“Hey Zac, you alright?” He had been in the bathroom since after the walk. I was trying very hard to let him have his personal space, goodness knows we saw each other enough on the tour bus. But he was steadily losing weight and I was worried about him.
“Yeah,” he barreled out of the door, hitting my shoulder with his. I rubbed it to try to make the soreness go away. It had already been hurting, and Zac hitting it at the speed of light didn’t help.
“All that time and you didn’t even take a shower?”
“I don’t need you to tell me when to bathe,” he was halfway down the hallway into our green room as he shouted back.
“Apparently you do,” I mumbled. I took an aspirin then a hot shower to try to ease the pain my shoulder. We were in Dallas, but headed to Tulsa for two days before starting the second leg of our tour.
“Sound check in five,” Rebecca, our tour manager knocked on the door.
“Be right there,” I said. I threw on jeans and a t-shirt and headed to the stage since I didn’t feel like making the effort to button a dress shirt. Just a few more hours until I was headed home. This tour had already been rough, with barefoot walks added to our already hectic schedule. Don’t get me wrong, I was passionate about our cause and inspiring our fans to take action and host walks in their own cities. Unfortunately, most of them thought of the walk as a photo op, not as us leading by example. I doubted many, if any, fans would actually host walks in their own cities.
“Tay you sound great, Zac good job. Ike, try and bear down on your strings a little more so we can get the full sound,” the audio tech said.
“Got it,” I said, even though the pressure I was already applying made my shoulder hurt even more. Damn, December was a long way away.
The first half of the show was rough, but I made it through. I’d have enough time during the solo songs to take some more aspirin to get me through the rest of the show. It seemed like now that I stopped playing my shoulder hurt even more. I could hardly see straight from the pain.
“You okay?” Taylor whispered once we were backstage.
“Yeah. My shoulder is hurting a bit, but I’ll be okay. I’ll go to the doctor before the Tulsa show. I need something stronger than aspirin; I think.”
“Okay, well take care of yourself. If we need to cut a couple of songs from the set list, it’s not a problem. Or I can do two solo songs, give you more of a break.”
“No, our fans paid for a full show and we’ll give it to them. I can make it just one more hour. Nikki can drive home.”
Taylor nodded and went back on stage for his solo.
Finally, the show ended. I cut the guitar riff in Watch Over Me a little short, but I was in pain and ready to go home.
Nikki was waiting for me backstage, holding our seven-month-old son in her arms. She followed me to my dressing area. “I’m just about ready, babe,” I told her as I unbuttoned my dress shirt so I could put on something less restricting for the drive home.
“Oh, Isaac!” Her face was white, and I followed her gaze to my arm.
“Oh, no.” My entire arm was purple. This had happened once before and I knew that it meant trouble. “I need to get to a hospital.”
“I’ll get the car and pull up to the door.”
I saw Taylor and Natalie out of the corner of my eye.
“Oh my God,” Taylor said. Natalie’s face mirrored Nikki’s.
“Nikki is going to drive me to the hospital.”
Natalie reached for Everette, “You go. I’ll watch Ev. Keep us updated.”
Nikki put our young son in Natalie’s arms. “Thank you. We will. Come on, Isaac.”
“We’ll be there as soon as we get everything packed up,” Taylor promised.
I only nodded as I followed Nikki out into the night air.