NOVEMBER, 1993, SEATTLE, WA

           NOVEMBER DAWNED UPON Seattle with a slew of cold rain and grey skies, two things that accurately represented Lindy's mood as she coped with the turmoil stirring inside her heart.

Kurt's overdose in her bathroom had driven a bitter wedge between them both. He'd broken a rule that Lindy had given him many months prior; that rule was that he could not, he would not bring heroin into their safe place. But yet he'd done it anyway, succumbing to his insatiable need and forgetting his promise to her. 

She'd been upset at first. Of course she'd been upset. She had watched him die before her very eyes. She had lost him and brought him back in the span of minutes feeling nothing except torture the entire time. 

Lindy had moved past her anger eventually, finding it hard to bottle up her rage for so long. She figured that some people might have called her crazy for forgiving Kurt for what he'd done, but she'd already come to terms with being crazy. Being with Kurt drove her crazy in more ways than one. But she loved him nonetheless -- she had learned the ins and outs of his addiction like the pattern of a complicated, unsolvable puzzle.

Loving someone with an addiction, Lindy had learned, meant putting aside the expectation that they were in control of their own selves. At some point, the addiction developed a mind of its own and the person suffering lost the autonomy of making good choices. Kurt had proven this to her.

She couldn't excuse Kurt's behavior and she struggled to forgive him, but it was something that she had come to realize in the time she'd spent laying in bed, her eyes adjusting in and out of the darkness. If you loved someone, if you loved them truly with every ounce of love in your heart, you would see their soul for what it really was. Their struggles became your own. It was a covenant of loving someone honestly. 

Lindy knew that Kurt had not stuck that needle in his arm that day with a careless dismissal of his promise to her. He loved her too and he would have never tried to hurt her, to spatter what they shared together with lies and deceit. It was the addiction. It had virtually eaten him alive and taken the reigns of his mind. When his craving struck, which it so often did those days, the real Kurt floated far away into oblivion. 

Some may have called her a pushover. She didn't care.

Lindy had come to greatly understand what she was dealing with when it came to her renewed involvement with the man she loved more than life. The addict whom she adored, who had laid broken and near-dead on her bathroom floor, was still the same man that she'd fallen in love with as a young adult. Nothing would ever change the steadfast way that Lindy had always cared for Kurt. Not even the enemy in their lives that was heroin.

They'd patched things up right before he left on tour. Lindy had nearly considered sending him off without so much as a goodbye; she wondered if 'tough love' would be a good lesson for him. But then she remembered Wendy and that she was not like the people of his past. She would not hurt him, even if he had hurt her. 

 Lindy refused to leave Kurt emotionally stranded as nearly everyone else in his life had. Like Trae said — she could have walked away. She could have apologized to him and explained that it had gone too far. She could have shuffled him out of her apartment and closed the door and never turned on MTV again where she would always see his terribly beautiful face and hear the sound of his lullaby voice calling out to her.

But she would never do that. 

He looked weaker than he ever had when they'd said their goodbyes, hanging his arms loosely around Lindy's waist in an attempt at a hug.

"I love you," she'd told him, kissing his forehead and sucking in a deep gulp of air that held all of his taste and warmth in it.

Kurt's eyes, once so alight with the daring and wondrous personality that had first ever sparked his creative soul, were bloodshot and heavy. He looked like he had nothing to live for, not even the woman who held him then in her arms. 

His guilt over what he'd done to Lindy was destroying him. He had cried endlessly, mostly to himself, but sometimes in front of her. She'd barely been able to get a word out of him in the days following the overdose. It was like he had taken an oath of silence. He was much too ashamed to find the words to express how sorry he was.

But not even the mass of his own guilt gave Kurt the strength to fight the real battle at hand. Deep down inside, he felt the truth of his addiction crushing him into dust.

"Love you too," he'd mumbled, his voice as broken as his heart.

_________

Midway through the first week of November, Lindy received an unexpected phone call from Kurt. 

He never called when he was away. There was always a well-known risk that came with it, one that he never dared test just for the sake of the pleasure of hearing Lindy's voice. If someone found out, that meant that they could tell Courtney. And telling Courtney would not only lead to a media meltdown, but also a likely chance of her attempt to kill Lindy with her bare hands.

"You called," Lindy said incredulously after picking up, hearing Kurt say hello on the end of the line.

"I called," Kurt confirmed. By the sound of his voice, he was wearing a smile, which inflated Lindy's mood slightly. Knowing he was somewhat happy relieved her.

"I'm glad to hear your voice," she sighed, a firm truth in her words.

"I know. I'm happy to hear yours, too. But I didn't call just for that. I've got a question."

"Okay. Shoot."

"You know that special segment MTV does? The Unplugged session?"

Lindy recalled a faint memory of watching Eric Clapton on MTV a year before, performing a stripped down version of his music in front of a live audience. They had advertised the performance as being 'unplugged,' a soothing, more gentle version of Clapton's usually smooth rock genre. 

"Yeah, I know what it is. What about it?"

"We're headed to New York City next week to play for them. Unplugged. And I want you there."

As soon as Kurt made his proposition, Lindy found herself being transported back in time to when Nirvana had found themselves playing a show in Chicago. Kurt had called her similarly to the way he did now, asking if she would come watch him play. She'd had to say no because of school.

Lindy bit down on her lower lip. "Kurt . . . what about my job?"

"Can you take off?" Kurt asked hopefully. "Look, Lindy, I need you there. I don't think I can do this damn thing without you. I'm fucking nervous as hell and I might tell them no unless I know that I'm going to see your face in the audience."

"You don't need me," Lindy insisted encouragingly. "You've played tons of shows without me there!"

"Not like this. Never like this. Please, Lindy. Just this once, please come."

Lindy resisted sighing into the receiver, not wanting Kurt to hear her exasperation. She really did want to be there — it had been so long since she had attended one of his performances not as a fan, but as his support system. And by the sound of it, Kurt was more than desperate to hear that she would be in attendance. 

Secretly, Lindy knew that she could afford the time off from her job. She had rarely missed a day of work and was in excellent standing to receive some well-deserved paid time off. If she said no to Kurt, not only would it be infused with a lie, but she would be acting on her jitters over the idea of embarking on a sudden, random trip. 

"Let's say I do get the time off to fly to New York," Lindy offered. "How are you going to hide me being there from Courtney? What if she realizes something is up?"

"Well, it's not like we'll get to kiss each other and say hello. All I'd be doing is reserving you a front row seat next to MTV producers. Hell, you could probably pass as one of them. She won't even notice."

"This is important to you."

"Yes."

"You feel as if you will be unable to perform if I'm not there."

"Correct."

She held the phone a little tighter, realizing that there was only one right answer. The answer had the potential to make or break a lot of serious things and after all, she still did owe him for missing out on the Chicago experience.

"Fine. Don't worry about the front row seat, though. And if Courtney finds out, I will happily use you as a human shield when she comes looking for me."

Kurt's sight of relief was so loud that it made a crackling sound into the receiver. 

"Thank you Lindy. That's all I needed to hear. I love you."

Once they hung up, Lindy went into the living room and slumped down onto her couch, thinking over her and Kurt's conversation. She'd have to call the hospital as soon as possible to let them know that she was taking a quick vacation.

For the first time in her life, Lindy was going to New York City.