Hotbox (58 page)

Adding
Nick
to
their campfire jam sessions
was pretty cool. H
e could play accompaniment to anything that Jayden and Shawn played together. The three of them played for over an hour until Bree almost seemed to get sick of watching
Sam
, so
Nick
took over the parenting.
After a while
Sam
kept coming to Jayden, so she set him on her lap and put the guitar aside. Eventually he fell asleep as his dad and Shawn continued to play. But twenty minutes later
Nick
took
Sam
and laid him in the tent, and then the three of them played again.

Earlier in the week I had given Jayden some sheet music and asked if she could play it. With a smile she
had
looked it over, but didn’t say anything, so I assured her it wasn’t necessary if she didn’t
want to
. But s
he
did say
she’d work on it sometime.
That
night she and Shawn ended up playing it together. When she began to sing it, I was completely blown away. I thought it was a song that she would sound really great performing, and it was cool when everyone suggested the two of them do it for a show sometime.

Sunday we went riding. Jayden was done after
an hour
, so she and I headed back to camp with Chris while the others continued on.
Sam
practically rejoiced when she returned
,
and he
became
completely fascinated with her motorcycle. She sat him in front of her on the bike and took him for a slow ride around the camp and through the grassy field. He absolutely loved it, and whenever Jayden tried to stop, he wouldn’t have it.
Nick
was about to make him come off anyway, but Jayden told him to give her just a minute. She parked her bike near the cabin and I heard
Sam
begin to protest. Jayden got off the bike but let him sit on it while she talked to him.
He wasn’t crying anymore
and, after a few seconds, he lifted his arms for her to take him off. Hand in hand they walked to where we were.

“
Sam
is going to be a big boy and help me take a nap,” she told
Nick
with a tiny smile. “So we’re going to lay on
his
bed because it’s better than mine.” The two of them disappeared into
Nick
’s tent.

“She’s amazing,”
Nick
said to me with a la
ugh. “I’ll have to try that one
sometime.”

I nodded, but my thoughts were focused on where th
e kid’s mother was. “Where’s uh, y
our wife?” I asked him as I grabbed a
bottle of
water from the cooler.

“Oh, she’s down at the
lake
with Cali and the other girls. Sunbathing is a priority,” he smiled.

“She doesn’t
like camping much, does she.
”

He shook his head. “Oh
no, not at all. I had to drag her here. She’s used to the high society of Hollywood. She’s never even
been
camping until this weekend,” he laughed.

“So how’d you convince her?”

“Guilt,” he smiled again. I so
ftly laughed and he continued,
“We usually do what she likes, which is fine with me,
but I get sick of
L.A.
sometimes. This was something I really wanted t
o do, and I really wanted Sam
to be away from the city for once.”

“Do you plan on always living in California?”

“
I
don’t,
but I think my wife does
.
I suppose that’s going to be an issue one of these days, but for now my job keeps me there.”

“How long do you think you’ll keep performing?”

“I have no idea. It’s just one of those
decisions
that I’ll have to consider as things change, I guess.
I’m twenty-five; my band…we’re kind of in our prime,
”
he chuckled.

Jayden came out of the tent right then, carefully zipping it shut before she made her way over to us at the picnic tables.

“The rotten kid went to sleep quicker than I thought,” she smiled at
Nick
. “I was hoping
he would keep singing me to sleep
.” She sat next to me on the
picnic
bench and leaned her head against my shoulder.

“He was singing to you?”
Nick
asked.

“Yeah,” she smiled. “I have no idea what he was saying, but it was definitely something he knew the melody to.”

“Was it ‘
Goodnight, Sweet Dreams
’?
”

With a laugh she replied, “I think he said something like that.”

Nick
sang part of the song for her.

“Yes! That’s what he was singing.”

“Huh.”

“Why’s that?” she asked him.

“Oh, uh, it’s a
song
I wrote
.
”

“Yeah? A new one?”

He actually seemed a little uncomfortable, but he shrugged it off and replied, “One I wrote
a couple
years ago
, but I’ve been thinking about
revamping it and
putting it on the next album.”

“You’ll have to play it for us tonight,” she said eagerly.
“
I’d love to hear
it.” She looked around the camp and asked,
“
Where’s Chris? I’m ready for lunch.”

We walked together down to the water to look for him, but only the girls were there. After spending twenty minutes or so with them, we found Chris back at the campsite already grilling some hamburgers. Jayden seemed to help with the meals no matter whose turn it was to cook, and this time she was slicing up the tomatoes and onions for him
. She was almost finished when she got stung by a bee,
and that
caused her to cut herself with the knife. She barely said much except for a quiet curse word, but the blood was dripping off of her hand significantly
onto the ground
.

