The Hangover: Part III

Pedestrians went casually about their day; walking in both directions on the sidewalk or crossing the street, talking on their cell phones, talking to each other, daydreaming, looking for something or someone, one or two taking pictures for business or pleasure. Their focus set on something ahead of them. Not on the door to the front entrance of Venom Lounge and Nightclub bursting open only to have some burly, muscled ex-marine with no neck tossing Phil out, ass first.

"Unngghhh!" Phil moaned in pain, landing flat on his back, his arms and legs momentarily up in the air as he laid there like a sack of coal on the sidewalk.

Most of the pedestrians parted like the Red Sea to stare and get out of the way while the others, the true New Yorkers, went about their lives as if someone getting tossed out of a club with a jarhead reject aiming a Louisville Slugger during non-business hours was nothing out of the ordinary. As if it was actually commonplace.

Stu, Sam and Alan came running out of the club from behind No-Neck, who was no doubt a bouncer. Why he was already at work that early was a mystery. Stu came up to step in front of No-Neck, holding his hands out to prevent Phil getting beat, possibly any further, with the baseball bat.

"Whoa, whoa, stop! Hey, stop!" Stu's eyes were wide and determined behind his glasses.

"Omigod, Phil, are you okay?" Sam was kneeling down beside him and looking his face over as she had to Stu before, but this time Phil was actually wounded.

There was a cut on the right of his forehead that was dribbling blood down the side of his face. He looked a little dazed and confused at the moment as he tried to get his bearings. "Fuck," he grumbled, taking a deep breath.

Sam took the club napkin that had the name and number on it and pressed it gently to Phil's forehead, holding it there to stop the bleeding. "Seriously, asshole," she growled up at No-Neck. "Cut back on the fucking steroids."

No-Neck aimed the head of the bat at Sam and sneered. "Shut it, Reba. I'm not above hitting a girl."

Sam jumped to her feet and went to run at No-Neck for his comment, but Stu grabbed her arms, holding her back.

"You try it, fuckface, and I'll rip your dick off and shove it up your own ass," she spat.

"Get the fuck outta here or I'll call the cops," came another man, shorter and built similarly to Doug. He was wearing black dress pants and matching blazer but no shirt underneath; just his bare chest and a few gold chains. His hair was slicked back and he was wearing Rayban Wayfarer sunglasses, which he'd been wearing inside the club, completing his overall douchebag look. "I see any of you anywhere near my club again and I'll make sure Lyle here breaks all your legs, comprende?"

"Go ahead and call the cops. We'll have you arrested on assault charges!" Sam barked, gesturing wildly at the people stopped dead on the sidewalk. "We have fucking witnesses."

"And I have you four and two others, on camera, fucking up my club last night. So that makes us even."

"Actually I think assault is a greater offense than destruction of property," Alan commented, only to be met with the bat against his stomach, though not hard enough to really hurt him. It knocked the wind out of him for a second, though.

Sam wriggled out of Stu's grasp and dropped back down to place her hands on Phil's shoulders while still glaring up at the club owner and his muscled goon Lyle. "Can you stand?" she asked Phil as the latter pair returned back into the club and the pedestrians went back about their business as if nothing had happened, walking around the foursome.

Phil nodded, pinching his nose with his fingers and tilting his head back. "I think my nose is broken."

"It's not broken, you got whacked in the head by a baseball bat." Sam kept the napkin to his forehead as she and Stu helped him up to his feet.

"Remind me to never get blackout drunk in a Manhattan club again," Phil grumbled, wincing when Sam pressed the napkin a little firmer against his cut.

"We must've had a great time here last night," Alan quipped with a grin, looking back at the front of the club. "Classic us."

"At least that barmaid who was off the clock in there was nice enough to explain things calmly before Chico and the Man came cruisin' for a bruisin'," Sam remarked, letting Phil take over in holding the napkin to his head.

He looked at her with a curious gaze. "Cruisin' for a bruisin'? Really?" Despite his pain, he laughed a little.

"I can't believe you set fire to the bar," Stu commented, rather impressed, as the foursome began to walk away from the club, in no direction in particular. "Literally."

"Well, in my defense, I have no memory of it."

"I wish I did," continued Stu, a smile forming on his face. "You dancing on the bar then pouring an entire bottle of bourbon on it and dropping a lit lighter? We really do go all the way when we're out of it."

"And apparently you were stripping," Sam added, looking at Phil. The idea sounded quite pleasing to her. She had already seen him in only his boxer briefs that morning, so she knew what the merchandise looked like, but not in the context of what had apparently happened at the club.

"Yeah, but you started it," Phil looked at her. "The barmaid said you got up on the bar first, pulling a Coyote Ugly, pouring a bottle of Jack into everyone's mouths."

