Chapter Text
‘Now, if you’ll step this way Mr. May.’
More bloodwork. He got up, feeling Roger’s reassuring hand on his arm. He opened his mouth to tell him that he could walk without being supported with every step, but that quickly became a lie as the room spun around him. A cloud of darkness washed into his field of view and the last thing he saw was worry clouding Roger’s face.
‘I need assistance in 308,’ a voice called out and someone was tugging his arm. Brian fought to open his eyes, but everything felt like it was made of wood. ‘Mr. May, can you hear me?’
‘Brian? Brimi? He just fell, I didn’t-’
‘-have to get an IV hooked up-’
His eyes shot open, taking in his surroundings. A hospital bed. Cheap ceiling tiles, wires.
“Brian!” He turned over to see Roger with suspiciously red eyes. Freddie was there and John, who appeared to be sleeping in a cramped visitor’s chair. His head felt full, muffled even. Roger wrapped his arms around him, until Freddie pulled him off.
“Let the man breathe, you buffoon.”
“He’s fine,” Roger retorted. “Aren’t you?”
“Yeah,” Brian whispered, his throat almost too dry to talk.
“John!” Roger practically shoved the younger man off the chair. “He’s awake.”
John’s groggy face lit up as he saw Brian.
Brian tried to sit up, wincing as something pinched his side.
“No, no, love,” Freddie said, placing a hand on his chest. “Don’t strain yourself.” He slumped back down.
“What happened?”
“Well, you scared the living daylights out of me,” Roger said. “You passed out.”
“What’s wrong with me?” Brian asked, his voice hoarse.
“Stomach ulcer,” John said. “It’s been there for a while. They think the hepatitis made it worse and that’s why you were having such a rough go.”
“They had to operate.”
Brian vaguely remembered discussing something with the doctor after waking up in a hospital wing. He mostly remembered the astonishment on the doctor’s face when he explained his recent eating habits.
‘Let me get this straight. You haven’t been eating anything?’
‘I have,’ Brian protested. ‘Just... not successfully.’
‘How often in a week have you been sick?’
Constantly. ‘Often.’
‘Often as in every few days? Every day?’
Brian mumbled something, hoping that the others wouldn’t hear.
‘I didn’t quite catch that.’
‘Every time I ate. Unless it was something ridiculously small.’ His stomach cramped up as he saw the shock on his friends’ faces.
An operation. So that’s why he felt strange. He was impossibly tired, and his side felt not quite painful, but…
“How long am I going to be here?” he whispered.
“As long as you need to,” Freddie replied. “None of this rushing back to the studio. Or isolation. We’ve made it very clear that we’re going to show up as often as we please.”
“The album-”
“Can wait.” This time it was Roger who chimed in. “This isn’t some tiny live album, mate. There’s layering, production, more writing. Deacy hasn’t even written half of his bass parts yet.”
“Actually, I have-”
“AND,” Roger continued, “we can layer the guitars after. Throw in ten tracks and bury us all in the mix.”
What if they wait for me and I get sick again? What if my life becomes a never-ending stream of problems-
“We’ve notified the manager,” Freddie added. “And made it very clear that this album gets done with Brian May as guitarist.”
“We couldn’t work with anyone else,” John said.
“We could,” Roger quipped. “We could choose someone who does constantly argue about his parts, or the tempo, or repeating a take because his string slipped too far in the bend.”
The others glared at him.
“But, we wouldn’t be Queen then, would we? We would be… something less.”
Freddie nodded in agreement. “He’s right. Without you, we’d be something boring.”
“Might as well call ourselves the Serfs.”
John and Roger tossed names back and forth, trying to outdo one another with some witty new band name.
Brian jerked out of his thoughts as he felt Freddie lay a hand on his arm. “We’ll wait for you. If it takes weeks, months, that’s what it takes.” He straightened up, clapping his hands together. “Now. Where’s that nurse? I want to discuss what food they’ll be serving you. I won’t allow that horrible hospital mash to be served to our guitarist.”
****
Freddie had little say in the hospital food, but he was right about frequent hospital visits. His bandmates stopped by often to update him on every studio update and, in Roger’s case, to try and settle debates. John brought him a steady stream of paperbacks from a store down the street and one day Roger hauled in a videogame console. Brian had to admit that the constant distractions helped occupy his mind.
At first, the fear of never being able to eat again stopped him from eating. Eventually, the twisting anxiety loosened up and he slowly rebuilt his appetite. Roger made a habit of showing up for diner.
