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Chapter 116

“Ma’am?”

Standing frozen against the wall, Claire felt a pair of hands grab her shoulders; she heard the nurse trying to talk to her, but she stared right through her, her thoughts only of Nick.

“Ma’am, you need to come with me. C’mon, let’s wait in the hall. Ma’am?” The nurse’s grip on her shoulders tightened, and she was steered away from the wall and towards the door.

“No, please,” Claire started protesting as she snapped to, “Please, I wanna stay; I wanna make sure he-“

“We need room to work. Let me take you down the hall to one of our private waiting rooms, and I promise someone will come to get you once it’s okay to come back in,” the nurse told her soothingly, yet her hold on Claire was firm as she guided her out the door.

In the hall, Claire spotted Howie, who was walking towards them, a can of Coke in his hand. When he saw Claire and the nurse, an alarmed look came over his face, and he picked up the pace, jogging towards them. “What happened?” he demanded. “Is Nicky okay??”

Claire didn’t know how to answer right away; luckily, the nurse said to Howie, “He’s having some trouble breathing; it looks like he might have a collapsed lung. The doctor’s trying to get him stabilized now. Could you walk her down to the waiting room and wait there, please? I’ll come and get you as soon as I know more.”

Howie’s face seemed calm; only the panic in his eyes revealed his fear. Keeping his composure, he nodded and gave the nurse a hurried “Thanks,” before putting his arm around Claire. “Come on,” he murmured, walking her briskly to the small waiting room up the hall. As soon as they were inside, he pushed the door shut and guided her to a chair. “What happened??” he asked her as they sat down beside each other, his forehead creased with worry and confusion. “Claire?”

She shook her head and brought her hand up over her mouth. “I think it was my fault,” she whispered, in shock. “Right before he started saying his chest hurt, he saw my ring…” She slowly held up her left hand, sadly examining the engagement ring.

It was several seconds before Howie responded. Then he said, “Congratulations.” His voice was quiet, but not condemning; still, she felt horrible. She couldn’t even respond, so she just stared down at her hands.

A few more seconds passed, and then Howie added, “You can’t blame yourself, you know. For this or… for anything. You and Nicky are both adults. You tried out a relationship; it didn’t work. You’re allowed to move on. You should move on, in fact. So should Nick. If he’s hurt by the fact that you’re with someone else, that’s his problem to sort out, not yours.”

Slowly, Claire looked over at Howie and managed a tiny smile. “Thanks,” she whispered.

He put his arm around her, gently hugging her against him. She felt her tense body relax a little against his muscular shoulder. But not too much; she wouldn’t be able to really relax until she knew Nick was okay.

Ten minutes seemed like ten hours, but finally, the nurse from before returned. In Nick’s hospital room, she had looked tense and flustered, but this time, she was smiling. “Nick is stable,” she told Claire and Howie. “His lung collapsed, but we put in another chest tube to re-inflate it, and his vitals are stabilizing. We’re going to take him for a chest x-ray now to check on his lungs. Normally this kind of pneumothorax – collapsed lung – isn’t an immediate emergency, but I think in Nick’s case it was complicated by his lobectomy and whatever is making him sick.”

Claire swallowed hard, remembering the biopsy. What?! she wanted to cry, what’s making him sick?? But she knew how long it could take to get test results back, and the nurse probably wouldn’t tell them without telling Nick first anyway. She sighed.

“Thank you so much,” Howie spoke up, shaking the nurse’s hand. “Will we be able to see him after the x-ray?”

“Yes, I think that would be alright. We sedated him to put in the chest tube, though, so he might still be a little out of it. His body needs rest anyway; he’s had a rough day, poor thing.” The nurse’s lips drooped sympathetically, and Claire couldn’t agree more.

Poor Nick. When would this nightmare ever end for him?

***

Claire walked tiredly into her dark, silent apartment and shut the door, locking it behind her. She turned on a small lamp in the living room, bringing a soft glow to the dim space, and slumped down on the couch, leaning her head against its back. It was close to midnight, and she was drained. Physically… emotionally… exhausted in every way imaginable. She’d considered staying at the hospital overnight, but Howie had taken one look at her around 11:30 and told her to go home.

