Chapter 199
At first, time had seemed to stand
still. But days passed, and before
Claire knew it, a week had gone by.
She was supposed to have gone back to
Tampa, back to work, back to her life.
But instead, she remained in Des Moines by Nick’s side, her life
revolving only around him.
Dr. Somers had been understanding as
always when she’d called him to request time off work, and Laureen had offered
to help cover her shifts. It was all she
could really do to help from Florida, she’d told Claire over the phone. She had sent a card and her love to Nick, and
it now sat with the many others that had been pouring in ever since word of
Nick’s accident had gotten out.
Brian and Kevin had arrived on the
Tuesday following the crash, and a press release had gone out Tuesday
night. Since then, Claire had caught
glimpses of news coverage of Nick’s condition, and the cards and flowers had
started coming in mass. Nick’s ICU
cubicle now looked less like a hospital room and more like a florist’s shop.
The first to arrive had been beautiful
arrangements sent by Leighanne and Kristin, and Brian’s mother had had flowers
delivered on behalf of the Littrell family in Kentucky. In the following days, Nick had received even
more bouquets, including a sweet-smelling bundle of lavender roses and freesia
from his old girlfriend Veronica and a cheerful mix of tropical flowers with a
card attached that read,
To our favorite patient,
Hope you’re not giving those Iowa nurses too much grief.
Wishing you a speedy recovery!
Love,
The 5th Floor Nursing Staff at TGH
Oddly enough, of them all, Claire had
found that one the most touching, and wondered which of the oncology nurses
back in Tampa had arranged to send it.
She knew that doctors and nurses, as a rule, weren’t supposed to get too
close to patients, but it was different with oncology; in their job, it was
hard not to get to know someone on a more personal level. Still, it was a testament to the effect Nick
had on people that they had bothered to have flowers delivered to him in Des
Moines.
People all over the world were
offering their well-wishes and prayers, but visitors to the hospital were kept
to a minimum. Only Claire, the guys,
and, most recently, Nick’s family were allowed in and out of the ICU. That was a great plenty for Nick, who was
still hooked to a ventilator and IV lines that took care of his nourishment,
fluid intake, anxiety, and pain. He
barely managed to stay awake when someone was in the room with him, but it was
just as well. With the breathing tube,
he couldn’t talk, and Claire was sure that was frustrating.
“Hang in there,” she would tell him as
he drifted off, her slow-healing hands smoothing back his hair. “You’ll get better soon, and this will all be
over.”
It was the hope she herself was
clinging to.
Nick was under the care of Dr. Renck,
a pulmonologist with a lilting Portuguese accent and a warm bedside
manner. Claire found her both
approachable and honest, and she had been wonderful at keeping them updated on
his condition. She knew, for instance,
that while Nick’s lung function was gradually improving, Dr. Renck was still
concerned about his ability to breathe without the help of the ventilator.
“He’s in a difficult situation,” the
physician had told her, “because while his lungs can’t yet support respiration
on their own, there are side effects and complications that can arise from
being on a ventilator – pneumonia, collapsed lungs, irreversible damage to the
respiratory system. Nick certainly can’t
afford that. I’d like to start weaning
him from the ventilator as soon as possible.
Generally, we don’t like to keep patients on them for more than two
weeks. If he can’t be weaned by then,
we’ll have to do a tracheotomy.”
At her words, Claire had a sudden
vision of Christopher Reeve, with a trach tube coming out of a hole in his
neck, able to speak only in short spurts that were interrupted by the hiss of
the ventilator forcing air directly into his windpipe. She hated the thought of Nick in that state,
though not as much as his mother did.
Jane Carter, whom Claire had tried to avoid ever since she’d stormed
into the hospital three days late to be Nick’s advocate, protested the idea of
a tracheotomy adamantly.
“Absolutely not,” Claire heard her
telling Dr. Renck outside Nick’s cubicle.
“What would it do to his voice?
He’s a singer; he can’t have a tube hanging out of his throat!”
Claire found it hard to think about
Nick’s singing career when he was struggling just to breathe.
Thankfully, as the days passed, Dr.
Renck decreased Nick’s dosage of sedatives, and he was able to make his own
decisions. No trake, he scribbled on a piece of paper for Claire to see. Want
all the tubes gone!
And so, as his second week in the ICU
loomed, they began the task of trying to get him off the ventilator. A respiratory therapist named Kristy started
coming daily to do breathing exercises with Nick, and Dr. Renck progressively
lowered the pressure of the ventilator, forcing his lungs to do some of the
work. It wasn’t easy, though; with
broken ribs, the breathing exercises were painful. Claire hated to see Nick struggling and in
pain, but she pushed him anyway, knowing he needed the encouragement to keep
trying.
“We’re gonna get through this
together, Nick. I love you,” she would
say when there were no other words of comfort to offer him. And the corners of his mouth would turn up
around the ventilator hose, and he would form the sign for “love” with his
hand, his thumb, index finger, and pinky pointing upwards. He’d hold it up, then gesture to her, and in
her mind, she could hear his voice whispering, “I love you too.”
After everything they’d been through,
Nick and Claire had come full circle.
They’d met in a hospital, exchanged their first “I love you”s in a
hospital, and now, as Nick fought for breath in a hospital bed once again, they
could finally say those words to each other once more.
If we can just get over this hurdle, thought Claire, we can
have a future together. The future we
always planned on…
She’d had her doubts before, but she
was doubtful no longer. Nick was the one
she loved, the one she wanted to be with.
