Chapter 197
Nick was alive, and that was all that
mattered to Claire. But Dr. Wittig had
other concerns.
“He’s still not moving air on his
own,” she heard the doctor say to her team of nurses. “I’m going to intubate so that we can get him
stabilized and sent for a CT and chest x-ray.”
Sensing that she was about to be
kicked out, Claire looked around at the doctor.
“Can I go with him for the scans?” she asked, adding a hopeful
“please?” After nearly losing Nick, she
wanted to cling to him; she couldn’t stand the thought of them taking him away
from her. What if he got worse again?
Dr. Wittig shook her head. “I’m sorry, but no. In fact, I need to ask you to leave the
room. Nick’s heart is beating, but he’s
still not breathing on his own, so I’m going to put in a breathing tube. Once he’s stable, we can do the scans and
find out the extent of his injuries. I’ll
talk to you when we know more. Char,
could you take her?”
Claire hated the helplessness of being
in a wheelchair. “Come on, hon,” said
her nurse, Char, as she took the handles of the chair and wheeled her back into
the adjoining trauma room. Without Nick,
Claire felt very alone.
Now that she could think straight
again, her thoughts went to Jamie and the twins. She realized she had run out on them all,
leaving him on the floor and her babies with him. He would have no idea where she was or what had
happened. She would have to call him.
“Could I use a phone to call someone?”
she asked Char.
“Of course, honey.” The nurse brought her the wall phone and told
her what to dial to get an outside line.
Claire actually struggled to remember the home number for the house in
Clive, but eventually, it came to her, and she dialed it. Jamie answered quickly, a sign that he had
been worried about her. He’d stayed
close to the phone.
“Hello?”
“Jamie, it’s me. Claire.”
“Hey… where are you?” His voice was casual. And why wouldn’t it be? He didn’t have a clue what she’d just been
through.
Her throat closed up just thinking
about it, but she cleared away the lump and forced the explanation out. “I’m in the hospital. We got into an accident.” She heard Jamie’s intake of breath and
pressed on quickly, “I’m okay, but… but Nick’s in pretty bad shape. He almost didn’t make it, Jamie.” Just talking about it put her on the verge
of tears again, but she kept her emotions in check this time.
“Oh my God,” she heard Jamie
murmur. “What do you want me to do?”
“Just take care of Cait and Lainey, I
guess. They’re keeping me in overnight,
but even if they weren’t, I couldn’t leave Nick. Are you okay keeping them for awhile?”
“Of course,” said Jamie quickly. “As long as you need me to.”
“Thanks.”
“Anything else? Do you want me to come to the hospital? I could drop the twins off at Mom’s for the
night,” he offered.
“No… thanks, but that’s okay. I don’t want you out driving in this, and
under the circumstances, I think it would just be better if you stayed away for
now.” She wasn’t trying to be snide,
but she couldn’t help but remember what had led to Nick taking off in such a
rage in the first place. If Jamie hadn’t
tried to kiss her… if Nick hadn’t seen… they would never have been out on the
road together, arguing in the car. The
crash wouldn’t have happened.
Oh, the “what ifs.”
She knew it wasn’t really Jamie’s
fault; Nick was the one who had driven recklessly, and no one was to blame for
the snow and ice. Still, a part of her
resented her ex-husband for his role in what had taken place that night. She was grateful he was around to watch her
girls… but she couldn’t say she wanted him with her now. And she had a feeling that if Nick were
aware, he wouldn’t want Jamie there either.
She was better off waiting alone.
To pass the time, she stayed on the phone, calling her parents after she and
Jamie hung up. She talked to her father
for almost twenty minutes, and he made her feel better, offering prayers and
filling her with hope that Nick would pull through this. Again, she was reminded of how much he’d
already survived: cancer, an amputation,
lung surgery, infections and illnesses serious enough to land him in the
hospital. He could survive this too, and
he would.
Still, as she thought of all the
details of the crash and aftermath, she worried about what kind of condition he
would be in. He hadn’t been wearing a
seatbelt… he could have internal injuries.
He hadn’t been breathing, and his heart had stopped… what if he’d
suffered brain damage in the long time it had taken to resuscitate him? On top of that, he could have hypothermia…
burns… smoke inhalation… any number of problems.
Altogether, she knew his condition was
critical. She was just waiting to find
out how critical.
It seemed like a long time before Dr.