“I’m staying here with Nicky anyway. We don’t both need to stay,” he’d pointed out. “Go home and get some sleep so you can come back in the morning. I promise I’ll call if anything happens.”

Claire had supposed he was right; there was no reason for her to stay and be a martyr. Nick had still been doped up and out of it when she left, and she figured he would sleep until morning. She would come back then and relieve Howie.

Remembering his promise to call before then if anything should happen, she realized that her cell phone was still turned off and decided she had better turn it back on, just in case. She pulled it out of her purse and held in the power button. She watched the screen blearily as it came on and found that she had three voicemails waiting for her.

Sighing, she pressed a button to dial her voicemail and punched in her code to access the messages. She wasn’t surprised when the automated voice on the line read off the digits of Jamie’s number. It was a Friday night; she was sure he had expected them to do something, and she’d been so worried about Nick, she had completely forgotten to call him.

“Hey, babe, it’s going on five, and I’m just calling to see what you feel like doing tonight. I was thinking maybe we could hit one of the restaurants down by the beach – whaddya say? Gimme a call back.”

His voice sounded annoyed by the second message, which had been left an hour later, and worried by the third, which had been left just an hour ago. Wincing, she quickly punched in the speed dial for him, feeling bad about making him worry.

“Claire?” Jamie answered abruptly. “What’s going on? I’ve been trying to call you all night; where have you been??”

“Hey, I’m sorry. My phone was shut off earlier, and I just now got home,” she started to explain. “I was up at the hospital… Nick’s sick.”

“Nick? I thought he was in Europe.”

“As of a couple weeks ago, he was. He’s back now… and he’s really sick. They think he might have pneumonia… or worse… they don’t know yet. I just found out after work, so I went up there and was there all night with Howie. I had to shut my phone off, so I didn’t get any of your messages until now. I’m sorry,” she apologized.

“I was worried about you. You could have called.”

“I know,” she sighed, closing her eyes wearily. “I should have, but I was a little worried too, you know. It wasn’t top priority.”

“Okay, okay, you don’t have to snap.” Jamie sounded annoyed again. “Sorry for being concerned about where my fiancée is.”

Claire rolled her eyes. “I didn’t snap,” she said curtly – okay, now she was snapping, “and I’m sorry… I’m just tired and upset, and I really just want to go to bed now.”

“Alright,” Jamie said simply, though he still sounded miffed. “Well, give me a call sometime this weekend if you have time to hang out with me. If not, give Nick my best.”

“Yeah, sure,” mumbled Claire, knowing he didn’t mean it. “’Night, Jamie.”

“Love you,” he replied, and she felt a stab of guilt.

“I love you too,” she repeated, and then she hung up. She set the phone down on the couch cushion next to her and lay her head back again, staring up at the shadows on the ceiling until her eyes started to cross. After awhile, she dragged herself up and drifted off to bed.

***

Nick awoke when a sudden light came seeping through his eyelids. He opened his eyes and immediately shut them again, trying to block out the bright light.

“Sorry, Nick,” a softly Southern-accented voice whispered. “I just need to check your vitals and everything here. You can go back to sleep.”

Nick opened his eyes again, squinting as he let them adjust to the light. He realized it was just the light above his bed; the rest of his room was dark. Samantha, his nurse, was there again, her hand flying across his chart.

“What time is it?” he asked, startled at how breathy and rasping his voice sounded. It had to be night time, judging by the darkness… but the last time he remembered being awake was in the afternoon, after his biopsy. He must have been out for awhile.

“Almost three a.m., hon,” Samantha replied, her voice hushed.

“Wow… that late?”

“Sounds like you had a hard day,” said Samantha, patting his shoulder sympathetically. “Surgery this afternoon… and then your lung collapsed this evening, and they had to give you another chest tube. No wonder you’ve been sleepin’ all this time.”

All of a sudden, the memory came back to Nick – Howie and Claire had both been to see him. He remembered Claire sitting beside him as the dull ache in his chest had begun to sharpen. He remembered seeing the ring on her finger, right before he’d started having trouble breathing. Then the memories faded to blackness, and he knew nothing of what had happened after that.

“Did Claire and Howie go home?” he asked weakly.

