Three Part Harmony (The Road to Rocktoberfest 2024)

26. Chapter Twenty-Six

Chapter Twenty-Six

Mike

“What the hell just happened?” I asked Mac as I struggled in his grasp to turn around and look. But Mac just kept a firm hold on my arm and continued to move me down the hall toward the dressing room.

I didn’t understand what the rush was and why the guards were adding increasing force to moving us. I also couldn’t venture to guess what all the shouting and jostling of people in the hallway behind us meant or what was going on. I even thought I saw blood on the floor at one point and a man who appeared to be in the custody of the venue security force.

Even weirder, I could swear I saw Griffin somewhere in the fray of that commotion.

But that couldn’t be. There’s no way Griffin would come all the way out to the desert to see us perform.

“Everything is under control,” Mac reassured me. “Just an over-excited fan trying to say hello.”

“I’m pretty sure I saw blood!” I said. “Fletcher, did you see what that was back there?”

“Did something happen?” Fletcher asked while we were shoved into a dressing room.

“I didn’t see anything,” Dixon commented.

“Was it a fight?” Potts asked.

“I don’t know what the fuck happened but all hell just broke loose behind me in the hall,” I explained.

Dagger came into the dressing room with Fizzbo. “Listen up!” Dagger shouted to get our attention. “You’ve got about thirty minutes before it’s showtime. Do your warm-ups, have a snack, whatever you typically do before a show but be ready when the stage director comes to get you.”

“Got it!” Fletcher hollered back.

“Dagger, what happened in the hall on our way here?” I questioned. Fizzbo leaned in close to Dagger’s ear and said something that we couldn’t hear.

“Apparently there was a fight but Fizzbo says everything has been taken care of,” Dagger replied. But the look that passed between Dagger and Fizzbo told me a different story. Something was definitely wrong and they obviously didn’t want us to know about it.

I tried to keep my mind occupied with our typical pre-show preparations but my mind kept going back to the red smears I saw on the floor of the hallway and wondering if it was in fact blood. Even still, I was mentally ready when Mac, Fizzbo, and the stage manager came to get us for the show. The one major difference in this procession to the stage was the enormous presence of security guards from our team and a few others flanking us on all sides as we walked toward the set of stairs that would lead us up to the stage. I swear, there must have been twenty to thirty guards surrounding us the entire time we walked. For a show like this we’d typically only have four guards that walked with us.

We took our places on stage and waited in the darkness for our introduction and for the curtain to fall. Then BOOM! The stage lights came up, with four key lights aimed at our faces and we were off! It was a rush every fucking time we did this and tonight was no different. The heat of the lights made my skin hot but as soon as Fletcher gave me the signal, my sticks were ready. I pounded out the intro to “Take A Shot” and the madness began. We plowed through four songs before we came up for a brief gulp of air, then dove into another run of fan-favorite songs.

Twenty minutes into the set and I was a sweaty mess but that was pretty standard for me. It was a cardio workout every time I sat at my kit but the others were in the same boat. We ripped through our set and left the stage for a brief break before starting our encore. The crowd was going crazy for us, like they really knew who we were and were singing along with Fletcher. It felt like we were no longer unknown musicians and that was something I was damn proud of. I wasn’t stupid enough to think we’d “made it,” at least not yet, but we were definitely one or two rungs higher on the ladder this year than we were last year.

The show was incredible from my point of view and somehow far more enjoyable this year than last. Maybe it was because I was one hundred percent sober this time around or perhaps we were just more comfortable with being arena performers. I knew we’d all grown a lot over the last year. We certainly had our own personal struggles and somehow came out of it stronger than we were a year ago. Fletcher was getting married, for fuck’s sake, and I experienced love for the first time. I never would have guessed that for either of us back when we were teenagers and trying to look into the future. But here we were. Fletcher was well on his way to marrying the man of his dreams and although I may have still been licking my wounds from losing Griffin, I had hope that I’d find happiness again one day. I was in no hurry to put myself—or my heart—out there any time soon but at least now I knew it was possible to feel that kind of love.

