Chapter 86
The
following week came sooner than Claire would have liked. She was more nervous about the cataract
surgery than she was letting on to anyone.
The doctor had made it out to be a simple procedure, nothing to worry
about. She wouldn’t even be put under
anesthesia, he had told her; she would be awake the whole time. That had actually worried her more. Who wanted to be awake while someone cut into
their eye??
The thought
made her shudder every time it crossed her mind, but she’d tried not to show
her fear in front of anyone else. All of
her friends and even her brother had been visibly squeamish when she’d told
them what she was having done, and in an instant, she’d found herself
reassuring them, rather than vice versa, that it was no big deal. She’d been through much worse before… this
was nothing to be afraid of.
What a
joke. They’d all bought it, and even
now, the day before the surgery, no one was acting particularly concerned. Now one knew how she nervous she really
was. Well, that wasn’t exactly true –
Nick knew. But Nick was in LA, and she
couldn’t exactly go running to him for a shoulder to lean on and a comforting
hug anymore, could she?
So, she ran
to Dianna instead. Or rather, ran to the
phone to call Dianna. “What are you
doing tonight?” she asked, as soon as her friend answered.
“Tonight? Um, well, actually… Todd and I were gonna do
something…”
“On a
Tuesday night?” Claire interjected. Wow,
they really were getting serious.
“Yeah… but
I don’t know what yet though. Why, did
you wanna- Oh! It is Tuesday, isn’t it? That means your eye thing is tomorrow
morning, right?”
Claire’s
stomach lurched as she replied, “Yeah.”
“Oh my
gosh, I almost forgot!” Dianna exclaimed.
“Well, did you want to do something tonight? Get your mind off it?”
Claire
smiled, grateful for that sixth sense only a close friend possessed. “Well…”
She hesitated; that was what she wanted, but she didn’t want to
interfere with Dianna and her boyfriend.
“That was kind of what I was hoping for, yeah, but if you and Todd have
plans, don’t worry about it. I can call
Laureen or something.”
“No, no, we’ll
do something!” Dianna insisted. “We were
probably just gonna hit a movie or something; I’m too tired for anything else
tonight. Come with us – it’ll be fun!”
Claire
blinked. Come with us? Ohhh no…
“Di, I know you didn’t just ask me to be the third wheel on your date,”
she said dryly.
“What? Ohh, no!” Dianna laughed. “You won’t be the third wheel! I’ll call Jamie to come too – it’ll just be a
group thing! Just like in high school.”
“Except
Todd didn’t go to high school with us. Won’t
he feel left out?” Claire asked, trying to squeeze a hint of innocence into her
voice. She didn’t really like the idea
of a “group thing” with her, Jamie, Dianna, and Todd either – then she would
still be the third wheel, Jamie would be the fourth, and it would all feel way
too much like a double date, only she and Jamie weren’t dating.
“Cla-aire,”
Dianna sing-songed in a patronizing tone.
“You brought Nick to hang out with Jamie and me when you were with him,
and we never complained! I wanna hang
out with you, girl, but I don’t wanna ditch Todd…”
Claire
wanted to remind Dianna of the time she’d basically told Claire not to bring
Nick water-skiing with her and Jamie, but then she remembered how much she had
wanted to and how bad she’d felt when she’d ditched him for her two friends and
knew Dianna had a point. “Alright,
alright. Are you sure you don’t mind us
coming along?”
“Of course
not!”
“And Todd
won’t mind?”
“No
way. If he minds, he doesn’t have to
come… then it really will be just the old trio.”
“Fair
enough. Why don’t you call Todd and make
sure, decide what time you wanna go and all that, and then call me back. I can call Jamie.”
“’Kay,
sounds good. I’ll talk to ya in a few.”
They hung
up, and Claire sighed, wondering if she just should have called Laureen
instead. She hadn’t seen Laureen much
lately because her broken arm was keeping her away from work, so it would have
been nice to hang out. But it was too
late now; Dianna was probably calling her boyfriend to change their plans right
that minute.
