“Gimmee that shit,” Matt panted, nearly snatching it from him. He drank heavily, but had to keep pulling the bottle from his lips to take a few breaths.
“Dude, you seriously don’t look all right,” Roger told him. “You’re as pale as a fuckin’ ghost!”
“My heart is beating kind of funny,” Matt said. He took another drink of Gatorade, took another couple of deep breaths, and then held out his hand to Roger. “Take my pulse.”
“I don’t know how to take a fuckin’ pulse!” Roger replied.
“Jesus Christ,” Matt muttered. “Gimmee your watch.”
Roger looked at him for a moment and then took the cheap Timex off his wrist and handed it over. It was an analog watch, the kind with a second hand. Matt wrapped the band around the fingers of his right hand and turned it so he could see that second hand. He then felt on the thumb side of his inner wrist with his left hand, seeking and finally finding the beating pulse there. He could tell without even counting that it was going far too fast, but he counted anyway, noting each beat for fifteen seconds on the watch. Fifty-five beats went by in that time frame.
Fifty-five times four is ... is... His stressed out mind struggled for a moment to do the math. And when he did come up with the answer, he couldn’t believe it. Two hundred and fucking twenty? No way! I counted wrong! He repeated the procedure. This time he came up with fifty-six beats. He did the math again. Two hundred and twenty-four? Fuck me!
“Roger, quick, check my math!”
“Your math? What the fuck are you talking about?”
“What’s fifty-six times four?”
“What?”
“Fifty-six times fucking four!” Matt screamed at him. “Is it two hundred and twenty-four, or not?”
Roger was looking at him as if he were some kind of alien. Matt wanted to punch him—would have if he had the energy.
“Somebody fucking check my math!” he screamed. “Fifty-six times four! Do it now!”
Steve finally grabbed a scrap of packing paper from one of the crates and then grabbed a pen from one of the tech roadies. He scratched out the equation on the paper and then began to solve it. All the while, the crowd out there were stomping their feet and calling for the encore. They were now a couple of minutes behind schedule.
“You’re right, Matt,” Steve told him after carrying the two and doing the final addition. “It’s two hundred and twenty-four. What does that mean?”
Matt took another deep breath, feeling actual fear flowing through him now. Two hundred and twenty-four was way too fast. Even at the height of a cocaine blitz, his heart rate was usually no faster than a hundred twenty or so. And even after jumping around on stage at top speed, it was usually no more than one-fifty. What the hell was going on here?
“Matt?” Roger said. “What’s going on, dude? Tell me what to do!”
“Get Gahn down here,” Matt told him. “Tell him to bring his little doctor bag with him.”
“What? Are you serious?” Roger asked.
“I’m dead fucking serious. Get that asshole down here. Tell him my heart is beating two-hundred and twenty-four fucking beats a minute.”
“And that’s not good, right?” Roger asked.
“No, it’s not fucking good. Now get on it!”
Roger rushed off to get on it. Matt took a few more deep breaths and then felt his pulse again. It was still trucking along at the same rate.
“What now, Matt?” Steve asked.
Matt looked up him. “Now,” he said, throwing Roger’s watch on the floor, “we get our asses back out there and finish the show.”
“Finish the show?” Steve asked. “But your heart...”
“My heart will hang on for another eighteen minutes,” Matt said. “I ain’t leaving this place without finishing what I started. Now let’s hit it.”
They looked doubtful but they headed for the stage entrance. Matt breathed deeply a few more times and then forced himself to his feet. He had a momentary attack of dizziness that was staggering in its intensity. His vision started to gray. A wave of nausea swept over him. He powered through it the best he could, remaining standing and, after twenty seconds or so, it started to fade. He looked up and saw that his bass player, his drummer, and every roadie in visual range was staring at him.
“I don’t think you should go out there, Matt!” Steve told him. “You kind of bleached out on us for a minute there.”
“I’m better now,” Matt said. “Let’s hit it.”
“But...”
“Let’s fucking hit it!” Matt yelled. “Come on. I need to get this shit over with.”
With that, he walked back out onto the stage, waving his hand at the crowd like nothing was wrong at all. The cheers erupted anew as they saw him. His band, with nothing else to do, followed him out and took their places while Matt picked up his Strat once again.
“All right, motherfuckers!” Matt yelled into the microphone. “Let’s do a little bit more here, okay?”
The cheer increased and he began to play.
He went through the two encore songs just as they had been rehearsed. He moved about on the stage just as he had in every other show of the tour. He sang out his lyrics with all the force and emotion that he always put into them. And through it all, his chest ached like a rotted tooth and he felt like he could hardly breathe.
He finished and he and the band took their bows at the front of the stage, Matt in the middle, his arms around their shoulders. When the bow was done, he did not release the embrace as he normally did.
“Walk me off this stage,” he panted to them. “Make it look cool.”
With scared faces, they did as he asked, escorting their boss out of the spotlight and back into the stage left area. By the time they got him to the crate he had sat on before, he could barely breathe at all and his chest felt like it was being squeezed in a vice. His legs could no longer hold him up.
“Put him down right there!” Greg barked at the bandmembers, pointing to the stage floor next to the crate. “If he’s truly as tachycardic as he says, he’s probably hypotensive as well.”
“What the fuck does that mean?” asked Steve.
“It means put him down where I told you!” Greg yelled. “Now! Do it now!”
They did it now. Greg, who, per directions, had his little back bag in hand, made no move to open it. Instead, he knelt beside Matt and picked up his sweaty wrist.
“How are you doing, Matt?” he asked him.
“I’ve been better,” Matt gasped.
Greg looked at his Rolex watch as he felt Matt’s pulse. He chewed on his lip a few times during the fifteen seconds. He then shook his head. “Two twenty-eight,” he said. “You’re having a cardiac arrythmia, Matt.”
“No fucking shit,” Matt barked. “Give me something for it!”
“I don’t have anything for this,” Greg said. “We need to get some paramedics here and get you to the hospital.”
“You don’t have anything for this?” Matt yelled. “You have fucking heroin in there, speed, downers of all kinds, Valium, Narcan, fucking Demerol, but you don’t have anything to slow my heart down?”
“No, this is not something I’m trained to deal with,” Greg told him. “Relax. Take deep breaths. We’re going to get you some help.”
There was a local paramedic team that had been on standby for the event. One of the security team went and got them just as they were packing up their equipment so they could go home. They were dragged backstage and brought to the stricken guitarist.
“Holy shit!” said the paramedic of the crew, a tall, lanky brown haired guy in his late thirties. He sported an unruly mustache and was dressed in a dark blue uniform. “This is Matt Tisdale!”
“You mean the guy who everyone came here to see?” asked his partner, an EMT. She was much younger, perhaps only early twenties, and cute enough that Matt might have tried to pick up on her under different circumstances.