Best Man

Slowly walking down the hall
Faster than a cannonball
Where were you while we were getting high?



Every step Billie Joe took felt like it was made in slow motion while everything around him flew by him in an unnatural blur. Everything felt digital, pixalized...like a room full of static clogging his vision and mind. He couldn't think straight as he headed down the incredibly bland hallway of South Buffalo's Mercy Hospital.

Yet, at the same time, it felt like he was running, but getting nowhere fast.

Maybe it was the pounding of his heart and the blood in his veins; reverberating via the pulse in his ears. It almost made him want to break out into a sweat or suffer another panic attack.

It was moments like this that put the fear of God into him. To fear the threat of what couldn't be seen or known. Of having no control.

As weary, bloodshot green eyes found a focal point in the figure of young nurse in her late twenties, Billie Joe nervously placed his clammy hands, which he'd had stuffed in his pockets, onto the nurses' desk and peered down at her.

"Excuse me," he muttered hoarsely.

When her eyes lifted up to meet his, she smiled. "Hello. Can I help you?"

"Michael Pritchard's room, please?"

"I'm sorry, only family's allowed to visit him right now."

Billie Joe just stared at her for a moment while a part of him wanted to dive over the desk and rip her eyes out their sockets. "He's been my fucking best friend for the last twenty-six fucking years and bandmate for the last nineteen. You gonna tell me that's not good enough reason to let me see him?" he seethed, his heart pounding erratically in his chest.

With pursed lips and a scowl to kill thousands where they stood, the 36-year-old punk rocker kept staring the nurse down until she began to shift uneasily under his gaze.

"I suppose I can call his room to see if his fiancee wants him to have any more visitors."

"Good. You tell Caroline that Billie's here," he remarked bitterly; turning his back and folding his arms across his chest just as the tanned and short figure of Estelle came bounding down the hall with her long, dark hair swayed from side to side.

"Uncle Billie!" she called out with open arms.

Perking up a bit, Billie Joe crouched down and welcomed the eleven-year-old girl into his embrace and lifting her up as if she were only five. After all, she was lean like her father.

Placing her hands on his shoulders, Estelle smiled sadly at Billie Joe and let out a sigh. "I'm glad you're here."

"Thanks, kiddo," he replied, ignoring the nurse and walking away with Estelle. "How's your daddy doing?"

"He's okay, I guess," she shrugged. "I was really scared when Caroline began to shout for help. Grandma Woods called 911 and I got to ride in the ambulance. Me and Caroline with my dad and the paramedics." She started to shake her head as if to start crying, but with no tears coming. "They had that breathing mask over his mouth and all these machines hooked up to him to make sure his heart got back to normal and stuff."

Billie Joe's heart ached for what both Caroline and Estelle had to witness on Thanksgiving.

"Caroline's been trying not to cry all night so she keeps sneaking out of dad's room but I still heard her outside. And then she'd come back in with puffy eyes and a redder nose."

"How about you? How're you holdin' up, chickpea?"

"I cried a little," she admitted.

"There's nothing wrong with that," Billie Joe assured. "I cried a little too before I caught the plane here to Buffalo."

"Ya did?"

"Mmhmm," he nodded. "Now, where's your dad's room?"

"There," she pointed to a room on their left.

Still holding Estelle on his narrow hip, Billie Joe pulled the handle to Mike's hospital room down and pushed the door open; stepping in as he began to let the taller man's daughter slide down to the ground.

Turning her head from where she sat in a chair, hunched over at Mike's bedside, Caroline sat up a little straighter as she spotted Billie Joe and Estelle entering the room together.

"Hey," she breathed, tiredly.

"Hey," he repeated with a nod of his toward Mike. "How's he doing?"

Mike was lying in his hospital bed, currently asleep and unaware his best friend was there. And even unconscious, the shorter man could tell how much what had happened the night before had aged his friend.

