Big Girls Do It Pregnant (13 page)

Now, he didn’t have time. Device had already done a three-song encore, and Six Foot Tall was set to go on within minutes of Device leaving the stage, which had been curtained off toward the back so the next band’s equipment could be set up.
 

“Thank you, Chicago! Good night!” David waved one last time to the screaming crowd, hometown for him, and left the stage, handing the mic to a stagehand and accepting a hand towel and a bottle of water, and was gone before Chase could open his mouth. Device had originally been slated to play a small acoustic set in a club as a soft launch for their newest tour, but the gig had been cancelled at the last minute. Then the local band that was supposed to open for Six Foot Tall had cancelled, citing an OD’d lead singer, and Device had agreed to fill the slot. Of course, David Draiman was a huge draw, so they’d taken up nearly half of Six Foot Tall’s original time. Chase didn’t really care, and the fans loved it. They’d just have to go overtime, which shouldn’t be a problem.

The stage was cleared and reset, and Chase prepared to go on. He took a deep breath, let it out, shook his hand, then trotted out onstage. The crowd went wild as the spotlight hit him. Johnny Hawk hit the kick drum a few times, and Gage thumped his bass, setting up a rumbling line as the band got settled in.
 

Blue stage lights bathed him, then turned purple. He felt the nerves leave him as Kyle fingered the opening chords to their latest hit, “Shadow Thrall.” Performing was the only time he felt any kind of peace lately. When the chorus came with the shrieking guitar solo underlaid by the scudding bass line, Chase was crouching at the edge of the stage, howling the lyrics: “The shadows hold me in their thrall, I cannot deny their call, I’m falling, falling, and I cannot stop this fall…”

Even then, though, the fear remained. It ate at him, dug under his skin and made his heart thump crazily, made his stomach roil and constrict. The next song fit his mood. It was their hardest metal piece to date, and it written entirely by Gage. The lyrics were dark, darker and harder than anything Chase had ever penned, but his fear gave him the edge needed to sell them.

The lights dropped to black, and Gage took front and center stage, bathed in a single red stage light. He held his black bass guitar vertically against his body, his long, fine blond hair loose around his face, obscuring his features. The crowd was silent except for a few isolated whistles and shrieks, and Gage milked it, thumping the lowest string with his thumb in a reverberating tone that washed across the audience. When the tension was thick enough to cut, he began to slowly ramp up the speed of his hammering thumb until the waves of basso reverberation were crashing back on themselves, reaching a crescendo. When the peak hit and he couldn’t tap any faster, his back arched and the bass resting on his chest, he slammed forward and let loose with a thundering series of chords, headbanging to the punishing rhythm. As the rhythm reached a crescendo, Johnny began pelting the snare drums in a stuttering march pattern. When their rhythms synched, Kyle wove a repeating series of riffs through the wall of sound created by Johnny and Gage.
 

Then it was Chase’s turn. He had slunk into the shadows near the side of the stage to accept a guitar and returned to stand between Kyle and Gage, waiting until the song hit a second crescendo and paused in single beat of silence. When sound returned, Chase added a driving backbone rhythm pattern. By now, all four members of the band were bathed in lights and the song was in full force, the crowd jumping and moshing with wild abandon.

Chase gradually moved toward the mic stand as the song progressed toward the first verse and began growling the lyrics to “Ablation”:
 

“Down this dirty hole

You and me we crawl

Through this recurring nightmare
 

Of me against you

Rage against recrimination

Blame against damnation

Domination of my past

Versus ablation of my heart

Your nails on my spine

Was once erotic

Your eyes on mine

Was once hypnotic

But this nightmare

The way it flares

Ignites into hatred

Slices through the skin

Of your demonic beauty

Revealing the evil within

This recurring nightmare

Of me against you

Rage against recrimination

Blame against damnation

Your lies ablate my hope

Your betrayal perpetrates my hate

You were once erotic

Hypnotic

Now you’re just demonic

Chthonic

A chronic cyclonic storm

Wrecking all my dreams.”