Wittig came back to talk to her, but late into the night, once Claire had been
moved into a regular room, she reappeared.
“Let’s talk,” the doctor said, pulling
up a chair to sit at Claire’s bedside.
“How’s Nick doing?” Claire asked right
away. She didn’t want to chitchat; she
wanted to get straight to the point.
“He’s resting comfortably in the
intensive care unit. He’s being kept
sedated while on a ventilator, at least for now, and we’ve also got him on a
medication for his pain,” Dr. Wittig began.
Claire, normally an optimist, saw
through the doctor’s warm bedside manner and processed the negative side of
everything she’d said. Nick was in the
ICU, which meant he was in critical condition.
He was on a ventilator, which meant he still wasn’t able to breathe
without support. And his injuries were
causing him enough pain to warrant a narcotic.
It only got a little better from
there.
“In many ways, Nick was lucky. The CT scan of his head showed no head
injury, and an EEG revealed normal brain activity. One thing we worry about with patients who
are resuscitated after being down such a long time is brain damage or even
brain death. Nick may have some short
term memory loss or personality changes when he wakes up, but hopefully no
long-term effects.”
“Thank God,” whispered Claire, unable
to fathom the idea of Nick being brought back from the brink of death, only to
be a vegetable the rest of his life.
That would have been worse than losing him now.
“Your actions at the scene of the
accident saved him more than you may realize,” Dr. Wittig added, smiling
faintly. “The EMTs told me that you had
already pulled him from the car when they arrived and were giving him
artificial respiration. You kept oxygen
flowing until they got there, so that even though he wasn’t breathing himself,
he didn’t suffer a serious lack of oxygen.
And your laying him in the snow cooled his body to the point that it
slowed his metabolism, making it possible for his body to go a longer time
without proper circulation. Had it not
been for the hypothermia, I don’t think we would have been able to revive him
after so long.”
Claire offered a crooked smile,
feeling anything but heroic. “I didn’t
even think about what I was doing when I was doing it,” she admitted. “He wasn’t breathing, and then the car caught
on fire, and I just knew I had to get him out.
Does he have frostbite from the snow?”
“Some, yes, on his leg and residual
limb. It’s not too severe, and the
hypothermia was mild too. He has
first-degree burns across his torso, where his clothing caught on fire, but
they would have been much worse if you hadn’t gotten him out.”
“I wouldn’t have been able to get him
out, if it hadn’t been for his leg. The
fake one, I mean. His left leg would
have been crushed under the dashboard, but it was only the prosthesis. I had to take it off him to pull him out.”
Dr. Wittig smiled tightly. “Another blessing in disguise. He has some bruising on his right leg,
apparently from the dashboard as well, but the X-rays showed no fractures. He does have several broken ribs, though; in
fact, most of the trauma was to his chest, undoubtedly from hitting the
steering wheel. He was driving,
correct?”
Claire nodded, remembering Nick
speeding down the icy roads, taking curves much too fast. He had slowed down, though, before the
accident…
“The ribs will heal in time, but I’m
concerned about his lungs,” Dr. Wittig went on.
There was no sign of a smile on her face now. “Both of them were collapsed when he was
brought in, which was why he wasn’t breathing.
We inserted tubes into his chest to drain air and fluid and re-inflate
them. But there’s been some damage.”
Claire’s own lungs drew in a slow
breath, as she tried to prepare herself for the worst. This was where the news got bad.
“The x-rays and scans showed a lot of
scar tissue on his lungs already, and I could see that he’s had a lung
lobectomy?”
Claire nodded. “Because of a tumor. He had bone cancer, Ewing’s Sarcoma. They took his leg for it, but it had already
spread to his lungs. He had the surgery
for that almost five years ago, and he’s been in remission ever since.”
“I see. Do you know of any other lung conditions he’s
had? With him unconscious and from out
of state, I haven’t been able to get a full medical history yet.”
Claire thought back, remembering other
times when Nick had been in the hospital, on breathing machines. “He’s had pneumonia before,” she
replied. “And a few years ago, he had
something called BOOP. Bronchio…
something.” She had never been able to
remember the whole name for it; it was much easier and much more amusing just
to call it “BOOP.”
Dr. Wittig nodded slowly. “I’ve heard of it. It’s not common though. He’s been through quite a lot…”
That was the understatement of the
night, Claire thought, as she nodded back emphatically. “Yes, he has.
