Please Don't Leave Me

“Wake up!”
It was just after seven, and we had to be on stage at eight fifteen. If I didn’t get Twiggy to wake up right now, he’d never get dressed and made up and ready in time. I have no idea what took so long, but he was always hurrying to get himself together for our shows.
“Twigs! Get up!” I nudged his shoulder with my knee. Sometimes, he could be a pretty sound sleeper. Although the couch he was stretched out on didn’t look that comfortable. But, then, we’d been touring for seven months straight, and there was no doubt that we were all exhausted.
Rolling my eyes, I leaned down, and rocked his shoulder back and forth. “Sunshine, it’s time to get dressed,” I prodded him, but he didn’t budge.
“Man, he’s really out!” John 5 chuckled behind me. He was already dressed, though he didn’t have his makeup on.
“Too much partying last night?” Ginger Fish asked. Wherever John was, Ginger was sure to be less than ten feet away.
I shook my head. After the meet and greet and dwindled down just before one, Twiggy and I had both gone straight to bed. It was kind of unusual that he didn’t want to take a girl back to the bus with us, or get wasted on whiskey or whatever drugs we could acquire, or, preferably, both. But, we were all getting older, and he was starting to grow up a bit- as much as one could expect with his personality.
“Twiggy, please get up,” I sighed, tickling the dangling fingers of his left arm. He was stretched out on his belly, his right arm tucked under his body, the left one hanging over the side of the couch.
“Let me try,” Pogo offered, a menacing gleam in his light eyes. He loved to be the one to wake any of us up. He never seemed to run out of torturous ideas. Though we all hated his wake up calls, they were always effective. No matter how dead tired you were.
I backed up, and let Pogo next to Twiggy.
“Wakey-wakey!” Pogo yelled loudly, violently shaking the soundly sleeping bassist.
Twiggy lay still, except for the slight tilt of his body that had come from Pogo’s roughness.
“How could he sleep through that?” Ginger wondered aloud.
I reached for the arm that was hanging over the couch. My God, he was cold. I massaged his fingers, my hand sliding up to his wrist. I was expecting to feel the steady rhythm of his pulse, but I felt nothing.
“Marilyn?” John was looking expectantly at me.
“He’s so cold,” I barely whispered.
Pogo shoved me over, rolling Twiggy onto his back. He was roughly shoving his matted, ratty black hair out of the way, trying to access his neck. When he finally got to it, he seemed deep in concentration as he pressed his fingers down, trying to find a pulse.
“I, I should call for someone? A…medic?” Ginger asked rather dumbly.
Pogo nodded. “I guess you call a medic. You don’t call the coroner, do you?”
I felt my heart stop for a moment. A coroner? No. Twiggy was sleeping. He wasn’t dead. He couldn’t be dead.
“Uh…” John was nudging Pogo, trying to get him to look at me.
Evidently, I didn’t look so good.
“Let’s sit you down,” Pogo said, turning his full attention to me.
“Where?” I asked vaguely, already reaching to lift Twiggy’s upper body so that I could sit where it had been lying.
“No. Leave him there,” Pogo said firmly, but I was already sitting.
I laid Twiggy’s head in my lap, stroking his hair. How many times had we sat like this? He always said that my lap was the most comfortable pillow.
Ginger was off the phone, staring wide eyed at me petting my best friend’s hair. “They’re sending an ambulance. Someone did check to see if he was breathing or if his heart is beating, right?”
Pogo shook his head. He tried to lean down, but I stubbornly warded him off with my arms. I had to protect Twiggy. I couldn’t let anyone tell me that he wasn’t just sound asleep.
“Marilyn, please,” Pogo said with a calmness that was completely foreign to him. “I have to check. You can hold him, but I have to check.
I shook my head. I rubbed my hands together for a moment to make sure that they were warm, and slowly edged up Twiggy’s black t-shirt. I laid my hand over his heart. It was warm. Not pulsing, but warm.
“Feel anything?” Pogo asked.
I nodded.
He sighed. He clearly didn’t believe me.
“It’s warm. I can’t feel a beat, but it’s warm.”
“Christ,” Pogo shook his head. “Ginger, call 9-1-1 and ask them what to do until the paramedics get here.”
Obediently, the drummer dialed again. He spoke rapidly, barely pausing to listen between questions. “Yes. Yes. I…okay.” He held the phone out to Pogo.
Slowly, Pogo instructed me on what to try. I could tell that he didn’t want me to get on the phone. Maybe he was afraid I’d lose it if I did.
Amazingly, I felt a very shallow beat begin. At that point, Ginger took the phone back, and Pogo helped me perform what must’ve been a comical version of CPR, as I felt like I was kissing my best friend while Pogo was banging on his chest.
I guess there must not have been much traffic or many tour buses in the area, because the paramedics were there surprisingly quickly. They checked Twiggy’s vitals, and lifted him onto the stretcher outside.
“Anyone family?”
My eyes darted back and forth nervously. Should I lie?
“No?”
“Um…” I bit my lip. I was in regular clothes, I didn’t look weird. It would be okay for me to go with him.
“You?”
I didn’t exactly answer, but I didn’t need to. The paramedic was pushing me off the bus, leading me to the front of the ambulance.
The ride felt like forever, even with the siren on and us not stopping for a single stop sign or stoplight.
While the medics raced Twiggy into the ER, I was led away by a tired looking middle aged woman who insisted that I needed to fill out paperwork. Well, that wouldn’t take long. He had no real medical history, no insurance, and I legally had no authority over what they were or weren’t allowed to do to treat him.
“Please, Mr. …?”
“Warner,” I filled her in. I wasn’t about to tell her that I was Marilyn Manson. In these situations, it was always best to be Brian Warner.
