Storms (60 page)

As I walked through the doors of his suite his nurse took one look at me and rushed out from behind her reception desk. Slipping her strong arm around my waist, she almost lifted me off my feet as she rushed me back to an inner room. “The doctor will be right here. Just lie down now, I'll be right back”, she said in an urgent tone as she gently helped me lie down on the examining table.

Within minutes Dr. Jackson walked in and immediately started barking orders to two nurses hovering just outside the door. After a half-hour of blood samples and examinations, Dr. Jackson brushed my long, sweat-soaked hair off my forehead as he sat on a chair beside me. “Carol. You're hemorrhaging. You've had a miscarriage and you've lost a lot of blood. We need to get you checked into the hospital as soon as possible. I'm sorry, hon.”

“What? But how is that possible? I didn't even know I was pregnant, Dr. Jackson! I had a period last month. I can't be pregnant!” I said as I began to cry. And then I told him about the heavy lifting I'd done two nights before. “I'm to blame, aren't I? That's what caused me to miscarry?”

In a soft voice Dr. Jackson explained to me that while he doubted it, there was no way to know. He thought the pregnancy was already in trouble. My light period the month before was breakthrough bleeding and the fainting spell was another indication that something was amiss. He believed I was two months along before I began to hemorrhage. I needed surgery, he explained, after telling me to check into Cedars-Sinai Hospital first thing in the morning for a D&C procedure. With condolences and words of warning about the trauma my body had been through, he sent me home.

Leaving my car behind, I climbed into a cab and closed my eyes for the entire ride home. I tried not to think about what I'd just been told. I tried not to think about the baby I hadn't known I was carrying. I tried not to think about what might have been. But all my thoughts seemed dark and empty and it felt as though I could barely breathe.

As I walked into the house I could hear Walter and the laughter of his band echoing down the hallway from the studio and I knew that I couldn't bear it. Calling Bob's name, I walked into his bedroom and looked at him numbly as he smiled at me. “Bob, I'm ill. I have to go to the hospital tomorrow. I want you to ask Walter and his band to leave. I'll let you know when they can come back.”

Before he could ask any questions, I said softly, “Look, Bob, I've had a miscarriage. I don't want anyone in the house right now but you and me. Don't tell them anything. Just say that I'm sick. I'm going to call Lindsey and then I need you to drive me to the hospital in the morning. Can you do all of that for me?”

He mumbled that he could and I walked slowly to my bedroom and once again locked myself in. I could hear Walter's loud words of protest quickly
grow quiet as Bob explained the situation, but it seemed so unimportant to me if they were angry or upset over having their recording sessions cut short. Curling up on the bed, I listened as car doors slammed outside in our driveway and then I reached for the phone. I had to tell Lindsey.

I don't know what I expected Lindsey's reaction to be. Shock perhaps, or sadness, or at the very least, concern over my health. But I got none of these reactions. Instead, I had to endure a ten-minute tirade of accusations about how I was hiding a pregnancy from him. And to Lindsey that seemed the ultimate betrayal. I explained over and over again that I hadn't known that I was pregnant, but he didn't want to hear it. He wasn't listening to anything I said.

There were no words of consolation, none of concern. He was angry. Enraged. And it made no sense at all to me. I was in pain, I was hemorrhaging, and I couldn't understand his fury. And for the first time in our relationship I realized that I didn't want to understand it. He seemed a stranger to me and already in shock over the loss of a child I hadn't known that I was carrying, I hung up the phone, silencing the screaming voice on the other end. As the phone immediately began to ring I unplugged it from the wall, climbed under the covers, and cried myself to sleep.

As they prepared me for surgery the next morning, I told myself that things couldn't get any worse. But I was wrong. The anesthesiologist couldn't find any veins for the injections I needed to have. They'd almost collapsed from my heavy loss of blood and after twenty minutes I was hysterical from not only the painful probing needles and the sheer horror of the miscarriage but also Lindsey's rage from the day before. As his ugly words echoed in my mind I seemed to see a baby's face that had Lindsey's eyes and my blonde hair, and I felt as though I were in the middle of a living nightmare.

Dr. Jackson came rushing to my side and with soothing words and gentle hands somehow injected me and I mercifully succumbed to blackness. When I awakened, the first thing I saw was Sara's anxious face bending over me. I tried to smile, but I couldn't. I was too weak to make the effort. Sara sat by my side, holding my hand, as I seemed to drift under the heavy pain medication. I didn't feel any pain. I didn't feel much of anything.

As if from far away, I heard the phone ringing and as Sara held it up to my ear I heard Lindsey's voice asking how I was feeling. “I don't know”, I said
in a whisper. He told me that he was flying home for me and that I should come directly to L'Ermitage as soon as I left the hospital. The band would join us in a few days, he said, and I would then accompany Lindsey for the rest of the tour. “Sure. Whatever. I have to go now. I don't feel very well.” Handing the phone back to Sara, I turned over on my side and closed my eyes. I could hear her speaking to him softly, but I didn't listen. I just wasn't interested.

The next day, as Bob waited for me in the hospital corridor, I pulled my clothes on slowly. Just as I was ready to leave the room, the phone once again rang. It was Lindsey. He sounded terrible. He hasn't had much sleep, he said. Could I ask my doctor for something to help him rest? As I listened incredulously to him telling me how sick he felt, it was like he'd forgotten that he was talking to me in a hospital room—the morning after I'd had surgery after losing his child. Forgive my skepticism, but it seemed hard for me to believe that his lack of sleep was caused by worry over me. “I'll ask the doctor”, I told him, and then hung up the phone.