This had
the potential to be an interesting night…
***
“Hey, how
about The Empress?” Dianna suggested two hours later, twisting around in the
passenger seat to glance back at Claire and Jamie, who rode together in the
backseat of Todd’s car. “I haven’t been
there in forever!”
“Is that
that one really old theater?” asked Todd flatly from the driver’s seat,
glancing briefly into his rearview mirror.
He sounded bored and not at all thrilled to be sharing his date with two
other people.
Poo on him, thought Claire; he could have Dianna
all to himself any old time he wanted.
Tonight, she needed her friends.
She was glad that Jamie had agreed to come along too. Even though it was an odd arrangement – Todd and
Dianna, Jamie and her – she was grateful for someone to make faces at across
the backseat whenever Todd and Dianna started flirting in the front. It had happened plenty of times already, and
they’d only been in the car five minutes.
It was
going to be a long night. But not as
long as it would have been if Claire had spent it sitting at home, fretting
over the cataract surgery the next morning, so she couldn’t complain.
“Yeah,
that’s the one. We used to go there in
high school all the time cause it’s cheap!
Wanna go?”
“What’s
playing there tonight?” piped up Jamie.
“I
dunno. Let’s drive by and see. We can always go somewhere else if we don’t
wanna see whatever they’re showing.
Sound good?”
“Sure,”
Todd and Jamie both replied with about an equal lack of enthusiasm.
“Claire?”
“That’s
fine,” answered Claire, secretly torn over the idea. She loved the old theater, but the last time
she had been there was with Nick. It now
held not only memories of nights out with her high school crowd, but memories
of him…
When Todd
slowed the car in front of The Empress, Dianna leaned eagerly across the front
seat to read the brightly-lit marquee.
Claire didn’t even bother – too blurry.
The only good thing about having this surgery tomorrow was that she’d be
able to see properly again – out of one eye, at least.
Dianna let
out a squeal at the exact same time Todd groaned. “What??” Claire asked.
“The
Notebook is playing,” Jamie replied for both of them, with his usual lack
of enthusiasm.
“The
Notebook?” Claire repeated, frowning.
“Hasn’t that been out on DVD for, like, a year?”
“Yeah, I
have it! It’s the greatest love story
ever!” Dianna gushed excitedly. “I
didn’t know they were showing it here tonight!
But it makes sense… they’ve been showing romance classics all month, for
Valentine’s Day. It’s the last day of
the month, so might as well end it with the greatest love story ever!”
Claire
rolled her eyes. “Are you kidding? Have you ever seen Gone With the Wind? Casablanca? Those are classic romances… not the
freakin’ Notebook.”
“Don’t
knock it till you’ve seen it, Claire,” Dianna said sharply, craning her neck to
glare back at Claire, who was sitting directly behind her. “It’s sooo good – trust me! I promise, it will melt even your cynical
heart.”
Claire
rolled her eyes again and looked to Jamie for back-up, expecting him to protest
against the chick-flick. She nearly
choked when he said instead, “I haven’t seen it either, Dianna.”
Dianna’s
eyes lit up. “You haven’t? How about you, Todd?”
“No,” came
Todd’s grunt.
“Ahh,
perfect! Notebook virgins! You all need to see it – come on! We’re going!”
Todd didn’t
seem thrilled, but he obediently turned the car into the parking lot, while
Claire sat looking between the two men, still shocked that neither of them had
put up a fight. Dianna may have had Todd
too whipped to know any better, but Jamie?
Come on! Since when did Jamie
like sappy love movies?
She still
couldn’t believe it as she trudged through the parking lot with the other four
and reluctantly bought her ticket from the old-fashioned kiosk at the
front. The theater was uncrowded, and
there was no line for popcorn. Claire
splurged on a large popcorn, realizing she was not supposed to eat breakfast
the next morning before her surgery. Might
as well pack in the calories tonight, she thought happily, balancing the
large bucket on her cast as she followed the others into the theater.
