Chapter 116
“Ma’am?”
Standing
frozen against the wall, Claire felt a pair of hands grab her shoulders; she
heard the nurse trying to talk to her, but she stared right through her, her
thoughts only of Nick.
“Ma’am, you
need to come with me. C’mon, let’s wait
in the hall. Ma’am?” The nurse’s grip on her shoulders tightened,
and she was steered away from the wall and towards the door.
“No,
please,” Claire started protesting as she snapped to, “Please, I wanna stay; I
wanna make sure he-“
“We need
room to work. Let me take you down the
hall to one of our private waiting rooms, and I promise someone will come to
get you once it’s okay to come back in,” the nurse told her soothingly, yet her
hold on Claire was firm as she guided her out the door.
In the
hall, Claire spotted Howie, who was walking towards them, a can of Coke in his
hand. When he saw Claire and the nurse,
an alarmed look came over his face, and he picked up the pace, jogging towards
them. “What happened?” he demanded. “Is Nicky okay??”
Claire
didn’t know how to answer right away; luckily, the nurse said to Howie, “He’s
having some trouble breathing; it looks like he might have a collapsed
lung. The doctor’s trying to get him
stabilized now. Could you walk her down
to the waiting room and wait there, please?
I’ll come and get you as soon as I know more.”
Howie’s
face seemed calm; only the panic in his eyes revealed his fear. Keeping his composure, he nodded and gave the
nurse a hurried “Thanks,” before putting his arm around Claire. “Come on,” he murmured, walking her briskly
to the small waiting room up the hall.
As soon as they were inside, he pushed the door shut and guided her to a
chair. “What happened??” he asked her as
they sat down beside each other, his forehead creased with worry and
confusion. “Claire?”
She shook
her head and brought her hand up over her mouth. “I think it was my fault,” she whispered, in
shock. “Right before he started saying
his chest hurt, he saw my ring…” She
slowly held up her left hand, sadly examining the engagement ring.
It was
several seconds before Howie responded.
Then he said, “Congratulations.”
His voice was quiet, but not condemning; still, she felt horrible. She couldn’t even respond, so she just stared
down at her hands.
A few more
seconds passed, and then Howie added, “You can’t blame yourself, you know. For this or… for anything. You and Nicky are both adults. You tried out a relationship; it didn’t
work. You’re allowed to move on. You should move on, in fact. So should Nick. If he’s hurt by the fact that you’re with
someone else, that’s his problem to sort out, not yours.”
Slowly,
Claire looked over at Howie and managed a tiny smile. “Thanks,” she whispered.
He put his
arm around her, gently hugging her against him.
She felt her tense body relax a little against his muscular
shoulder. But not too much; she wouldn’t
be able to really relax until she knew Nick was okay.
Ten minutes
seemed like ten hours, but finally, the nurse from before returned. In Nick’s hospital room, she had looked tense
and flustered, but this time, she was smiling.
“Nick is stable,” she told Claire and Howie. “His lung collapsed, but we put in another
chest tube to re-inflate it, and his vitals are stabilizing. We’re going to take him for a chest x-ray now
to check on his lungs. Normally this
kind of pneumothorax – collapsed lung – isn’t an immediate emergency, but I
think in Nick’s case it was complicated by his lobectomy and whatever is making
him sick.”
Claire
swallowed hard, remembering the biopsy. What?!
she wanted to cry, what’s making him sick?? But she knew how long it could take to get
test results back, and the nurse probably wouldn’t tell them without telling
Nick first anyway. She sighed.
“Thank you
so much,” Howie spoke up, shaking the nurse’s hand. “Will we be able to see him after the x-ray?”
“Yes, I
think that would be alright. We sedated
him to put in the chest tube, though, so he might still be a little out of
it. His body needs rest anyway; he’s had
a rough day, poor thing.” The nurse’s
lips drooped sympathetically, and Claire couldn’t agree more.
Poor
Nick. When would this nightmare ever end
for him?
***
Claire
walked tiredly into her dark, silent apartment and shut the door, locking it
behind her. She turned on a small lamp
in the living room, bringing a soft glow to the dim space, and slumped down on
the couch, leaning her head against its back.
It was close to midnight, and she was drained. Physically… emotionally… exhausted in every
way imaginable. She’d considered staying
at the hospital overnight, but Howie had taken one look at her around 11:30 and
told her to go home.