I came off the Rocktoberfest stage with a whole new sense of gratitude and hope. If the last several weeks proved anything to me it was that I was a survivor. I would bounce back from this, I was already well on my way, and now with this show behind us, I was looking at an extended amount of downtime to recharge my depleted batteries .

I’d already decided that after I was rested I was going to reach out to Griffin. Looking back at it, I owed him an apology for being a dick and not being more understanding to his position. Most of all, I wanted to have some kind of closure that would allow me to emotionally move on from him because right now, I didn’t have that. I was still so deeply in love with him. I was hoping by seeing and talking with him it might give me the strength to cut ties and open myself to others on that level.

I grabbed a clean towel from my drum tech as we walked off the stage and wiped the sweat from my face. While I did that, I was mentally going through the things we needed to do before we could leave the pavilion. But my evening took a dramatic turn once I hit the side of the stage where security was waiting.

“Mike, we need you to come with us,” Fizzbo requested.

Dagger stood beside him and they obviously weren’t there to congratulate us on a fantastic performance. This was something else entirely. I could feel it in the air. A quick glance around at the rest of my band and all the other people waiting off-stage told me this was bad. The typical jovial atmosphere with back clapping, and other celebratory shouts were missing. Everyone was standing around with somber looks on their face and dread began to pump through my veins.

“What happened?” I asked Fizzbo. Dagger already had a grip on my arm and was tugging me toward the stairs off the stage. “Where are you taking me?” My head snapped behind me to look for Fletcher, Dixon, or Potts but they were being corralled together by other security officers. They shuffled me down the stairs but when we reached the bottom I finally jerked my arm out of Dagger’s grip and stopped walking. “What the fuck happened?” I shouted at the top of my lungs.

Dagger’s gaze shot to Fizzbo and then his mouth opened to speak but the squawk of Fizzbo’s walkie-talkie blared in the hallway.

“Medi-Vac inbound. ETA seven minutes. Be ready for transport,” a voice reported.

“Copy that,” Fizzbo called back to the person.

“Listen,” Dagger said. “There was an altercation before the show. A guard spotted a threat and he was able to neutralize it quickly but unfortunately he was hurt in the process.”

“Is that what I saw in the hall?” I questioned.

“You probably saw the aftermath when we had the guy restrained on the floor,” Fizzbo explained, then he latched onto my shoulders and turned me to face him. Our gazes met and locked. I’d never seen Fizzbo look as stone-face serious as he was right now. “The guard who was able to take down the man with the knife was Griffin, and in the process he was seriously injured.”

“ My Griffin?” I asked in a soft voice and Fizzbo nodded.

“Yes, he came to see you perform and by chance he spotted a threat unfolding that even I had missed,” Fizzbo elaborated. “In his effort to neutralize the situation, he was cut.”

“Holy shit! Is he okay?” I asked.

“They have him stabilized but he needs to be transported to a hospital in Reno for a better evaluation and likely emergency surgery,” Dagger added .

“The onsite triage has done everything they can for him but the wound is deep and they can’t get the bleeding to stop,” Fizzbo said.

“They can take one more person in the helicopter,” Dagger said to me. “Do you want to go with him to Reno?”

“Fuckkk,” I said and squatted down on the floor with my head in my hands. “Is he conscious—will he be all right?”

“He’s mostly alert but he’s lost a lot of blood. They’ll probably sedate him for transport. Hopefully the doctors at the hospital will be able to give us more information about the internal damage and his recovery,” Fizzbo said. “If you want to go with him then we need to get you out to the helipad now.”

“Yes, yes of course I want to go!”

Fizzbo helped me to my feet and we hurried down the hall with several more guards leading the way. Workers out by the loading docks and people milling about managed to form a human barrier for us to make our trip to the helipad quicker. We ran swiftly through the parted crowd and finally stopped next to the landing area for the helicopter. A few seconds later, four big men wearing medical scrubs covered in blood ran while holding on to a stretcher. Another person on the medical staff hurried along the side of the stretcher carrying an IV bag. As they got closer I saw it was Griffin strapped to the gurney with a blanket covering his body. The IV was running into his arm.

