Chapter 44

Nick was back to his old self by the next day, which we also spent in Orlando. After visiting our original band house and the old warehouse we used to rehearse in, we headed over to the studio where we had recorded parts of our first few albums. It had been called Parc Studios back then but had since changed owners and was now known
by the name Paint It Black Studios.

“Wow… this place looks a lot different,” Howie observed, looking around as we went inside.

“Yeah, well, so do we,” I replied as I rolled after him. “Some of us more than others.”

“I like it,” Nick said, smiling at the guitars and framed album covers that lined the brick walls as we headed down the red-carpeted hallway. The newly renovated facility seemed to cater more to rock and heavy metal bands than pop groups like us, but we’d still been able to reserve a studio so that we could record the rest of the Christmas song he and Howie had written.

It didn’t take long for AJ and me to lay down our vocals, but, just like he had in London, Brian struggled to get through his solo. “I’ve been… checking my list twice…” His voice wavered as he sang. “Got plans to give you this gift tonight… oh-oh… oh-oh…” As he trailed off, he shook his head. “Sorry, guys… I know that wasn’t great. Lemme give it another go.”

But his next try wasn’t any better than the last ten had been. Looking around the control room, I could tell the others were getting frustrated. AJ frowned as he watched Brian through the glass window of the recording booth. Howie’s lips were pressed into a thin line, and Nick had started chewing on his nails again. They all knew as well as I did what a time crunch we were in. If we didn’t get the song recorded this week, there was no way it would be done in time for us to release it after the Disneyland performance like we wanted to. That was less than two weeks away.

“I thought he was getting help for this,” Nick whispered while Brian paced back and forth inside the soundproof booth, taking tiny sips from the mug of hot tea in his hand. I could tell by his body language how stressed he was.

“He is. Or he’s trying to, anyway,” I said, frowning. “He’s been doing voice therapy, but I don’t think there’s a lot of other treatment options.”

“Didn’t anything come out of that trip he took to Boston last month?” Howie asked.

I shook my head. “The doctor told him there was nothing he could do surgically. They didn’t find nodules or polyps or anything that can be removed from his vocal cords. Apparently, it’s more of a neurological problem.”

“So it’s all in his head,” Nick said flatly.

“No… that’s not what neurological means,” I argued, starting to feel annoyed. “Quadriplegia is a neurological problem, too, but it has nothing to do with my brain. ‘Neurological’ just means it involves the nervous system somehow.”

“Well, are his vocal cords paralyzed? Is that what’s causing him to sound like this?” AJ asked.

“Not the way he explained it to me. He said it’s more like the spasms I get – the muscles in his throat tighten involuntarily sometimes and constrict his vocal cords. He can’t control it.” My own throat tightened as I watched Brian through the window. He had stopped pacing and put his tea down. Tilting his head back, he massaged both sides of his neck with two fingers, apparently trying to loosen the muscles inside. I knew how frustrated he must have felt.

Nick sighed. “Well, we can’t exactly have him sounding like this on the record either. I mean, no offense, but I don’t think fucking autotune is gonna be enough to fix this. And we don’t have time to sit here and wait while he records a million takes in hopes that one of them will be good enough to make the final cut. So, what are we gonna do about it?”

“We’re gonna support him through it,” I said firmly, glaring at Nick. “That’s what we’re gonna do. What we’re not gonna do is give him a hard time or take away his solo. We all agreed everyone would have a part on this song, and we’re not going back on that promise. We can find a way to work around it.”

“All right, but how?” Nick pressed. “Are we really gonna ask the sound engineer to go through each one of his takes and pull out the best notes to piece together into something that sounds good? ‘Cause, again, ain’t nobody got time for that! And what happens when he has to sing this shit live in a couple weeks?”

I opened my mouth to continue arguing with him, then closed it again, at a loss for words. I didn’t have an answer to that, nor did I have an actual solution to the problem. I could only sit there in silence, crippled by a sudden surge of anxiety. Nick had no way of knowing it, but, in criticizing Brian for a condition that was outside his control, he had inadvertently triggered my own insecurities, my fear that I was no longer good enough to be in the group. My pulse pounded against my eardrums as a flood of emotions built up inside me, threatening to bubble to the surface. But in spite of how upset I felt over how insensitive Nick sounded, the logical side of me could see his point.

“Like Kev said, we’re gonna support him through it,” AJ spoke up. “So, let’s give him some support. Who says the second verse has to be a solo? Why can’t it be a duet? One of us could harmonize with him. Another voice would help to hide the flaws and make the sound so much richer.”

“That’s a good idea,” Howie replied.

I nodded in agreement, giving AJ a grateful smile. He caught my eye and smiled back. “How ‘bout we come up with a lower harmony and have Kev try recording it?” he added. “The Kentucky cousins have always sounded great singing together.”