Chase’s voice was raw by the end of the song, by the time he’d screamed the chorus through three more times. He knew he’d sold it. He’d given in to every fear and nagging worry and put it all into the song, let it feed the lyrics with all his inner darkness. He stood in the pool of white spotlights, sweat dribbling down the shell of his ear and into the gauged hole of his piercing, heart hammering, stomach clenching, adrenaline pumping. The instruments around him all fell silent, and he forced himself to breathe through it, ignore the fear that was quickly turning into unreasoning terror.

Then his phone buzzed. He ignored it until the lights doused between songs, then spun around and dug it out of his pocket, shielding the glow with his body.

The name across the screen made his heart stutter and stop.
Jay
.
 

What was he supposed to do? She knew he was performing tonight. She wouldn’t call him unless it was an emergency, but Johnny was already clicking his sticks to count in the next song, and the lights were up.
 

He shoved the phone back in his pocket and forced himself through the next song. He felt his phone buzz again, and almost lost his place in the lyrics. When the song ended, he edged up to Gage and Kyle and told them to do a solo or something, an instrumental piece to buy him time.

Chase left the stage and stood under the light of an emergency-exit sign with his phone clutched in his trembling fist.
 

“Hey, guys, I’m Gage. We’re, uh, we’re gonna do an instrumental song for you guys. It doesn’t really have a name, it’s just a jam we put together. Hope you like it.” He heard Gage’s bass kick in a fast rhythm, and then the other guys came in.

You wouldn’t know they were making it all up as they went along. They’d never done an all-instrumental number before, hadn’t practiced it or written it or jammed out to even have an idea. But it was buying him time, and that’s all that mattered.

He pulled up the text message.
Hey, babe. I know you’re onstage, sorry. It’s time. The headache came back, and I’ve been admitted to L and D. They’re gonna start a pitocin drip around midnight to induce labor. I need you here.

Midnight. Fuck. That was in three hours. He was in Chicago, four hours away. There were no flights out till morning. He didn’t have a car. The band was only three songs into an eleven-song set.
 

He swore again under his breath and typed a response, a promise he didn’t know how to fulfill:
I’ll be there. I promise.

Gage came out to get him. “Come on, dude, you’re on. ‘Long Night Gone’ is up next.”

He met Gage’s gaze. “They’re inducing her in three hours, Gage. I gotta be there.”

“What’s that mean?”

“It means they’re forcing her to go into labor early. It means she’s having the baby, like, now.”

“Fuck.” Gage flipped his hair back from his face with an angry motion. “Fuck. What are you gonna do?”

Chase shook his head. “I don’t know. I don’t fucking know, man.”

“Problem?” Darrel McKay said. Darrel was the lead singer for Blood Oath, a local Chicago metal band that had been the pre-opener.
 

“I’m about to have a baby, and I’m here. She’s in Detroit. We’re not even halfway through our show.” Chase rubbed his hand over his head, again and again. “I don’t know what to do.”

“I can fill in. I don’t know your material, but we can do some covers.” Darrel ran his fingers through his shoulder-length black hair, flipping it back.
 

“That works for me,” Gage said. “Let’s do it. You make the announcement, Chase, and then get going.”

Chase shook hands and bumped fists with his band-mates, and then took the stage, sitting on the very edge with his feet hanging off. He lifted the mic to his lips, shaded his eyes against the glare of the stage lights and the spot bathing him. “So, hey, Chicago. How’s it going? Having a good time?” The crowd cheered and applauded until Chase lifted a hand to silence them. “Some of you may know I got married a little while back, and my wife is expecting a baby.”

There was more applause, a few boos from the disappointed female members of the audience, and some shouts of congratulations.
 

“So, the reason I’m sitting here like this, talking to you rather than singing the next song, is that I just got a text from Jamie, my wife, and she just went into labor.” He paused and scratched his head. “Well, actually, she’s getting induced, if you want to get technical, but that’s beside the point. The point is, I have to go witness the birth of my daughter. This is—and you have to believe me—this is the
only
reason I would ever leave in the middle of a concert. I hate doing this, I really do. You guys are the reason I’m here, the reason the boys and I are able to live our dream like we have been.”