Samantha smiled. “Claire left a few hours ago, but she said she’d be back in the morning. And Howie… well, you don’t think everyone would go and leave you now, do you?” she said, and then she pointed across the room. Following her finger, he saw Howie passed out in a chair, his head back, mouth wide open, snoring softly. “He was worried sick about you. They both were.”

Nick couldn’t help but smile in Howie’s direction. “Was I that bad off?” he wondered aloud.

Samantha frowned. “I wasn’t on yet, but I heard you gave everyone a little scare,” she answered quietly. Nick swallowed hard, feeling slightly queasy at the realization. The beeping coming from his heart monitor sped up, and Samantha looked over at it. “Hey now, don’t get all worked up,” she said soothingly, touching his shoulder again. “You’re a tough guy, and I know you’re gonna get through this,” she added, looking him straight in the eye. “Keep the faith, alright?”

Nick nodded. “I’ll try,” he rasped. He took a few labored breaths before he asked tentatively, “Do they know what’s wrong with me yet?”

“I’m not sure,” said Samantha apologetically. “I haven’t heard anything, but I can leave a message for Dr. K or your pulmonologist to come talk to you first thing tomorrow morning.”

“Okay… thanks…”

“No problem,” she smiled briefly. Her smile faded as she turned to the monitors again to finish making her notes. “Are you havin’ any trouble breathing?” she asked, frowning. “Your sats have dipped a little.”

“Yeah, kinda,” Nick wheezed. His chest felt tight and achy, as if a hippopotamus were sleeping on top of it. As Samantha leaned over to fiddle with his oxygen again, Nick felt a block of ice settle in his stomach. He had the feeling – a bad feeling – that he was getting worse instead of better. But he tried to force this negative thought out of his mind, knowing it would do him no good to worry about it all night. He would talk to a doctor in the morning, and hopefully he would get some answers then.

Trying to get his mind off of his own health, he asked, “So… what are you doing working here so late at night again?”

“Oh, I work the night shift on most weeknights now,” replied Samantha, straightening up and adding something to his chart. “Trying to pay my way through med school.”

“Med school?” Nick repeated with raised brows, impressed. “Wow. So you wanna be a doctor… instead of a nurse?”

Samantha gave him an impish smile and a little shrug. “I thought I’d give it a try, yeah. I’ve always wanted to go back to school… and now I finally am!”

Nick smiled. “Must be hard though… doing med school and working nights here…”

“Oh, you should talk!” hissed Samantha, lightly swatting his shoulder with her clipboard. “I know what your schedule’s like when you’re on the road.”

“Well, yeah… but I’m not, like, saving lives,” Nick rasped with a chuckle that ended in a cough.

“Hm…” Samantha pressed her lips together and studied them. “Maybe not,” she said quietly, “but you’re changing them.”

Nick felt a lump of pride rise in his throat as she left his room, leaving the room in near-darkness again. In the glow of the monitors around his bed, he looked over at Howie, who was still conked out in a chair. How the guy could sleep with the sounds from all the medical equipment and two voices talking was beyond him. But still Howie slept.

It was sort of comforting, knowing he was there, even if he could sleep through a train wreck… or a helicopter crashing into the side of the hospital… or something. Nick smiled over at him before he closed his eyes, trying to block out the strange beeps and hisses of the hospital room and let Howie’s soft snoring lull him to sleep, as it had on the tour bus for so many years.

***

As promised, Dr. Kingsbury stopped by Nick’s room the next morning, as he lay propped up in bed, poking at the bowl of soggy oatmeal he’d been given for breakfast with his spoon. Howie had gone down to the cafeteria to get himself breakfast and had offered to sneak Nick back something more appealing, but he had no appetite at all. He felt weak and feverish, and his chest ached. It hurt to cough, it hurt to breathe, it hurt where the two thin tubes had been put in to drain his lung and keep it from collapsing again...

“How are you feeling, Nick?” Dr. Kingsbury asked.

“Like hell,” he answered truthfully.

“How’s your breathing?” she asked, her eyes drifting to the numbers on his monitors before looking down at the chart she was holding. “It looks like they had to turn up your oxygen again last night.”