The one she couldn’t bear to live without. She knew that now, and it killed her to think
she’d wasted so much time questioning it.
She’d made so many mistakes, but it wasn’t too late to fix them, if only
Nick would get better.
Her love was all she could offer him
at this point, though. The rest was up
to Nick.
***
Sometimes to Nick, it seemed like
Claire was the only thing keeping him going.
Every time she told him that she loved
him, he got the same rush, one that had nothing to do with pain meds. And every time he opened his eyes and found
her by his side, he remembered the reason he had to live. She was his reason. The realization that, after all this time,
he’d finally gotten her back gave him the strength he needed to push through
the pain and do everything the doctors, nurses, and therapists asked him to.
Other than Claire’s presence,
everything about his current situation sucked, and it was hard not to get
depressed. For over a week, he’d lain in
a hospital bed, forced to lie propped up, even though it killed his ribs to do
so. Even if it didn’t hurt to move, he
couldn’t for all of the tubes and wires.
He was pretty sure every single function of his body was being measured,
and it seemed like every part was connected to some kind of device. Tubes snaked every which way from beneath his
hospital gown, some carrying fluids in, others draining them. He hadn’t been able to get a good enough look
at himself to know how many there were or what all they did, but he was
probably the only one who didn’t. There
was no privacy in the ICU. If it hadn’t
been his first time, he would have been embarrassed, but by now, he knew that
humiliation was pointless, a waste of precious energy.
Still, he couldn’t be confident and
upbeat like Claire either. She kept
telling him he was going to make it through this – actually, everyone told him
that – but the truth was, he was scared.
For nine days, a machine had breathed
for him. Now he was told that if he
wasn’t ready to come off the ventilator in five more, he would be given a trach
tube instead. That, Nick vowed, was not going to happen. No way in hell. He was going to get himself off the
vent. He was determined to; he wanted to
more than anything. But his lungs were
crapping out on him.
They’d collapsed with the impact of
his chest against the steering wheel of the car, he’d been told. He remembered nothing of the crash himself;
he didn’t even remember driving with Claire.
His last memory was of flying to Des Moines to see her; he didn’t recall
getting there, nor driving in the car he had apparently rented, the car he had
crashed. Claire had filled him in on the
rest.
Apparently the car had caught fire
after the crash. There was proof of that
in the healing burns on his torso and Claire’s gauze-wrapped hands. Smoke inhalation had further damaged his
lungs, which were already scarred from cancer and BOOP. They all said he was lucky even to be alive. “You weren’t breathing when I first checked
you,” Claire had told him, a few days after he’d first awoken in the
hospital. He found out later from Brian
that she had given him mouth-to-mouth until the ambulance came.
Too bad I wasn’t awake to enjoy it J, he’d written to her on the notepad they now kept by his bed,
attempting to make light of it. She had
grinned and made some kind of crack at him in return, but looking into her
eyes, he could tell how scared she had been at the time. It scared him too, to think how close he had
come to dying. If he’d been alone in the
car, he probably would have died before the EMTs had gotten there. Claire had saved his life.
But now he was relying on the
ventilator, and without it, he wouldn’t be in much better shape. As much as he wanted to be rid of it, it
terrified him to think that if it was turned off, his lungs might fail
him. Twice in his life, he’d experienced
the fright of truly not being able to breathe, and those were the two instances
that had put him in the predicament he was in now. He didn’t want there to be a third time.
That was why, when Kristy came in on
the tenth day and said, “We’re going to do a little breathing trial, without
the vent,” his first reaction was panic.
“Don’t worry,” Kristy assured
him. “All I’m going to do is unplug the
hose that hooks the ventilator to your endotracheal tube… the breathing tube in
your throat. That stays in place for
now. We’ll see how you do breathing on
your own through the tube, without the help of the vent. If you don’t tolerate it well, I can just
hook you right back up to the vent. With
me so far?”
Nick nodded, but the pressure was
mounting in his chest.
“We’ll try it for five minutes at
first, and if you do okay, we’ll keep going.
If you can breathe on your own for an hour or so, then Dr. Renck will
probably want to extubate you – take the tube out,” Kristy explained.
Nick’s heart lifted; that was what he
wanted. He nodded to show that he
understood, and that he was ready, and as Kristy and one of the nurses got him
ready for the trial, he tried to prepare himself.
Lord, please give me the strength to do this…
***
Claire walked in just as they were
setting Nick up for his breathing trial.
“Can I stay?” she asked, after his therapist, Kristy, explained what she
was about to do.
Kristy and Liane, his nurse, exchanged
glances, and Kristy said, “I don’t see why not, as long as it’s okay with
Nick.” All three women looked to Nick,
who nodded and raised his hand to form the “okay” sign.
Claire smirked; he was getting pretty
good at the whole sign language thing.
Which was funny because, with her scorched hands, she couldn’t do many
hand signals at all, so she talked, and he signed or wrote, and somehow, it
worked. She always had an idea of what
he was thinking or trying to say.
Right now, for instance, she could see
the uncertainty in his eyes. He was
nervous about coming off the ventilator, even if he was trying not to show it.
“You’re gonna do fine, Nick,” she told
him, sitting down beside him and taking his hand. “You can do this.”
On his opposite side, Kristy said,
“Okay, Nick, I’m going to disconnect the vent now. Once I do, it’s going to get harder for you
to breathe; it will feel a little like breathing through a straw at first. Take as deep of breaths as you can, and if
you need to cough, cough. That will help
clear your lungs and make it easier.”