“I’m
staying here with Nicky anyway. We don’t
both need to stay,” he’d pointed out.
“Go home and get some sleep so you can come back in the morning. I promise I’ll call if anything happens.”
Claire had
supposed he was right; there was no reason for her to stay and be a
martyr. Nick had still been doped up and
out of it when she left, and she figured he would sleep until morning. She would come back then and relieve Howie.
Remembering
his promise to call before then if anything should happen, she realized that
her cell phone was still turned off and decided she had better turn it back on,
just in case. She pulled it out of her
purse and held in the power button. She
watched the screen blearily as it came on and found that she had three voicemails
waiting for her.
Sighing,
she pressed a button to dial her voicemail and punched in her code to access
the messages. She wasn’t surprised when
the automated voice on the line read off the digits of Jamie’s number. It was a Friday night; she was sure he had
expected them to do something, and she’d been so worried about Nick, she had
completely forgotten to call him.
“Hey, babe,
it’s going on five, and I’m just calling to see what you feel like doing
tonight. I was thinking maybe we could
hit one of the restaurants down by the beach – whaddya say? Gimme a call back.”
His voice
sounded annoyed by the second message, which had been left an hour later, and
worried by the third, which had been left just an hour ago. Wincing, she quickly punched in the speed
dial for him, feeling bad about making him worry.
“Claire?”
Jamie answered abruptly. “What’s going
on? I’ve been trying to call you all
night; where have you been??”
“Hey, I’m
sorry. My phone was shut off earlier,
and I just now got home,” she started to explain. “I was up at the hospital… Nick’s sick.”
“Nick? I thought he was in Europe.”
“As of a
couple weeks ago, he was. He’s back now…
and he’s really sick. They think he
might have pneumonia… or worse… they don’t know yet. I just found out after work, so I went up
there and was there all night with Howie.
I had to shut my phone off, so I didn’t get any of your messages until
now. I’m sorry,” she apologized.
“I was
worried about you. You could have
called.”
“I know,”
she sighed, closing her eyes wearily. “I
should have, but I was a little worried too, you know. It wasn’t top priority.”
“Okay,
okay, you don’t have to snap.” Jamie
sounded annoyed again. “Sorry for being
concerned about where my fiancée is.”
Claire
rolled her eyes. “I didn’t snap,”
she said curtly – okay, now she was snapping, “and I’m sorry… I’m just
tired and upset, and I really just want to go to bed now.”
“Alright,”
Jamie said simply, though he still sounded miffed. “Well, give me a call sometime this weekend
if you have time to hang out with me. If
not, give Nick my best.”
“Yeah,
sure,” mumbled Claire, knowing he didn’t mean it. “’Night, Jamie.”
“Love you,”
he replied, and she felt a stab of guilt.
“I love you
too,” she repeated, and then she hung up.
She set the phone down on the couch cushion next to her and lay her head
back again, staring up at the shadows on the ceiling until her eyes started to
cross. After awhile, she dragged herself
up and drifted off to bed.
***
Nick awoke
when a sudden light came seeping through his eyelids. He opened his eyes and immediately shut them
again, trying to block out the bright light.
“Sorry,
Nick,” a softly Southern-accented voice whispered. “I just need to check your vitals and
everything here. You can go back to
sleep.”
Nick opened
his eyes again, squinting as he let them adjust to the light. He realized it was just the light above his
bed; the rest of his room was dark.
Samantha, his nurse, was there again, her hand flying across his chart.
“What time
is it?” he asked, startled at how breathy and rasping his voice sounded. It had to be night time, judging by the
darkness… but the last time he remembered being awake was in the afternoon,
after his biopsy. He must have been out
for awhile.
“Almost
three a.m., hon,” Samantha replied, her voice hushed.
“Wow… that
late?”
“Sounds
like you had a hard day,” said Samantha, patting his shoulder
sympathetically. “Surgery this
afternoon… and then your lung collapsed this evening, and they had to give you
another chest tube. No wonder you’ve
been sleepin’ all this time.”
All of a
sudden, the memory came back to Nick – Howie and Claire had both been to see
him. He remembered Claire sitting beside
him as the dull ache in his chest had begun to sharpen. He remembered seeing the ring on her finger,
right before he’d started having trouble breathing. Then the memories faded to blackness, and he
knew nothing of what had happened after that.
“Did Claire
and Howie go home?” he asked weakly.
