It was hot, the kind of hot that could only be satisfied with blasting the AC and holding one’s hands at ten and two to feel the cold air hit them from the vents. Not paying mind to the fact that ten and two had gone ‘out of style’ and was downright dangerous in some cars, depending on the installation of the air bag. Many drivers on the large highway drove with the windows up to take advantage of their comfortable igloos. Reginald Briggs De’Angelo didn’t mind the heat, which was good considering that he certainly had no AC. His custom-made MV-Augusta F4CC wove between the lanes, disregarding the mini-vans and camrys as he sped past them. Reggie had just gotten the sports bike a few weeks before, and he wasted no time in taking it for a spin, leaving his ‘old’ bike to gather dust until he gave it to someone, or donated it to some auction event for charity.

The sun was beginning to set, and though it might have seemed a bit early for bar-hopping, Reggie was on his way to Cecil’s, a bar he had been to only once before. There was something…inherently wrong about going to the same bar all the time in his mind. Yes, the staff knew how to treat the right people with the right respect, opening the curtains, doors, and velvet rope where required. However, it was only when Reggie went to the same bar with regularity that people began to notice him. In this case, ‘people’ was another word to mean women and the kind of men who swung the wrong way a bit. It wasn’t just the fact that women noticed him. Reggie wouldn’t have had a problem with that. He was the kind of person who would be quite content being the last man on Earth, assuming of course that the last women on Earth were all playboy bunnies. The problem with repetition was that women began to stalk people like Reggie. The last club he had enjoyed, called [i]Lion’s Den[/i], was where he was assaulted with quite a common exchange.

[i]”Reg? Reginald? The red-head asked, practically climbing over the bouncers protecting people like him from the grub—common folk. “No, really. I know him.” She told the bouncer, trying to reassure him. 

Having already had a decent amount to drink, Reggie wasted no time in approaching the bouncer and the girl, though he made no attempts to tell the bouncer that she did, indeed, belong on his side of the velvet rope. “Do I know you?” He asked, holding some house special whose name he couldn’t remember in his right hand, while his left was dangling lightly by his side.

“Yes, of course… Remember? We met here two weeks ago… We went back to your hotel room…” It was the same story Reg had heard time and time again. Of course they met at a club. Of course he brought them back to some hotel room. He practically had a standing reservation at any of the biggest hotels in the state. He never brought a girl home, because girls met in clubs weren’t for bringing home, and Reggie had no interest in finding a girl in any other place. Other girls required courting. There were dates, and restrictions on activities, and flowers, and dinners, and questions, and pretending that he actually cared about her boring life when he knew that all she wanted was his money. No, Reginald was not interested in a relationship; he was only interested in having a good time. After all, he had money, he had a great body, and he had absolutely no reason to change his lifestyle.

Shaking his head, Reggie shrugged and took a sip of his drink. Wasn’t her name Meredith? That name annoyed him, and as he looked at her once again, he remembered that it was Meredith. He didn’t even want to say that name, and so had decided to call her Sweetie. That had also been the name of one of his cleaning ladies’ parrots. Listening to Meredith speak two weeks ago reminded him of how much that damn bird squawked, which was how he got the name that sounded slightly less sour on his tongue than [b]Meredith[/b]. “Nope, don’t remember you.” He said, and turned away from the woman, walking towards the back of the club and ducking down a hallway. He could almost hear the silence of her shock, and smirked as he finished his drink in one large gulp.[/i]

Eventually, going to the same club just led to too many awkward encounters, alcohol being poured on his designer suits, women huffing and puffing and throwing tantrums in their discount heels. Reggie didn’t go out on weekend nights to be assaulted by women… Well, sometimes he did, but that was always on his own terms. This new club, Cecil’s, had been recommended by a friend of his, a guy named Andrew. Since Andrew only came to the area like three times a year, the places that he recommended were hit or miss. This one, though, was definitely a hit. 