Too much. But he’s always pulled
through. He’s going to pull through this
too, right?”
The doctor pursed her lips in a way
that told Claire she was about to get more difficult news. “I can’t make any promises,” she said. “Of course, I’m not an expert… now that he’s
out of the ER and in the ICU, he’ll be under the care of another doctor, Dr.
Renck. She specializes in
pulmonology. I’m sure you’ll meet her
tomorrow. I consulted with her before I
came to talk to you, and we both have concerns about Nick’s lungs. As I said, they had been affected previously
from the lobectomy, pneumonia, BOOP, and so on.
Now, with the added damage from the blunt trauma and smoke inhalation,
they’re in bad shape, quite frankly.
He’s relying on a ventilator to breathe; if we took him off of it right
now, I don’t think his lungs would be able to carry out respiration on their
own. We’re just hoping that, with time,
they will heal. He may never get back
full lung function, but as long as they improve enough to be sufficient, he’ll
be okay. Right now, though, his
condition is very serious.”
Claire nodded to show she understood,
though she wasn’t quite sure what to say.
She was painfully aware of the slow breaths she was taking, in and out,
and it suddenly occurred to her that she’d almost always taken them for
granted. Her lungs… despite her own
colorful medical history, they had never been a concern to her. They had kept on breathing through
everything, even when the rest of her body was ready to shut down.
But Nick… his body was surprisingly
undamaged, given the intensity of the crash.
It was his lungs that were failing him.
Each inhalation of air was forced; a machine was breathing for him. Every breath she took for granted was
precious to him now, whether he was aware of it or not. She prayed his precious breath would not be
taken away.
***
The nurses on Claire’s new ward
strictly refused to let her leave her room to go to Nick’s side that night, but
in the morning, after breakfast, they allowed her to visit the ICU in a
wheelchair.
Dressed in a hospital gown and robe,
with paper surgical booties on her feet and an IV line still in her arm, she
was wheeled into the intensive care unit looking almost as if she belonged in
one of the beds herself. Granted, the
patients here were much worse off than she was; she was conscious, first of
all, and while most of them were tethered to ventilators, a breathing treatment
last night had been enough to keep her from still needing oxygen. She was slightly wheezy from the smoke she’d
inhaled in the car, but it felt like a mild case of bronchitis, nothing she
couldn’t handle.
It was Nick she was worried
about. He was in the last cubicle of the
ICU, the curtains drawn around his bed for privacy. The nurse pushing Claire’s wheelchair pulled
these back long enough to wheel her inside.
“I’ll just close these again,” she said on her way out. “If you need anything, just holler.”
Claire nodded, glad for the
solitude. Using her feet instead of her
gauze-wrapped hands, she inched her chair closer to Nick’s bed, anxious to see
him up close. Her eyes roamed his body
from head to foot, taking in every aspect of his appearance. His face was still pale, though not as ashy
gray as it had been last night. The flow
of warm blood had brought some color back to his skin. He was covered by a loose hospital gown and
blankets folded down over his torso. Out
from underneath them, she could see drainage tubes that emptied into plastic
containers hooked to the end of his bed and thin wires that connected leads on
his chest and limbs to a heart monitor. Looking
at the monitor, she was pleased to see that the waves were nice and steady
today, the numbers measuring his heartbeat and blood pressure within the normal
ranges.
Only his oxygen saturation was low,
even with the ventilator forcing pure oxygen into his lungs through a long
hose. The hose connected to the end of
the breathing tube that protruded from his mouth, and it snaked away from his
face like a freakish elephant’s trunk.
She could hear the flow of air hissing through it, forced by a pump which
compressed and released with a steady, whooshing sound. Every time it did, his chest rose and fell
visibly.
Between the sounds of the ventilator
and the beeps from all of the monitor, it was so noisy in the small cubicle
that it was a wonder anyone could sleep.
Yet Nick was completely out, his face relaxed and expressionless behind
the obtrusive hose.
She reached out with her bandaged
hands and used her fingertips to touch his cheek, stroke his brow, smooth back
his hair. “I love you,” she whispered
close to his ear, caressing the side of his face with a gentle touch. “I hope you know that.”
She found his hand amidst all of the
tubes and wires and took hold of it gingerly.