“Here,” Chris handed
Nick
the spatula to finish the burgers and he made Jayden sit down. “Ty, grab me that med kit,” he pointed
to
the other side of the table. He wasn’t even concerned with the
depth of the cut
at first. He only grabbed a piece of gauze out of the kit when I set it by him, and he wrapped it around her finger. He had something else in his hand, watching her very closely, and that’s when I realized he was checking her breathing.

“Is she going into shock?” I asked. “Jayden, are you okay?”

She
slowly
nodded at the same time Chris said, “She’s
very
allergic to bee stings.”

I wasn’t even sure if I knew that or not. She tried avoiding them at all costs. I just thought she was afraid of them, but
possibly
she did tell me once
. Maybe it didn’t register
.

Chris was still watching her carefully. Something must have changed because
whatever he had in his hand
went right into Jayden’s leg. He was reminding her to stay relaxed and to just give it a minute. Cali and the rest of the girls arrived about that time
and Chris automatically warded them off. I later learned that an audience tended to make things worse, and Jayden had a harder time controlling her breathing when everyone got overly concerned.

“Jayden got stung,” Cali
observed
as she stood next to me.
“Did she get
epinephrine?”

I assumed that’s what was shot into her leg, so I nodded my h
ead. The girls left the scene
to head off the guys that had
just
returned from riding.
They all stood in the distance, watching to see if
everything
was okay.
By that time Chris
was checking
Jayden’s
pulse.

“I’m good,” she finally spoke. She took a few more easy breaths
and I think I finally released the breath that
I
was holding
.
Chris was looking over her left
wrist
where she had been stung, monitoring the swelling.
He made her take off her ring for the time being
, so she switched it to the other hand
.

“I don’t need to give you mouth-to-mouth?” Chris asked her with a smile. He glanced at me with the same smirk.

Jayden laughed.
“
I think I’m breathing on my own this time.
” She paused for a moment and took a couple more breaths.
“
But h
ow about this?”
she
smiled, shaking the gauze off her hand. “It looks pretty deep, Dr.
Davis
.”
Chris shook his head
but kind of smiled, and then she added, “Let’s make Shawn watch. I wanna see if he’ll pass out.”

“You’re terrible,” Chris laughed.

“Hey Shawn!” she hollered. He turned from where he was standing with Matt and Cali. “Wanna watch me get stitches?”

He gave her the finger, but everyone else was laughing.

I had pretty much kept out of the way until Jayden patted the spot next t
o her. “Sorry about all that.
I
thought I was going to stop
breathing.”

I shook my head and sat down. “Well it’s a good thing there were other people
here. I had no idea you needed…
all that,” I motioned.

“
Jayden
,” Chris said
with
disbelief
. “You know better than that. That’s something he needs to know.”

“I know,” she replied. “I’m sorry, I just… I guess I thought I told you.”

“You told me you were allergic, but you never said you go into anaphylactic shock. That’s a little different.
But…I guess now I know
.
”

“She carries
epinephrine
everywhere she goes,”
Chris
informed
me, holding one
of the
syringe
-like
pens
in his hand to show me, and then h
e instructed me on what to do if it happened again. “You carry one with you, righ
t?” he asked her sternly
.

“Yes, dad. I have one in my purse, one in the car in the glove box, and one at home in the medicine cabinet. And I think all of my friends carry one, too,” she
smirked.

Chris looked at me to make sure I got all that, so I nodded. He kept checking her pulse
,
and when he felt all was well, we moved away from the table so everyone else could come and eat.
Jayden sat in a chair several yards away from everyone, and Chris pulled up a chair next to her.

He actually put a couple of stitches in her
right then and there.

When they were done,
Jayden joined the rest of the gr
oup, but Chris made her remain sitting
. He continued to check her pulse every so often, and asked her standard questions about her breathing.
She’d been stung a few other times and the reactions had varied. But about four years ago was the scariest
when everyone was down at the river
one evening. She didn’t have epinephrine
with her at the time
,
and Shawn had to race to her car to find
some
while J
ayden pretty much
stopped breathing
and passed out
.
Chris had to keep air in her until Shawn came back, thankfully with the epinephrine in hand. It did the trick and she was breathing on her own, but they took her to the hospital
anyway
to make sure everything was okay.
It freaked everyone out pretty bad.
And then last summer she got stung and nothing even happened.

“Is she going to be okay after going through that?” I later asked Chris. Jayden had
Sam
on her lap, looking through a book.

Chris sighed. “Yeah, she’ll be fine. She’s never really had any other reactions ot
her than the breathing problems
. As long as her heart rate is normal and she’s breathing fine, she won’t even let me mention a hospital. If you don’t believe me, you can try suggesting it,” he said with a smile.