I hurried over to the side of the gurney while Fizzbo did his best to hold me back. Griffin’s sleeping face was all I could see and he looked so damn pale. I leaned closer and stroked the top of his head.

“Baby, I’m here,” I whispered beside his ear. “Be strong for me and we’ll talk after they get you patched up.”

We all heard the whorl of the chopper blades slicing through the night sky and saw the blinking red lights flashing. We masked our eyes as it began to lower to the landing pad to prevent dirt and debris from hurting our eyes. Everything after that was synchronized pandemonium but like clockwork they had Griffin loaded onto the helicopter with me following close behind. I wasn’t sure I’d even managed to say goodbye to my band, Dagger, or Fizzbo. I hadn’t even had time to grab my cell phone, nothing, not even my wallet.

I watched the medical flight crew quickly get Griffin hooked up to machines in the back of the helicopter that immediately started beeping. Then they did a series of vital checks and called the information into the Reno hospital where we were headed. In under a minute, we were airborne.

“Are you family?” the paramedic seated closest to me asked.

I looked at him with watery eyes, doing my best to get my brain to focus enough to create words he might actually understand. I finally settled on one word I thought was the most appropriate.

“Partner,” I declared. Although at this point, I wasn’t sure if we were anything at all.

“Then you’re family,” the medic replied with a smile.

“Is he going to be okay?” I asked.

“His vitals are strong and he’s young and healthy,” he answered.

I reached under the blanket covering Griffin and found his hand on his uninjured arm, then laced our fingers together. I was grateful for the warmth of his skin against mine. It grounded me in a way I couldn’t quite explain. I’d long since lost the buzz from the incredible set we’d just performed at Rocktoberfest and now all I could think about was the man on the gurney. The man I was still hopelessly in love with.

“Did you perform at the event?” the medic asked me.

I nodded. “Yeah, we just finished our set,” I answered.

“That’s really cool,” he replied. “I bet that’s awesome, seeing all those people in the audience singing the songs you wrote.”

“It’s a hard feeling to describe but I don’t think I’ll ever get tired of playing for crowds that big,” I admitted. My eyes remained glued to Griffin’s peaceful face and my fingers stroked the back of his hand.

“What instrument do you play?” he asked.

“I’m a drummer,” I said.

“I think if I was a rockstar I’d want to either play the drums or maybe guitar,” the medic confessed.

I shook my head. “But you save lives,” I pointed out. “That job is way cooler than anything I’ll ever do.”

A while later we landed on the roof at the Reno hospital where a medical team was ready to take Griffin for treatment. They rushed him through the building and down to the emergency room for an evaluation. While they did that, I was asked to hang out in the family waiting room. One minute I was surrounded by thousands of people, music, and non-stop commotion, and the next I was left alone in a hospital I’d never been to and no one to keep me from losing my mind .

It was about an hour later when my entire band, Fizzbo, Mac, and Dagger came running into the waiting room. Dagger was holding a bag with my phone and charging cord, along with my wallet and a change of clothing. I hugged them all and struggled to keep my emotions in check even though I was so damn close to losing my shit completely.

“How is he?” Fizzbo was the first to ask.

“They had to call in an orthopedic surgeon to repair tendon and muscle damage,” I explained. “The doctor said there could be nerve damage, too, but it’s too early to tell. That’s all I know.”

“He’s in the right place for all that,” Dagger said.

“Yeah, let’s hope so,” I said. “The surgeon should come out soon to give us an update and hopefully we’ll be able to see him after that.”

“How are you holding up?” Fletcher leaned in to ask me.

“I’m feeling like an asshole for not reaching out to him and for letting us become so disjointed,” I expressed.

“Don’t think of it like that,” Fletcher soothed.

“Hard not to but it sounds like we’ll be able to talk everything through as soon as he’s healthy enough to do so,” I said and blew out a breath of relief.

As horrible as this situation was, at least it brought us to the same location at the same time. I wasn’t sure it would have happened otherwise, but I’d take this as the one positive in what was sure to be a shitty event in Griffin’s life. And all I could do was hope he’d make a full recovery.