APRIL, 1990, SEATTLE, WA

                "WE GOT PAID five hundred dollars for our last gig. I want you to take the money and buy yourself a plane ticket so you can fly to Chicago. I want you here."

These were the words Kurt was speaking firmly into the phone to Lindy, who sat on the other line twirling the cord around her finger until it lost feeling. 

"Kurt, I don't know. I have to be at the hospital for clinical training . . ."

"Please, Lindy," Kurt said, speaking gravely. "Please come. I'm sending the money today. Buy the ticket. I love you."

He hung up, the click of the dying line feeling like a physical blow to Lindy's chest. Their conversations were getting shorter and shorter. Kurt's patience with their relationship was wearing thin, but his stardom was only beginning to thicken.

Since February, he had been combing through every viable way to get Lindy to him. Nirvana had not been making money for their past gigs, rather having to pay venues out of pocket themselves to even play there, but for the first time, their fortune was beginning to change.

Lindy's own personal work was thriving too. She was close to finishing her second to last year of college, having finally knocked out a full year in the college of nursing. Her professors had been impressed with her, remarking on her uncanny ability to never score anything below a B on exams.

Her clinicals were going well and she seemed to outshine every other student in her group, always the first to be asked to step in and demonstrate on real patients. When she was in the hospital, wearing her scrubs and diving into medicine, she felt like she'd finally attained everything that she had ever wanted.

Except Kurt. On the contrary, she felt like she was losing him more with each passing day.

Hunched at her kitchen table, Lindy stared off into space, wondering how she'd be able to get away from both school and work to go to Chicago. She'd already had to take so many days off from working in order to study, something that had caused her to barely make rent for the last two months.

Freddie leapt agilely onto the table, nuzzling his head against Lindy's hand, a clear invite for her to pet him. She did as he pleased and smiled when he started to purr like a motorboat.

"I bet you miss your dad," she said aloud. Kurt was easily Freddie's favorite human. It had everything to do with how attentive Kurt had been to the cat, always petting and holding him, treating him like a human baby.

Lindy ventured into their bedroom, pushing open the closet door and looking at the hanging line of various t-shirts and flannels Kurt had left after leaving for the tour. She grabbed one, pulling it off its hanger and sliding her arms into it.

It didn't fit Kurt, as with everything he owned, so in turn it was quite big on Lindy as she pulled it over her body. She held the fabric up to her nose, inhaling his scent. It had never changed. Cigarette smoke, soap, and a trace of something sweet, probably her own perfume.

Standing there, solitary in their bedroom with her face pressed into Kurt's flannel, she started to cry.

_________

Only a few short days later, Lindy received Kurt's check for five-hundred dollars in the mail. She'd opened it slowly, feeling like it might burn her fingertips to touch it. Once she'd pulled it out, it would almost be like sealing an invisible deal, a bargain that she knew she would not be able to fulfill.

In her maternity and child health class, Lindy had waited behind once everyone left. She wanted to speak with her professor and gauge the possibility of her leaving for Chicago.

"Doctor White?" Lindy asked tentatively, stepping towards her professor's cluttered desk.

"Yes?" the woman asked, turning away from her file folder of papers and peering over her reading glasses at, undeniably, her favorite student.

"I . . . I have a favor to ask."

"Ask away," Dr. White insisted, dabbing her finger against her tongue and continuing to flick through the papers she had been reading.

"Well, um, I'm not sure if it will be okay. But my boyfriend is in Chicago this upcoming week playing with his band there. He really wants me to come see him. We haven't seen each other in months and I . . ."

Lindy drifted off, realizing that her professor probably wouldn't want, nor need, to know the details of she and Kurt's relationship woes.

"You do understand that next week is the last week of clinicals, right Lindy?" Dr. White clarified, her attention now zeroed in as she removed her glasses.

"Yes. I know. But I've done pretty well in them this past semester and I thought that maybe I could miss a day or two for this."

Dr. White sighed. "If you missed even a day at this point in the semester, you would be penalized a whole letter grade. It's imperative that you are present, Lindy. The final week is always full of review. You'll be assessed on what you've learned. To be quite frank, if you missed it, you'd be damning your chances of continuing with the program."

Lindy nodded, having expected nothing less of this answer. Her throat was beginning to lock.

"I understand. So . . . there really is no way around it?"

Dr. White peered at Lindy, observing the pinched look of her features. Deep down inside, the woman felt guilt for having to let Lindy down. She of course knew nothing of her students' personal lives, but it was easy to see that Lindy would be letting her boyfriend down in a very major way.