“Okay,” Nick said slowly, “but, then, what about your half of the second verse? Can we add some harmony to that, too? It would be weird to have two voices on the first half and not the second half.”

“Sure, why not?” said AJ. “You sing with me on the second half, and Howie can have the bridge all to himself. Fair enough?”

“Works for me,” Nick replied with a shrug. “Now we just have to get Brian to agree to it.”

AJ cleared his throat before pressing a button to turn on the intercom that connected the control room with the recording booth. “Hey, Rok?” he said, speaking into the microphone. “Why don’t you come back out here for a minute? We got something we wanna run by you.”

When Brian emerged from the recording booth, AJ told him his idea, repeating the part about the harmonies making the sound richer as if that was the main reason he was suggesting it. I could tell by the look on Brian’s face that he saw right through this, but he didn’t push back against it. “Sure,” he said in a defeated sort of way. “Sounds good.”

Once we’d worked out the harmonies, Nick and I went back into the booth to record our new parts. By nightfall, we had enough solid takes to send to Morgan and Prophet, the co-writers and producers of the song. We left the studio with a collective sense of relief and accomplishment.

To celebrate, we all went out to dinner at NYPD Pizza, a place we’d frequented often while recording our first few albums. Afterwards, we headed over to the World Bowling Center, another one of our old favorite hangouts.

“You sure you don’t mind us going bowling, Kev?” Howie asked as he held the door open for me.

“Nah, not at all,” I replied, feeling a blast of cool air on my face as I followed the others inside. “I’ve been bowling in a chair before; Keith’s son had his birthday party at a bowling alley last year and invited Mason. It was actually pretty fun. They had this ramp I could put in front of me to push the ball down. And I didn’t even have to rent a pair of bowling shoes.”

Howie laughed. “Oh, well, that’s good.” I had a feeling he had secretly been hoping I wouldn’t want to bowl so we could go sit at the bar together and have a few drinks instead. He was a terrible bowler.

AJ, on the other hand, adored bowling. He quickly claimed a lane for the five of us and added each of our nicknames to the scoreboard while the others changed their shoes and picked out their balls.

“Find me a light one, will ya?” I told Nick as he picked up different balls to test their weight and feel. “It’s hard to get my fingers in the holes, so I need one that I can hold onto.”

“This one’s not too heavy,” he said, turning a red ball around in his hands. “Here, try it.”

I held out my hands, and Nick put the ball between them. “You got it?” he asked before he let go.

“I think so.” But as I pushed my hands together, the ball slipped right through them. It landed in my lap, rolled off my left knee, and hit the wooden floor with a loud thud. “Whoops,” I said with dismay as I watched it roll away. “I guess I didn’t have it after all.”

I looked up to find the four other guys and a full camera crew staring at me with wide eyes, their mouths open in horror. “Dude, are you all right??” Nick demanded. “You damn near dropped that thing right on your junk, and then it bounced off your freaking foot!”

I frowned. “Which foot?” I wondered, looking down.

“Your right one… You really didn’t feel any of that?” Brian asked in a faint voice. I glanced back up to find him blinking at me in disbelief.

I raised my eyebrows, giving him an incredulous look. “What, you think I’ve been faking it all these years?”

His face reddened. “Sorry… It just looked like it would have really hurt.”

I shrugged. “I guess it’s a good thing I can’t feel anything that far down, then, huh?”

Nick stepped forward, looking flustered. “I’m sorry, bro. I should have made sure you had a good grip on it before I let go.”

“Don’t worry about it,” I said, waving him off. “I drop stuff all the time.”

“I know,” he replied, wrinkling his nose. “That’s why I shouldn’t have let go so fast.”

“It’s not your fault, Nick. Accidents happen. But I’m fine.”

“Are you sure? Shouldn’t we, like, take off your shoe and check?”

I felt my face flush as I remembered him and AJ stripping off my pants right in the middle of the studio after my fall in London. “No,” I replied quickly, not wanting to attract any more attention than we already had by rolling into the bowling alley with a film crew. “My body will let me know if I’m not fine. Let’s just start the game. You mind getting my ball for me?”

This time, Nick carefully set the ball in my lap, keeping a firm hand on it until he was confident that I could hold it in place myself. When it was my turn, he helped me position the ball on top of the ramp one of the employees had brought out for me.

“I’ve got it from here – thanks,” I told him, trying to sound appreciative when, really, all I wanted was to be independent. I pushed the ball off the ramp and watched it roll straight down the lane, knocking over all but two of the pins.

“Nice!” Nick exclaimed, giving me a fist bump.

“Damn, bro, that was almost a strike!” AJ came up to clap me on the back.

“I’ve got one more turn. Let’s see if I make it a spare,” I said, adjusting the angle of the ramp while Nick retrieved my ball. When I let it go, it drifted down the lane, coming dangerously close to the gutter before curving slightly to take out the last two pins.

