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Chapter 197

Nick was alive, and that was all that mattered to Claire. But Dr. Wittig had other concerns.

“He’s still not moving air on his own,” she heard the doctor say to her team of nurses. “I’m going to intubate so that we can get him stabilized and sent for a CT and chest x-ray.”

Sensing that she was about to be kicked out, Claire looked around at the doctor. “Can I go with him for the scans?” she asked, adding a hopeful “please?” After nearly losing Nick, she wanted to cling to him; she couldn’t stand the thought of them taking him away from her. What if he got worse again?

Dr. Wittig shook her head. “I’m sorry, but no. In fact, I need to ask you to leave the room. Nick’s heart is beating, but he’s still not breathing on his own, so I’m going to put in a breathing tube. Once he’s stable, we can do the scans and find out the extent of his injuries. I’ll talk to you when we know more. Char, could you take her?”

Claire hated the helplessness of being in a wheelchair. “Come on, hon,” said her nurse, Char, as she took the handles of the chair and wheeled her back into the adjoining trauma room. Without Nick, Claire felt very alone.

Now that she could think straight again, her thoughts went to Jamie and the twins. She realized she had run out on them all, leaving him on the floor and her babies with him. He would have no idea where she was or what had happened. She would have to call him.

“Could I use a phone to call someone?” she asked Char.

“Of course, honey.” The nurse brought her the wall phone and told her what to dial to get an outside line. Claire actually struggled to remember the home number for the house in Clive, but eventually, it came to her, and she dialed it. Jamie answered quickly, a sign that he had been worried about her. He’d stayed close to the phone.

“Hello?”

“Jamie, it’s me. Claire.”

“Hey… where are you?” His voice was casual. And why wouldn’t it be? He didn’t have a clue what she’d just been through.

Her throat closed up just thinking about it, but she cleared away the lump and forced the explanation out. “I’m in the hospital. We got into an accident.” She heard Jamie’s intake of breath and pressed on quickly, “I’m okay, but… but Nick’s in pretty bad shape. He almost didn’t make it, Jamie.” Just talking about it put her on the verge of tears again, but she kept her emotions in check this time.

“Oh my God,” she heard Jamie murmur. “What do you want me to do?”

“Just take care of Cait and Lainey, I guess. They’re keeping me in overnight, but even if they weren’t, I couldn’t leave Nick. Are you okay keeping them for awhile?”

“Of course,” said Jamie quickly. “As long as you need me to.”

“Thanks.”

“Anything else? Do you want me to come to the hospital? I could drop the twins off at Mom’s for the night,” he offered.

“No… thanks, but that’s okay. I don’t want you out driving in this, and under the circumstances, I think it would just be better if you stayed away for now.” She wasn’t trying to be snide, but she couldn’t help but remember what had led to Nick taking off in such a rage in the first place. If Jamie hadn’t tried to kiss her… if Nick hadn’t seen… they would never have been out on the road together, arguing in the car. The crash wouldn’t have happened.

Oh, the “what ifs.”

She knew it wasn’t really Jamie’s fault; Nick was the one who had driven recklessly, and no one was to blame for the snow and ice. Still, a part of her resented her ex-husband for his role in what had taken place that night. She was grateful he was around to watch her girls… but she couldn’t say she wanted him with her now. And she had a feeling that if Nick were aware, he wouldn’t want Jamie there either. She was better off waiting alone.

To pass the time, she stayed on the phone, calling her parents after she and Jamie hung up. She talked to her father for almost twenty minutes, and he made her feel better, offering prayers and filling her with hope that Nick would pull through this. Again, she was reminded of how much he’d already survived: cancer, an amputation, lung surgery, infections and illnesses serious enough to land him in the hospital. He could survive this too, and he would.

Still, as she thought of all the details of the crash and aftermath, she worried about what kind of condition he would be in. He hadn’t been wearing a seatbelt… he could have internal injuries. He hadn’t been breathing, and his heart had stopped… what if he’d suffered brain damage in the long time it had taken to resuscitate him? On top of that, he could have hypothermia… burns… smoke inhalation… any number of problems.

Altogether, she knew his condition was critical. She was just waiting to find out how critical.

