Chapter 55
“CUT IT OUT!”
The forceful
words echoing hauntingly in his mind, Nick’s eyes flashed open to find that the
dark ocean, the boat, Claire and the rest… they were all gone. The walls of bare whiteness and glass, the sterile
smell, and the high-pitched beeping reminded Nick of where he was – the
hospital, ICU. It had all been a dream,
a horrible nightmare.
He took a moment
to let this sink in, then, concentrating hard, tried to lift his left leg. He saw it rise slightly beneath the
bedsheets, the whole long thing, and although it hurt to do so, he felt
immediate relief. Wondering if the drugs
they had given him had caused him to dream such scary shit, he looked around,
wondering where his nurse was.
Something in the
very corner of his cubicle catching his eye, he glanced over and jolted in
surprise when he saw a figure curled up in a chair. On second inspection, he realized that it was
Howie, and that he was sound asleep, scrunched in a very uncomfortable-looking
position in the stiff chair.
“Howie,” Nick
tried to say, but his throat felt funny, and no sound would come out. Alarmed, his hands flew to his mouth and were
met with tubing. The respirator. So they had put a tube down his
throat. He let his hands drop and
assured himself that at least it was not a paper towel roll, like in his
dream. Still, he couldn’t talk, and he
had to find a way to get Howie’s attention.
His fingers
crawled blindly down his neck and to his chest, where he touched one of the
wire leads stuck to him, measuring his heartbeat. He gave it a pull, and off it came, the
others pulling off along with it.
Immediately, he heard the short, steady beeps of the heart monitor
transform into one, long, continuous wail.
Flatline.
Well, that was
cool. He glanced over at Howie to see if
the sudden change in noise would awaken him, but his friend did not stir. Damn Howie.
What if his heart really had stopped beating? He’d be dying over there, and Howie would
still be sitting on his ass, sound asleep.
Some friend he was.
Vaguely, he heard
a voice call over some intercom, “Code Blue to ICU 9! Code Blue to ICU 9!” It didn’t occur to him that ICU 9 was his
cubicle or that a whole team of doctors and nurses were running to it at that
very moment, ready to resuscitate him.
Clear! Nick thought and secured the leads back
to his chest. The short, steady beeps
returned. We got him back, Nick
thought, thinking it might be fun to be a doctor. Maybe he could persuade that cute nurse
Samantha to let him play with some of those shocking paddles when he felt
better.
At that moment,
the code team burst in, lead by Mersey, the only familiar face of the bunch.
“Nick!” she
gasped when she saw that he was awake.
“Are you all right?!”
“Where’s the
code?” a man behind her asked, looking around in confusion.
“No code,” Mersey
said breathlessly. Striding up to Nick’s
bed, she checked the wire leads on his chest and frowned, apparently seeing
that they were not placed in the same spots as they had been before. “Did you pull these off?” she asked him.
Nick nodded
guiltily. Whoops. Maybe that hadn’t been such a good idea.
It did its job
though. Amidst all the commotion, he
looked over at Howie to see his friend leap out of his chair, a befuddled
expression on his face.
“What’s going
on?” he asked, his voice high and frantic.
“Nick!”
“Nick is just
fine,” Mersey said dryly. “He only
pulled the leads off his chest and gave us quite a scare.”
“But he’s awake?”
Howie asked, hurrying over to Nick’s bed.
“Hey, Howie,”
Nick started to say, then remembered he couldn’t talk.
“He’s triggering
the vent,” said Mersey, glancing back at one of the men in white coats that had
come charging in with her. “Should we
extubate?”
The man came up
and looked at Nick’s monitors. “Yeah, I
think he’s ready.” Looking down at Nick,
he asked, “Do you want me to take the tube out of your throat?” Vigorously, Nick nodded, his eyes
pleading. “Okay. Then when I say so, I need you to blow, like
you’re blowing out a candle. Got it?” Again, Nick nodded, and the doctor took hold
of the hose coming out of his mouth.
“Ready? Now – blow out.”
Gathering
together all of his strength, Nick blew, and the doctor pulled the tube from
his throat. Immediately, he was sent
into a violent coughing fit, his throat burning. He gasped for breath, choking, hacking,
trying to fill his lungs with a single precious breath of air.
“Just relax;
it’ll pass,” urged the doctor. “Mersey,
get him on a mask.”
The nurse covered
Nick’s mouth and nose with an oxygen mask, and a moment later, he lay back in
relief, the sweet oxygen pouring into his lungs. He took a few deep breaths, and his coughing
ceased, though the fiery sensation in his throat did not.
“M-my throat,” he
rasped, his voice soft and hoarse, as if he had a bad case of laryngitis.