There was an IV line in the crook of his elbow, and clipped to his index
finger was a pulse oxygen monitor, but she didn’t have the energy to shuffle
around to his right side, so she held onto his left hand and tried not to
jostle anything. “Wouldn’t that be
funny, if I accidentally knocked the pulse ox. thing off, and a bunch of people
came rushing in for a code, thinking they’d lose your pulse?” she murmured with
a giggle, stroking the back of his hand with her thumb. “‘Oh no, Doctor, he’s fine; it’s just his
stupid girlfriend fiddling with everything.’”
It wasn’t funny, considering she’d witnessed the real thing the night
before, but she forced herself to laugh anyway, in case Nick could hear
her. She had to stay upbeat and joke
around with him; he couldn’t hear her sound upset.
It was easy to talk to him once she
got started, but she wished she could get a response out of him. She reminded him of the time he’d pulled the
leads off his chest while in the ICU for pneumonia and brought in the whole
code team; he and Howie had once regaled her with that story. She only wished he would open his eyes and
flash her the same wicked smile he must have had then. She told him that too.
“Listen, Stumpy, you gotta get those
lungs whipped back into shape so that your doctor will stop doping you up and
take you off that breathing machine. I
like the sound of my own voice and all, but I feel like I’m talking to a
cucumber here.” She patted the stump of
his leg beneath the covers. “I miss
you. I was so scared I was gonna lose
you last night… you just really need to open your eyes and let me know you’re
still with me.”
Until then, she hadn’t gotten any kind
of response from him whatsoever, no indication that he could hear her, even
while unconscious. The nurses said he
might be able to, but she was beginning to think that was a crock, just
something they told the families of ICU patients to make them feel better.
Then his eyelids fluttered.
Her heartbeat accelerated as she
stared, refusing to take her eyes off of his.
“That’s it,” she encouraged him, squeezing his hand as best she could
through the bandages. “Come on, Nick,
open your eyes.”
And he did.
It was just for a few seconds, but his
blue eyes were definitely open. At
first, they darted around, taking in the sights around him in obvious
confusion, but then they focused in on her face. For a second or two, Claire and Nick locked
eyes, and she knew then that he was really “all right,” that he would still be
the same old Nick she loved when he came through this.
Then his eyes fluttered shut again.
Claire was disappointed, but tried to
be understanding. His body had been
through so much, he had to be exhausted, and on top of that, he was
drugged. Of course he couldn’t keep his
eyes open. “Thanks, Nick. That was good,” she murmured, stroking the
back of his hand. “You sleep now. We’ll try again later.”
She didn’t want to leave him, but she
knew she couldn’t keep him all to herself either. No one but Jamie and her parents knew what
had happened to him the night before.
Nick’s family and friends were blissfully unaware. She had to start making the phone calls that
would bring their mornings crashing down.
***
As it turned out, Claire only made one
call. She started with Brian, who, as
Nick’s best friend and the one who had seen Nick last, deserved to know first. Upset as he was, Brian had a way of staying
calm and reassuring. “Let me call
everybody else,” he offered in his quiet, Kentucky drawl. “There’s nothin’ else I can do for him from
here, so I’ll do that. You just go be
with him, alright? That’s what you can
do.”
So Claire went gratefully back to
Nick’s bedside and let Brian make the rest of the calls.
Around noon, her day nurse brought her
back to her room so that her doctor could examine her. He gave her a clean bill of health,
instructions for how to take care of her hands, and a packet of discharge
papers for her to sign. “You can get
dressed, sign these papers, and drop them off at the nurse’s station on your
way out. They’ll set you up with a
follow-up appointment so I can check those burns,” the doctor told her, wishing
her well.
The nurse gave her a bag from the
emergency room that held her clothes, but when she opened it, Claire found her
jeans and hoodie in pieces. They must
have cut everything off her. The ER had
been such a blur, she hardly remembered.
She called Jamie and asked him to
bring her bag of clothes to the hospital, and when she got off the phone, she
poked through the rest of the contents of the ER bag. There wasn’t much there – she hadn’t had
anything with her that night but the clothes on her back – but at the bottom,
she found the two pieces of her white gold Claddagh ring. She picked them up gingerly and fit them
together. She supposed a jeweler could
solder the ring back together, but was that what she wanted? She had loved that ring, but it would forever
be a symbol of her first, mistaken marriage.
Why keep it and be reminded of a time she wished she could forget?