“Dr. Renck ordered your dosage of pain
meds to be upped,” added Liane, “so you should be able to take deep breaths
without too much pain from your ribs.
You can give me a thumbs down if it hurts too much.”
Nick nodded again and gave the thumbs
up. Claire squeezed his hand. She watched, feeling anxious, as Kristy
unplugged the thick hose of the ventilator, leaving only a thin, clear tube
sticking out of Nick’s mouth. She
imagined it would feel like breathing
through a straw, with that down his airway.
Almost immediately, Nick started to
cough, and Liane leaned over him with a suction tube, not unlike the ones
Claire used in her job, to clear the breathing tube.
“That’s good, Nick; cough,” Kristy
coached him, while Claire hung back, watching in trepidation. “Now try and take a deep breath for me. A good, deep breath…”
Claire could see him trying; racked
with coughs, his chest heaved, and he gasped and choked, bearing down on her
hand. The raw skin beneath the gauze on
her palms screamed out in searing agony, but it hurt her almost more to see
Nick fighting for breath. As the
coughing finally subsided, he began to wheeze, breathing in short, rapid gasps
that hissed out through the tube in his throat.
“That’s it... that’s it…” Kristy
murmured, her voice encouraging. “Don’t
panic, Nick, just relax and breathe… relax and breathe…”
But he couldn’t relax. His grip on Claire’s hand was frantic, and it
was obvious he was struggling. A fine
sweat had broken out on his forehead, and his hand was clammy.
“He’s diaphoretic, and his sats are
dropping,” Claire heard Liane say in a low voice. She looked away from Nick long enough to
check his monitor and saw that his oxygen saturation level had fallen to
88%. Her eyes darted to Kristy,
wondering what the therapist was going to do.
Kristy was watching the monitor
carefully. “If he drops below 85, we’ll
have to put him back on the vent. But
give him a minute and see if he can bring it back up.”
“C’mon, Nick,” Claire said quietly,
rubbing his forearm, trying to calm him down.
“You can do it. Suck and blow,
baby; move that air.”
He seemed to relax a little, but his
sats continued to fall. “He’s
tachycardic… BP’s up,” Liane said to Kristy when the level was at 86, making
note of the numbers on Nick’s chart. As
she did, Claire saw the oxygen level drop to 85.
“Alright…” Kristy looked disappointed. “I’m re-connecting the vent. Suction…”
Liane moved to suction out the
breathing tube again, and Kristy said, “Hang on, Nick, we’re gonna get you
hooked back up. Keep breathing; you’re
doing fine.”
Within a minute or so, the ventilator
hose had been reattached, and its mechanical hiss resumed, pumping air into
Nick’s tired lungs. Claire watched his
rigid body relax against the pillows, felt his grip on her hand loosen. She ran her thumb over his knuckles, feeling
them recede back into his flesh.
“That was a good try, Nick,” said
Kristy, patting him on the shoulder.
“I’m going to have you rest on the vent for the rest of the day, and we
can try again tomorrow, alright?”
Nick gave a short nod and closed his
eyes, looking thoroughly exhausted. His
face was pale and clammy, and when Kristy packed up her equipment and left,
Claire asked Liane for a wet washcloth.
“Oh, I can do that, hon,” she said when Claire took the damp cloth and
started to sponge the perspiration from his forehead, but Claire shook her
head.
“It’s alright; I’ve got it,” she
insisted.
The nurse nodded, made one last note
on Nick’s chart, and left the cubicle.
“I’m sorry,” Claire said softly when
they were alone, wiping Nick’s brow in slow, gentle strokes. “I know you were trying. I guess it’s just going to take more time
than we thought. You’ll do better the
next time.”
Nick didn’t respond to her at all; his
eyes were still closed, but she knew he hadn’t drifted off to sleep that
easily. He was still awake… just
disappointed. She could tell, and she
felt bad for him, knowing how frustrated he had to be.
“I love you,” she offered, out of any
other encouraging things to say.
Standing up, she leaned over him and planted a kiss on his
forehead. She could taste the salt of
his sweat, feel the coolness of his damp skin.
As she backed away, his eyebrows
furrowed, and she caught sight of a single tear seeping out from beneath his
lashes.
It was enough to break her heart.
***
After what had happened without the
ventilator, Nick was nervous to try again the next day. Sedated, he’d slept comfortably the rest of
the past day and was not thrilled about being roused in the morning to repeat
the breathing trial. Foggy though his
mind was, he would never forget the sheer desperation he’d felt as he fought
for air, the panic of feeling like he was suffocating, which was exactly how
he’d felt when they had unplugged the vent.
He never wanted to experience that again.
But with Kristy and Claire’s
encouragement and the threat of a tracheotomy still on his mind, he tried again
anyway.
This time, he was more prepared for
what to expect, and although he still coughed when the vent was disconnected,
jolting his ribs painfully, he was able to relax and focus on taking deep
breaths, moving air in and out of his lungs slowly through the tube. At first, each breath took all the effort and
concentration he could muster, and his chest ached as his shattered ribs were
forced to expand.
But eventually, he adjusted, and the
breathing became easier. He still felt short
of breath, but not as he had yesterday, and his sat level was much better.
“You’re doing great, Nick,” said
Kristy with a smile. “I want to see you
breathe on your own, without the vent, for another hour. If you can do that, I think you’ll be ready
to extubate.”
An hour. He could do it, he thought.
Claire stayed with him for the hour,
and the guys came and went. The more
they talked to him, the more he yearned to be rid of the breathing tube so that
he could talk back. It was a hassle to
have to write everything down or try and communicate with only his head and
hands. Thankfully, he had Claire, Brian,
and AJ to do enough talking for all of them.
