Cary
It was getting
light out when we finally took a cab back to the hotel. Nick had dozed in the emergency room, while
we waited for his lab results, but I had been awake for twenty straight hours
and could barely keep my eyes open for the short taxi ride. When we pulled up in front of the hotel, I
remembered how we’d walked out of it, his arm over my shoulders, mine wrapped
around his waist, practically holding him up.
I half wished he’d do the same for me; as I climbed out of the cab, I
felt dead on my feet.
But Nick
looked just as exhausted. Together, we
trudged into the lobby. Thankfully, it
was deserted this time of night – morning, rather. If any of the fans who’d crowded it before
had stuck around, waiting for us to return, they’d given up by now. Aside from the front desk clerk, we didn’t
run into anyone on our way upstairs to the room.
Once we
were inside, I made a beeline for the bathroom.
There were towels strewn across the floor. I shuddered, remembering the image of Nick
lying there. The tub was still full of
water, cold now. I pulled the lever that
opened the drain, and the water gurgled as it went down. The noise reminded me of why I had come into
the bathroom in the first place, and I sat down on the toilet to relieve
myself.
When I was
done, I went out to the sink to wash my hands.
I grimaced at my reflection in the mirror. My face, without makeup, looked pale and
haggard. My hair hung limply around my
shoulders. I was embarrassed to think I
had been out in public looking like that, in my pajamas no doubt, but an
emergency’s an emergency. The hospital
had surely seen worse. The nice part
was, I was already ready for bed, so once I’d dried my hands, I headed straight
for it.
Nick was
already there, sitting up on his side of the big bed we were sharing
again. The blackout shades were drawn
over the windows, but he had the TV on and was flipping channels. “Aren’t you sleepy?” I asked, surprised that
he would feel like watching TV.
He
shrugged. “I’m too wired to sleep right
now.”
“I thought
that was the problem earlier,” I replied automatically, before I could hold
myself back. “All that caffeine should
be out of your system by now.”
His face
reddened, and he shot me a sheepish grin.
“Sorry… about all this…”
I wanted to
tell him that he should be sorry, for putting both me and himself through all
that panic. I wanted to tell him he was
an idiot, and that if he didn’t start taking better care of himself, I wasn’t
going to be able to take care of him, either.
But I was too tired to speak my mind, so all I said as I climbed into
bed next to him was, “It’s done. We’ll
talk in the morning.”
He looked
relieved. “Thanks. For everything.”
I looked
over at him. Idiot or not, it was hard
not to feel sorry for him. He had taken off
his shirt to go to bed, and his bare chest showed the evidence of all that he’d
gone through that night. His port was
covered with a fresh bandage from where they’d stuck him to draw his blood and
give him the fluids and medications his body needed. Under the port, in the place where you could
still see the remnants of one of his feet tattoos, was a large, rectangular,
red outline, branded into his skin.
There was a matching one on the other side of his chest, underneath his
left nipple. They were defibrillator
burns, the exact shape of the paddles that had sent a shockwave across his
heart to stop it in its tracks and make it slow down. They looked raw and painful, and I hoped
they’d serve as a reminder to Nick not to let this happen again.
The results
of his labwork had been pretty predictable:
there was enough caffeine in his system to cause even the healthiest of
hearts to race. It probably wasn’t just
caffeine alone, but the fact that he was also dehydrated, that had triggered
the arrhythmia in his weakened heart.
Between the alcohol at the after-party the night before and the Red Bull
before the show, he hadn’t been drinking enough water, and his electrolytes
were all out of whack. I felt partly
responsible for that; if only I’d kept a closer eye on what he was putting into
his body.
I wasn’t
sure how much good I could have done, though.
Nick did what he wanted, regardless of what I said. His blood counts were low again, too, and the
doctor had wanted to admit him to the hospital for further monitoring and a
blood transfusion. Nick had
refused. “I’m tired,” he’d told the
doctor irritably, after we’d been in the ER for several hours. “I just wanna go back to my hotel and sleep
it off. We’re driving to California
tomorrow, anyway.”
In the end,
there hadn’t been a thing Dr. Harrison or I could say to change his mind; he
had signed himself out against medical advice, promising to follow up with his
cardiologist after the tour. I had the
feeling it was an empty promise, made just to get the ER doctor off his
back. He didn’t seem to listen much to
his oncologist, so why would he care about what any other doctor said – or me,
for that matter? The sheepish “thanks”
was probably all the acknowledgment I’d get.
“You’re
welcome,” I told him shortly, before I slid beneath the covers and rolled onto
my side, away from him. I closed my eyes
to block out the flickering light of the TV.
The sound was on low; it wouldn’t bother me. I was so tired, I was sure I’d be asleep in a
matter of minutes. But sleep didn’t come
right away. I was overtired, and my head
hurt so bad it was pounding, but inside it, my thoughts were still racing. I kept hearing the thud of Nick collapsing…
feeling his erratic pulse beneath my fingertips… seeing his body jerk with the
shock of electricity. I couldn’t relax
enough to fall asleep, and after I’d lain there awhile, I realized it might not
only be because I kept reliving the last few hours, but because I hadn’t felt
Nick relax yet, either.