It seemed like a long time before Dr. Wittig came back to talk to her, but late into the night, once Claire had been moved into a regular room, she reappeared.

“Let’s talk,” the doctor said, pulling up a chair to sit at Claire’s bedside.

“How’s Nick doing?” Claire asked right away. She didn’t want to chitchat; she wanted to get straight to the point.

“He’s resting comfortably in the intensive care unit. He’s being kept sedated while on a ventilator, at least for now, and we’ve also got him on a medication for his pain,” Dr. Wittig began.

Claire, normally an optimist, saw through the doctor’s warm bedside manner and processed the negative side of everything she’d said. Nick was in the ICU, which meant he was in critical condition. He was on a ventilator, which meant he still wasn’t able to breathe without support. And his injuries were causing him enough pain to warrant a narcotic.

It only got a little better from there.

“In many ways, Nick was lucky. The CT scan of his head showed no head injury, and an EEG revealed normal brain activity. One thing we worry about with patients who are resuscitated after being down such a long time is brain damage or even brain death. Nick may have some short term memory loss or personality changes when he wakes up, but hopefully no long-term effects.”

“Thank God,” whispered Claire, unable to fathom the idea of Nick being brought back from the brink of death, only to be a vegetable the rest of his life. That would have been worse than losing him now.

“Your actions at the scene of the accident saved him more than you may realize,” Dr. Wittig added, smiling faintly. “The EMTs told me that you had already pulled him from the car when they arrived and were giving him artificial respiration. You kept oxygen flowing until they got there, so that even though he wasn’t breathing himself, he didn’t suffer a serious lack of oxygen. And your laying him in the snow cooled his body to the point that it slowed his metabolism, making it possible for his body to go a longer time without proper circulation. Had it not been for the hypothermia, I don’t think we would have been able to revive him after so long.”

Claire offered a crooked smile, feeling anything but heroic. “I didn’t even think about what I was doing when I was doing it,” she admitted. “He wasn’t breathing, and then the car caught on fire, and I just knew I had to get him out. Does he have frostbite from the snow?”

“Some, yes, on his leg and residual limb. It’s not too severe, and the hypothermia was mild too. He has first-degree burns across his torso, where his clothing caught on fire, but they would have been much worse if you hadn’t gotten him out.”

“I wouldn’t have been able to get him out, if it hadn’t been for his leg. The fake one, I mean. His left leg would have been crushed under the dashboard, but it was only the prosthesis. I had to take it off him to pull him out.”

Dr. Wittig smiled tightly. “Another blessing in disguise. He has some bruising on his right leg, apparently from the dashboard as well, but the X-rays showed no fractures. He does have several broken ribs, though; in fact, most of the trauma was to his chest, undoubtedly from hitting the steering wheel. He was driving, correct?”

Claire nodded, remembering Nick speeding down the icy roads, taking curves much too fast. He had slowed down, though, before the accident…

“The ribs will heal in time, but I’m concerned about his lungs,” Dr. Wittig went on. There was no sign of a smile on her face now. “Both of them were collapsed when he was brought in, which was why he wasn’t breathing. We inserted tubes into his chest to drain air and fluid and re-inflate them. But there’s been some damage.”

Claire’s own lungs drew in a slow breath, as she tried to prepare herself for the worst. This was where the news got bad.

“The x-rays and scans showed a lot of scar tissue on his lungs already, and I could see that he’s had a lung lobectomy?”

Claire nodded. “Because of a tumor. He had bone cancer, Ewing’s Sarcoma. They took his leg for it, but it had already spread to his lungs. He had the surgery for that almost five years ago, and he’s been in remission ever since.”

“I see. Do you know of any other lung conditions he’s had? With him unconscious and from out of state, I haven’t been able to get a full medical history yet.”

Claire thought back, remembering other times when Nick had been in the hospital, on breathing machines. “He’s had pneumonia before,” she replied. “And a few years ago, he had something called BOOP. Bronchio… something.” She had never been able to remember the whole name for it; it was much easier and much more amusing just to call it “BOOP.”

Dr. Wittig nodded slowly. “I’ve heard of it. It’s not common though. He’s been through quite a lot…”

That was the understatement of the night, Claire thought, as she nodded back emphatically. “Yes, he has. Too much. But he’s always pulled through. He’s going to pull through this too, right?”

