MARCH 4th, 1994, SEATTLE, WA

       SITTING IN HER chair behind her desk, Reagan chewed on the cap of the pen twirling between her fingers. It was all she could do to keep herself from sighing.

Her eyes were tired, which was the biggest thing bothering her. She'd been scanning the same industry press sheet for almost forty-five minutes, browsing through the black print for new and upcoming bands that she could pass word on to Todd about. Usually, she enjoyed the kind of eagle-eyed scouring that came with browsing these sheets, but she was exhausted that day.

Dave had unexpectedly arrived home the day before. Kurt had unceremoniously cancelled the next few days' worth of shows, meaning that Dave was free to stay in Seattle until the eleventh, when the next leg of the tour started.

Delighted by his surprise return, Reagan had stayed up nearly all night with him, first playing with Gracie until she went to sleep and then transitioning onto their back deck, where they'd drank cheap wine and talked. They'd talked about everything, from the tour to Virginia to music and it wasn't until almost three in the morning that Reagan's head had hit her pillow and she'd fallen asleep.

She didn't regret having stayed up with him. His arrival home had been a gift from the heavens, aligning perfectly in time with Gracie's upcoming second birthday. It was a perfect enactment of serendipity, which pleased Reagan to no end and left her feeling quite satisfied, even a little smug, that she'd gotten Dave back early.

Only now was she paying the price. Her vision stung and watered as she read and no amount of rapid blinking cleared her eyes. She let out a great, heaving sigh, throwing her own down onto her desk and cradling her head in her hands.

She wondered if anyone would notice if she checked out for an hour or two. People did come and go a lot, always rapping at her door to pop their heads in, but at least if she was curled up beneath her desk sleeping, they wouldn't see her and assume she was elsewhere in the building.

Running her tongue over the top row of her teeth and straightening her spine, Reagan sat back in her chair and smoothed out the paper in front of her.

No sleeping. She had to comb through the sheet one more time, mark it up with her red pen and buzz Todd by one in the afternoon. She was tired and yearning to be back home with Dave, but the one thing she wasn't was lazy on the job. And she really, really couldn't afford to be lazy on this job. Not when she was trying to maintain her good impressions in hopes of elevating herself to more a managerial status.

It was so difficult, though, trying to train her eyes on the paperwork layered across her the top of her desk when her mind was elsewhere. She fixed her gaze onto the row of frames gathered beside her pen organizer. In one was a snapshot of Gracie, beaming up from the living room floor with a toy in hand. Beside that picture was a photo of her, Dave and Gracie all together, taken by Kate while they'd lounged on their back deck. Dave wasn't looking in the camera lens, but rather off in the distance with a sly smile on his face.

Reagan examined the picture for a little longer. God, did she love him. She loved him and their small but perfect family, the epitome of all the happiness that she held close in the world. It was hard for her to fathom a memory in which the source of her joy, her family, did not exist. It didn't seem plausible that the world had even tilted right on its axis before she'd met Dave.

The sudden trill of her desk phone jarred Reagan out of her internal mulling. She cleared her throat and grabbed the receiver, pressing it to her ear.

"Reagan Abner-Grohl speaking," she said professionally.

"Can you come home? Right now?"

It was Dave's voice on the other line, low and urgent as he swiftly dodged a proper greeting. Reagan felt herself blink in surprise.

"Dave?" she asked, though she already knew it was him.

"Are you busy?" he asked.

"Um . . . sort of. Why? Is everything alright? Is Gracie okay?"

He took a deep breath that crackled into her ear. "Gracie's fine. I think you need to come home, though."

"I can't right now. I've got so much to do before one, and I have a phone call scheduled right before I leave."

"It's important, Reagan."

"What is? What's going on?"

Reagan's chair might as well have been jerked out from under her. That was the way it felt at least as her stomach plunged and her mouth dried, signaling an oncoming crest of anxiety. She tried to slow her thoughts down before she could get ahead of herself, knowing it would do no good to grasp at straws. Attempting to guess what Dave would say next would only make her more sick with worry.

"Are you by a t.v.?" Dave questioned, his words heavy with unease.

"No, I'm not. Look, can you just spit it out? You're making me scared."

"Kurt," he uttered after another shaky inhale. "It's Kurt. He . . . he's in a coma. Something happened in Rome. Too many pills. I don't know all the details yet."

Reagan stiffened in her seat as every drop of blood in her body seemed to freeze, mid-gush through her veins.

"What?" she whispered.

"I want you to come home. If you can manage it. Please."

It took her a moment to respond. Her brain wasn't connecting the proper signals to her mouth, which was glued shut into a jaw-clenched line. There was no processing Dave's request when her overactive imagination was already getting the best of her, sifting images of a bone-pale Kurt lying in a hospital bed, complete with pallid, closed eyes and a barely-there pulse.

"Okay," she finally murmured. Her lips quivered as she spoke. "I'll . . . I'll say it's a family emergency."

That excuse didn't seem too far out of scope. Kurt was her family, wasn't he? Maybe not by blood, but he was still like a brother to her and Dave both, a seemingly permanent fixture in their lives. He was as good as any blood relative that she had.

It was too damn hard. Too hard to distinguish the image of Kurt's face flooding her brain from Robbie's that accompanied it. They were different, yes, but their faces evoked the same kind of panic-stricken, all consuming love in Reagan's fragile heart.