Nick nodded tiredly, inhaling the near-pure oxygen that flowed into his nostrils. It helped a little, but he was still short of breath, and breathing deeply seemed an impossibility, even though the nurses urged him to try.

“Well, I have some news for you,” said Dr. Kingsbury, pulling up the chair Claire had occupied the night before and sitting down next to his bed. She set her clipboard down on her lap and looked up at him. “Here’s the good news,” she said with a pleasant smile. “It’s not cancer. The biopsy yesterday showed no signs of metastasis.”

At her words, Nick let out what little breath he had in a sigh. “Thank God,” he croaked, sagging with relief. He raked a hand through his hair wearily. “I don’t think I could have gone through that again…”

Dr. Kingsbury nodded sympathetically. “I know. This is certainly good news.”

“But you said there was bad news too, didn’t you,” Nick asked flatly. “What is it, pneumonia?” That wouldn’t be so bad, he decided as he waited for her to answer. His last bout with pneumonia had been scary… but he’d made it through. And he had been on chemo at the time, which made it worse; it was different now. Pneumonia he could handle. As long as it wasn’t a relapse of his cancer…

“It doesn’t appear to be pneumonia either,” said Dr. Kingsbury, “and that’s the bad news – we don’t know exactly what it is yet. I have a consultation with your pulmonologist, Dr. Mahmood, later this morning, but right now all I know is that your body isn’t responding to the antibiotics as it should. Whatever it is, it’s not clearing up. The chest x-ray they took last night after your lung collapsed showed that the patchy shadows we saw on the first slides have become even more extensive.”

“So it’s getting worse,” Nick whispered, starting to feel woozy as he took shallow breaths, the oxygen rattling in and out of his ailing lungs.

“I’m afraid so,” Dr. Kingsbury answered grimly. “We’re going to get to the bottom of this, but I’ll be straight with you, Nick – right now you’re on 90% oxygen, and your pulse ox. is showing that you’re still not getting enough oxygen into your blood. If your sats dip much lower, you’re probably going to have to be intubated.”

A shudder ran through Nick, but he nodded his understanding, knowing he had no other choice. He had been through this before; he knew the drill. If he got worse, they would have to put a tube down his throat to help him breathe. A ventilator would breathe for him then, and they would keep him doped up on drugs until it came out. He prayed it wouldn’t come to that.

“For now,” Dr. Kingsbury continued, “a respiratory therapist is going to come down in awhile to give you a breathing treatment. That might help clear out your lungs and give us some time to figure out what’s going on so we can treat you. In the meantime, hang in there, alright?” She squeezed his shoulder, and he tried to smile. It probably ended up looking more like a grimace.

“I’ll try,” he said softly before his doctor left the room.

***

The breathing treatment helped a little, and by noon, Nick was feeling slightly better. The misty vapors he’d inhaled through a mask during the treatment seemed to have cleared his lungs a bit, and the number that measured the amount of oxygen in his bloodstream hovered in the low 90s on his monitor. This figure was far from ideal, but the day nurse who kept coming to check on him had told him that as long as the number stayed above 90, they would not have to intubate.

Claire had turned up around ten o’clock, looking tense and awkward. “It’s good to see you awake,” she’d whispered as she gave him a gentle hug, being careful not to disrupt any of the tubes.

“Sorry if I scared you last night,” he’d replied with a wry smile, remembering that she had been with him when he’d started having trouble breathing the night before, the result of a collapsed lung.

“Don’t apologize,” she said quickly, straightening. “If anyone’s going to apologize here, it should be me. I’m sorry if… if I hurt you last night…” Her right hand drifted to her left, and she started nervously twisting the ring he’d seen on her finger the night before.

Nick tried to pretend it hadn’t hurt, knowing that it wouldn’t change anything if she knew how much it had. So what if it stung him to see a new and different diamond ring on her finger, a spot once reserved for the ring he’d bought for her. Knowing that wouldn’t make her take it off and give it back to Jamie, would it? She’d already said yes to him. A huge mistake, he thought, but he wasn’t going to say that to her now either. It wasn’t the time or the place. He would just come off looking jealous or, worse, like he was trying to play the sympathy card.