Howie was quieter about everything,
but at least he was calm. Kevin was so
uptight and paranoid that he made Nick nervous with all his questioning and
checking. And his family… just the
thought of them being there exhausted Nick.
They meant well, but all of the bickering between his siblings and Bob
and Jane, whom he hadn’t seen together in years, drove him nuts. He was glad they’d chosen to stay away today;
the thought of his neurotic mother hovering over him was more than he could
bear. If the breathing tube didn’t suffocate
him, Jane Carter surely would.
“How you doin’, Nick?” Kristy asked,
when an hour had passed. “Think you’re
ready to have that tube gone?”
Nick nodded as vigorously as he could,
hoping that would get the point across.
His throat itched to be rid of the tube; his lungs were aching to
breathe freely.
“Okay,” Kristy smiled. “Let me call Dr. Renck.”
When Dr. Renck came in, they raised
the head of Nick’s bed all the way, so that he was sitting upright. “I’m going to ask you to take a deep breath,
Nick,” Dr. Renck instructed when she was gloved up and ready, “and when I say to,
blow it out as hard as you can, like you’re blowing out birthday candles.”
“Practice for the big 3-0 in another
month,” Claire chimed in from the background, flashing Nick an impish grin.
He just pointed at her, narrowing his
eyes into a look that said, Won’t be
long, and you’ll be thirty too.
Dr. Renck smiled. “Perfect then. So you blow out your candles, and I’ll pull
out the tube. It won’t be a nice
feeling, but I promise I’ll pull fast.”
Nick nodded; he remembered the feeling
of being extubated and wasn’t looking forward to it, especially with broken
ribs. But it would be worth it, he
reminded himself, once the tube was out.
As the doctor counted to three, Claire
offered her arm for him to squeeze, and he sucked in the deepest breath he
could get. “Blow,” ordered Dr. Renck,
and he blew out with all of his strength, squeezing the pain from his chest
into Claire’s forearm. He gagged and
choked as the long tube came up his throat, and once it was out, he started
coughing, pressing his hands to his chest in a vain attempt to cushion his
tender ribcage.
“Doin’ great, Nick,” said Kristy,
putting an oxygen mask over his mouth and nose.
“Just breathe.”
He sucked in the oxygen, and after a
minute or so, the urge to gag and cough was gone, and he could breathe more
easily. He slumped back against his
pillows and took a few deep breaths. Dr.
Renck came forward with her stethoscope and listened to his lungs as he inhaled
and exhaled. “How are you feeling,
Nick?” she asked when she’d taken the stethoscope out of her ears, watching him
closely.
Nick was still trying to decide how he
felt. There was a dull ache in his
chest, and his throat felt scratchy and sore, but he’d certainly felt
worse. “Okay,” he rasped, his voice barely audible. It hurt to try and speak.
Dr. Renck nodded. “Good.
Don’t try to do much more talking; your throat is irritated from the
tube. You’ll probably be hoarse for a
few days, but it will get better after that.
Some ice chips will help the soreness a little for now. Liane?”
His nurse appeared with a small cup of
ice chips, which she handed to Claire.
“Some ice cream would be better, right?” Claire teased with a smile,
perching on the edge of Nick’s bed. She
gently lifted the oxygen mask. “Open
up.” Nick opened his mouth, and she
placed an ice chip on his tongue. He
sucked slowly, savoring the cold relief as it slid down his sore throat.
“When Nick feels ready, he can start
with liquids and soft foods,” said the doctor, “but he’ll be on a restricted
diet for at least a few days. Your
digestive system needs time to adjust to solid food again,” she added, speaking
directly to Nick now.
He suppressed a smirk, knowing that
this was the subtle way of telling him that after being fed through an IV for
ten days, an ice cream sundae would give him diarrhea the likes of which he’d
never seen before. But that was okay
with him… he didn’t feel like eating anything now, not even ice cream. He still felt slightly queasy from the tube
being pulled out, and his throat burned too badly to swallow much anyway.
After awhile, his room cleared out,
and he and Claire found themselves alone.
He had been waiting days to talk to her, but his throat was too sore to
say much. Claire didn’t seem to
mind. She fed him another ice chip, and
as he took it off her fingertip, she leaned forward and caught his lips with
hers. The kiss was brief, but
intensified by the chill of the ice and the contrasting heat of her mouth
against his. It was a shock to his
system, and when she pulled away, replacing the oxygen mask over his mouth, he
could only stare at her.
“Sorry,” she said impishly. “I’ve been wanting to do that for days, but
there was always a freaking tube in the way.”
She winked playfully.
Pulling the mask away from his face
again, he smiled. He cleared his throat,
wincing at the pain, and, with difficulty, managed to whisper, “You took my
breath away.”
“Take my breath away…” she sang,
off-key as always.
He cringed behind the mask and shook
his head. “Don’t sing.”
Claire grinned widely. “Sorry.
One of us had to, and I didn’t think you’d be up to it.”
He opened his mouth to rasp a reply,
but she reached out and held the oxygen mask firmly in place. “Don’t.
Rest that voice of yours; you know I can talk enough for both of us,”
she said good-naturedly. Then, as a
mischievous gleam lit up her eyes, she started singing, “Don’t speak… I know what you’re saying… so please stop explaining…
don’t tell me ‘cause it hurts…”
Nick’s groan was muffled by the oxygen
mask. His ribs twinged, and his throat
was on fire, but what hurt more than anything now were his ears.