“Yeah, Kev!” I heard the guys call as they clapped and cheered behind me.

“Way to go, cuz,” said Brian as I wheeled myself back to the bench where they were sitting. “You’re up, Howie!”

“Watch me get my ass kicked by the guy in the wheelchair,” Howie muttered, shaking his head as he walked by me to grab his ball.

I grinned. “Let’s see what you got, D.”

But as I watched Howie bowl a gutter ball on his first turn, my smile faded. I could feel a warm sensation creeping up my face. By the end of his second turn, my forehead had broken out in sweat. Recalling how cold the air conditioning had felt when we’d first come in, I knew I wasn’t just overheating. A hot flash was almost always the first sign of autonomic dysreflexia. And since I’d used the bathroom right before we left the restaurant, my bladder couldn’t be the culprit this time. It had to be because of the bowling ball I’d dropped on my foot.

“Hey, Nick,” I said in a low voice as Brian got up to take his turn. “I think you’d better take a look at my foot after all. I’m feeling real warm all of a sudden, which is never a good sign.”

“I’m on it,” he said, dropping to his knees in front of me. He unlaced my tennis shoe and carefully pried it off my right foot as my whole leg trembled with spasms.

“How’s it look?” I asked, leaning over so I could see as he pulled off my sock.

“Swollen,” he said, frowning as he held my foot in his hand, gently prodding it with his fingers. “But it was pretty puffy last night, too, so I’m not sure if that’s from the bowling ball or the blood pooling in your legs.”

I sighed. “Yeah… hard to tell.”

“I think it’s starting to turn black and blue here,” he added, touching a spot on the top of my foot. “Looks like you might have a bruise. We better get it checked out, don’t you think? What if you broke a bone in there?”

What would it matter if I did? I wanted to say. It’s not like I’m gonna be walking on it anyway. But I knew it did matter, if only because my blood pressure would continue to climb out of control until it was taken care of. “Yeah, you’re probably right,” I admitted grudgingly.

Howie must have been listening to our conversation. “I’ll go with you,” he offered. “I don’t care if I miss out on bowling.”

“Thanks, D,” I said, forcing myself to smile.

“I’ll come along, too,” Nick added. “It’s the least I can do.”

“I told you, it’s not your fault. Stay here and have fun with the guys. I’ll be fine.”

“No, really. I wanna come with you,” Nick insisted. As he stood up, my shoe and sock still in his hand, he leaned over and whispered into my ear, “Howie doesn’t know what the hell he’s doing. I do.”

I had to laugh at that. “All right, fine, Nick. Whatever floats your boat. But no cameras.”

Leaving the crew behind to film AJ and Brian as they finished the game we had barely begun, we went back out to the van that had been hired to drive us around.

“Well, I didn’t foresee us making a stop here,” I said with a sigh when the driver dropped us off in front of the emergency room doors.

“Hey, just think of it as a little detour down memory lane,” Howie said, laughing as we went inside. “This is the hospital where I was born – not that I can actually remember that.”

“We brought Brian here once, back in the day,” I recalled, heading toward the triage desk. “Remember, we thought he had a boil on his leg that had gotten infected and wouldn’t heal? He could barely walk, let alone dance in rehearsal, ‘cause it hurt so bad. Turned out, it wasn’t a boil at all but a brown recluse spider bite. It’s a good thing we made him go to the doctor, or he might have lost his damn leg.”

“Now, that I do remember,” said Howie, his eyes widening. “Wasn’t he on crutches for, like, two weeks afterwards?”

Nick nodded as he walked alongside us. “Yeah, and I came over to your apartment to keep him company and brought that movie, Arachnophobia, for us to watch while he was laid up on the couch.” He snickered to himself. “That was pretty mean, huh?”

“Eh, knowing Brian, he probably thought it was funny,” I replied before pushing myself up to the counter. By that point, my head was pounding. Based on the intensity of my spasms, I imagined my foot must be throbbing the same way. I was thankful I couldn’t feel it.

The triage nurse took my information and my vital signs and fast-tracked me to an exam room. I didn’t know if it was because of my famous name or my frighteningly high blood pressure reading, but I never seemed to have to wait long when I came to the ER with AD. This time was no different. Within half an hour, I had been seen by a doctor, given a painkiller and some nitroglycerin paste, and whisked away for X-rays of my foot.

“How ya feeling, Kev?” Howie asked afterward when the orderly brought me back to my room.

“Better,” I answered with a shrug. The drugs had helped to lower my blood pressure, and once those numbers dropped, my other symptoms had disappeared. Now it was just a matter of waiting for the doctor to return with my test results and tell me what to do about my foot in order to prevent the AD from flaring up again.