"I'm sorry, Lindy. I wish I had a better answer for you, I really do."

"No, it's okay Doctor White. Thanks for your time."

Holding her backpack straps firmly, Lindy dashed out of the classroom, half-gasping when she walked into the dreary light outside. All she saw in her mind was Kurt, sitting alone, present but somehow not, only thinking of her and hoping she would be there for the Chicago show.

Lindy walked to her car, reminding herself that she could not break down. She had to keep it together, she had to stay strong. Between herself and Kurt, she had to be the one who demonstrated the strength that would keep them together.

If she lost him, she would never be the same.

The last three years of her life were replaying in her head on a constant, looping circuit, memories of Kurt's smiling face flashing in images through her brain. She had known from their first kiss, their first touch, that she didn't want to live her life without him by her side. He was like a mysterious treasure that she had just happened to stumble upon. For three years, she had felt nothing but luckiness and love when she'd looked at him.

Now, he was slipping out of her reach.

In the safety of her car, Lindy attempted to settle her swimming thoughts, counting each breath that rose and fell in her chest.

Deep breaths, she reminded herself. Don't freak out.

But she was freaking out. She was losing her grip. She didn't understand how the world could be so inhumanely nasty to both her and Kurt. Their dreams and goals were being fulfilled, but they were being torn apart by them. How could that kind of good counteract another good that just as perfect?

She ran her fingers through her hair and closed her eyes.

Just swear to yourself that you won't let him go.

That promise Lindy made to herself in her car then and there was an easy one to make, one of the simplest things that she had ever coerced herself into doing.

But she wasn't sure Kurt would be able to make the same promise.

_________

The day of the concert came faster than she expected. Before she knew it, she had woken up on that very morning, her limbs growing stiff as she laid in bed and remembered.

It was six a.m. Lindy sat up, her hair a lovely brown veil that hung down her back and shoulders. Even after a night's sleep, she looked like what Kurt would have called beautiful. Even with sleep crusted into her eyes and her morning breath, he'd always complimented her every morning, reminding her that she was the most beautiful girl that he'd ever seen. Yet, when she looked into the mirror that hung directly across the room in front of her, she felt anything but beautiful.

After minutes spent stalling the moment that she'd have to get up and ready herself for a day of clinicals, Lindy finally crawled out from under the sheets. Her lungs were not working properly. It was like a massive brick was laying on her chest, making her breathing short and feeble.

She shuffled into the kitchen, eyeing her coffee pot but deciding against it when she felt a sharp pain in her stomach. There was no way she'd be able to keep anything down the rest of the day.

The phone started ringing. Lindy froze, fixing her eyes on it and physically feeling the color drain from her face.

She didn't have to wonder who it was. She already knew.

With shaking fingers, Lindy picked up the phone, taking her time raising it to her ear. She feared it would be the last time that she'd hear his voice. She thought this was it, that he would never come back to her after this.

"Hello?"

"There's still time," Kurt said right away, abandoning any formal greeting. He sounded more awake than she did. Then, Lindy remembered the time difference. He had already been out of bed for a few hours.

"Time . . . time for what?" Lindy stammered.

"For you to buy the plane ticket. If you do it now, you could be on the next plane out of Seattle by noon. And then you could be at the show. And with me."

Lindy bit her lip, but the whimpers growing in her chest could not be put to a halt.

"I can't come, Kurt. I tried. But I have to be at the hospital today. My grade depends on it."

Kurt paused, and his silence nearly caused Lindy to collapse with angst.

"What if I told you our relationship depended on this?" he finally said.

It would have been better, less painful even, if he had been there to simply punch her in the gut rather than wound her in the way he just had over the phone.

"Please don't," Lindy cried softly, covering her mouth. This was punishment in its cruelest form.

"I didn't mean that," Kurt sighed. Although he had sounded alert only seconds before, his voice was suddenly raked over with exhaustion.

"I'm so, so, so sorry Kurt," Lindy whispered. "I can't tell you how sorry I am."

"Yeah," Kurt said lowly. "I'm sorry too."

They hung up and Lindy predictably cried. She cried in the shower, as she put on her scrubs, and as she gathered her hair into a ponytail. Even as she prepared to walk out the door, she was fighting her tears which seemed unable to not stop coming.

The five hundred dollars Kurt had sent her lay abandoned on the table, untouched and never to be spent on a plane ticket after all.