***
I wanted you to know
That I love the way you laugh
I wanna hold you high and steal your pain away…
The next day, life seemed a thousand
percent better to Nick. He’d been moved
to a private room on a different floor, and as the sun streamed in through the
slats of the mini-blinds on his window, made even brighter by their reflection
against the snow-covered ground, the cheerful sound of Claire’s laughter
bounced off the walls.
“… so I had to call down to the front
desk and ask for a couple of gallon-sized Ziploc bags and big rubber
bands. Twenty minutes later,” she
giggled, “one of the bellboys shows up in his fancy-pants uniform, carrying a
whole box of Ziploc and a handful of rubber bands and looking at me like I’m
insane. So I somehow manage to get the
bags over my hands and hold them on with rubber bands… but then I have to
actually take a shower with my big blob hands.”
“Blob hands?” Nick repeated, chuckling
hoarsely.
“Well… they seemed kinda squishy and
slimy at the time, especially once I got the shower going,” shrugged
Claire. “So anyway… I’m trying to squirt
shampoo out of one of those teeny little hotel bottles, and the bottle keeps
sliding out of my hands, and once I actually do manage to get some shampoo out,
it starts running right off the
plastic… It was a miracle I managed to
get anything on my body at all. So,
yeah, until my hands are healed, I’m on, like, the once-every-three-days shower
plan.”
“What day is it now?”
Claire grinned. “Day three.”
He wrinkled his nose. “Ew.
Don’t come too close,” he joked.
“Aww, c’mon, I don’t smell too
bad.” She raised her arm and sniffed her
armpit exaggeratedly. “Well… maybe I
take that back…”
“Gross, Ren,” Nick rasped, making a
face.
She
beamed. “Aww, Stumpy, you love me and
you know it.”
He couldn’t deny it. He did love her, especially when she was so
full of life and laughter. She’d been
extra cheerful ever since yesterday, when he’d come off the ventilator. He supposed they had both taken that as a
sign that he was finally out of danger and on the mend. His road to recovery wouldn’t necessarily be
easy – it never was – but at least he was on his way.
Their fun was interrupted by a knock
on his door. They exchanged glances, and
Claire’s voice rang out, “Come in!” The
door opened, and in came a large man dressed in green scrubs. He was carrying a large, plastic bag, the
kind emergency rooms used to hold patients’ clothes and other belongings. In it was something big, long and thin.
“Hi, Mr. Carter. I’m Drew, from the ER,” the nurse introduced
himself. “The firefighters from the
scene of your accident brought this in last week, and we thought you might like
to have it, or at least see it.”
Nick and Claire both watched, curious,
as he opened the bag and pulled out what was inside. At first, Nick didn’t even recognize the
charred hunk of metal. Then, with a
jolt, he realized it was his C-Leg.
The prosthesis’s titanium pylon,
strong enough to have supported his weight over billions of steps, was mangled
and twisted. Its socket was blackened
and misshapen; it looked as if parts of it had actually melted, the heat
molding it into an unidentifiable shape.
It was hard to believe it had once been a perfect cast of his stump.
So this was what had happened to his
leg in the fiery crash, he realized, staring at it in awe. Subconsciously, he had noticed the absence of
his prosthesis, but hadn’t yet questioned it.
Until today, he hadn’t been able to leave his bed, so there had been no
need for it. Now he understood why he
hadn’t even seen it in his room.
“Oh my God…” Claire was the first to speak. As she, too, realized what she was looking
at, her bandaged hand went to her mouth in shock.
The nurse, Drew, gave a grim
smile. “That’s pretty much what we said
in the ER. The guys who brought it in
said it was completely jammed under the dashboard when they went to recover it
from your car. The fire damaged it,
obviously, but they think the impact of the crash is what bent it all up in the
first place.” He shook his head and
added, “I guess you could consider yourself lucky. I mean, if that had been your real leg, the
crush injuries would have been massive.
Excuse my candor, but… if that had been your real leg, you might have
ended up losing it anyway.”
Nick’s stomach turned over at the
thought of having to go through the amputation of his leg all over again. But before he could really even wrap his mind
around that possibility, Claire shook her head and said, “Forget losing a
leg. If that had been your real leg, Nick, you’d be dead right
now.”
He turned to look at her, startled by
that grim statement.
“You were stuck in a burning car,
Nick,” she spoke bluntly. “The only
reason I managed to get you out was because I took your leg off. If that had been your actual leg, I never
would have been able to pull you out.
You would have been wedged in.
The flames probably would have killed you before the fire trucks and
ambulance got there.”
Drew nodded and added, “Like I said,
man… you’re a lucky guy.”
Lucky… lucky to have lost his
leg. It seemed ludicrous, and yet, if
what they were saying was true, they were right. He was
lucky.
His eyes drifted down to the lump made
by his stump beneath the covers, a sight he had awoken to and loathed every
morning of the last five-and-a-half years of his life. Had the remnants of his severed leg, the
stump he hated, really helped save his life?
It was an incredible thought, one he wasn’t quite sure how to process
yet.
“Do you, um… do you want to hold onto
this, or should I have it thrown out?” asked Drew awkwardly, and Nick looked up
to see him holding up the mangled prosthesis.
Nick thought the first inclination of
any normal person would be to throw the thing out; obviously, it was useless
now. But, strangely enough, he felt a
lump of emotion rise in his throat as he looked upon the sad remnants of his
C-Leg. That robotic leg had been his
lifeline; it had literally given him his life back. Without it, he never would have left his
house. He would never have walked again,
never jogged or danced or played football with the guys. He owed a lot to that hunk of titanium, and
deep down, he didn’t want to part with it.