They had
just found seats in the middle section when the lights dimmed, and the heavy,
velvet curtains in front of the screen swept back grandly. Claire shoved a handful of popcorn into her
mouth as the screen crackled and popped before the New Line Pictures logo
appeared.
The movie
opened with a beautiful sunrise over the dark maroon waters of a calm lake or
river. In the middle of the water, she
could barely make out the dark silhouette of a solitary figure in a
rowboat. Her breath caught in her throat
as she pictured a similar sunrise, reflecting on the shores of Tampa Bay… a
sunrise she had watched from the deck of a boat, much larger than the one in
the movie, in the arms of her love.
Watching
the man on the screen slowly row across the still waters, while melancholy
piano music tinkled in the background, she was reminded of him. Nick…
***
Nick threw
his suitcase down on his bed and heaved a sigh of exhaustion. It was eight o’clock in the evening, and he’d
finally made it home to Tampa. A
snowstorm in Salt Lake City had delayed his connecting flight by several hours,
leaving him stiff, tired, and annoyed from having to sit and wait so much
longer than he’d anticipated.
But it was
over now, and he was glad to be home, if only for a few days. He’d make a point to take his boat out at
least once while he was here; he hadn’t been out on the water in awhile. But the real purpose of his visit was Claire,
and she came first. He’d knew that her
surgery was sometime in the morning, but he wasn’t sure what time. Figuring she’d need a ride, he pulled out his
cell phone to call her and find out.
She’d be in for a surprise – she didn’t even know he was in town…
He still
had her on speed dial, so he held in the right number and waited as the phone
started to dial her cell. Putting the
phone to his ear, he listened as it rang a few times before connecting to her
voicemail. He hesitated before leaving a
message. “Hey... it’s Nick. Give me a call back as soon as you get this,
okay? Later.”
He ended
the call and glanced at her name on the screen of his phone for a moment before
flipping it shut. He wondered what she
was doing right then and why she wasn’t answering her phone.
***
Claire sat
with tears in her eyes as she watched Noah and Allie break up onscreen and knew
that this time, it had nothing to do with her hormones. This was all too reminiscent of a break-up of
her own. Not with Nick… but with Jamie.
“Are you breaking up with me?”
“I don’t see how it’s gonna work…”
She could
feel Allie’s pain as she watched Rachel McAdams’ character break down, looking
pitiful as Noah drove away. Meanwhile,
Jamie, she realized, was sitting right next to her. She marveled over how odd it was that, after
all their history, they could enjoy a relationship that was purely platonic
now.
Blinking
furiously to clear the tears from her eyes (for some reason, she was
embarrassed to be crying over this, even though she was quite aware of Dianna
sniffling on her other side), she chanced a look over at Jamie. She was startled to find him looking back at
her. As his piercing blue eyes met with
hers, her heart skipped a beat. Quickly,
she jerked her head back towards the screen, but she stared without really
seeing the movie being projected onto it.
She was glad it was dark inside the theater, so that he would not see
her cheeks flushing pink. What just
happened? she wondered, completely flustered by her reaction just
then. She was practically trembling
inside…
She began
to settle down again as the movie continued and the similarities waned. Yet when they came to a scene with Allie
working as a nurse, caring for the “broken me” who had fought in World War II,
her stomach jolted again, and this time, she couldn’t help but think of
Nick. She watched Allie help a man in a
body cast sit up and remembered how hard it had been, seeing Nick in pain and
despair following the loss of his leg.
She’d had to fight hard to hide how much it hurt her to see him hurting
then. Was he hurting still, because of
her?
As the
movie progressed, she found herself plagued with memories of them both. Nick and Jamie… Jamie and Nick. Her poor memory felt almost as torn as Allie
was in the movie, torn between her high school sweetheart and her charming,
wealthy fiancée.