Making up her mind quickly, she got up
and tossed both pieces of the ring into a biohazard container. Now she couldn’t have it back, even if she
did change her mind. But why would
she? The ring represented the past and
Jamie. Nick was her future, if only he
could live to put a new ring on her finger.
***
Jamie turned up with her bag and the
twin stroller, Caitlin and Delaine packed into it like two fat sausages in
their winter clothes. The babies looked
around at their new surroundings in bewilderment, taking in the bright
fluorescent lights and strange sounds and smells, but when they saw their mother,
they were all smiles.
Claire, who had thought of no one but
Nick since last night, felt her heart leap at the sight of her daughters. “There’s my girls,” she murmured, sinking
down to kiss the tops of their heads.
“Mama missed you. I wish I could pick
you up…” She looked down at her
bandaged hands helplessly.
Jamie reached out and took her wrist
gingerly, looking at the gauze. “Your
hands… what happened?”
“Second degree burns,” she
replied. “I wish Cait and Lainey were
old enough to understand; this could be a good lesson for them – never stick
your hands into open flame.”
“Open flame??” Jamie’s eyes bugged. “You mean, the car caught fire?” Claire nodded grimly, and his eyes darted
all over her body, looking for other signs of injury. “Are you all right?? I mean, other than-”
“I’m fine,” she answered dully. “I had already gotten out by the time the
fire started; I was just trying to get Nick out. His clothes were on fire, and I was trying to
put it out. I wasn’t thinking
straight. But they’ll heal.”
Jamie nodded slowly, surveying her
with his piercing eyes. “How about
Nick? How’s he doing?” he asked.
“Not well. But I guess it could always be worse. Last night was worse.” She swallowed hard, unable to get the image of
that nurse doing chest compressions on Nick’s lifeless body out of her head.
“I’m sorry,” Jamie offered, pressing
his lips together grimly. “I hope he’ll
be okay… I really do. If you want, I can
pray for him.”
“Thanks,” was all Claire said.
Jamie nodded again. “I’m just glad you’re alright,” he said, and
he gave her a delicate hug. “I’m really
sorry,” he added, as he pulled away. “About
what happened last night, I mean. Not
just the accident, but back at the house… right before he showed up.”
Claire understood, but she wasn’t
willing to forgive just yet. She
couldn’t forget that Jamie’s little mistletoe stunt was what had set Nick off
in the first place. “You should be,” she
replied, letting her voice frost over.
“That was completely inappropriate.
You can’t let anything like that happen ever again… especially not in
front of the girls. They’re too young to
understand now, but when they get older, it will only confuse them, you acting
like that with me. They need to
understand that we’re not together anymore, and we’re never going to get back
together. I think you need to understand that too.”
She gave him a cold look, letting her message sink in.
Jamie returned the look with a
sheepish smile. “I know… I do,” he
said. “I just… got carried away, I
guess.” He shrugged. “It’s not easy, you know, just letting go of
you. I’ll always love you…”
“And you’ll always have a special
place in my life. But you can’t say
things like that anymore,” chided Claire.
“I know it’s not easy… it isn’t for me either. But we both need to move on. It’ll get easier once we do.”
Jamie studied her again, his icy blue
eyes seeming to penetrate into her soul.
“Have you moved on already?” he asked.
“Right back to Nick? Is that why
he showed up at our door last night?”
She shrugged. “I don’t know… I don’t want to say anything
now. Who knows what the future
holds. I… I just want him to make it
through this, and then we’ll see.” But
she knew by the scowl on Jamie’s face that he could see right through her
half-assed attempt to stumble around the question. And yet, she didn’t care.
The twins’ fussing interrupted any
retort he might have had for her; they were getting antsy, fidgeting in their
stroller, reaching their chubby hands out for Claire to pick them up.
“I’ll get them,” Jamie told her. “Sit down on the bed.” She did, and Jamie placed both babies
carefully on her lap. Balancing one on
each knee, she brought her arms around them both and snuggled them close to her
chest. It felt good to be holding them
again, after everything she’d been through last night. She hadn’t really thought about it before
now, but if the car had struck the tree on the passenger side, it could have
been her on that gurney last night, moments away from death. Her daughters could have lost their
mother. But thanks to Nick’s last,
desperate actions or fate alone, the car had impacted on his side instead.
Fate…
What did fate have in store for Nick
and her now? It was the question she was
dying to know the answer to. She
couldn’t take this waiting. But, as she
would find out, waiting was all she could do.
***