Yet it was Claire who first said,
“Keep it.”
He turned his head, and she was
looking at him, her eyes blazing with devilishness. “You think?” he croaked.
“Yeah!
Hell yeah! Come on, how cool is
that for a souvenir? You gotta keep it;
it’s awesome and bizarre, and it comes with a good story. You can’t beat that. You can show it to your children
someday. And in the meantime, you can
use it as a decorative sculpture or something… mount it on your wall; I dunno…”
Nick shook his head, grinning. “You are weird,
you know that?” he told her. But
secretly, he was pleased.
Drew put the leg back into its bag and
stowed it away in the room with them.
Before he left, he said to Nick, “Hey, it’s good to see you awake and
talking, and… well, breathing. You gave
us quite a scare.” His eyes shifted to
Claire, and when Nick looked at her, he found her gazing back at the nurse, a
crooked smile on her face.
“I don’t think I got a chance to thank
you,” she told him, “for everything you did.
For not giving up. So thank you…
thank you so much.”
“Thanks,” Nick echoed, but the
conversation had left him confused. He
had no idea what he was thanking this person for.
When Drew left his room, he turned to
Claire and asked, “Did he work on me in the ER or something?”
“Work on you??” she repeated, smiling
the same, lopsided smile, and he got the impression that his question had been
naïve. “Nick, that man did CPR on you
for at least half an hour. He kept you
alive, until they could get your heart beating again.”
“What??” Nick’s reaction was stunned disbelief. At first, he didn’t think he’d understood her
correctly; despite all the accounts of the accident he had heard, no one had
told him this. “My heart stopped
beating?”
At Claire’s grim nod, his mouth fell
open, his mind going into warp speed.
His heart had stopped. Never before had he come so close to death,
and to think, he hadn’t even known. He
hadn’t been conscious, and thus, had had no reason to be frightened, but now,
the knowledge was disturbing.
“They told me it stopped in the
ambulance, on your way here. When I came
into the room, they had already been doing CPR for an hour. They were about to stop, but they kept going
for me… so that I could have a chance to say goodbye…” Her voice shook on the last few words, and he
looked up at her to find tears sparkling in the corners of her eyes.
Something about the sadness of those
blue eyes jolted his memory, and all of a sudden, in his own mind’s eye, Nick
saw her reaching up to him from the dark depths of the sea, beckoning to him
and calling his name.
“You were in the room?” he asked
faintly, trying to sort through this new revelation, and Claire nodded
wordlessly. “You were talking to me,” he
added, and this time, it was not a question.
“You said…” Looking down, he
thought back to the dreamlike picture in his mind. “You said not to leave you. Something like, you needed me, you couldn’t
live without me. And you told me you
loved me.”
He lifted his head and found Claire
staring at him, her eyes round and huge.
Her mouth fell open, but it took a few seconds for her to speak. “How… how did you know that?” she whispered
finally.
His eyes locked with hers. “I heard you.”
She didn’t speak. Her hand moved to cover her mouth, and the
tears that had filled her eyes began to trickle out. As they streamed silently down her cheeks,
Nick recounted, “It was like a dream… I
was in the water, in the ocean, and I was drowning. I kept trying to make it to the surface, and
I was almost there, but then I heard your voice. I… I looked down, and you were there…
floating in the water, below me. Only
you weren’t drowning. You were just
hovering there, like a… a mermaid or something, and you were reaching up to
me. I didn’t want to go back to you at
first, ‘cause I knew I would drown. But
you were calling to me… I could hear you calling to me… and you sounded so
desperate, I had to swim back. So I let
myself sink… and you grabbed my hand… and then…” He trailed off, shaking his head. “That’s all I remember. I’d forgotten it until now.”
Claire’s face was a mess of
tears. “Oh god… Nick…” she managed to
say, her voice thick with emotion, and before he knew it, she had risen from
her chair and climbed onto the bed beside him, moving close to his side. Careful not to jostle him, she hugged him
around the neck and buried her face in his shoulder, and there she cried,
letting out her emotion until he could feel the moisture of her tears seeping
through his hospital gown.
“Shh… it’s okay,” he whispered,
running his hand up and down her back, not knowing what else to do or say or
think. He was in an emotional whirlwind
himself, completely blown away by what he’d learned. “I’m okay now,” he assured her. “You saved me, Claire. I heard you, and you saved me.”
Because I’m broken when I’m lonesome
And I don’t feel right when you’re gone away…
***
By the next morning, Nick was ready to
try eating actual food again. Of course,
in typical hospital fashion, they started him out on jell-o.
Claire arrived by herself early that
morning, just in time for the orderly to bring his breakfast tray. As the orderly set the tray out on Nick’s
bedside table, she bent and kissed his cheek, murmuring her good morning into
his ear in a way that only could have been more sensual if she’d said it from
beneath the covers of his bed.
As it was, Nick was the only one in a
bed, and he was starting to get restless.
“I can’t wait to get out of here,” he
muttered, swinging the moveable table that held his breakfast closer to him.
“Any idea when that will be?” Claire
asked. “I mean, has Dr. Renck said
anything about discharging you?”
Nick shrugged. “Not yet. Hopefully it’ll be soon. I am getting better and all…” That was the truth; he felt loads better
than he had in the ICU. His ribs were
still painful, but at least it was easier to breathe. He was still on oxygen, but had traded the
obtrusive mask for a thin nasal canula.