Noah, Claire thought emphatically, trying to focus on the characters in the
movie and not on her own life. She has
to end up with Noah… He was her
first love. It just seemed right.
By the time
the movie ended, she could no longer contain her tears; she walked out of the
theater with wet trails of them down her cheeks, her eyes red and swollen from
crying. “I knew you would love
it!” Dianna gloated before whipping a makeup compact out of her purse in a vain
attempt to clean up her own tearstained face.
“You got
me… it was good,” Claire admitted, fumbling with her purse as well in search of
a kleenex.
“Here,”
said a voice, and she glanced up to see Jamie holding out a tissue that he had
seemingly conjured out of nowhere.
Caught
off-guard, she accepted the tissue and looked back up at him as she blotted at
her eyes. She could have sworn even his
eyes seemed a little red-rimmed, but maybe it was just the lights of the
theater. By the time they made it out to
the parking lot, it was too dark to tell.
The car
ride home was fairly quiet; the movie had left everyone subdued. Todd dropped Claire off at her new apartment
complex first, and she told everyone goodnight, thanking Dianna and Jamie for
taking her out that night, and went inside.
Her stomach knotted as she walked up the stairs to her floor, realizing
she would be leaving again in about nine hours’ time for the hospital. The movie had done a good job at distracting
her, but now that she was back home and alone, her nerves flared up again.
She took a
couple of Tylenol PMs with her nightly regime of pills, hoping they would help
her get to sleep easier. Only when she
finally walked back to her bedroom and went to plug her cell phone into its
charger for the night did she notice the missed call and voicemail from Nick.
***
The droning
of the TV had nearly lulled Nick to sleep when his cell phone jarred him
awake. Blinking in momentary confusion,
he realized where the sound was coming from and plucked his phone off of the
coffee table. “’Lo?” he answered without
bothering to check the caller ID. He was
hoping it was Claire.
“Hey,
Nick.”
Nick
smiled. “Hey, Claire. How’s it going?”
“Eh, it’s
going,” she replied with a weak laugh.
“How are you?”
“Fine…”
Nick said slowly, then paused and added, with an air of mischief, “Here…”
“Here…? What do you mean, here?” asked Claire.
Nick
smiled. “I’m here. In Tampa.”
“You
are??” Her voice rose. “What are you doing back?”
“What
time’s your surgery tomorrow?” Nick answered her question with one of his own.
He heard
her hesitate. “Um… eight a.m. I need to be at the hospital by
seven-thirty. Why…?”
“Cause I’m
gonna pick you up. You’ll need a ride,
right?”
“Oh, yeah,
but that’s okay, Nick. My mom’s already
planning to come down for the day and take me,” said Claire.
“No,
seriously, Claire, that’s what I’m here for.
I don’t mind; I want to. Your mom
shouldn’t have to drive all that way… I mean, unless you want her there with
you. I guess you’re probably pretty
nervous about it, huh?” Nick hadn’t
really thought about her family. Funny,
he’d made his mother go away before his amputation surgery… and no one had
bothered to call her when he’d had his lung surgery. But then again, his mother certainly wasn’t
like Claire’s.
“Well,
yeah… but, I mean, if you really don’t mind taking me… I could call her…”
He could
hear the hesitancy in her voice and jumped on it. “No, ‘course I don’t mind. I’ll pick you up at seven tomorrow morning?”
“O-okay…
um, sounds good. Thanks, Nick!”
“No
problem,” Nick said, smiling, glad she’d agreed.
“Um… do you
know where I live?” she asked awkwardly.
Huh? Nick thought at first, and then he remembered – she’d moved. Duh.
He let her give him directions to her new apartment complex and talked
to her for a few more minutes before they decided to hang up. She had taken some sleeping pills, she told
him, and wanted to get to bed. He let
her go, telling her that he’d see her bright and early in the morning.
Better get to bed myself, he thought when he got off the
phone. The last thing he wanted to do
was oversleep and make her late.