Samantha
smiled. “Claire left a few hours ago,
but she said she’d be back in the morning.
And Howie… well, you don’t think everyone would go and leave you
now, do you?” she said, and then she pointed across the room. Following her finger, he saw Howie passed out
in a chair, his head back, mouth wide open, snoring softly. “He was worried sick about you. They both were.”
Nick
couldn’t help but smile in Howie’s direction.
“Was I that bad off?” he wondered aloud.
Samantha
frowned. “I wasn’t on yet, but I heard
you gave everyone a little scare,” she answered quietly. Nick swallowed hard, feeling slightly queasy
at the realization. The beeping coming
from his heart monitor sped up, and Samantha looked over at it. “Hey now, don’t get all worked up,” she said
soothingly, touching his shoulder again.
“You’re a tough guy, and I know you’re gonna get through this,” she
added, looking him straight in the eye.
“Keep the faith, alright?”
Nick
nodded. “I’ll try,” he rasped. He took a few labored breaths before he asked
tentatively, “Do they know what’s wrong with me yet?”
“I’m not
sure,” said Samantha apologetically. “I
haven’t heard anything, but I can leave a message for Dr. K or your
pulmonologist to come talk to you first thing tomorrow morning.”
“Okay…
thanks…”
“No
problem,” she smiled briefly. Her smile
faded as she turned to the monitors again to finish making her notes. “Are you havin’ any trouble breathing?” she
asked, frowning. “Your sats have dipped
a little.”
“Yeah,
kinda,” Nick wheezed. His chest felt
tight and achy, as if a hippopotamus were sleeping on top of it. As Samantha leaned over to fiddle with his
oxygen again, Nick felt a block of ice settle in his stomach. He had the feeling – a bad feeling – that he
was getting worse instead of better. But
he tried to force this negative thought out of his mind, knowing it would do
him no good to worry about it all night.
He would talk to a doctor in the morning, and hopefully he would get
some answers then.
Trying to
get his mind off of his own health, he asked, “So… what are you doing working
here so late at night again?”
“Oh, I work
the night shift on most weeknights now,” replied Samantha, straightening up and
adding something to his chart. “Trying
to pay my way through med school.”
“Med
school?” Nick repeated with raised brows, impressed. “Wow.
So you wanna be a doctor… instead of a nurse?”
Samantha
gave him an impish smile and a little shrug.
“I thought I’d give it a try, yeah.
I’ve always wanted to go back to school… and now I finally am!”
Nick
smiled. “Must be hard though… doing med
school and working nights here…”
“Oh, you
should talk!” hissed Samantha, lightly swatting his shoulder with her
clipboard. “I know what your schedule’s
like when you’re on the road.”
“Well,
yeah… but I’m not, like, saving lives,” Nick rasped with a chuckle that ended
in a cough.
“Hm…” Samantha pressed her lips together and
studied them. “Maybe not,” she said
quietly, “but you’re changing them.”
Nick felt a
lump of pride rise in his throat as she left his room, leaving the room in
near-darkness again. In the glow of the
monitors around his bed, he looked over at Howie, who was still conked out in a
chair. How the guy could sleep with the
sounds from all the medical equipment and two voices talking was beyond
him. But still Howie slept.
It was sort
of comforting, knowing he was there, even if he could sleep through a train
wreck… or a helicopter crashing into the side of the hospital… or
something. Nick smiled over at him
before he closed his eyes, trying to block out the strange beeps and hisses of
the hospital room and let Howie’s soft snoring lull him to sleep, as it had on
the tour bus for so many years.
***
As
promised, Dr. Kingsbury stopped by Nick’s room the next morning, as he lay
propped up in bed, poking at the bowl of soggy oatmeal he’d been given for
breakfast with his spoon. Howie had gone
down to the cafeteria to get himself breakfast and had offered to sneak Nick
back something more appealing, but he had no appetite at all. He felt weak and feverish, and his chest ached. It hurt to cough, it hurt to breathe, it hurt
where the two thin tubes had been put in to drain his lung and keep it from
collapsing again...
“How are
you feeling, Nick?” Dr. Kingsbury asked.
“Like
hell,” he answered truthfully.
“How’s your
breathing?” she asked, her eyes drifting to the numbers on his monitors before
looking down at the chart she was holding.
“It looks like they had to turn up your oxygen again last night.”