They fell silent, smirking at the crazy despite themselves while trying to place more missing pieces into the puzzle.

"The good thing to come out of this visit was learning Doug was still with us at two-thirty in the morning when we ran out of here last night to avoid the cops," Sam chuckled a bit.

Phil gave a nod. "Yep," he agreed. "The only good thing about this visit."

Sam mock pouted at him, reaching both hands up to place them on his shoulders, giving him a short-lived shoulder rub. "Aww, poor baby."

Narrowing his eyes down at her with faux disdain, he quickly turned his frown upside down and gestured with a nod of his head toward the rest of the street ahead of them. "Alright. Where to next?"

"How about we take some time to get something to eat?" Stu suggested. "My stomach is growling like a tiger."

"Like Mike Tyson's tiger, Stu?" Alan asked as they headed up the road.

"Like any tiger, Alan," he replied, faintly annoyed.



"I guess you really were hungry," Sam observed, watching as Stu all but shoveled a fistful of fries into his mouth, taking a moment to wipe his hands on his napkin. His mouth was quite full so he only looked across the table at her with a shrug and smirk.

The four of them were sitting at a small table on the patio of a cafe in Greenwich Village. A waiter stopped by their table and others once in a while to check if they were doing okay and needed anything else from time to time, but mostly left the customers to enjoy their food. Some of the customers could be found staring at Phil. His cut had stopped bleeding but there was some dried blood still around it and down the side of the face. Not as much as before, though. He'd gotten most of it wiped off by dabbing a clean napkin into his glass of iced tea. There was, however, a considerable amount of dried blood on the right side of his shirt collar and several drops on his shoulder. Two older women stared at him, possibly disgusted.

Phil just glared back. "What? You never seen a little blood before? Take a fucking picture, it lasts longer."

"Phil," Stu chastised, looking over at the ladies. "Sorry," he apologized on Phil's behalf.

"Don't apologize to them," he told Stu, then a little louder for the women to hear, "It's fucking rude to stare."

"It's also rude to act like an asshole in a restaurant."

Phil threw his Aviators on the bridge of his nose, leaning back in his chair as he lifted the top bun off of his burger to pull one of the pickles out, throwing it to the plate. "I'm not in a restaurant. I'm on a patio. I got first amendment, freedom of speech rights."

"Actually, freedom of speech doesn't include obscenities, defamation, incitement to riot, and fighting words, as well as harassment," Alan pointed out, taking a sip of Coke from the straw in his glass.

Phil just stared at Alan from across the table through the caramel-colored glass of his Aviators. "I don't recall giving a shit, Alan," he snipped casually.

Just then the phone in Sam's sister's purse began to ring. Sam looked down, pulling it out and immediately frowning. Stu and Phil looked at her expectantly. Maybe it was her sister and then it would be one less person to have to look for.

"Hey, mom," Sam greeted with as much of a smile in her voice as she could muster. "No, it's Sam. Because she's in the bathroom right now." The others watched how Sam had to lie to her mother about her sister's whereabouts. "I know it's the day before the wedding, but Amanda and I haven't seen each other in a while and we knew it would be harder to see each other after she's married and I'm back in LA. Because we wanted to take the day and relax in the city...sisterly bonding. We've been having a wild time," with the last sentence she met Stu's smirk. The smirk wasn't mirrored on Sam's face, though. She picked up her bagel and brought it to her lips to take a bite, not really paying attention to what she was doing as she tried to placate her mother. "We might stay the night in the city again. We'll be back early tomorrow for the wedding, obviously..."

Sam trailed off as Alan suddenly complained to her. "Hey, that's my bagel."

She looked down and dropped the bagel, her voice turning raspy out of nowhere. "Gotta go, mom." She was suddenly losing her voice and she turned off the phone, turning to look into the purse once again ever so frantically for something and not finding whatever it was. Her eyes immediately shot across the table to Stu as her face began to turn blotchy and red.

"You okay, Sam?" Phil asked, touching his hand to her shoulder.

She looked at him for a moment and touched her right hand to her throat, going to say something but only a gasp escaping her lips, followed by a succession of more gasps. Her hands began to flutter wildly in front of her, as if a panic attack was setting in. Once again she looked at Stu and gestured to Alan's bagel she had accidentally taken a bite of.

Stu's eyes went wide. "Oh! Nuts!"

"What?" Phil asked, growing concerned.

"Nuts," Stu replied. He turned his gaze to Alan. "What's on your bagel, Alan?"

"Peanut butter. I don't like cream cheese."