***
“That was…
weird,” Claire muttered to herself as she plugged her cell phone in and turned
down the covers on her bed. Yet she
couldn’t help but smile. Nick had been
so adamant about wanting to be there for her tomorrow. It was so sweet of him, but it made her feel
guilty. She told herself that if he was
facing something like this, she would be there for him too – that’s what friends
were for, after all. But after all
they’d been through, after what she’d done to him, it wasn’t that simple. She couldn’t expect anything like this from
him. And yet, he was still there for
her.
In a way,
she was sort of glad. Despite the
tension she had caused between the two of them, Nick had always had a way of
putting her at ease. Whereas her mother
unknowingly just stressed her out. She
meant well, but she worried too much.
She would probably have been an absolute basket case tomorrow, more
nervous about the eye surgery than even Claire herself. Yet she had been the only one available to
drive Claire to and from the hospital.
Her dad, Kyle, Dianna, Jamie, and Laureen all worked, and Amber was at
home with a new baby. Her mother was happy
to do it, but Claire was happier to have Nick there.
Oh shit, I need to call her and let
her know, Claire
remembered and reached for her phone again, hoping her mom hadn’t gone to bed
already. Luckily, she was still up and
picked up on the second ring.
“Hi,
honey!” she answered. “Are we all set
for tomorrow? I’ve already got my alarm
set for four o’clock, and I’m planning to be on the road by quarter to
five. I’ll be at your place by seven at
the very latest.”
Claire
smiled ruefully; her mom always sounded so hyperactive when she was stressed
out. “Hey, Mom. Actually, that’s what I was calling about –
um, Nick called today, and he’s back in town, so… he offered to take me
tomorrow, so that you don’t have to get up so early and drive all that way.”
“Oh,
sweetheart, you know I don’t mind. I
want to make sure you’re in good hands.
Wait, did you say Nick’s back?”
“Uh-huh.”
“Oh… well,
isn’t that a little… awkward, for the two of you?” her mom asked hesitantly.
“A little…
yeah. But we’re still friends, Mom. He’s just… being a friend.”
“Well,
okay…” The older woman sounded
unsure. “Are you sure you’re okay with
this, Claire? I have no problem driving
down there; I want to be there for you.”
“I know,
Mom, but it’s okay. It’s a simple
procedure, and I’ll be fine. All I
really need is a ride there and back, and Nick’s perfectly capable of taking
care of that,” Claire replied calmly.
She always felt the need to play down her nervousness in front of her
mother, just to keep her from freaking out.
Her mom
finally agreed to let Nick give her a ride the next morning and made her
promise to call as soon as she felt up to it after the procedure. Once they’d said their I love you’s and hung
up, Claire set her phone back on her nightstand and slid beneath the covers,
reaching over to shut off the lamp next to her bed.
As darkness
filled the room, she lay down and closed her eyes. The Tylenol she’d taken earlier had relaxed
her, calming her nerves so that she could slip off to sleep with surprising
ease.
***
“Okay,
Claire, I’m going to start now. I need
you to hold perfectly still,” said Dr. Dumagan.
Claire could barely see her face through the hole in the heavy blue drape that
had been put over the left side of her face.
“Okay,” she said, her voice high and small. She could feel her heart racing, and her
palms had begun to sweat. Why, oh why,
did she have to stay awake for this?
The nurse
that was assisting on the surgery put more saline drops in her eye, and
instinctively, she tried to blink, but couldn’t. This was torture.
She was aware
of the doctor probing in her eye, but she couldn’t feel a thing,
thankfully. The only sensation she was
aware of was a tickling in the back of her nose, like she was about to…
Oh no…
Before she
could react, she let out a mighty sneeze and felt her head jerk.
At that
very moment, everything went black.
She cried
out in terror. And then she heard her
doctor’s voice, stripped of its former professionalism.
“Oh shit.”
***
AN: To Carrie, who begged me to :)