Nick nodded
tiredly, inhaling the near-pure oxygen that flowed into his nostrils. It helped a little, but he was still short of
breath, and breathing deeply seemed an impossibility, even though the nurses
urged him to try.
“Well, I
have some news for you,” said Dr. Kingsbury, pulling up the chair Claire had
occupied the night before and sitting down next to his bed. She set her clipboard down on her lap and
looked up at him. “Here’s the good
news,” she said with a pleasant smile.
“It’s not cancer. The biopsy
yesterday showed no signs of metastasis.”
At her
words, Nick let out what little breath he had in a sigh. “Thank God,” he croaked, sagging with
relief. He raked a hand through his hair
wearily. “I don’t think I could have
gone through that again…”
Dr.
Kingsbury nodded sympathetically. “I
know. This is certainly good news.”
“But you
said there was bad news too, didn’t you,” Nick asked flatly. “What is it, pneumonia?” That wouldn’t be so bad, he decided
as he waited for her to answer. His last
bout with pneumonia had been scary… but he’d made it through. And he had been on chemo at the time, which
made it worse; it was different now.
Pneumonia he could handle. As
long as it wasn’t a relapse of his cancer…
“It doesn’t
appear to be pneumonia either,” said Dr. Kingsbury, “and that’s the bad news –
we don’t know exactly what it is yet. I
have a consultation with your pulmonologist, Dr. Mahmood, later this morning,
but right now all I know is that your body isn’t responding to the antibiotics
as it should. Whatever it is, it’s not
clearing up. The chest x-ray they took
last night after your lung collapsed showed that the patchy shadows we saw on
the first slides have become even more extensive.”
“So it’s
getting worse,” Nick whispered, starting to feel woozy as he took shallow
breaths, the oxygen rattling in and out of his ailing lungs.
“I’m afraid
so,” Dr. Kingsbury answered grimly.
“We’re going to get to the bottom of this, but I’ll be straight with
you, Nick – right now you’re on 90% oxygen, and your pulse ox. is showing that
you’re still not getting enough oxygen into your blood. If your sats dip much lower, you’re probably
going to have to be intubated.”
A shudder
ran through Nick, but he nodded his understanding, knowing he had no other
choice. He had been through this before;
he knew the drill. If he got worse, they
would have to put a tube down his throat to help him breathe. A ventilator would breathe for him then, and
they would keep him doped up on drugs until it came out. He prayed it wouldn’t come to that.
“For now,”
Dr. Kingsbury continued, “a respiratory therapist is going to come down in
awhile to give you a breathing treatment.
That might help clear out your lungs and give us some time to figure out
what’s going on so we can treat you. In
the meantime, hang in there, alright?”
She squeezed his shoulder, and he tried to smile. It probably ended up looking more like a
grimace.
“I’ll try,”
he said softly before his doctor left the room.
***
The
breathing treatment helped a little, and by noon, Nick was feeling slightly
better. The misty vapors he’d inhaled
through a mask during the treatment seemed to have cleared his lungs a bit, and
the number that measured the amount of oxygen in his bloodstream hovered in the
low 90s on his monitor. This figure was
far from ideal, but the day nurse who kept coming to check on him had told him
that as long as the number stayed above 90, they would not have to intubate.
Claire had
turned up around ten o’clock, looking tense and awkward. “It’s good to see you awake,” she’d whispered
as she gave him a gentle hug, being careful not to disrupt any of the tubes.
“Sorry if I
scared you last night,” he’d replied with a wry smile, remembering that she had
been with him when he’d started having trouble breathing the night before, the
result of a collapsed lung.
“Don’t
apologize,” she said quickly, straightening.
“If anyone’s going to apologize here, it should be me. I’m sorry if… if I hurt you last night…” Her right hand drifted to her left, and she
started nervously twisting the ring he’d seen on her finger the night before.
Nick tried
to pretend it hadn’t hurt, knowing that it wouldn’t change anything if she knew
how much it had. So what if it stung him
to see a new and different diamond ring on her finger, a spot once reserved for
the ring he’d bought for her. Knowing
that wouldn’t make her take it off and give it back to Jamie, would it? She’d already said yes to him. A huge mistake, he thought, but he wasn’t
going to say that to her now either. It
wasn’t the time or the place. He would just
come off looking jealous or, worse, like he was trying to play the sympathy
card.