And yesterday afternoon, he had even gotten out of bed and hobbled a lap
around the room with the help of a walker.
It had been an exhausting and painful feat, but maybe today, after
another day’s rest and recovery, he would be able to try the hallway. He was surprised to find that he actually
looked forward to the challenge.
The revelation of his near-death
experience had given him a fresh outlook on life, and that morning, he had
awoken in better spirits than ever. He
was going to get through this, just as Claire had been telling him, and when it
was over, he would go on with his life… with her in it. He wasn’t sure what the future held for their
relationship, but never had it been more clear to him how much he loved
her. She was his one… his soul mate… and
someday, when the time was right, he was going to make her his wife. He was sure of it this time, and if she
wasn’t, then somehow, he was going to make her see that they were meant to be
together.
But the hospital didn’t seem the best
place to discuss their relationship, and so he held off, trying to concentrate
on the more immediate future and the task of healing.
“You’re getting lots better,” Claire
agreed with him cheerfully, and she perched on the edge of his bed as reached
to uncover his breakfast tray. Sure
enough, there was a bowl of red jell-o jiggling up at him.
He groaned. “It’s not even green jell-o. Why couldn’t it be green?”
Claire laughed. “What, you don’t like cherry? Who doesn’t like cherry? Besides, red is way more romantic.”
“Romantic?” He wrinkled his nose. “Who said anything about being romantic? We’re in a hospital. And it’s… jell-o.”
“Hey, Stumpy, with us… even a hospital
can be romantic. Where were we when you
told me you loved me for the first time, huh?”
Nick chuckled, wincing as the motion
jarred his ribs. She had him there. “A hospital,” he admitted grudgingly.
“See?”
She beamed. But then her smile
faded, and her face turned serious.
“Listen… before you dig into that jell-o, I want to tell you
something. I’ve said it before, but… I
want to say it again, now, and I want you to know that I really mean it. I really, truly do.”
He gazed at her, mystified by this
preface. “Okay…” he said slowly. “So… say it.
What is it?”
“I love you.”
That was all she said, and his first
instinct was to laugh. Why all the build
up? She’d been saying that to him for
two weeks.
“Well, I love you too,” he replied.
He expected her to smile, but instead,
she gave him a long and penetrating look.
“Do you really?” she asked. “I
mean, after everything I’ve put you through, all the pain and the baggage I’ve caused you, do you really
still love me? Enough to want to be with
me again?”
Nick frowned, confused by her
questions. Why would she ask such a
thing? Didn’t she know? “Yeah,”
he said emphatically. “Of course I do. I always have. I never stopped loving you, Claire; I thought
you knew that.”
“But… with our break-up and then Jamie
and all of that…”
“I still love you,” Nick interrupted
her. “I loved you even through all of
that. Can’t say I was always happy with
you…” He paused to shoot her an impish
smirk. “… but I always loved you.”
Finally, she smiled, and he could see
relief in her eyes. “I always loved you
too,” she said, a wistful expression softening her features. “I don’t know if I was in denial or just
kidding myself, but after I left you, and even when I was with Jamie, I always
knew in the back of my mind that I still loved you. A part of me always regretted leaving
you. I just… I would never let myself go
back to you.” She frowned, looking
away. “I guess I was being stubborn… but
I just kept thinking that we had broken up for a reason, that it never would
have worked out. Our lives were too
different.”
Nick nodded, but he wondered what she
was getting at. Why were they having
this conversation again, about why they’d broken up? He didn’t want to hear about that. He wanted to focus on their future, not the
failures in their past.
“But now I know that it doesn’t matter. It never mattered,” she stressed, looking him
directly in the eye again. Her next
words came pouring out in a rush that he didn’t dare interrupt. “When you love someone, you make it
work. You compromise; you sacrifice if
you have to. That’s what love is all
about… two lives, two souls, merging into one.
My life totally changed when I married Jamie… and even though it didn’t
work out, I don’t regret everything about it.
I wouldn’t have Caitlin and Delaine without him. My life has changed because of them. And I’ve changed too. I’m different now; I’m not the same person I
was when I was with you. I’m older now,
and wiser. Much wiser. And less selfish. And I think that, if we were to try it again
now, we could make it work this time.”
Nick nodded again, his heartbeat
accelerating. “I want us to try.”
She smiled, and a strange look glossed
over her eyes. “Good.”
A moment passed between them, in which
neither of them spoke. Then Claire
seemed to snap out of it and said, “You better eat that jell-o now.”
Nick blinked, shrugged, and picked up
his spoon. There was something going on
with her, he thought as he dug in. She
was acting weird. But it was too early
to try and figure out what it could be now.
He’d work on that later, once he had some brain food in him. Yeah… jell-o… the breakfast of champions.
It may not have been his favorite, but
the first bite of gelatin was surprisingly good – sweet on his tongue, cool and
soothing as it slid down his sore throat.
Eager for more, he plunged his spoon back into the bowl. It sank easily through the red jell-o, but
this time, it hit something hard, something solid, in the center of the
bowl. His brow furrowing in bewilderment,
he leaned forward, tipping the bowl towards him.
There was something stuck in the
middle of his jell-o. It was dark and
squarish, but through the dark red gelatin, he couldn’t tell what it was. It didn’t look
like a cockroach or anything, but… what could it be?
“There’s something in my jell-o,” he
said flatly to Claire, tipping the bowl to show her.
“Hm… weird. You better dig it out and find out what it is
before you eat the rest.”
