauze and dabbed at Eddie’s forehead, checking the small gash and deciding it was only a flesh wound before he started asking questions. “Do you know your name?”

“Eddie,” she whispered.

Recognizing Eddie as a man’s name, he looked at Raven to verify.

Raven confirmed, “That’s right.”

“Okay, Eddie, can you wiggle your fingers and your toes for me?” Eddie wiggled. “Good. Do you know what day it is?” he asked, pulling a small penlight out of the same shirt pocket and flashing it into her pupils.

“After show—”

The paramedic looked again to Raven, who nodded, “Yes, it’s the day after the showcase.”

“Do you remember how long she was out?”

“Um,” Raven thought, “like three minutes. It wasn’t long.”

Two men rushed in with the gurney. Eddie looked at it in horror. The paramedic calmly explained, “We’re going to take you to the hospital, okay?”

“My ankle” Eddie winced, “hurts.”

“We’ll get cha all checked out,” he said.

They set the gurney flush to Eddie, gently slid a board underneath her body and carried her to the unit waiting outside.

“We’re taking her over to Cedars-Sinai,” the paramedic announced. “Is she under eighteen?”

“Yeah.”

“Do you know how to get hold of her parents?”

“They live in San Francisco. Should we call them?”

“Yes, they need to know right away. This girl could need emergency surgery for whatever reason, but the doctors won’t know anything until they run some tests,” he said. “After seeing from where she fell . . .” he trailed off, looking again at the musical carnage. “We’ll meet you at the hospital,” he finished.

While driving to the emergency room, Gretchen asked, “So, who wants to man up and call her parents?” Seeing how there were no takers, she mumbled, “I’ll do it.”

The jam shed was only a few miles from atop the Hollywood Hills, but it was a winding road. Slade’s thoughts flew as images of Eddie and her head cracked open came to mind. He mentally prepared himself as he gripped the steering wheel of his Aston Martin. “I just don’t want her to be hurt, that’s all,” he voiced out loud.
A life full of barriers and the one person I trust has to land on her head. Perfect
—
just perfect
—
Yeah Slade, that’s it
—
trust.

Slade got out of his car, rushed headlong inside, and slammed open the heavy door only to find the girls gone. What he did see were the amps and drums still on stage and the caved in riser. Eddie’s keyboards were heaped into a pile, the stands twisted together making an electronic mess. He glanced to the side of the stage where the accident had happened and saw another keyboard, split open. His nose twitched from the unmitigated stench of vomit. He spied the puddle and cursed himself for being stupid. They had left for the hospital, but which one?

He looked around for anybody who might have seen something, but the practice hall was a tomb. Knowing Cedars-Sinai was closest he took off.

The automatic sliding doors of the emergency room opened and Slade found himself at the front desk, his fingers drumming the counter, hoping the nice middle-aged lady behind it would help. “Excuse me,” he urged, taking in the women’s scrubs, straining to keep her tucked neatly inside.

“Yes?”

“There’s a girl, a group of girls, actually—I think came in here earlier. There was an accident—she fell off a stage, er,
one
of them, not all of them,” he clipped in his British tongue, knowing the explanation was badly pieced together.

The emergency room nurse, “Barbara Timmons, LPN”, asked, “Are you a family member?”

“No, sorry.”

“Then I’m sorry, too. I can’t help you.” She smiled, her tone even, her resolve iron clad.

“Well, then, could you at least tell me if there was a group of girls that came in not too long ago? You can’t miss ‘em—two blondes, two brunettes—tall, gorgeous.”

The nurse looked Slade over with his dreads and rocker stance. “Don’t tell me . . . let me guess . . . daddy’s a TV studio exec, right?”

“Er, no—”

“—and that poor girl in here earlier with blood soaked hair? You didn’t have anything to do with that either, I suppose?”

“What?”
Slade breathed, “
How dare you, madam
. I was merely trying to locate . . . look are you going to help me or-”

He looked at his feet sighing. Trying a different tactic, he asked, “Ever go to concerts? I can get you tickets to anything you want to see—just name it.”

Barbara Timmons, LPN, leaned over the narrow high counter and whispered, “Sir, if I took every offer that made its way through these doors—Vince Vaughan himself, would date me.”

Slade's shoulders dropped. He looked at the nurse, crestfallen.

“What’s the name of your girl?” the nurse asked.

“Esther Von Drake,” he said.

She ran her finger down the page on her desk and answered, “Looks like she’s been admitted. You’re going to have to walk back out and around the building to the main entrance. I can’t let you go through here.”

“Thank you,” Slade said, meaning it.

Gretchen’s hand gripped Eddie’s phone. She wondered how best to say, “Your daughter, who practically ran away, is in the hospital with a possible concussion.” She scrolled through Eddie’s phone book until she found “Home.” She hit send, waiting for anybody to answer.

“Hello?”

It was a female voice. Gretchen, assumed it was Eddie’s mom. “Mrs. Von Drake?”

“Yes?”

“My name is Gretchen Thor and I play in a band with your daughter, Eddie.”

“Oh, yes.”

“The reason I’m calling is that, well, um, Eddie’s in the hospital, ma’am.”

“What? What happened? Is she hurt?”

“You know, I’m not sure—she fell off the stage while tearing her equipment down.”

“
She fell
off a stage
?”

“Yes ma’am and we’re here at the hospital waiting to hear from the doctor. They took her off somewhere to get an x-ray or something like that, but we figured you’d want to know.”

“What hospital?”

“Cedars-Sinai in Los Angeles—It would be a good idea to call. I’m sorry but I don’t know much more than that. We’re all waiting around till somebody comes to let us know what’s going on.”

“Yes, I’ll call the hospital right now. Thank you.”

Slade parked underground and went through the hospital maze, asking for directions over and over until he finally arrived in the east tower, fifth floor, where the other Katz were all waiting with glum faces.

“How is she?” he asked.

All three pairs of eyes shifted their gloomy demeanor into the face of Slade. Their primary concern was for Eddie’s welfare, but the fact that Slade had shown up to wait out the prognosis in the hospital with its pasty, dull walls and irrelevant magazines was revealing. He scanned their faces for any sign as Raven said, “We don’t know. Nobody’s been out with anything, yet.”

“What happened?”

After hearing the story, he excused himself and walked off out of ear shot to make another phone call. Something of grave importance had struck him.

Seeing Slade’s name light up on her phone, T.J. smiled with great glee. “Hi, babe.” She was perched in a heavily padded chair, her toes soaking in a bath of soapy water, getting a pedicure at a local salon.

“T.J.,” Slade stressed, somberly, “I don’t want to alarm you, but . . . I’m at the hospital.”

“
Slade
—
what’s wrong? Are you okay?”

“It’s not me it’s . . . its Eddie,” he said, more somber than before.

“
Eddie! Why’s Eddie—”

“T.J! I need your help.”

“Tell me what’s going on, Slade.” She pulled her feet away from the attendant and braced herself as he explained the reason for his call.

Stunned, she asked, “Is she conscious?”

“She wasn’t at first. I guess she had a pretty good knock on the head, but she came to.”

“Do her parents know?”

“Gretchen called her mom.”

“What hospital did they take her to?”

“We’re here at Cedars-Sinai.” Slade, treading lightly, pressed, “T.J., I need you to tell me something.”