There was traffic on the freeway, not that Reg particularly cared. Two lanes were wide enough for two cars and him, provided they weren’t complete idiots. While Reginald didn’t have a lot of faith in mankind, he did think that survival instinct was pretty high, and that usually kept him safe. Some Camry that had to be from the 90s honked as he sped past, and Reg looked in the rearview mirror as the small car disappeared from sight, no doubt the man was raising Reg’s favorite finger in front of him. In fact, the man honked because he was finishing a text, and Reginald coming up in his peripheral vision scared him and made him think he was in the shoulder, causing him to swerve unnecessarily. Reginald shook his head slightly and turned back towards the road in front just in time to see the large semi hurtling towards him. “Shit!” Reginald cursed and turned the bike sharply, pushing forward on the left handle to counter-steer his motorcycle and move quickly to the left, where there was no one in his lane. Reg had to pull harder than he expected though, as the back of the semi curved out, and blocked the path ahead. Going far to the left, Reginald hit the semi and flew over the median. He didn’t even hear the crunch of the metal when his bike smashed into a car in the other lane, and he fell unconscious before he hit the ground.

Though Reginald had a history of making poor decisions before getting on a motorcycle of vehicle, this time the culprit had been the driver of the semi. The driver, a man named Billy Thompson, had been driving for 13 hours straight, and hadn’t taken the mandatory breaks that he was supposed to, trying to make a deadline. He had, of course, been in the far left lane of the highway, driving south, when he fell asleep at the wheel. The semi managed to make it over the median before he woke, and by then, all he could do was try to slam the brakes before he had a head-on collision with the other cars coming towards him. The momentum carried the back out and to the side, blocking all of the lands, and smashing against a few cars. There was no shoulder for them to go into, the semi blocked all of the lanes, its front slamming into the median once more, and it’s back stretching into the shoulder. The pile-up on the North-bound side of the highway would be 15 cars and the semi, and the South-bound, due to rubber-neckers and Reginald’s bike, would have 5 as well, though only two lanes of traffic on that side would be blocked completely.

-.-

[i]Five months after the accident - St. Martin’s Extended Care Hospital: [/i]

“I don’t care who is asleep, who is in a meeting, and who is at fucking dinner. I expect to speak with the project manager immediately!” Reminor De’Angelo barked into the phone before hanging up. When the accident first occurred, he had come right away. The boy’s mother had taken a few weeks, having needed to finish presenting some new design line for some very important people. Reminor had been angry at first that his son had gotten himself in another mess. He would have tested positive for some alcohol, and likely some sort of drugs as well, but since the driver of the semi had been found to be the cause of the accident, no one pursued the habits of all of the crash’s victims. The company that had allowed the driver to pull such a long trip had to pay damages to a majority of the victims, not that the De’Angelo’s needed the money, or the publicity. No, Reminor didn’t want his son’s name brought up in any of that, and so he opted out of the lawsuit that would have given a decent payout towards his son’s care.

Reginald had always been a troublemaker, and people would perceive it as his fault if Reminor had allowed his name to reach any of the papers. No, as far as Reginald’s friends were concerned, he simply dropped off the map entirely, with rumors flying around of him backpacking through Paris, or modeling for his mother. 

Reminor’s phone rang less than a minute later, with the project manager he had demanded on the other line. Another argument ensued, in which Reminor insisted that Reginald would be made a subject of their research study that very evening. The project lead tried to insist that it was impossible, that Reginald wasn’t even a candidate for the drugs given the nature of his accident, and there were days-worth of testing that had to happen before they could ensure that he had the potential to respond to the treatment they had. Reminor, however, wouldn’t take no for an answer. He threatened to cut all funding to their organization, and since the De’Angelo’s had a lot of money to contribute to the group, the man relented finally, and agreed to send two tech that very night to give the boy his first treatment.

The drugs were a cocktail that were just beginning the trial phase. They were meant to help prevent brain deterioration in people with Alzheimer’s, and other neurological diseases. Thus far, they were having more beneficial results with helping to prevent the deterioration of motor function in people whose neurons were not firing properly. They did have a few other patients who had been in comas, trying to test if the brain damage could be reduced, and clearly De’Angelo wanted his son to reap all of these benefits, though he wouldn’t likely benefit from any of it, given his condition. The techs soon arrived, and were able to give Reginald the first treatment, though they would move him to their facilities the next day for follow-up care and treatment, as long as he didn't die from the first concoction of drugs that night. They could not promise any results, of course, but Reminor didn’t care. He wanted the best possible treatment for his son, no matter how much money he had to throw at it.