Sam began to shake and fell out of her chair, knocking the table over with her foot as it kicked upward before her back hit the ground. Stu was on his feet in an instant, moving around the downed table to be at Sam's side. Phil followed suit.

"Sam's allergic to any kind of nut. She needs epinephrine," Stu explained, placing his hands on either side of Sam's face; his own stricken with worry. "Get her EpiPen out of her purse," he continued, talking to Phil.

"That's not her purse," Phil reminded. "It's her sister's. Unless her sister is allergic, too, I doubt there's an EpiPen in there."

"Fuck!" Stu exclaimed. "Will someone call 911?"

"Dude, you're a doctor. Can't you do something?"

"Oh, sure, now I'm a doctor and not just a dentist!"

"Help's on the way, sirs," the waiter said, crouching down. "We've seen this sort of thing happen before. But usually the person has their medication on them."

Alan began to whimper as he watched the scene unfold. Phil tried keeping a level head along with Stu so Sam wouldn't feel to frightened. "What's the worst case scenario if she doesn't get an EpiPen soon, Stu?"

Stu lowered his voice. "She can die."

Phil ran a hand through his hair. "Oh, fuck."

"Can you try CPR on her to help her breathe?" Alan asked, scared.

"It's worth a shot," Phil shrugged.

Stu went to lean down to try CPR on Sam, but Alan held him back. "Not you, Stu. That'll be like you're cheating on Lauren. Let Phil do it. He doesn't have a wife anymore."

"For Christ's sake," Phil growled, pushing Stu out of the way when he hesitated at Alan's comment. He leaned down over Sam, placing his hands on her face before bringing his lips against hers, breathing air into her mouth. "This wasn't how I thought kissing you would be like," he tried to joke with her. The initial breath of air didn't seem to do much but she was still conscious enough to frown at him. "Sorry," he apologized, realizing it wasn't the best time for a joke. He brought his lips to hers once more, trying to give her air.

The sound of sirens came into earshot and quickly approached. As an ambulance pulled up next to the curb. "Over here!" Phil shouted, noticing Sam had fallen unconscious. Or at least that's what he hoped had happened. Two EMTs, a man and woman, hopped out with their bags and ran over to where Sam lay on the ground with Phil hovering above her.

"She accidentally ate peanut butter and she's extremely allergic and she has no EpiPen on her because her and her sister accidentally switched purses at some point," Stu rattled as if he was going to start hyperventilating at any moment. He was just so worried. He really cared about Sam as a friend and she was probably his best, if not favorite, hygienist at his practice.

"Sir, out of the way, please," the male EMT, Eric, said to Phil, who leaned back to let the man do his job. He pulled an epinephrine pen ouf of his bag and immediately injected it into Sam's thigh.

"Is she going to be okay?" Phil questioned, looking between both EMTs; Alan's crying filling the air around them.

"She should be fine now. Your waiter was quick to call us and you were lucky. We were only a few blocks away on another call," the female EMT named Julie, remarked.

"I did CPR. It seemed to help a little."

"It was a smart move. It bought her some time."

Stu leaned back on his knees. Both him and Phil were on the ground with Sam and the EMTs while Alan was still sitting in his chair, a little bit beside himself. Stu felt bad that he was taking it so hard so he patted Alan's knee. "She's gonna be fine, Alan. It was your quick thinking about the CPR that helped her."

"Really? So I'm kind of like a hero now?"

"Sure. Something like that."

"Cool," Alan muttered, wiping his tears away with the back of his hand.

"We're gonna recommend taking her to the hospital just to make sure she's okay," Eric the EMT informed. EMT Julie got up and went to the back of the ambulance, opening the doors and pulling an emergency stretcher out and wheeling it up onto the sidewalk. Phil and Stu stood up as both EMTs lifted Sam up onto the stretcher as she began to come to. She seemed pretty dazed.

"We're coming with," Stu informed them adamantly.

The EMTs didn't seem to care as they began to load Sam into the back of the ambulance. Stu pulled a few twenties out of his wallet and handed it to their waiter.

"Keep the change!" he called out as he grabbed Alan up off his chair and led him toward the ambulance. They hopped up inside, with Alan needing extra help from EMT Eric. Stu slid over toward Sam's head and smiled. "You gave us quite a scare."

Her eyes felt heavy as she smirked ruefully. "Wasn't my intention," she rasped.

Phil slid in beside Stu while Alan sat on the other side of the stretcher, across from them. EMT Eric shut the doors behind them and hopped into the driver's seat up front. Since Sam was basically out of the woods, there was no need for them to throw the emergency siren on as they pulled out into traffic and toward the nearest hospital.

"Next time, pay attention to what you eat," Phil chided, reaching his hand out to give her knee a squeeze.