AN: Hey my Bandstand readers, I'm back! So, the first seven chapters of this book are each going to be dedicated to a different member of The Donny Nova Band, just giving some insight into their characters. I don't know how much I'll be updating this book, it probably won't be too frequently, since my life is crazy right now, but I'll do my best! Hope you enjoy!

Three surgeries. Johnny had gone through three different surgeries just to fix the injuries on his spine enough that it wouldn't kill him, and none of them did anything to help with the pain. All they did was give him drugs. He didn't know what was in them, or even what they were called (he just took in the prescription every time he ran out), he just knew they made the pain slightly less unbearable.

The physical pain, anyway. The mental pain almost never went away, except when he was with the band. They never acted like he was child or looked at him like a kicked puppy the way everyone else did.

His family always treated him like a toddler, like he couldn't take care of himself, even though he lived in an apartment by himself. Sure, sometimes he forgot where he put things, or did things more than once a day because he didn't remember whether or not he'd already done it, and he sometimes hurt himself trying to change a light bulb. That didn't mean he was incapable of doing things altogether.

His mother was the worst. She was always trying to convince him to move back in with her, and every time she looked at him, she got this expression on her face that made it seem like she'd lost her son, and that hurt Johnny almost as much as his back pain (not really, he was exaggerating when he told people that).

Because she hadn't lost him. He wasn't exactly the same person as he was when he enlisted, he'd changed in more ways than one. But he wasn't dead. His mother hadn't lost him and that was more than a lot of women could say. The fact that his mother acted like that was one of the few things that made him angry.

The only time he felt truly at ease was when he was with the band. They treated him like he was equal to them, and that was one of the best things someone could do for him. They did get impatient with him a lot early on, but that hardly happened anymore. They always laughed at his jokes, even if he'd told them five times already, and they took the time to explain things to him without talking down to him.

They were more like a family to him than his blood relatives.