I've got troubled thoughts
And the self esteem to match,
What a catch
What a catch, whoa-oh...

Jack’s POV:
I don’t know what made me go back to the room.

Meet and Greet was only half way over, and I had no real reason to worry. I’d only been away from Sally for maybe fifteen minutes, and shouldn’t have felt any need to go check on her.

But I did.

It was like an aching inside of me, burning in the back of my mind that something wasn’t right, and no matter how hard I tried to focus on the adoring fans in front of me, I just couldn’t ignore it. I had to check. Just in case.

Alex could tell something was up with me, though it probably wasn’t that hard to tell. I was more fidgety than usual, and my eyes kept darting back towards the backstage entrance in hopes of seeing Sally walk in at any second. I was beginning to get paranoid, wondering what the heck was taking her so long. Maybe she got hooked on that book of hers, or perhaps she just fell asleep. We had been traveling a lot lately, and that plus the long, eventful days that came with touring in general could get to anyone.

“Dude, what’s up?” Alex whispered, momentarily abandoning his own small horde of young fans to approach me.

I pursed my lips, tempted to ignore the voice in my head that urged me to abandon my duties and go back to the hotel. “It’s, uh...” I stepped back from the crowd, causing the young girls to give the two of us well deserved confused looks, but I ignored them. “It’s Sally.”

Alex’s dark brown eyes shot up to me in worry. “What about her?”

I shrugged, knowing I probably sounded crazy to be so worried all of a sudden. “I don’t know. I just have this feeling in the pit of my stomach that I need to check on her, like, now...” I licked my lips, my gaze wandering once more towards the back door to find no one new entering the venue. My shoulders deflated, turning so our conversation could be a bit more private. “I know it doesn’t make much sense, but ‘lex I really think something might be wrong--”

“Then go, make sure she’s okay.” Alex stopped me, his voice without a hint of doubt.

I raised a brow despite my feet already itching to get out of there. “...you sure?”

He flicked his wrist, rolling his eyes as if my question was absurd. “Yeah, we’ve got this. Matt might grumble a bit, but don’t fret. We can hold the fort for a few minutes.” Though he was the only one out of the band that was aware of my impending absence, I had a feeling Rian and Zack wouldn’t even blink if I needed to be by her side. They cared for her like a sister, and after everything she’d gone through these last few months, they probably cared about her well-being more than anyone, next to me and her family, of course.

I shot a grateful smile towards my best friend, patting my hand lightly against his back a couple times before inching my way towards the exit. “I owe you one, man!”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah...” Alex smirked, turning to the group of disappointed girls I was currently abandoning, as well as the girls who’d been waiting to meet him. I glanced once more over my shoulder to make sure I wasn’t totally abandoning my friend with a large group of over-excitable teenagers, and let out a sigh of relief as I noted the particular group of girls seemed more stable than usual. Alex, always the charmer, would be just fine. I turned back and quietly escaped towards the exit, briefly hearing Alex’s short explanation for my sudden absence echo against the dome-like interior. “Okay, so Jack has to go check something really quick, but he’ll be right back. Until then, you guys’ll just have to hang out with my ugly mug...”

Once I was out the building, my mind really began racing. I kept my observation level on high alert, scanning everyone that passed with a hopeful prayer that she’d come into view at any second with that wide, beautiful smile of hers and squash my worry like a bug.

But that didn’t happen.

I passed stranger after stranger on the brief walk from the venue to the hotel, and with each person that passed, the more nervous I became. What if there was a valid reason I was worried? What if something serious had actually happened?

God, I couldn’t even begin to think about that.

I was in the elevator within minutes, tapping the 7th floor button with desperation. If there was something genuinely wrong, every second counted. Every movement mattered.

I took a shaky breath as the elevator rose floor by floor, the pace agonizingly slow, and I wondered for a second if at this point, taking the stairs would’ve been faster. By this point though, I was already half way there and the choice to take the stairs had long passed.

Just three more floors now. Two. One.

Ding.

I shot out of that elevator faster than I ever had in my life, barely feeling my feet touch the red and white flowered carpet as I practically flew to the room I’d only just left. My left hand flew down to my jean pocket, patting it a few times to check the key card was still where I’d left it. I let out a sigh of relief, the tips of my fingers grazing against the rectangular outline of the plastic card. I slipped the key into it’s electronic slot and anxiously waited for the sensor’s light to turn green and allow me entrance. When it did, I turned the handle and walked in, expecting Sally to still be mesmerized by the book in front of her, or maybe passed out from exhaustion on the bed.

I didn’t expect walking into a silent room, that’s for sure.

“Uh, Sally?” I timidly called out, creeping forward as I softly shut the door behind me. My eyes carefully observed my surroundings, taking in how nothing much had changed since I’d last been there. Our suitcases were still open in the corner of the room, a couple articles of Sally’s clothing strewn atop a chair for later use. The book she’d been reading was still in the room, carefully placed on the nightstand, the bright red bookmark an indicator she’d finally torn herself away from whatever enticing story she’d been glued to.

I stood there for a few moments, in that silent room. I was about to turn back around and curse myself for coming up there in the first place when I heard it. It wasn’t much, barely audible even with the empty room. And I don’t know if it was because my senses were already on such high alert, or I’d happened to be close enough to hear it, but I froze the second my ears caught it.

A whimper.

“Sally?” I asked, my heart already beginning to flutter nervously.

“No, I can’t believe I actually did it...” I could vaguely hear her voice now. It was muffled and barely above a whisper, but she was there. I turned the corner, feeling like an idiot as I realized that the bathroom door was shut and the barest hint of light was emitting from a crack below. She was still there. Then, just as I was about to breath that sigh of relief I’d been holding since that sickening feeling first arose within me, I heard her cry out once more, her voice filled with desperation and regret, “I can’t die.”