He stood up, waved to the other guys, and took center stage. “So, you guys paid good money to hear us play, and just because he’s a badass, David has graciously offered to kind of fill in for me. So, is anyone here a fan of Blood Oath?” The crowd screamed wildly for the local talent, and it was several long moments before anyone could be heard over the noise. “I take it that means you’ll let us change things on you? The guys from Six Foot Tall are gonna play, and Darrel is gonna sing, and I personally think Darrel is fucking badass. They’ll rock your shit, I guarantee you. They might even take a couple requests.”

Darrel lifted the mic to his lips. “Hey, you’re about to have a kid, man. It’s the least I could do to help a brother out.” He pushed Chase toward the side of the stage. “Now go, get the fuck out of here and be with your wife.”

“If you follow me on Twitter or Facebook, check for updates. Thank you, Chicago!” Chase waved to the crowd and left the stage as the band kicked in the opening notes to “Down With the Sickness” in tribute to David Draiman, who was watching from backstage.
 

Less than half an hour later, Chase was in a car borrowed from a roadie and flying as fast as he could safely drive toward Detroit. The fear in his belly had faded a bit but hadn’t gone away completely.
 

Something told him the insanity had just started.

Wait for me, Samantha
, he thought.
Wait for me.
 

Chapter 6: JAMIE

A long, growling groan ripped from my throat, a sound of frustration, pain, and panic. The OB on duty, Dr. Clayton, had ordered a pitocin drip to start labor, but the anesthesiologist hadn’t shown up yet, despite the passage of more than two hours, so I was feeling the full force of every contraction, and they were increasing in intensity with every half hour.
 

Chase still wasn’t here, and all I’d heard from him was a single text an hour before:
OTW, driving now, be there soon.

Anna and Jeff had gone home, at my insistence; I knew it would be several hours before anything happened, and they had Anna’s complicated pregnancy to deal with. I was, once again, alone and in pain. I breathed in through my nose as a contraction gripped my core and squeezed. It felt like a menstrual cramp amplified by a million. I whimpered, trying to breathe through it, counting in my head,
One-one thousand…two-one thousand…three-one thousand…four-one thousand…
and then it passed, leaving me slumped back against the thin pillow, sweating and panting.

“Where the fuck is the drugs man?” I growled to the empty room at large.
 

A nurse breezed in at that moment and checked the charts and beeping monitors, adjusted the fitting of the circular monitor pickup strapped to my belly. “He’s coming, hon. Another patient had a complication with her epidural.”

“A complication?” My voice squeaked at the end, panicking at the idea of a complication happening to me.

“Nothing for you to worry about, dear.” The nurse was a young brunette with wide brown eyes and an easy smile. “Just a slightly-off placement is all. You’ll be just fine. Dr. Harris is an excellent doctor. You have nothing to worry about, I promise.”
 

“God, don’t scare me like that. I’m freaked out enough as it is.” I sucked on the straw in my miniature can of Vernor’s.
 

“Do you have anyone here with you, Mrs. Delany?” the nurse asked.

“Yeah, my friends just left, and my husband is on the way.”
 

“Where’s he coming from?”

I felt my womb tensing in preparation for another contraction. “Chicago—he actually left in the middle of a show.”

The nurse scanned the printout coming from the monitor, assessing the frequency and intensity of the contractions. “Oh? What does he do?”

I laughed. “You must be the only nurse in the whole L and D who doesn’t know.” I gritted my teeth and breathed through the contraction, then exhaled in relief when it passed. “My husband is Chase Delany from Six Foot Tall.”

I could tell the nurse tried to contain her excitement, but she wasn’t entirely successful. “Oh, my god! I love them! I saw them at Harpos before they blew up!”

“Well, you’ll meet him as soon as he gets his ass here.” I took another sip from my soda and then crunched an ice chip, wishing desperately for something other than ice and soda.

“Did he really leave in the middle of a concert to be with you?” the nurse asked, clearly awed.

“That’s what I hear. I haven’t actually talked to him yet, but I know he’s supposed to be playing right now, and instead he’s driving to get here.”