Caroline just stared at Billie Joe, as if in a daze. "He had a second heart attack in less than two years, Billie. How do you think he's doing?" A pained expression crept onto her face as she leaned her head down to rest onto the edge of the mattress; her left hand reaching out to clasp around Mike's.

"He's not in a, um...a you know..."

"No, he's not in a coma. Just resting."

Then Mike groaned, causing all to lift their heads toward Mike's closed eyelids which began to flutter open until his blue eyes honored all three with knowledge that he was awake.

"Was resting..." he mumbled.

"Sorry, Mike. Didn't mean to wake you."

He looked as if he'd had the shit beat out of him and his motions dragged as he tried to take steady breaths and focus on his best friend who stood at the foot of his bed.

"When'd you get here?"

"Just now," Billie Joe answered. "My plane touched down about an hour ago and Caroline's uncle was nice enough to pick me up from the airport and bring me here. And, actually," he turned to Caroline. "He told me to tell you he was gonna head back to your grandma's and for you to call him when you wanted if anything changed with Mike."

Caroline just nodded. "I will later."

A moment of silence fell over them as Billie Joe looked around the darkened room and found another chair in the corner which he pulled up beside Caroline's and sat down in. All the while, Mike's eyes followed him, as if awaiting a judge's sentence of life in prison.

"D'you talk to Tre?" Mike asked; being the one to break the silence.

"Yeah, I got a hold of him in New York."

"Right. He's visiting Ramona."

"Yeah."

"What'd he have to say?"

"Well, I didn't go into detail because I was trying to make a lot of calls. I told him you...that you had another heart attack and that your, um, video got out and is being sold online without consent and he seemed to clam up." Billie Joe's green eyes flitted down to his lap. He hated being stuck in the middle when it came to Mike and Tre's quarrels. It made him feel like he was being torn in half, right down the middle from gullet to groin.

"I bet he did."

"Mike..." Caroline began, tightening her grip around his hand.

He looked at his fiancee and smiled. "I know, I know," he whispered, appearing as if he were melting into the mattress a little.

"He said he'd try and catch a flight here sometime today," Billie Joe continued, hunching forward a little; almost matching Caroline's posture.

"'Kay," Mike muttered lamely, staring off to his right where his daughter sat with her iPod in her hands, but not listening to it. "How you doin', Stella baby?"

"I'm good, daddy."

Mike grinned, moving his right hand out for her to take it and when she placed her smaller one in his, he wrapped his fingers around her tinier ones. "That's good."

"What the doctor say?" Billie Joe inquired, more focused on his friend's health than anything else.

Turning his head in the shorter man's direction, Mike simply stared for a few moments, as if not really seeing him; like he were peering into a daydream. Pulling his left hand out of Caroline's, he itched lazily at his chest and then just let it rest there, below the location of his heart.

"I had a heart attack," he spoke with a deadpan expression, stating the obvious. "Another one. And here I am, still kicking, because I am so damned invincible...apparently. No condition can bring me under." Spreading his fingers out like a fan, he patted the left side of his chest. "Strong like bull," he muttered with a faux Russian accent.

This wasn't what Billie Joe wanted to hear. He wanted to know the particulars. What exactly happened? What did this mean for Mike? Would he be able to take part in any form of physical activity?

"Well, as long as you're alive and kickin', man, that's all that matters."

Mike smirked sleepily. "Damn straight."

As the bassist's eyelids began to droop, Billie Joe stood up and gestured to Estelle. "Hey, chickpea, why don't you stay here and keep your daddy company while Caroline and I go get some coffee, okay?"

The eleven-year-old nodded and got up to try and hop onto the hospital bed beside her father and lie down next to him as Mike wrapped his right arm around her.

"Bring me back one," Mike joked.

"Coffee is the last thing you need," Caroline muttered a little nervously. Looking up at Billie Joe, she gazed sadly at him before turning back to Mike and standing up to lean forward and press her lips to his.

"You're comin' back, right?" he mumbled.

"Always."