The doctor pursed her lips in a way that told Claire she was about to get more difficult news. “I can’t make any promises,” she said. “Of course, I’m not an expert… now that he’s out of the ER and in the ICU, he’ll be under the care of another doctor, Dr. Renck. She specializes in pulmonology. I’m sure you’ll meet her tomorrow. I consulted with her before I came to talk to you, and we both have concerns about Nick’s lungs. As I said, they had been affected previously from the lobectomy, pneumonia, BOOP, and so on. Now, with the added damage from the blunt trauma and smoke inhalation, they’re in bad shape, quite frankly. He’s relying on a ventilator to breathe; if we took him off of it right now, I don’t think his lungs would be able to carry out respiration on their own. We’re just hoping that, with time, they will heal. He may never get back full lung function, but as long as they improve enough to be sufficient, he’ll be okay. Right now, though, his condition is very serious.”

Claire nodded to show she understood, though she wasn’t quite sure what to say. She was painfully aware of the slow breaths she was taking, in and out, and it suddenly occurred to her that she’d almost always taken them for granted. Her lungs… despite her own colorful medical history, they had never been a concern to her. They had kept on breathing through everything, even when the rest of her body was ready to shut down.

But Nick… his body was surprisingly undamaged, given the intensity of the crash. It was his lungs that were failing him. Each inhalation of air was forced; a machine was breathing for him. Every breath she took for granted was precious to him now, whether he was aware of it or not. She prayed his precious breath would not be taken away.

***

The nurses on Claire’s new ward strictly refused to let her leave her room to go to Nick’s side that night, but in the morning, after breakfast, they allowed her to visit the ICU in a wheelchair.

Dressed in a hospital gown and robe, with paper surgical booties on her feet and an IV line still in her arm, she was wheeled into the intensive care unit looking almost as if she belonged in one of the beds herself. Granted, the patients here were much worse off than she was; she was conscious, first of all, and while most of them were tethered to ventilators, a breathing treatment last night had been enough to keep her from still needing oxygen. She was slightly wheezy from the smoke she’d inhaled in the car, but it felt like a mild case of bronchitis, nothing she couldn’t handle.

It was Nick she was worried about. He was in the last cubicle of the ICU, the curtains drawn around his bed for privacy. The nurse pushing Claire’s wheelchair pulled these back long enough to wheel her inside. “I’ll just close these again,” she said on her way out. “If you need anything, just holler.”

Claire nodded, glad for the solitude. Using her feet instead of her gauze-wrapped hands, she inched her chair closer to Nick’s bed, anxious to see him up close. Her eyes roamed his body from head to foot, taking in every aspect of his appearance. His face was still pale, though not as ashy gray as it had been last night. The flow of warm blood had brought some color back to his skin. He was covered by a loose hospital gown and blankets folded down over his torso. Out from underneath them, she could see drainage tubes that emptied into plastic containers hooked to the end of his bed and thin wires that connected leads on his chest and limbs to a heart monitor. Looking at the monitor, she was pleased to see that the waves were nice and steady today, the numbers measuring his heartbeat and blood pressure within the normal ranges.

Only his oxygen saturation was low, even with the ventilator forcing pure oxygen into his lungs through a long hose. The hose connected to the end of the breathing tube that protruded from his mouth, and it snaked away from his face like a freakish elephant’s trunk. She could hear the flow of air hissing through it, forced by a pump which compressed and released with a steady, whooshing sound. Every time it did, his chest rose and fell visibly.

Between the sounds of the ventilator and the beeps from all of the monitor, it was so noisy in the small cubicle that it was a wonder anyone could sleep. Yet Nick was completely out, his face relaxed and expressionless behind the obtrusive hose.

She reached out with her bandaged hands and used her fingertips to touch his cheek, stroke his brow, smooth back his hair. “I love you,” she whispered close to his ear, caressing the side of his face with a gentle touch. “I hope you know that.”