“Yeah…” He rammed his spoon back into the bowl,
using it like a jackhammer to break the smooth gelatin up into little, jiggly
bits. He still couldn’t tell what the
unidentified foreign object in his breakfast was, but when he got it on his
spoon and lifted it up for closer inspection, he realized it was a piece of
cereal. A piece of Cracklin’ Oat Bran,
the cereal that looked like a square-shaped ring. The cereal that…
He froze, the memory hitting him like
a pillow to the face.
She gasped and burst out
laughing. “Nick!” she cried
breathlessly, laughing uncontrollably.
Nick only smiled sheepishly and admired his own creativity. He’d sliced an egg three-quarters of the way
through its middle, hollowed out the powdery yellow-gray yolk, and in its
place, set a single piece of Cracklin’ Oat Bran. As her laughter died, Claire plucked the
square-shaped cereal loop out of its egg encasement and held it up. It sort of resembled a ring, only thick and
square-ish… and made of bran… But she
got the point. Smiling, she set down the
bottom of the egg “box” and slipped the cereal onto the ring finger of her left
hand. It only went halfway before
getting stuck, and she giggled again.
“Sorry,” Nick said, offering her a
shrug.
“No… no, it’s… it’s perfect,” she
replied, grinning over at him. “You are
so cute!”
He flashed her a toothy Crest
smile. “Nah, I’m just cheesy. I wanted you to have a ring.”
“And now I do. And what a beautiful, crackling, oat-branny
ring it is.” She held her left hand up
and turned it this way and that, as if the ring were sparkling in the light.
Slowly, Nick turned his head to stare
at Claire, as he was met with understanding.
She had been watching him carefully,
and now her cheeks were pink, and her bottom lip, red from her chewing on it,
quivered ever so slightly. Yet her blue
eyes shone with unwavering intensity.
“That night, Nick,” she said shakily, “when I almost lost you… I
realized again how short life is. How
fragile. We’ve both been given second
chances. We can’t afford to waste them.”
Nick nodded in agreement, but he
couldn’t speak; he had no words. He let
her keep talking, just waiting to hear what she would say. Did this mean what he thought it might mean?
“I know I said I wanted to take things
slow… but I don’t anymore. I know what I
want now… and that’s you, Nick. I love
you, and you love me, so why waste our time?
Let’s just… go for it. Carpe diem. Seize the day. Marry me, Stumpy.”
Nick practically choked, an unexpected
burst of laughter exploding from his chest.
His ribs seared, but this time, he didn’t to feel the pain. “I’m sorry… what did you say?” he asked in disbelief. “Did you just say-”
“I said marry me.”
He stared, his heart thudding against
those fragile ribs. “Are you
serious? You’re… for real?” He didn’t want to find out this was all just
her idea of a joke, yet somehow, deep down, he knew it wasn’t. He knew this was just her, just Claire,
taking it upon herself to be spontaneous, seize
the day, as she said, and propose to him.
“I am totally for real, Nick. I want to marry you. Will you marry me?” She raised her eyebrows, looking uncertain
for a moment, as if she actually thought he might say no.
Again, Nick laughed, laughed at the
mere thought of turning her down.
“Claire…” he said, looking her in the eyes, seeing her as he had in the
moment he’d first popped the question to her.
No, not a question. Just a “marry
me.” Exactly as she’d said it to him.
A grin split across his face, and his
answer tumbled out effortlessly. “Hell
yeah, I’ll marry you, Ren.”
Now it was her turn to laugh. The sound filled him with warmth, soothing
his aching chest. She leaned forward to
kiss him deeply, though the kiss was broken by her giggling. As she pulled back from him, she reached into
the pocket of her jeans and emerged with a long braid of yellow and red
yarn. “This goes with your engagement
ring,” she giggled, holding up the long yarn chain.
He had one identical to it back in
Florida, one that held his own piece of cereal.
She had made it for him, after braiding herself a chain to hold the
cereal “ring” he’d first given her.
Now his eyes dropped to the piece of
cereal still sitting in the bottom of his spoon, and just as he started to
wonder, before he could even begin to ask, Claire said, “Yes, it’s the same
one. It’s the one you gave me.”
Nick’s eyes returned to her face in
surprise, stunned that she had kept it, that she had saved such a stupid token
all these years, even after their engagement had fallen apart, even while she’d
been married to Jamie. If there was no
other proof of her lasting love for him, that was it.
“It’s your turn to wear it now,” she
said. “At least until we get back to
Florida.” And she wiped the bits of red
jell-o off the piece of cereal, strung it onto the braid of yarn, and tied the
necklace together around his neck. It
was a sign of his love for her that he didn’t protest, just slipped the cereal
pendant underneath the neck of his hospital gown and let it rest against his
chest, right next to his heart.
“I love you,” Claire whispered, her
lips caressing his neck. “I can’t wait
to be your bride. I don’t want to wait.”
His arms came around her, and he
gingerly pulled her close, ignoring the pressure on his ribs. It was a good kind of pressure, holding her
near him. “I can’t wait to make you my
bride,” he whispered back; then, unable to resist, he added a teasing, “finally.”
She grinned and bobbed her head up and
down. “Yeah… finally.”
The worst is over now
And we can breathe again
I wanna hold you high
You steal my pain away
There’s so much left to learn
And no one left to fight
I wanna hold you high
And steal your pain
‘Cause I’m broken when I’m open
And I don’t feel like I am strong enough
‘Cause I’m broken when I’m lonesome
And I don’t feel right when you’re gone away
- “Broken” by Seether
***