AUGUST, 1992, SEATTLE, WA

           LINDY HAD TO stop reading the magazines. She was holding up horribly on her stupid promise to forget Kurt once and for all; she found herself again flipping through the pages of an old spread detailing the success of Nirvana and the triumph of a recent tour that they had been on. 

But as of recently, she had a different reason now for reading up on Kurt.

"I'm worried about him," Lindy said into the phone, having called Trae to voice her concerns. She had talked herself into thinking that her worries were justified and that she was not still clinging to the same ghost. 

"Worried about him? Lindy, don't do this. You don't know him anymore," Trae sighed. He never wanted to hurt his sister, but found it necessary to always tell her the truth, especially the truth about Kurt. He had made it clear to her that he did not think it was smart for her to worry over someone so unattainable.

"Trae, they're saying he's into drugs. That he's . . . shooting up," Lindy said gravely, forcing the words out between her teeth. She felt a wave of nausea as she imagined Kurt injecting himself with a needle. She could recall a time when he had once balked at the idea of being pricked by them.

Trae paused, knowing that this information was dire to them both. 

"I thought everything was going well with Jack," he finally said, attempting to steer the conversation in a different direction. 

"It is! But this is important!" Lindy cried. "This is Kurt we're talking about! The Kurt we cared about for all those years!" 

Trae was not lying when he assumed that things between Lindy and Jack were solid. The past six months of Lindy's life had been filled with more happiness than she had experienced in quite some time. Jack was shaping up to be the ideal boyfriend and Lindy could say confidently that she had fallen in love with him, something she never would have guessed would happen. 

Work was an odd occasion — the nurses had all found out and most of them decidedly stared at her with disdain nowadays. Beth had argued that they were all jealous. Lindy, in the fashion of not giving a damn what anyone thought, ignored the glares when she walked through the hallways of the hospitals. Her relationship with Jack existed outside of the space that she occupied at work, even when they only floors away from each other. The opinions of other people did not matter. 

Regardless of anything else, she had found security with Jack and she trusted him to take care of her heart. He was down to earth and understood her in ways that she did not think anyone could. The fact that he was a gorgeous doctor no longer played a role in Lindy's decision to love him; all that mattered was that Jack had ended up becoming one of the dearest people in her life.

But then there was still Kurt.

The thought of him always found its way back to her. It was like a shadow at her heels, following her everywhere she went. No promise that she made would actually make Kurt's memory, burning brightly within her, go away. 

She'd done an okay job at not loving him as fiercely as she had before. Lindy had never thought she'd stop, but her aching desire for Kurt had been greatly subdued by her newfound interest in Jack. It had certainly not been replaced, but she had lived happily without feeling plagued by the thought that she'd lost something meaningful. 

She had even heard that Kurt was expecting a baby with his wife Courtney — this had definitely been hard news to take in, but once again Jack had unknowingly saved the day, spending the night holding Lindy in his arms and not once questioning why she had seemed so inconsolable. 

It was these moments that convinced Lindy that she would be able to live without Kurt. She grudgingly accepted that it was going to take her years to move on, but it had to have been possible. She had felt closer and closer to shedding the memoir that there was relationship, but then the drug rumors had appeared. They had made her think with a sickening feeling that it was he who could not live without her. She had always kept him stable, always ensured that he never took anything too far.

Worst yet, the rumors that she had read had been peppered with suggestions that Kurt's future child was to be taken away by child services because of his alleged drug abuse.

"Trae, I don't want him hooked on that shit. I don't care that I'm not in his life. I'll just die if I find out he's dead because he's doing this," Lindy reasoned. She clenched her teeth down hard when she imagined him dying. It hurt worse than holding a lit flame to her bare skin. 

"And did you see what they're saying about his kid with the Courtney girl? They're threatening to take her away, Trae. Tell me, does he really deserve that?"

"I get that, Linds, I do. And it's really sad to hear all that stuff going around, especially when Kurt's about to be a dad. A good dad, I bet. But as your brother, I'm telling you that you need to forget about it. If he really is on drugs, I think it might be a situation out of anyone's control, including yours."

Lindy felt a spurt of anger at Trae's discouraging stance on the situation. She found herself remembering the New Year's Eve party in which Trae had reprimanded Kurt's drug use to his face.

"You've always been like this about him. You think he's just some drugged out basket case, don't you? I'll never forget what you said to him at that party on New Year's," Lindy snapped. 