“You know, I don’t have any memories of this hospital – or any hospital here, really,” Nick said randomly as we sat around my room, returning to the conversation we’d had on the way in. “My dad didn’t really believe in doctors.”

“What do you mean, ‘didn’t believe in doctors’?” Howie asked, giving him a weird look. “They’re not like the Easter bunny or the tooth fairy.”

Nick laughed. “No, I know. I guess what I meant was, he didn’t trust ‘em. When one of us kids got hurt or sick, he would just try to take care of it at home. Like, this one time, I cut my leg while I was running away from an alligator, and instead of taking me to get stitches, my dad just stitched it up himself.”

“Your dad stitched you up?” Howie repeated, raising his eyebrows.

I was more concerned by Nick casually mentioning he’d been chased by an alligator as a child. These Florida boys, I thought, shaking my head.

“Yeah, he kinda just butterflied that thing all up – that’s how I got that one scar on my leg that looks all tore up,” Nick said, rubbing his left knee through his jeans.

“You need to tell that story on camera tomorrow, dawg,” I said, chuckling. “That’s crazy.”

My nurse came in to check my blood pressure, bringing the conversation to a pause. “115 over 76. Perfect,” she said, smiling as she unstrapped the cuff from around my arm. “The doctor should be in to go over your X-rays soon.”

“Thanks.” I waited until she left to add under my breath, “I wish he’d hurry.” I didn’t want to hang around the ER any longer than I had to.

“Hey, at least we got the song recorded,” Howie said with a shrug. “If we end up being here late tonight, we can just sleep in a little longer tomorrow before we head to Tampa.”

“You can, maybe. Not us,” I said, glancing at Nick. “Tomorrow’s my long morning, which means we’ve gotta get up two hours early for me to be ready to leave on time.”

“Well, then, you can take a nap in the van. Once we leave Tampa, we’ve got a long ride up to Lexington.”

I nodded. “I am glad we finished recording, though. You were right, Nick – that song is catchy as shit. Y’all did a great job writing it.”

Nick and Howie exchanged grins. “Thanks, dawg,” said Nick. “We do make a pretty great writing team.” He cleared his throat. “Actually, me and Howie were talking about having another writing session in Nashville sometime soon. I reached out to Dan Muckala the other day, and he said he’d love to work with us again. Would you wanna join us?”

“Sure!” I replied eagerly. “I mean, send me some dates, so I can make sure it works with my schedule, but I’d love to come down if I can.”

“I’d invite you to stay with me, but my house in Franklin has, like, a lot of stairs,” Nick said, scrunching his face apologetically.

“That’s okay. I’ll get a hotel room,” I replied. I made it sound like no big deal, but my mind was already racing through all the things I would have to figure out in order to make the trip to Nashville work. Like how I would get there. And who would go with me. And who would help me get up in the morning and into bed at night. As always, it was a lot to think about. I tried to push it all to the back of my mind, not wanting to trigger another blood pressure spike while I was being monitored so closely.

Finally, the doctor who had examined me earlier came back into the room. “Well, Mr. Richardson, it looks like you have a hairline fracture of the third metatarsal, which is the bone in your foot near the base of your middle toe.” He pulled up one of the X-rays and pointed out a small, faint line that I could barely see and probably wouldn’t have even noticed otherwise.

“Damn… So I did break a bone in there,” I said, raising my eyebrows at Nick. “Your diagnosis was correct, Dr. Carter.”

Nick just shrugged. “So, what do you do for that?” he asked the doctor.

“Well, normally, we would put on a hard cast for three weeks, followed by a walking cast for three more weeks,” the doctor replied, turning his attention back to me. “But, because of your lack of sensation, you’re at a higher risk of skin breakdown, which would be difficult to detect underneath a hard cast. So, in your case, I would recommend going straight to the walking cast or boot, which can be removed to do daily skin checks.”

I nodded. “Sounds good to me. And don’t worry – I won’t be doing any walking in it.”

He flashed me a lopsided grin. “Just try to keep the weight off it during transfers for the first three weeks and avoid any bending or twisting motions of the foot when you take the boot off to shower. You can take an over-the-counter pain reliever, like Tylenol or Motrin, to prevent the autonomic dysreflexia from flaring up again. You’ll also want to follow up with your primary care physician when you get home. They may refer you to an orthopedic specialist to make sure the fracture is healing properly.”

Once he’d finished going over my discharge instructions, the doctor fit me with a bulky walking boot and sent me on my way.

“Thanks, fellas,” I said as Nick and Howie helped me transfer from the hospital bed back to my wheelchair without putting any weight on my right foot. “Sorry for ruining what would have been a fun night.”

“That’s all right,” Howie replied with a shrug. “I suck at bowling, anyway.”

Catching my eye, Nick snickered. “We know, Howie. We know.”

***