When I
rolled over to check on him, he was still sitting up, his back straight against
the headboard, his eyes glued to the TV, his hand resting on his chest. “You okay?” I whispered.
He looked
over at me. His eyes were glazed with
fatigue, and it seemed to take him a few seconds to focus on me and process
what I’d said. Finally, he answered,
“Yeah…” He sounded uncertain, though,
and the way he left the word hanging in the air, I sensed there was more he
wanted to say. A few more seconds passed
before the “but” came. “But… what if it
happens again?”
I
understood then. He was afraid. I saw the fear in his eyes. He liked to play tough guy, with his whole
“too cool for cancer” act, but this close call had not just shaken his
confidence; it had rocked him to the core.
He was scared to sleep, scared his heart might start going haywire
again. My exasperation with him melted
into sympathy.
“I don’t
think it will,” I said honestly, pulling myself up to sit beside him. “Some people do have episodes of SVT that
come and go, but usually they have something wrong with the electrical
conduction system in their heart. You
don’t have that. Yours was triggered by
overexerting yourself with too much caffeine and not enough fluids in your
system. Your heart was trying to tell
your body to slow down and take care of itself.”
He smiled
sheepishly again at the warning look I gave him. “I know… I was stupid.”
I
nodded. “Thank you for admitting that.”
He
chuckled, then shook his head, his expression sobering. “Seriously… I thought I was having a heart
attack or something. When I saw those
paddles coming for me, I thought that was it… that I was gonna die.” He shuddered, rubbing the spot on the left
side of his chest where the defibrillator paddle had burned him. Maybe he didn’t remember the shock itself,
but he hadn’t forgotten the fear that came before it.
I felt
sorry for him, but I hoped this would be the wake-up call he needed. “It was scary for me, too,” I said. “You’re lucky it wasn’t life-threatening, but
it just goes to show what happens when you push yourself too far. Your whole body’s weakened from the chemo,
Nick… it can’t handle all the stress you’re putting it under, trying to finish
this tour.” I took a deep breath,
knowing he was going to hate what I was about to say, yet again, but I said it
anyway: “You need to talk to the
guys. You need to tell them what’s going
on.”
He shook
his head, but slowly, not as automatically as he usually did. It seemed like he was at least considering
what I had said. But when he answered,
he sounded just as stubborn as ever. “I
can’t. I don’t want to. Not yet.
This leg of the tour’s almost over,” he added, as if that would justify
his bad decisions. “I don’t want us to
cancel it with only a few shows left… and that’s what would happen if I told
them now. They’d freak out, and we’d
have to cancel the rest of the shows, and all this would’ve been for
nothing. I started this tour, and I
wanna finish it.”
I
sighed. It was hard being his nurse and his
fellow singer, his friend and his fan all at the same time. As a medical professional, I knew he was
being irrational, jeopardizing his health for the sake of a few more shows, but
as a musician, I understood how much those last few shows meant to him. As a friend, I felt for him, caught in the
middle of a tug-of-war between his common sense (or lack thereof) on one side
and his passion for entertaining on the other.
And as a fan, though I wished he would tell the guys, his brothers, I
could see why he was delaying that moment as long as possible.
It would
kill the other guys to know what he was going through. They’d probably be angry at him, at first,
for hiding it from them so long, but then they would rally around him. Of course they would; they were his family,
and he was their little brother. That
was exactly why it would be so hard for them to watch him go through cancer
treatment. In a way, Nick had been
protecting them from that burden the whole time. This tour wasn’t just for him or for the
fans; it was for Brian, AJ, and Howie, too.
I swallowed
the lump in my throat and said, “Okay… let’s make a deal, then.”
He eyed me
skeptically. “What kind of deal?”
I took a
deep breath, trying to get my tired brain to focus enough to choose my words
carefully. “I will do my very best to
get you through the last few shows. But
you have to take care of yourself. That
means getting as much rest as you can and drinking enough water. No more alcohol, and no more caffeine. Alcohol’s just going to make you feel worse,
and caffeine doesn’t give you any actual energy; all it does is cause an
adrenaline rush, which activates your body’s ‘fight or flight’ response – the
feeling you get when you’re in a high-stress situation. By chugging caffeine all day, you kept your
body in a constant state of emergency… no wonder your heart was racing. You can’t do that anymore. Got it?”
I felt like
I was lecturing a child, and with his wide-eyed expression, Nick looked almost
little boyish. I was glad to see him nod,
like he was taking me seriously.
“If you
drink one more drop of booze or Red Bull on this tour,” I went on, looking him
right in the eye, “then our deal is off, and I will tell the guys. Everything.”
I wasn’t
above threatening him anymore. Tough love…
he needed it. If I couldn’t convince him
to give up this whole charade, the least I could do was put the fear of God
into him so that he could fulfill it without killing himself.