“SALLY!” I shouted, wasting no time in knocking as I took a chance and shoved the bathroom door open to find my worst nightmare right in front of me. My blood ran cold as I felt my body go into auto-pilot, sinking to meet her level as grabbed her limp body into my arms. “Come on, Sally. Wake up...” I pleaded tapping her cheeks in a quick rhythm. Nothing. I did it again, trying hard to not hit her cheeks too hard. “Fuck!” I cursed loudly, wondering what the hell could’ve happened within the last twenty minutes for her to be passed out like this. Did she have a seizure? Or an aneurysm? Both were probable, considering her history of trauma.

I took out my cell phone and dialed 911, growing more and more concerned by the second. She was still breathing, but that did little to calm me.

“911, what’s your emergency?”

“It’s my girlfriend. I found her passed out on the bathroom floor--”

The person on the other line hardly waited for me to finish my sentence. “Okay, sir. What’s your girlfriend’s name?”

“Sa--” I sucked in a sharp breath, glancing down at the delicate figure in my lap. “Her name’s Christina.”

“And your name, sir?”

“Jack.”

“Listen to me very carefully, Jack. Is there any reason Christina might’ve passed out? Has she been under a lot of stress lately? Drinking, drugs, anything like that?”

I shook my head. “No, no. I don’t think so.” I bit my lip. “I mean, things have been getting better. She and I have been going through a loss, and she’d been diagnosed with depression a few months ago, but...” My gaze trailed downwards towards the tiled floor, feeling completely helpless while the woman I loved was once again in danger.

The dispatcher was silent for a moment, taking in this new information. “I’m going to have you look around the area really quickly, okay, Jack? Check for any open pill bottles that could’ve caused this--”

My eyes widened. “What, you don’t think that she did this on purpose, do you?”

To her credit, the dispatcher kept her response as sensitive as she could, given the situation. “I just want to rule out all possibilities, that’s all...” She paused for a second. “Do you see anything?”

“Uh...” I pressed my phone against my ear and my shoulder as I delicately tried to adjust myself to get a better view of the spacious bathroom. I checked the trash can. Nothing. The tub. Squat. The medicine cabinet. Nothing out of the ordinary. “I don’t think--” Then, out of the corner of my eye, just underneath the sink, I caught a flash of orange. “Shit.” I breathed, grabbing the empty plastic bottle with shaky hands. “Shit. Shit. Shit.”

“What do you see, Jack?”

“It’s...” I gulped, throwing my head back as I scanned the label. “It’s her anti-depressants. The bottle...it’s empty.”

“Okay, Jack. If there’s any question that she took those, you’re going to need to induce vomiting. We have to get that out of her system now.”

I nodded, not even giving it a second thought as I asked, “What do I have to do?”

She proceeded to quickly give me instructions step by step, and with our teamwork, I somehow managed to get all of those disgusting drugs out of her system. Once I did this, her dim-grey eyes fluttered as she began to stir a bit, but she still couldn’t stay fully conscious. Even when the paramedics finally did arrive, Sally couldn’t seem to hold on long enough before slipping into the darkness once more.

Within minutes we were downstairs and in the ambulance, the paramedics already getting an IV into her system in hopes of clearing out any residual drugs in her. I numbly watched as my girlfriend laid on that gurney, pale and sickly. I hated that I’d seen her like that before, let alone that it’d happened again. And this time, this time felt like a knife to the gut. This time there wasn’t another person to blame, a freak accident to explain why what had happened happened. It was just her. She’d done this to herself. She’d been in such a painful place that she’d tried to end it.

And here I was, idiotically believing that things were actually getting better. How could I not see through the mask that she was in more pain than ever?

It wasn’t until we actually got to the hospital and the EMT’s kindly, but urgently told me to stay in the waiting room, that it finally sunk in what had actually happened. Like a zombie, I took out my phone, pressing Alex’s name without even thinking if he might be busy with the interview we’d had planned shortly after the Meet and Greet I’d abandoned. He answered on the third ring.

“What happened, man? I thought it was just going to be five minutes?”

I almost lost it right there, the reality of the situation hitting me like a sucker punch. “It’s Sally, ‘lex.”

“Is she okay?”

“I...” I shook my head, trying my best to keep from sobbing in the congested waiting room, but it was damn hard. “I really don’t know.”

He was silent for a beat, probably realizing himself how serious things had suddenly become. “What happened?”

“I think she tried--” I drew in another shaky breath, the thought that she’d actually done such a thing making my blood feel like ice. But I had to tell him. Out of everyone I knew, he’d know what to do. Which was why the words flew out of me before I could catch them. “She tried to commit suicide, Alex.”

Doubt was his natural response. It was like he’d much rather it be some sick version of a joke rather than the unfortunate reality. “She...no. Chris wouldn’t do that...”

Maybe before the accident, she wouldn’t have. But now...I guess things were different. I sniffed, ignoring Alex’s denial as I continued, “She’s in the ER right now. The doctors won’t tell me shit and I’m really fucking scared, man. What if I--” My throat hitched. “What if I didn’t find her in time?”

“Jack, you can’t think like that.”

“But what if I didn’t?” I shot back, my voice tight as a handful of people waiting for their own loved ones gave me nasty looks. I sighed, moving away towards the hallway in hopes of at least a little more privacy.

“She’ll be alright, Jack.” Alex repeated, probably at a loss for words to say much else. “What hospital are you at? I’ll update Matt and the rest of the guys and we’ll be there ASAP.”

I rattled off the name of the hospital and with one last assurance that she’d be just fine, my best friend hung up, leaving me to wonder just when the hell things had gone so south, so fast. But more importantly, I prayed that she could make it out of this.

She had to be okay.

She just had to be.

Notes