“It’s
okay,” was all he said. He couldn’t
bring himself to congratulate her or to lie about how happy he was for
her. It simply wasn’t true, and he knew
she would see right through it, so what was the point? She had to know, deep down, how he really
felt. But that didn’t matter
anymore. He knew she still cared about
him, but she clearly wasn’t going to put her own life on hold just because he
was still in love with her. Claire was
ready to move on with someone else. But
why, he thought, why does it have to be Jamie?
He tried
not to dwell on it, but as they made small talk, he could not stop his eyes
from gravitating towards that ring. How
had Jamie proposed to her? he wondered.
Had he dazzled her with something elaborate and romantic? It made him nauseous to even picture Jamie
Turner down on one knee, his obnoxious smirk stretched across his face as he
held the ring up to Claire.
Claire… she
was so smart and so intuitive about a lot of things, but when it came to Jamie,
it was like she was blind. Their history
was working for Jamie and against her; for some reason, she just couldn’t see
how much of an asshole the guy really was.
Maybe he did have some redeeming qualities, but when Nick pictured
Jamie, all he saw was a shifty, arrogant dick.
A dick who had taken back the only woman he’d ever truly loved.
The
emotional sting hurt almost worse than the physical ache in his chest, and no
painkiller would get rid of it. All he
could do was try to keep himself from thinking about it, but it was hard when
the sparkle of that engagement ring caught his eye every time Claire moved her
hand.
Claire and
Howie were both with him, finishing up the last of the lunches they’d bought in
the cafeteria downstairs, when a distraction arrived in the form of his
pulmonologist, Dr. Mahmood. “Hello,
Nick,” the young doctor said as she breezed into the room, her long braid of
dark hair swinging across her back with each step. “You must be Nick’s friends?” she addressed
Howie and Claire. They both nodded, each
introducing themselves. Dr. Mahmood
shook their hands and then turned back to Nick.
“I have some information about your condition,” she said. “Are you alright with your friends staying in
the room, or would you rather talk in private?”
“They can
stay,” replied Nick with a wave of his hand, trying to keep his voice sounding
casual. There was no point in trying to
hide anything about his health from Howie or Claire; he’d learned his lesson
about keeping secrets. And more than
that, he needed them there, in case the news was bad. If it’s not cancer, it couldn’t be too bad,
he reassured himself, but he was still nervous about what the doctor was going
to say. He glanced over at Howie and
Claire, who were sitting next to each other on the right side of his bed. They both looked uneasy too; Claire had her
bottom lip in her teeth, and Howie’s knee was vibrating as he jiggled his foot
up and down.
Dr. Mahmood
came around to the other side of the bed and pulled up a chair of her own,
sitting down so that she was facing Nick.
“I just came from meeting with Dr. Kingsbury, and she said she had
already told you this wasn’t a recurrence of your cancer.” Nick nodded quickly, and Dr. Mahmood
smiled. “That’s definitely good news, so
let’s focus on the positive – it’s not cancer.”
“Well, what
is it then?” asked Nick, nervously licking his lips. His mouth felt very dry, yet his hands were
clammy, and his forehead was perspiring.
“You have
what’s called BOOP. It’s-“
“Wait, did
you say BOOP?” Claire blurted out, and everyone turned to look at
her. She immediately blushed, shifting
her weight. “Um, sorry,” she said
awkwardly, “I just… There’s a disease
called BOOP??”
Despite his
uneasiness, Nick found himself snickering.
It was a pretty funny name…
“It’s an
acronym that stands for Bronchiolitis Obliterans Organizing Pneumonia,” Dr.
Mahmood explained slowly. Instantly
sobering, Nick just stared at her, as if she were speaking another language.
Bronchio-what??
He only knew what half of those words even meant, and one of them was
“pneumonia” – which Dr. Kingsbury had told him he didn’t have. He furrowed his brow at the doctor, confused. “I thought I didn’t have pneumonia…”
“It isn’t
really pneumonia, although the symptoms are similar,” explained the
doctor. “BOOP is an illness which causes
inflammation in the lungs. It’s hard to
diagnose because it’s rare, and it can look like a number of different lung
conditions in x-rays and CT scans, including pneumonia and lung cancer. That’s why we had to do the biopsy, to rule
out those things.”
“Okay…”
Nick said slowly. “Well, how bad is
this??”
“It really
depends on how you respond to treatment.
This can be a chronic condition, meaning it comes back from time to
time, but most people do recover fully from it.
