Their feet trampling, the crowd chanted. I squeezed my eyes shut and sang along. Line after line until Frank’s voice perished among the clamor of the instruments.
Then came the gasp. It was a low, chilling sound that made my skin crawl. The drums still rattled, but the tremble of Johnny’s bass had melted away and Dante’s guitar went off key. Like a mile-long drop into an abyss of nothing. Heart clenching, I snapped my eyes open and scanned the stretch of space between me and the platform. Frank wasn’t there. The fog was thick and the lights spun uncontrollably, slicing through the darkness. I couldn’t see well, but I could hear the distressed screams as they grew louder. Then the music stopped.
Dread seized my chest. People behind me started to push, their whispers deafening. Static noise and panic took over the backstage area as paramedics barreled through. Janet and Bruce ran in after them. The fog was settling and bright lights flooded the entire arena.
That’s when I saw him. He was on the floor, face up. Dante sat next to him, cheeks abnormally pale. Carter stood behind Dante. Johnny, like the true gatekeeper, still held on to the microphone, but terror twisted his features.
A howl tightened my lungs. Frank wasn’t moving. I palmed my mouth and began my approach. My heart had fallen out of my chest somewhere along the way. It was the strangest sensation. The immediate need to know he wasn’t hurt overwhelmed me. My emotions were fragments of feelings, similar to a broken mosaic that clattered inside my head.
I didn’t make it past the safety line. Roman intercepted me and grabbed my arm. His grasp wasn’t rough, but it was firm enough to stop me from going any farther.
“I’m sorry, Ms. Evans. It’s best you stay back.” His voice boomed over the noise.
Then I saw Corey shaking his head furiously and waving his hands. He didn’t want me anywhere near Frank right now.
I understood. I would have become another unnecessary complication if I were to show up on stage in front of twenty thousand people in a dress that was made of a piece of fabric that was smaller than a bandana.
“Okay.” I gave Roman a nervous nod. “What happened?” I tried to sound calm, but I was having trouble holding it together.
“Not sure just yet, Ms. Evans.” Shaking his head, he released my arm and marched into the chaos surrounding Frank.
A stretcher was rolled on stage. I heard another collective gasp, then waves of worried murmurs rippled through the arena. The crowd was restless.
My shoes suddenly felt small, tight, and very uncomfortable. My spine stiffened. I balled my hands into fists and waited to the side while the paramedics tried to get Frank off the floor. My manicured nails dug into my palms, stabbing the tender skin, but I didn’t feel anything. Not a lick of pain. It was all in my chest, squeezing and tearing at my hammering heart.
On stage, technicians and crew members ran around with their walkie-talkies, and I could see the pattern of Janet’s dress behind the wall of bodies as she hovered above her son. The paramedics finally managed to put Frank on a backboard and lifted him up after a brace was settled around his neck. Cries filled the arena—a fusion of sounds of anger, fear, and disappointment.
Low thuds and feedback came from the speakers as Dante tapped the microphone. He pushed the tangle of dark, wet locks off his forehead and held up his hands, asking for silence.
When the paramedics pushed the stretcher away from the audience’s line of sight, blind panic clutched my brain and I barreled my way in and grabbed the side rail, needing to look at him, needing to know what exactly he was going through. His eyes were wide open, unblinking and full of horror as they looked past me.
“Ma’am!” One of the medics elbowed me, knocking my purse off my shoulder. “Please step aside!”
My gaze swept the length of Frank’s body, checking for blood. One small cut carved the skin near his sweat-coated temple. I reached for his fingers and they were stiff and unresponsive.
“Ma’am! We need you to step aside!”
“Miss Evans, please!” Roman insisted, ripping me away from the cluster of paramedics trying to work on Frank.
Dante’s voice reverberated in the back of my head. He was talking to the fans. I heard Carter resuming on the drums. The noise of the show began to fade away as we scrambled past the backstage crowd and into the hallway. A muddle of sobs, shouts, and radio static trailed the stretcher as it clattered against the floor.
“Where are you taking him?” I asked no one in particular. My lungs were out of air and the words that tore through my throat were dry spurs. “Where are you taking him?” I caught Janet’s sleeve.
She glanced at me over her shoulder. “Cedars Sinai.”
The strap of my dress fell and my purse dangled against my leg as I trailed behind in my four-inch heels.
Outside, the distressed blues and reds of the ambulance gleamed against the polished bodies of the eighteen-wheelers that lined the dock.
The muffled roar of the audience filled the parking lot as I watched the medics loading the stretcher into the back of the vehicle. Janet and Billy jumped in behind it. Roman went next.
Eyes trained on Frank, I slung my purse over my shoulder and pushed through the chain of security.
“Only family!” a voice barked at me as the ambulance doors slid closed.
“I’m his girlfriend!” I cried out, my fist thrust in the air in an attempt to hit the vehicle, but my coordination was off. Heck, my brain was off too. My entire life was crumbling like a sandcastle under the tide.
“I’m sorry. Only family!”
“Roman!” I called and waved my hand to get his attention, but he was turned with his back to me.
“Ma’am, please step aside.” A security guard rested his heavy hands on my shoulders. A flashlight jerked across my face.
Delirious, I stomped my foot. “Don’t fucking touch me and don’t fucking ma’am me!” My blood boiled with rage.
“You need to calm down, ma’am!”
I spit out another string of expletives, but the piercing noise of the siren devoured my words. The ambulance moved. Without me. I wasn’t sure what exactly I felt at that moment. Mad. Terrified. Erased?
Emotions clogged my throat. I dropped my gaze to my chest and realized my backstage pass was missing.
People around me yelled and ran in different directions. Inside the arena, the noise was subsiding. The drums had stopped. I spun on my heels and scanned the crowd, looking for a familiar face. My heart was a thrashing mess somewhere in the pit of my stomach. My pulse raced. Brooklyn stood near one of the trucks with a phone pressed to her ear. I couldn’t make out a word she said, but for the first time since I’d met the woman, I saw her emitting emotions. Mostly shock.
Corey was nowhere to be seen. My hands shook when I pulled out my own phone to check the reception. With twenty thousand people Tweeting and Instagramming about another Hall Affinity fiasco, the chances of getting an Uber from anywhere within a half-mile radius of the Forum were less than zero.
“Fuck, fuck, fuck,” I growled, staring at the single bar in the top left corner of my screen.
The app lagged.
I felt it then. The tears of despair pooling at the back of my eyes. I didn’t know what triggered them, the incident itself or the fact that I hadn’t made it into the ambulance, but the sudden shift terrified me. The unknown terrified me. The helplessness terrified me.