Nick looked
sufficiently rattled, as he nodded to accept my terms. “Deal,” he mumbled, his cheeks flushing.
I offered
him my sweetest smile. “Good.”
Nick smiled
back, then tipped his head to the side.
“Rockstar Energy Drink’s okay, though, right?”
My mouth
dropped open, and I was halfway through saying, “Are you kidding me?” before I realized his smile had turned into a wicked
little smirk. He was messing with me.
With a
quick wink, he replied, “Yes, I’m kidding.”
“Ugh,” I
groaned, flopping my head back onto my pillow.
“I’m gonna go to sleep now. We
can talk more in the morning, okay?” It already is morning, my tired brain
thought.
“Yeah,
okay,” Nick agreed. He turned off the TV
and scooted down under the covers so that he was lying on his back, his arms folded
over his chest in that odd sleeping position of his.
Almost like a mummy in a coffin, I thought, then
immediately wished I hadn’t. I lay back
down and rolled over again, closing my eyes and trying to fall asleep.
I was
almost out when I heard Nick’s voice drift out of the darkness. “I can still feel my heart beating…”
Forced out
of my sleepy, semi-conscious state, I muttered, “That’s nice… glad to know it
hasn’t stopped.”
“It’s
freaking me out…”
“Is it
going really fast again?”
“No… not
like before. I just… don’t like feeling
it.”
I sighed
and rolled over to face him. “It’s just
because you’re concentrating on it.
After what happened tonight, you’re more aware of it than usual. Try to think about something else.”
“I
can’t. I keep thinking about everything
that happened. Like, what if you hadn’t
been here?”
A shiver
ran through me that had nothing to do with the air conditioning. What if
I hadn’t? I wondered. Hopefully, he
would have woken up alone on the bathroom floor and been scared enough to get
himself some help. Even if he hadn’t,
his heart probably would have reverted to a normal rhythm on its own after
awhile, once the caffeine wore off.
Probably. But sometimes the type
of tachycardia he’d had turned into a more dangerous arrhythmia, a lethal
one. He could, potentially, have
died. It was unlikely, but just thinking
about it made me feel sick.
I knew Nick
had to be feeling the same way. I
remembered how anxious he’d sounded when he asked earlier, “But… what if it happens again?”
I sat up
and turned on the light on my side of the bed.
“Do you know how to take your pulse?” I asked.
“No… not
really,” said Nick, sitting up, too.
“Your phone
has a stopwatch, right?"
“Yeah…” He reached over and grabbed it off the
bedside table.
“Set it for
fifteen seconds,” I said, and he did.
“Now give me your wrist.” He gave
me his free hand, and I turned it palm up in mine. “You put your index and middle finger over the
radial artery in your wrist, right… here,” I said, putting my fingers over the
right place on his wrist to show him.
“It’s usually pretty easy to see in guys, especially ones with veiny arms like you, but you’ll know you’re in the right
spot when you can feel the pulse under your fingers. Never use your thumb; it has its own pulse,
so it’ll throw you off. Then you just
count the beats for fifteen seconds and multiply that number by four. Here, you try, and I’ll time it.”
He handed
me his phone, and I helped him guide his fingers to the right spot on his
wrist. “Can you feel it?” I asked.
His brow
was furrowed in deep concentration.
“Yeah,” he said, “I feel it.”
“Okay, now
start counting when I say when.
Ready? Go.” I started the stopwatch on his phone and
stayed quiet while he counted, his head bowed in concentration. His phone beeped at the end of the
fifteen-second countdown, and I said, “Stop.
How many beats?”
“I think
twenty?”
“Oh,
easy. Multiply that by four, and you’ll
get the beats per minute.”
He looked
up at the ceiling as he did the mental math.
“So… eighty?”
I
nodded. “Like I said, normal is anywhere
from sixty to a hundred, so eighty’s right smack dab in the middle. See?
You’re perfect.”
“Good,” he
sighed, letting out a breath of relief.
I
smiled. “Now if you’re worried, or you
wake up and something doesn’t feel right, you can check your pulse. If it’s over a hundred when you’re just lying
around like this, or if it doesn’t feel steady, wake me up or come get me.”
He nodded,
looking more at ease. “Thanks. Again.”
“Sure,” I
said, sliding down under the covers again.
“Now stop worrying and try to get some sleep. You’ll be fine.”
“Okay,” he
sighed, lying back down beside me. I
felt the mattress move and the covers pull as he flopped around a few times,
trying to get comfortable, but finally, he relaxed and got quiet and
still. If he was still lying there
awake, obsessing over his heartbeat, he didn’t bother me about it again.
I normally
wouldn’t mind, but my head felt like it was pounding as hard as his heart had
been earlier, and I was desperate for sleep.
I closed my eyes and let my body relax again. While Nick may have fallen asleep counting
beats, I drifted off to the steady sound of his breathing.
***