“It hurts,
doesn’t it?” said the doctor. “Don’t
worry; it will feel better in a few days.
Your voice will recover too. I
know that’s important to you, being a singer and all.” He gave Nick a knowing smile.
“Good,” Nick
whispered, although singing was the last thing on his mind. He hadn’t thought about singing or the
Backstreet Boys or the new album in a long time. His career seemed to be growing forever more
distant to him, something that lay just beyond his reach. Would he ever be well enough to record and
tour again with the group? Maybe he
should tell them to just go on without him…
“How do you feel,
Nick? Are you in any pain?” Mersey
asked, interrupting his thoughts.
“Not too bad, I
guess,” Nick answered. “My chest is kind
of tight, but that’s just the pneumonia, right?”
“Yes. But that should go away in a few days. You’ve gotten through the worst of it now.”
The nurse’s words
struck him as strange, and he looked up in confusion. “How… how long did I sleep?” he wondered.
“You’d been out
of it for about a week,” replied Mersey, and Nick’s mouth dropped open in utter
shock.
“A week!” he
cried. It had only seemed like a few
hours! “W-was I in some kind of coma or
something?”
“Not a coma, just
unconscious,” she said. “You drifted in
and out, but we had to keep you sedated most of the time because you kept
thrashing around and trying to pull out your tubes and things.”
He shook his
head, his head still spinning with this knowledge. A whole week… he had just slept through an
entire week of his life.
“Well, if you’re
feeling better, Dr. Dunn and I will go and let you visit with your
friend.” Mersey glanced over her
shoulder at Howie, who had retreated back from the bed.
“Oh… okay.” Nick watched as the doctor and nurse left the
room and then looked to Howie. “D… what
are you doing here?”
Howie smiled
slightly and dragged a chair up to Nick’s bed, into which he then lowered
himself. “Your mom called,” he
replied. “Well, really she called Brian,
and Brian called me and the guys. She
was really freaked, and she thought we would want to come and be with you.”
“So are the other
guys here too then?” Nick asked, surprised that his mother had called
them. Had he really been that sick?
“Just Brian. AJ and Kev are still out in California, but
they’ve been calling every day to see how you’re doing.”
“So I guess I was
pretty sick then, huh?” Nick said slowly as he absorbed this information.
“Yeah,” Howie
answered, his brown eyes wide and serious.
“You have pneumonia, Nick. That
can be pretty serious anyway, but in your case… well…”
Nick nodded. “I know.
I just didn’t know it was that bad… and I didn’t think I’d been
unconscious for a whole freaking week!
It seemed like I had just slept for a few hours… I had this dream… God,
it scared the shit out of me.”
Howie
frowned. “What did you dream about?”
Nick
snorted. “You’ll just laugh.”
“I won’t
laugh. What was it about?”
“It was another
shark dream. Where I’m swimming, and a
shark’s after me. Man, I haven’t had
those since I was a kid.”
“I know,” said
Howie, both of them remembering how Nick had had nightmares about sharks when
he was just a teenager and homesick on tour.
Sharks – they had always been the one thing he feared. Some people had nightmares about vampires or
spiders or clowns. Nick dreamed about
sharks.
“Yeah… this one
was hella freaky though. The shark… it…
it bit off my leg, dude. And, God, the
blood… it was fucking gory!”
“Ew.” Howie shuddered. “Don’t tell me any more, man, I don’t wanna
hear it.”
Nick smiled. “They musta given me some pretty strong drugs
to make me dream all that whacked out shit.”
“Yeah, it was
probably the sedatives,” Howie said with a grin. “God, I’m glad you’re back, Nicky. You scared me, you know? You scared us all.”
Nick shifted
uncomfortably in the bed, embarrassed.
“Sorry.”
Howie
laughed. “No, don’t be sorry! Not like you could help it. Anyway, I better go call the hotel – your
family and Rok will want to know you’re awake.”
“My family?” Nick
repeated. “They’re here? All of them?”
“Everyone except
BJ. Your mom said she had some kind of
modeling something or other, I dunno.”
Howie shrugged. “But yeah, your
dad and Leslie and Aaron and Angel all got in the same day I did. So anyway, I’m going to go call them, okay?”
Nick nodded
slowly. “Okay.”
Howie smiled and
started to leave the room. Then he
stopped, turned back, and walked back to Nick’s bed, bending over and gently
wrapping his arms around him. Surprised,
Nick patted Howie awkwardly on the back until Howie finally pulled away.
“What was that
for?” he laughed slightly.
“Sorry.” Howie smiled sheepishly. “I just… well… like I said… you scared us,
Nicky. It’s good to have you back.”
Nick smiled
blankly and nodded. “It’s good to be
back.”
***