“It’s okay,” was all he said. He couldn’t bring himself to congratulate her or to lie about how happy he was for her. It simply wasn’t true, and he knew she would see right through it, so what was the point? She had to know, deep down, how he really felt. But that didn’t matter anymore. He knew she still cared about him, but she clearly wasn’t going to put her own life on hold just because he was still in love with her. Claire was ready to move on with someone else. But why, he thought, why does it have to be Jamie?

He tried not to dwell on it, but as they made small talk, he could not stop his eyes from gravitating towards that ring. How had Jamie proposed to her? he wondered. Had he dazzled her with something elaborate and romantic? It made him nauseous to even picture Jamie Turner down on one knee, his obnoxious smirk stretched across his face as he held the ring up to Claire.

Claire… she was so smart and so intuitive about a lot of things, but when it came to Jamie, it was like she was blind. Their history was working for Jamie and against her; for some reason, she just couldn’t see how much of an asshole the guy really was. Maybe he did have some redeeming qualities, but when Nick pictured Jamie, all he saw was a shifty, arrogant dick. A dick who had taken back the only woman he’d ever truly loved.

The emotional sting hurt almost worse than the physical ache in his chest, and no painkiller would get rid of it. All he could do was try to keep himself from thinking about it, but it was hard when the sparkle of that engagement ring caught his eye every time Claire moved her hand.

Claire and Howie were both with him, finishing up the last of the lunches they’d bought in the cafeteria downstairs, when a distraction arrived in the form of his pulmonologist, Dr. Mahmood. “Hello, Nick,” the young doctor said as she breezed into the room, her long braid of dark hair swinging across her back with each step. “You must be Nick’s friends?” she addressed Howie and Claire. They both nodded, each introducing themselves. Dr. Mahmood shook their hands and then turned back to Nick. “I have some information about your condition,” she said. “Are you alright with your friends staying in the room, or would you rather talk in private?”

“They can stay,” replied Nick with a wave of his hand, trying to keep his voice sounding casual. There was no point in trying to hide anything about his health from Howie or Claire; he’d learned his lesson about keeping secrets. And more than that, he needed them there, in case the news was bad. If it’s not cancer, it couldn’t be too bad, he reassured himself, but he was still nervous about what the doctor was going to say. He glanced over at Howie and Claire, who were sitting next to each other on the right side of his bed. They both looked uneasy too; Claire had her bottom lip in her teeth, and Howie’s knee was vibrating as he jiggled his foot up and down.

Dr. Mahmood came around to the other side of the bed and pulled up a chair of her own, sitting down so that she was facing Nick. “I just came from meeting with Dr. Kingsbury, and she said she had already told you this wasn’t a recurrence of your cancer.” Nick nodded quickly, and Dr. Mahmood smiled. “That’s definitely good news, so let’s focus on the positive – it’s not cancer.”

“Well, what is it then?” asked Nick, nervously licking his lips. His mouth felt very dry, yet his hands were clammy, and his forehead was perspiring.

“You have what’s called BOOP. It’s-“

“Wait, did you say BOOP?” Claire blurted out, and everyone turned to look at her. She immediately blushed, shifting her weight. “Um, sorry,” she said awkwardly, “I just… There’s a disease called BOOP??”

Despite his uneasiness, Nick found himself snickering. It was a pretty funny name…

“It’s an acronym that stands for Bronchiolitis Obliterans Organizing Pneumonia,” Dr. Mahmood explained slowly. Instantly sobering, Nick just stared at her, as if she were speaking another language.

Bronchio-what?? He only knew what half of those words even meant, and one of them was “pneumonia” – which Dr. Kingsbury had told him he didn’t have. He furrowed his brow at the doctor, confused. “I thought I didn’t have pneumonia…”

“It isn’t really pneumonia, although the symptoms are similar,” explained the doctor. “BOOP is an illness which causes inflammation in the lungs. It’s hard to diagnose because it’s rare, and it can look like a number of different lung conditions in x-rays and CT scans, including pneumonia and lung cancer. That’s why we had to do the biopsy, to rule out those things.”

“Okay…” Nick said slowly. “Well, how bad is this??”

