Free The Rider List: An Erotic Romance by J.T. Charles Page B

could feel it intensify as we got closer to show time. And by the time we were onstage, I just knew it—I was sick.
    Maybe it was the flu, I thought. Or some kind of stomach bug I had picked up from eating something the night before that had been sitting backstage for two hours during our show.
    I thought of it as we started our first song—it was a meat and cheese tray, and I had made a roast beef sandwich. Yes, that had to be it, I thought. Just a little food poisoning. But how was I going to make it through the show like that?
    Turns out, I didn’t.
    When we started the third song, the lights became a blur. The noise, usually loud and booming in my ears, became muffled. I got tunnel-vision.
    The senses of sight and hearing were shutting down. My heart raced, even fluttered, skipping beats. I heard the pounding in my ears and I began to sweat like I’d been out on the stage for hours under the bright hot lights and in the humid air.
    What the fuck was this? I remember thinking, just before I couldn’t think at all.
    I had passed out. I woke up backstage. The band was still playing. I was disoriented and had a headache like no other I’d ever experienced. It hurt to open my eyes and even when I could, they wouldn’t focus.
    I heard ringing in my ears, the only intelligible sounds registering were broken phrases: “hospital,” “ambulance is here,” “gonna be okay, dude.”
    Three hours later, with the band out there in the waiting room, a doctor came back with my test results.
    “It wasn’t a heart-attack,” he had said. “It wasn’t a stroke, and you don’t have food poisoning. Your potassium and electrolytes are extremely low. You’re dehydrated.”
    “That’s it?”
    The doctor shook his head. “No. How long has it been since you’ve had some time off?”
    I had to think about that for more than a few seconds. “I don’t remember.”
    The doctor slid his reading glasses up to the top of his head, crossed his arms, tucking my chart into his armpit. “You need some time off, starting when you get out of here in a couple of days.”
    “A couple of days?”
    He nodded. “You’re suffering from exhaustion. We’ll need to observe you for at least forty-eight hours, and then you’ll need rest.”
    “We still have two shows—”
    “Mr. Crawford, this is nothing to play around with. If you don’t address it you’ll be back here or some other hospital with much more serious problems. You’re twenty-nine?”
    I nodded.
    “You’re in otherwise good health,” he had said, “but that can change very quickly. I’ve heard your music. It’s not my usual preference, but I like it. So it was nice meeting you, but honestly, I’d rather not see you wheeled through these doors again. And if you don’t do something about it, that’s what’s going to happen, either here or some other hospital.”
    The guy was friendly, but this news was pissing me off.
    The band went on to Louisville, Kentucky, for the next show while I stayed in the hospital in Indianapolis. They were understanding, told me not to fuck around with my health, and that things would be fine—this is one of the reasons we travel with a few studio musicians. In my case, it was a backup guitarist who would fill in for me.
    So as I lay there in the hospital bed that next morning and thought of all of that, I had to factor in the threat to my health as well.
    And it hit me. I was about to turn thirty. I’d made it past age twenty-seven, but Jimi Hendrix didn’t, and neither did Janis Joplin, Jim Morrison, and Kurt Cobain, and more than a dozen other musicians. They’re known as the “27 Club.” I’d known about it for a long time, but it didn’t hit home until the doctor gave me that stern warning.
    I Googled it from my hospital bed. There was no increased risk of death for musicians at age twenty-seven—the number was just a coincidence—but any sample of musicians shows an increased risk of death at an early age, late twenties