Brothers. One by blood, the other through years of mutual kinship, raised up on the foundations of music.

She bowed her head into her hands and dug her fingernails into her scalp. There was a ringing in her ears, growing louder the longer she turned over Dave's message.

Kurt was in a coma. Somehow, Reagan had always known it would come to this.

It was as if some kind of million-handed entity had plunged its fingers through her chest, pried apart her ribcage, and scrambled her internal organs around until they were mismatched and ripped straight from the sinewy muscle and tissues that held them together.

She thought of Gracie — her perfectly ignorant daughter who was too young to comprehend the world of heartache that her parents had been thrown into. It was silly how much Reagan envied her toddler. Gracie didn't know the depth of human pain yet. She didn't know what it was like, watching one of her best friends succumb to his own bad habits.

And Dave . . . poor Dave. As much as Reagan's heart bled for her own sorrow, it doubled in shattering when she thought of what he was going through.

He was strong. A hell of a lot stronger than she was. Had he known in the back of his mind, all that time ago, that this would be his life? That by touching the tip of a pen to a contract, forever twining his soul with Nirvana, he would have to watch his best friend and bandmate slowly die?

Reagan shot up from her desk. She pushed herself away from it with her hands, feeling the air in her lungs start to funnel away. Even her vision was growing hazy around the edges, making her question the fortitude of her own sanity.

The only rational explanation for her body's physical response to the news was a panic attack. Reagan surmised quickly that this was it. The lack of oxygen that her lungs screamed for, the sandpaper dryness in her mouth, the thud of heartbeat throbbing loudly in her ears.

Stupid, she thought. So stupid.

What kind of ridiculous fairytale had she been living in? Her pact with Dave, their promise to each other that his life in Nirvana would not affect their lives together, had been nothing but a facade.

They were both in too deep. The distinction between Nirvana — between Kurt — and their joint life was nothing but a thin, crippled little line. Too much of both sides had bled together.

Reagan shakily grabbed her purse from under her desk, shouldering it with trembling hands. She told herself that she had to pull it together, she had to walk downstairs, get in her car, and drive home.

Memories overwhelmed her. There was no way that she could look at Kurt's present state from a logical, detached perspective. He was family. She recalled all the times that she'd watched, amused, as he and Kurt had playfully roughhoused each other with grins on their faces. Dave's uncanny ability to make Kurt laugh. Squishing into the backseat of Nirvana's van with them all, counting on Krist to drive like a speed-demon to whatever show they'd been running late to.

Kurt . . . sitting down on his tattered apartment couch beside her, linking their fingers together and assuring her that she was like his sister. He loved her like a sister. The path for Dave had always been clear — to Kurt, Reagan was a sibling. A sibling through the bonds of music that had pushed them together.

Reagan dashed away the wetness that had begun to cloud her eyes. She wanted to cry and let out the gush of panic and pain flooding her system, but there were bystanders she'd have to pass by to get to her car.

She threw open the door to her office and slunk out, immediately turning her back to the coworkers that lingered in the hallways. A hush fell over the gathering when she exited and Reagan knew what they were thinking. Surely, the news about Kurt had already spread.

As if to confirm her suspicions, she heard the fuzzy sound of a television playing from a few cubicle spaces over.

Lead singer of Nirvana, Kurt Cobain, is reported to be in a coma after an accidental overdose in . . .

Reagan shut it out. She'd heard it once from Dave. She didn't need to hear it again from MTV.

She began a brisk walk down the hall, keeping her head bowed as she counted her steps, when a hand suddenly clamped around her arm and stopped her in her tracks.

Reagan's head snapped up and she saw Todd, his face a mask of concern as he held her in place.

"Todd," Reagan began uneasily, hating the scratchy tension in her voice. "I-,"

"Are you okay?" Todd asked.

Reagan pressed her lips together. It would have been easier to tell Todd that she was fine, that she was just on her way out to deal with her personal emergency, but Todd looked like he already knew. They were hardly anything but business partners, but the anguish radiating out of Reagan must have been palpable to him.

She shook her head jerkily, one tiny shake for 'no.'

Todd nodded. "I figured as much. Come on, I'm going to follow you home."

"You don't have to do -,"

"Reagan, you're as white as a sheet. Be honest with yourself. The last thing Dave needs is for you to end up in the hospital too."

Now that Reagan could not argue with. She allowed Todd to wrap one arm protectively around her and lead her continuously down the hall. Her head remained down, but that didn't erase the sting of people's stares. Everyone knew who she was. The wife of Kurt's drummer, sucked into the vortex that was slowly but steadily dismantling Nirvana from the inside out.

"You're shaking pretty badly," Todd remarked as he hustled Reagan outside. It wasn't raining yet, but the air was cold and damp, suggesting that a midday storm was brewing. "Can you drive?"

"I'll be fine," Reagan whispered, fishing her keys out of her bag. "I just need to get home to Dave."

Todd eyed her seriously. Despite wanting to be alone in her misery, Reagan was strangely glad that it was him who'd found her before she'd fallen apart. Todd couldn't have possibly understood the depth of what was going on, not from a personal standpoint, but somehow he looked like he got it.

"Yes," he said. "Yes, you do."