After we arrived in Bel-Air, I called Dr. Jackson and asked for sleeping pills. Knowing what a hard time I'd had, he was only too happy to oblige. After showering and packing a small overnight bag, I grabbed Lindsey's birthday present before I left the house. About a month before, I'd taken the three snapshots that Lindsey had of his father and had them blown up and beautifully framed as a surprise for his birthday. I'd also made framed copies for his two brothers. I'd been so shocked months earlier when Lindsey confided that those three snapshots were about the only good pictures he had of his father. And I'd wanted to preserve them for both him and his family.

Even though I was under strict orders not to drive, I knew I needed to be alone before I faced Lindsey. Firmly refusing Bob's offer to drive me to the pharmacy and the hotel, I climbed into my car, picked up Lindsey's pills, and went straight to L'Ermitage. As soon as I entered our suite Lindsey wrapped his arms around me and told me how much he'd missed me. Handing him the pills and brightly wrapped gift, I tried to smile as I murmured that I loved him too and walked into the bathroom, closing the door behind me. Closing my eyes, I sank down onto the floor, putting off the “reunion” that only a few days before I'd looked forward to so eagerly.

I felt angry, betrayed, and, most of all, heartbroken. Angry over his furious reaction to the news of my miscarriage; betrayed that he would think
I would ever try to hide a pregnancy from him; and heartbroken because he'd shown so little concern about my health and the pain I'd endured both physically and mentally over the loss of our child. And worst of all, devastated that he seemed to care so little that our baby would never be born.

As I heard him call my name I got up and slowly walked into the bedroom. Sitting in the middle of the bed, he was staring at my birthday gift of pictures with tears in his eyes. He thanked me profusely as he pulled me down on the bed beside him. He made no mention of my miscarriage. Not a word. He went on and on about what a drag the road had been without me and how glad he was that I'd now be joining him for the tour. He loved the pictures of his father, he told me, and was overwhelmed by them. He didn't seem to notice that I was barely speaking. Which was just as well, because right then I had nothing to say to him.

But like so many times before, all thoughts of myself disappeared as I looked into his pale, overwrought face and all my instincts told me that he needed me to take care of
him.
And I did. I put him to bed, watched as he washed down his sleeping pills, and then curled up beside him. With superhuman effort I buried my pain and hurt feelings and fell asleep repeating a now-familiar mantra:
It's not his fault. It's just the pressure he's under that's making him behave in a way that I cannot understand. He swears that he loves me and I want to believe him.

We left the next day to join the band in Houston, Texas. As we arrived backstage at the amphitheater it was immediately apparent that this tour was nothing like the
Rumours
or
Tusk
tours. Everyone in the band just seemed to be going through the motions as they got dressed and sat through the ten-minute countdown. Even though drugs and alcohol were being consumed like water, they seemed to have little effect on lifting anyone's spirits or changing their apathetic moods.

The band was bored—and they'd only been touring two weeks. The electricity in the air that was always present before a concert was gone. And no one seemed to care. After giving a performance that would have seemed barely adequate by the standards set during the
Tusk
tour, the band had little to say about it after the show. There was no discussion of what went wrong, or right. Everyone headed for the drinks table, picked up powder-filled bottle caps, and changed into their street clothes to head back to the hotel.

And this would set the tone for the rest of the
Mirage
tour. With the exception of Mick and John, nobody wanted to be on the road. And slowly but surely the fights and ugliness that were present at Le Château once again became commonplace whenever the band was together—and all of us were suffering from it. By Halloween, Stevie, Lindsey, and Christine had told John and Mick that after next month's U.S. tour dates were completed the
Mirage
tour was over.

Lindsey on the road during the Mirage tour.

There would be no European or Far East tour. With
Mirage
at number one for two straight months, the band was over it. They wanted to pursue their solo projects. They wanted a long break from Fleetwood Mac—and they couldn't give a damn about record sales, fans, and the future of the band that had made them superstars. For now, the party was over. And just when it seemed things couldn't get any worse on the road, they did.

On October 12, I answered the phone in our hotel suite and heard Stevie's tearful voice on the other end of the line asking for Lindsey. She haltingly told me that she was sorry about my miscarriage and as my voice caught in my throat, I thanked her as she broke down into sobs. Biting my lip, I worriedly handed Lindsey the phone. Watching his face, I knew with a sinking feeling that it was the bad news that we'd all been expecting: after giving premature birth to a beautiful baby boy six days before, Robin had died last night at City of Hope.

I could hear Stevie's sobs reverberating from the receiver as I slowly sank to the floor. Laying my head on my knees, I cried for Robin and her motherless child. It felt as though everything that was once so beautiful and sparkling behind the golden curtain of fame that surrounded Fleetwood Mac's world was crumbling into desolation and ruin. The curtain remained, but the inhabitants it shielded were no longer protected from the ravages of life.

The years 1983 and ‘84 were when it all went wrong. When a fortune was lost. When the world fell apart. When another life was taken. When it all went insane. And for a few of us, they would be years in which we left it all behind and tried to find a way out of the darkness that had settled over the kingdom of Fleetwood Mac.

It was late afternoon when we got the phone call. After over seven years by Lindsey's side I didn't think anything could shock me any more. But I was wrong. This call not only horrified the two of us, but also sent every single member of the band and the inner circle reeling in stunned disbelief.

Stevie Nicks was married. In a small, sparsely attended ceremony on a Malibu beach, she had exchanged marriage vows with Kim Anderson, the widowed husband of her best friend, Robin. I don't think anyone believed that Stevie was in love with Kim. Everyone understood that she did, however, want Robin's baby. But the question we all kept asking ourselves was how, in the name of God, could she rationalize marrying her best friend's husband only two months after Robin's tragic death?