I’m going to get you started on prednisone, which is the standard
treatment. It should start to clear up
your symptoms in the next few days.”
Nick
nodded. That didn’t sound so bad. “So I’ll be okay in a few days?” he asked.
Dr. Mahmood
seemed to hesitate. “Assuming you
respond to the prednisone, you should start to feel better in the next few
days,” she said slowly, “but for most people with BOOP, it takes at least a few
months for symptoms to totally disappear.
In your case, it’s complicated by the fact that you had a lobectomy –
you’ll probably have some shortness of breath and a nagging cough for awhile. But it is manageable.”
Nick let
out a rattling sigh. A few weeks ago, he
had been looking forward to coming home from tour and having a relaxing few
months off. Now he was facing months of
feeling like shit because of this… this thing he’d been diagnosed
with. “What caused this??” he
asked, imagining himself inhaling some kind of foreign germs while in Europe.
“It’s
impossible to say for sure, but BOOP has been known to develop out of certain
kinds of infection, like the flu or pneumonia.
It’s also connected to certain anti-cancer drugs,” she replied with a meaningful
look. “It could be either, but at this
point, it doesn’t matter. Let’s just
focus on treating it and getting you better.”
She offered him an encouraging smile, but he couldn’t manage one back.
My life is shit, he thought dejectedly, when the doctor
left a few minutes later. He looked up
slowly to find both Howie and Claire watching him. They had kept silent while the doctor was
explaining things to him, letting him ask all the questions, but now Howie
asked, “You alright, Nicky?”
Nick
shrugged. “This fucking sucks,” he
muttered. “Why does this shit keep on
happening to me? Why can’t I ever get
anything simple? I fracture my leg, and
it ends up being fucking bone cancer… I
get what I think is a cold, and it turns out to be a fucking tumor in my
lung… I give myself a blister on my
fucking stump, and it turns into an infected ulcer… and now this. This is shit.”
Howie’s
brown eyes were wide and filled with sympathy, but he looked as if he didn’t
know quite what to say to that. Nick
didn’t blame him.
Claire, on
the other hand, spoke up, “Damn straight.
It is shit. I’m so sorry,
Nick… I wish we had an answer for you, but I don’t know either…” She frowned, biting her lip again.
Nick
inhaled and exhaled slowly, his lungs searing with the effort. “Someone must really like torturing me,” he
muttered in a small voice. He could feel
himself starting to lose his composure, and he looked up towards the ceiling,
blinking rapidly. “Think this is funny,
God? Knocking me down yet again?”
“Nick,”
Howie said warningly, and out of the corner of his eye, Nick saw the two of
them exchange worried looks.
“Sorry,” he
muttered, but he really wasn’t. He was
angry. What had he ever done to deserve
all of this? Just when it seemed his
life was finally back on track, something else had to happen. When would it ever end? When he finally died? Whenever that happened, he was going to have
some questions for The Big Man (or Big Woman), that was for sure.
“Nick, look
on the bright side,” Claire said. “First
off, it’s not cancer. That in itself is
something to be grateful for. And hey…
if you were going to get sick with something no one’s ever heard of, might as
well be something with a funny name.”
“BOOP?”
said Nick and cracked a smile. He and
Claire exchanged looks, and all of a sudden, they both started snickering
again. Howie just looked between the two
of them as if they were insane.
Smiling
gently, Claire reached out and grabbed his hand, giving it a squeeze. “I know you’re gonna get through this,
Nick. What doesn’t kill you makes you
stronger, right?” she said. “After all
of this crap, you’ve got to be the strongest guy I know. You’re gonna kick some BOOP ass.”
Nick
managed another smile. Even now, she
still knew what to say to make him feel better.
“Thanks, Claire…”
***
AN:
*whispers* I have a confession to
make… I was going to just give Nick pneumonia, for my angst-loving readers, but
then I found this BOOP thing, and it fit, and so I decided to use it instead…
all because the acronym cracks me up. =P
And so does the site I found it on: http://www.epler.com/BoopTown.htm (LMAO it looks like “The Busy World of
Richard Scarry” or something!) I’m sorry,
I’m just very easily amused and end up doing stuff like this purely for the
humor value – remember Paris Hilton’s freak carnival accident? So yeah, there’s my explanation for this one,
before I get a bunch of emails going “WTF??” LOL. Trust me on this one though… you know I
always make things work out in the end. ;)