Turning away with Billie Joe, Caroline led the way out of the hospital room as he shut the door behind them. And as soon as they were greeted by the hallway's bright and sterile lighting, the 28-year-old singer immediately pressed her back against the wall and sank down to the ground as she placed her head in her hands.

Crouching down to her level, Billie Joe folded his hands between his knees and looked at her through his eyebrows. "So...what's going on with him? How's he really doing?"

Focusing on a small spot on the linoleum floor, Caroline licked her lips and let out a sigh. "The doctor said his heart's twenty percent weaker than it was before this second heart attack, and it wasn't that strong before because of his first," she began. "I mean, he got back to health and was able to do anything a normal man could. Normal as in never having had a heart attack before. But...the doctor..."

"What?"

"He said only seven percent of heart attack survivors have a second, so given that Mike just had a second, he was surprised Mike lived. He didn't expect Mike to pull through."

"Well, that's good. That's great," Billie Joe amended. "So he's gonna be okay, right? He'll just have to stick to a better regiment of cutting the stress out of his routine, cut back on coffee -- or the decaf, this time -- and really he just shouldn't have it at all anymore. Maybe tea would be better for him. And he already quit smoking altogether...and then there's a better diet and exercise. I know he was starting to slack a bit on those..."

Caroline wasn't sure whether or nor Billie Joe was aware that he was rambling, so she held a hand up to place on his shoulder to grab his attention; her gaze not at all expressing any glimmer of hope.

Noting her hand on his shoulder, Billie Joe looked Caroline in the eye, questioningly. "What?"

As her eyes began to well with tears, her chin began to quiver, so she bit her lip in order to hold her composure. Unfortunately, the tears fell. She just wasn't strong enough to hold them back.

"The doctor said he could assure us that if Mike doesn't cut out the stress and whatnot from his life, he won't survive a third. And...and given his condition now...he's weaker after this one than after his first. I mean, you saw him. He was more out of it this time around. And I can't begin to think of what I'd do if he died. I feel like if I touch him, he'll break and if there's even an ounce of angered feelings or stress, he'll have a third attack and that'll be it. 'Cause that's what the doctor said. Mike'll die if he suffers a third heart attack."

Billie Joe's own heart began to twist and ache at the possible death of his best friend, and he wasn't about to let that happen.

"It's okay, Care. We won't let Mike deal with any stress. You and me, we'll make sure his life is stress free and that he drinks no more coffee, eats healthier, exercises better. We'll be his shadows..."

"I don't wanna lose him," Caroline interrupted with a heart-wrenching sob escaping her lips. "I'd rather die than live without him, Billie."

Tears stinging his green eyes, Billie Joe leaned forward and wrapped his arms around her shoulders; shifting his weight to sit Indian-style on the floor in front of her. "Shh, he's not gonna leave you anytime soon. Nothing could pry him from you."

"I was never so scared in all my life than I was last night," she spoke through hiccuping sobs. "I wasn't there when he had his first attack. He was alone and then I wasn't really around when he was recovering because of the tour and everything was just so crazy then. But this time...last night...I was so fucking scared. I thought he was gonna die right there in my arms. I mean, the look on his face. I could just see the pain in his eyes when he grabbed at his chest and fell to his knees. It was the most horrific thing I'd ever seen and I can't risk losing him like that. Not ever."

Billie Joe just held her and listened. It was all he could do right now for her; his friend.

"I can't lose him. Because I still need to marry him. I have to become his wife and I wanna have his children and then grow old with him and raise our kids together. I want us to go to ballet recitals and soccer games, to stand side by side as we watch our kids go on their first dates and graduate from high school, go off to college and make lives for themselves. I wanna be old with him," she rambled, desperately. "I wanna be old and gray and senile with him. I just...I wanna be with him forever and ever. He's the love of my life and without him I can't survive."

Breaking apart from Billie Joe, Caroline stared him in the eye; her sobs beginning to subside and her emotions calming down.

"If I lose Mike, I promise you, here and now...I will not go on..."