“It’s depressing to eat alone,” Roger said, eating a massive hamburger.
Brian knew the real reason for his nightly visits. He refused to let Brian hide any eating issues from him. “I don’t mind.”
“Aren’t you going to finish that?” Roger asked, pointing to the singular bite left on his plate.
Brian’s mouth was full as he stared back at him. “’m not even done.”
“And you’re feeling alright?”
He sighed. “Yes, Roger. I don’t have any glaring issues.”
“Well, you’ll have some if you don’t tell me. I mean it.”
“I’m just… tired.” And he was. His recovery was going well, but some days he wondered if things would ever be back to normal after the stream of problems.
Roger wiped his hands on his pants. “Good. I’ll let you get some sleep then.”
****
‘Wake up lad.’
Firm hands gripped his shoulder, tugging him awake. He tried to pull away from the ragged figure hunched over him but his limbs felt sluggish. ‘Please, I don’t want to-’
‘Do you feel it?’
‘I don’t know-’
‘There’s a storm coming lad, a storm that will swallow every man whole. Every man who has pushed away his neighbour, who has rejected a life of goodness.’
The room around him grew dark as shadows swirled along the walls.
‘Can you hear me? Listen lad. Listen!’
Leave me alone.
‘Death all around, around, around…’
The sudden rush of water filled his ears, and he was no longer in the hospital. He was sitting at the dining room table in his childhood home.
‘Mum?’
The house was empty, deathly quiet asides from a steady dripping.
‘Did you hear?’ Brian spun around to see a strange man holding a briefcase. ‘Us English folk need to stick together.’ He strode forward, setting the case on the table. ‘We all must stick together. You’d be best to listen.’
‘Who are you? Where-?’
‘The wise man. The mad man. They are one in the same. Sometimes one speaks but sometimes the other speaks and you never know which is wise and which is mad.’ He flipped open the case and water began spilling out, cascading down the table, rising around Brian’s legs at an impossible speed.
Listen to the wise man.
‘Death is coming, one that you cannot escape, one that you cannot rise unchanged from.’
His legs wouldn’t move no matter how hard he tried.
Listen to the mad man.
‘My human zoo!’
The water soaked though his shirt, as Brian struggled to move. Higher. It was lapping at his chin now as he desperately reached for the floating briefcase in front of him. He watched as bits of dishes drifted past him. He saw a familiar shirt bobbing ahead.
‘Roger!’
His voice barely carried through the room, and the more he tried to swim towards it, the further he seemed to drift.
‘Roger, take my hand,’ he screamed out. ‘Take it!’
“Brian!”
He shot up, feeling the water pushing against his chest, staring directly into John’s eyes.
“Hey, are you alright?”
His breath was still catching in his chest as the terrible voice in his head seemed to fade away. His shirt was drenched, not with water, but with sweat.
“What’s wrong?” Roger’s voice called out from the door.
“Just… some weird dream,” Brian mumbled, pushing the matted hair from his face.
“Not surprising,” John said, holding up the science fiction book he had been reading the night before. “You wouldn’t catch me going to sleep with this on my mind.”
“No, it was weird. Some flood. And there was this old man there.”
“Sounds terrifying,” Roger said, his voice light. “Old men are some of the scariest things you’ll see.”
“You know what, never mind,” Brian said.
“No, go on, I’m quite interested in this old man. Was he trying to sell you something?”
“Forget it?”
“Because there’s nothing scarier than an old man showing up on your doorstep trying to sell you something.”
Brian sighed, but the dream was still clear in his memory.
Still I fear, still I dare not laugh at the madman.
****
The day Brian stepped back in the studio, it was bliss. John was in the corner fiddling with a loose knob on his amp. The lights gleaming off the microphone stands. Roger talking with Freddie in the control room as a studio technician loaded up a reel. The way Freddie’s eyes lit up when he saw Brian walk in with his guitar.
“Brian love, we were just about to start warming up.” He pulled him into his arms, holding him tight.
Roger smiled at him, as if they weren’t about to have ten arguments about the tempo every day. “It’s great to have you back mate.”
“So, what are we going to start with?” John asked, wandering into the control room.
“What do you want to start with?” Freddie asked Brian.
“Well,” he said, setting down his Red. “I’m here to play guitar. Whatever needs to be done.”
“Right, well it’s about time you picked up the slack,” Roger joked, bumping Brian’s shoulder.
As he slid his guitar strap over his shoulder and ran a hand along his guitar neck, he smiled. This was it. This was what he was. Brian May. The Queen guitarist.