“It really depends on how you respond to treatment. This can be a chronic condition, meaning it comes back from time to time, but most people do recover fully from it. I’m going to get you started on prednisone, which is the standard treatment. It should start to clear up your symptoms in the next few days.”

Nick nodded. That didn’t sound so bad. “So I’ll be okay in a few days?” he asked.

Dr. Mahmood seemed to hesitate. “Assuming you respond to the prednisone, you should start to feel better in the next few days,” she said slowly, “but for most people with BOOP, it takes at least a few months for symptoms to totally disappear. In your case, it’s complicated by the fact that you had a lobectomy – you’ll probably have some shortness of breath and a nagging cough for awhile. But it is manageable.”

Nick let out a rattling sigh. A few weeks ago, he had been looking forward to coming home from tour and having a relaxing few months off. Now he was facing months of feeling like shit because of this… this thing he’d been diagnosed with. “What caused this??” he asked, imagining himself inhaling some kind of foreign germs while in Europe.

“It’s impossible to say for sure, but BOOP has been known to develop out of certain kinds of infection, like the flu or pneumonia. It’s also connected to certain anti-cancer drugs,” she replied with a meaningful look. “It could be either, but at this point, it doesn’t matter. Let’s just focus on treating it and getting you better.” She offered him an encouraging smile, but he couldn’t manage one back.

My life is shit, he thought dejectedly, when the doctor left a few minutes later. He looked up slowly to find both Howie and Claire watching him. They had kept silent while the doctor was explaining things to him, letting him ask all the questions, but now Howie asked, “You alright, Nicky?”

Nick shrugged. “This fucking sucks,” he muttered. “Why does this shit keep on happening to me? Why can’t I ever get anything simple? I fracture my leg, and it ends up being fucking bone cancer… I get what I think is a cold, and it turns out to be a fucking tumor in my lung… I give myself a blister on my fucking stump, and it turns into an infected ulcer… and now this. This is shit.”

Howie’s brown eyes were wide and filled with sympathy, but he looked as if he didn’t know quite what to say to that. Nick didn’t blame him.

Claire, on the other hand, spoke up, “Damn straight. It is shit. I’m so sorry, Nick… I wish we had an answer for you, but I don’t know either…” She frowned, biting her lip again.

Nick inhaled and exhaled slowly, his lungs searing with the effort. “Someone must really like torturing me,” he muttered in a small voice. He could feel himself starting to lose his composure, and he looked up towards the ceiling, blinking rapidly. “Think this is funny, God? Knocking me down yet again?”

“Nick,” Howie said warningly, and out of the corner of his eye, Nick saw the two of them exchange worried looks.

“Sorry,” he muttered, but he really wasn’t. He was angry. What had he ever done to deserve all of this? Just when it seemed his life was finally back on track, something else had to happen. When would it ever end? When he finally died? Whenever that happened, he was going to have some questions for The Big Man (or Big Woman), that was for sure.

“Nick, look on the bright side,” Claire said. “First off, it’s not cancer. That in itself is something to be grateful for. And hey… if you were going to get sick with something no one’s ever heard of, might as well be something with a funny name.”

“BOOP?” said Nick and cracked a smile. He and Claire exchanged looks, and all of a sudden, they both started snickering again. Howie just looked between the two of them as if they were insane.

Smiling gently, Claire reached out and grabbed his hand, giving it a squeeze. “I know you’re gonna get through this, Nick. What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger, right?” she said. “After all of this crap, you’ve got to be the strongest guy I know. You’re gonna kick some BOOP ass.”

Nick managed another smile. Even now, she still knew what to say to make him feel better. “Thanks, Claire…”

***

AN: *whispers* I have a confession to make… I was going to just give Nick pneumonia, for my angst-loving readers, but then I found this BOOP thing, and it fit, and so I decided to use it instead… all because the acronym cracks me up. =P And so does the site I found it on: http://www.epler.com/BoopTown.htm (LMAO it looks like “The Busy World of Richard Scarry” or something!) I’m sorry, I’m just very easily amused and end up doing stuff like this purely for the humor value – remember Paris Hilton’s freak carnival accident? So yeah, there’s my explanation for this one, before I get a bunch of emails going “WTF??” LOL. Trust me on this one though… you know I always make things work out in the end. ;)