“Mr. Warner, I need you to sign the consent forms.”
I took the pen, staring down at the papers. “But…he’s my best friend. I don’t…I shouldn’t…”
“Well, is there a family member who can sign, then?”
“No. His family is about seven hours away.”
“We need the consent now, Mr. Warner. Please, sign the forms.”
Sighing deeply, I scrawled my name, handing her back the clipboard.
“No insurance?” She stared at me as if I’d told her that Twiggy had three heads.
“No. He’s…uh…self employed, I guess.”
She raised an eyebrow.
“Surely not every patient has insurance.”
“No, but I’m not quite sure how he’ll pay these bills.”
“We’ll manage,” I promised her. I don’t think she believed me. She was probably right. He probably was a dummy for not having health insurance. On the other hand, mine was almost three hundred a month. He would never pay that. Of course, he didn’t have a heart condition to worry about like I did.
“All right. I’ll take you to the waiting room.”
I was led to a large, white room. All of the chairs were in a single line, and the room was mostly empty. It reminded me very much of the set we had used in the second to last music video we’d shot.
“Have a seat. It’s going to be awhile.”
I sat, putting my head down between my knees. I ran my hands through my matted red hair. Somehow, I hadn’t begun to really process all of this yet.
John, Pogo, and Ginger all trooped in, looking worried. I was surprised they’d come.
“How is he?” John asked, sitting beside me.
I shrugged. “They’re working on him, I guess. He’s alive. That’s all I know.”
Pogo went to make coffee while I paced beside the nurse’s station, on the phone with our manager, explaining that we were in the ER and that we weren’t going to be able to go on. Not that we wouldn’t have been late already. It was nearly eight thirty.
By the time I came back, a nurse was talking to Ginger.
“What did I miss?” I asked tiredly, dropping back down into my seat.
“Well, they’re about to take Mr. White for a CAT scan and an MRI.”
“Does he need those?”
She nodded. “We need to see if we can figure out what’s going on with him. We don’t know how long he was down. There’s a possibility for brain and lung damage, depending on how long he wasn’t breathing.”
“You don’t know anything?”
“No. Not right now. All I can say is that he’s breathing with oxygen, and his heart is pumping. He hasn’t shown any signs of consciousness, and he doesn’t respond to touch.”
“I could’ve told you that,” Pogo grumbled, taking a sip of his steaming hot coffee.
I saw two young men in scrubs wheel Twiggy by in the direction of the massive x-ray rooms. I wanted to go along, but I knew that they wouldn’t allow it. Instead, I waited with the rest of the band.
Fifteen minutes later, they wheeled him back into the room they’d taken him to originally.
“Okay…one at a time, please,” the older of the two informed us, eyeing us a bit suspiciously.
Ginger was dressed normally, but John was still in his stage clothes, and Pogo…well…he never was one for looking normal.
I went in first. I sat in the chair beside the bed, putting down the rail so that I could hold his hand. It wasn’t like he was going to get up or roll out of bed. I spoke softly to him, mostly telling him that we were all there, that we all loved him, and that he needed to wake up. Of course, he didn’t.
John, the last one to get a ten minute visit, was just going into Twiggy’s room when the nurse came back.
“The scan results are back. We’ve got a neurologist and a general physician in looking at them now. We should know more soon.”
I thanked her, and finally accepted the cup of coffee Pogo had been trying to get me to drink for the past hour. I really wasn’t much for coffee. I never had been. It was strong and bitter.
When John came out, I went in again. Nothing had changed, but I couldn’t stop myself from hoping.
Almost an hour later, both doctors came down and examined Twiggy, then darted off down the hall to discuss some more. The waiting felt like torture. Sure, I was sitting beside him, but was he still there? I mean, his mortal body was there, but was the Twiggy I loved so much still inside, or was he simply a shell?
It was almost midnight when we finally got some answers. Twiggy was in a coma, but they couldn’t figure out why. He had no damage to his brain, lungs, or heart. He’d simply stopped breathing out of the blue. Luckily, he’d only been down for a few minutes when I’d gone to wake him, or he would be dead right now.
With nothing more to be done, Ginger, John, and Pogo went back to the bus while I stayed while they moved Twiggy to a room in the brain injury wing. Not that he had a brain injury, but they really didn’t know what to do with him, and since he was in a coma, it seemed like the best place for him.
“If he’s in a coma, how can he breathe with an oxygen tube? Doesn’t he need that lung pump thing?” I was no medical expert, but I did know more than the average person, since my mother was a nurse.
“There are different types of comas. This one’s light. He should wake up just as if he’s been asleep for a few days.”
I nodded. I hoped she was right.
Rather than go back to the bus, I slept on a cot in Twiggy’s little room. It wasn’t comfortable, but I was with him.
Morning came, and I stretched out on my little bed, trying to take in my surroundings. I sat up, looking at Twiggy’s bed. It was empty. I started to panic.
“Hey.”
My head almost completely spun around to face Twiggy, who was standing by the window, his massive hospital gown like a tent over his small frame.
“Twigs! You’re awake!” I held out my arms, and he skipped over, barefoot, to drop down into my lap. I hugged him close, kissing his cheek, toying with his hair.
“I guess I took a long, deep nap?”
I laughed, stroking his cheek. “You sure did. What were you thinking, trying to die on me? You know you can’t leave me to do this on my own any more than I could leave you.”
He hugged tightly to my waist. “I’m still here, aren’t I?”
“Of course you are. And don’t you ever do that to me again, okay? I don’t know what I’d do without you.”
He rested fully against me, his head tucked down against my chest. He seemed completely normal.
I didn’t understand what had happened, and I probably never would. All I knew was that he was going to be okay.