"I loved Kurt like a brother," Trae said defensively. "But the key word there is 'like.' You're my real sibling Lindy and I know how much this Kurt thing has hurt you. I know you're happy now, with your job and your new boyfriend. Don't let this fuck that up. I just want you to be happy."

They'd hung up with each other on a note of obvious coolness. Lindy respected Trae's opinion and knew deep down that he was probably right that she should not involve herself in a life that she wasn't even a part of, but her protective instincts over Kurt were coming out of hibernation. She feared for him on a level that she had not felt in the past. 

Beth came over later that evening for a dinner of wine and pasta. Lindy usually loved to have her over, but was noticeably bothered as they sat at her kitchen table, pouring wine and moving noodles around their plates with forks. 

"Are you okay? Is everything good with Jack?" Beth asked, swirling her wine in her glass and looking at her friend apprehensively.

"We're just fine," Lindy said assuringly. Beth would have mourned the loss of Jack in Lindy's life as if he had been her own boyfriend — she thought he was perfect for Lindy, too perfect to ever be given up.

This slightly bothered Lindy. She was beginning to worry that the people she was close to were more concerned about who she dated rather than her own happiness outside of her love life. 

As they continued to sit in subdued silence, Lindy mustered up the courage to gauge Beth's opinion on the subject still lingering in her head.

"Beth, do you think once someone's addicted heroin, it would be possible to get them off of it?"

Beth's fork clattered noisily to her plate.

"Are you on fucking heroin?!" she exclaimed, her voice deadpanned.

"Oh my god, NO!" Lindy yelled back. "I'm just asking for you opinion!"

Beth took a deep breath, but still looked affronted by Lindy's random question. She narrowed her eyes suspiciously.

"Why? Who do you know that's on it?"

"No one. I saw something in the news about some rockstar —,"

"Kurt Cobain?"

Lindy froze, tightening her grip around her fork. She swallowed, not having expected Beth to say his name out loud. It was as if she had read her mind. 

"Yeah. I think it was him."

Beth sighed heavily, twirling more pasta around her fork and leaning back into her chair as if she were about to launch into a well-rehearsed speech. 

"It's so sad, you know? Him about to be a father but being on drugs. I really hope it's not true."

"But if it is," Lindy said quickly. "He'd be able to get off of it, right? Don't you think so?"

Beth wrinkled her brow. "I guess it depends on the person. I mean, you should already know that, being a nurse and all. You know how drugs work. They're powerful things. It varies with everyone and could get really bad." 

"To the point where . . ." Lindy said, trailing off. Beth was right -- she was smart enough, had enough medical experience to know what addictive substances could do to a person both mentally and physically. A small part of her hoped that Beth could prove all of her logic to be wrong. 

"To the point where he could become so addicted that he'll die. Yeah," Beth said, confirming the secret fear that had been eating away at Lindy's insides. 

There was more silence between them as Lindy put down her silverware and pushed her plate away, no longer hungry. Her mind was being attacked with images of a frail Kurt, living out the remainder of his life on the edge of death.

"Why are you thinking about this?" Beth asked, concerned. "You seem so upset about it." 

"I told you, I saw it in the news and —,"

"I know that, but why does it even matter to you?"

Lindy did not respond immediately. In her head, she was listing all of the reasons why it did matter to her. They were reasons that she was not ready to confess to Beth. They were the sort of reasons that no one except herself could understand.

"I'd just hate to see someone with so much talent do that to themselves," Lindy said remorsefully. It wasn't necessarily a lie. Kurt was too gifted to waste his life on needles.

When dinner was finished and Beth had left after helping Lindy clean up, Lindy ended up having a silent showdown with her landline. 

She stood by it, staring at its smooth, cream-colored exterior but not reaching out to lift it from its hook. She wanted so badly to call Krist and Shelli. She had to know the truth about Kurt, if he was okay and if he needed help. And not only that, but she wondered if it would do her well to hear her old friends' voices.

Lindy remained standing, not moving a muscle and eyeing her phone until its sudden shrill ring caused her to jump.

Holding her hand to her heart and trying to catch her breath from the shock, she picked up.

"Hey baby," came Jack's cheerful voice. "I just got off call. Want me to come over?"

Lindy leaned against the wall, thinking once more of Krist and Shelli and poor Kurt, wherever he was. She hoped he that he was at least somewhere safe. Somewhere where drugs could not touch him.

"Yes. Come over," she agreed.

She would not call Krist nor Shelli that night. She would simply have to put it off until the time was right -- if that time would ever even come.