She found his hand amidst all of the tubes and wires and took hold of it gingerly. There was an IV line in the crook of his elbow, and clipped to his index finger was a pulse oxygen monitor, but she didn’t have the energy to shuffle around to his right side, so she held onto his left hand and tried not to jostle anything. “Wouldn’t that be funny, if I accidentally knocked the pulse ox. thing off, and a bunch of people came rushing in for a code, thinking they’d lose your pulse?” she murmured with a giggle, stroking the back of his hand with her thumb. “‘Oh no, Doctor, he’s fine; it’s just his stupid girlfriend fiddling with everything.’” It wasn’t funny, considering she’d witnessed the real thing the night before, but she forced herself to laugh anyway, in case Nick could hear her. She had to stay upbeat and joke around with him; he couldn’t hear her sound upset.

It was easy to talk to him once she got started, but she wished she could get a response out of him. She reminded him of the time he’d pulled the leads off his chest while in the ICU for pneumonia and brought in the whole code team; he and Howie had once regaled her with that story. She only wished he would open his eyes and flash her the same wicked smile he must have had then. She told him that too.

“Listen, Stumpy, you gotta get those lungs whipped back into shape so that your doctor will stop doping you up and take you off that breathing machine. I like the sound of my own voice and all, but I feel like I’m talking to a cucumber here.” She patted the stump of his leg beneath the covers. “I miss you. I was so scared I was gonna lose you last night… you just really need to open your eyes and let me know you’re still with me.”

Until then, she hadn’t gotten any kind of response from him whatsoever, no indication that he could hear her, even while unconscious. The nurses said he might be able to, but she was beginning to think that was a crock, just something they told the families of ICU patients to make them feel better.

Then his eyelids fluttered.

Her heartbeat accelerated as she stared, refusing to take her eyes off of his. “That’s it,” she encouraged him, squeezing his hand as best she could through the bandages. “Come on, Nick, open your eyes.”

And he did.

It was just for a few seconds, but his blue eyes were definitely open. At first, they darted around, taking in the sights around him in obvious confusion, but then they focused in on her face. For a second or two, Claire and Nick locked eyes, and she knew then that he was really “all right,” that he would still be the same old Nick she loved when he came through this.

Then his eyes fluttered shut again.

Claire was disappointed, but tried to be understanding. His body had been through so much, he had to be exhausted, and on top of that, he was drugged. Of course he couldn’t keep his eyes open. “Thanks, Nick. That was good,” she murmured, stroking the back of his hand. “You sleep now. We’ll try again later.”

She didn’t want to leave him, but she knew she couldn’t keep him all to herself either. No one but Jamie and her parents knew what had happened to him the night before. Nick’s family and friends were blissfully unaware. She had to start making the phone calls that would bring their mornings crashing down.

***

As it turned out, Claire only made one call. She started with Brian, who, as Nick’s best friend and the one who had seen Nick last, deserved to know first. Upset as he was, Brian had a way of staying calm and reassuring. “Let me call everybody else,” he offered in his quiet, Kentucky drawl. “There’s nothin’ else I can do for him from here, so I’ll do that. You just go be with him, alright? That’s what you can do.”

So Claire went gratefully back to Nick’s bedside and let Brian make the rest of the calls.

Around noon, her day nurse brought her back to her room so that her doctor could examine her. He gave her a clean bill of health, instructions for how to take care of her hands, and a packet of discharge papers for her to sign. “You can get dressed, sign these papers, and drop them off at the nurse’s station on your way out. They’ll set you up with a follow-up appointment so I can check those burns,” the doctor told her, wishing her well.

The nurse gave her a bag from the emergency room that held her clothes, but when she opened it, Claire found her jeans and hoodie in pieces. They must have cut everything off her. The ER had been such a blur, she hardly remembered.

She called Jamie and asked him to bring her bag of clothes to the hospital, and when she got off the phone, she poked through the rest of the contents of the ER bag. There wasn’t much there – she hadn’t had anything with her that night but the clothes on her back – but at the bottom, she found the two pieces of her white gold Claddagh ring. She picked them up gingerly and fit them together. She supposed a jeweler could solder the ring back together, but was that what she wanted? She had loved that ring, but it would forever be a symbol of her first, mistaken marriage. Why keep it and be reminded of a time she wished she could forget?

Making up her mind quickly, she got up and tossed both pieces of the ring into a biohazard container. Now she couldn’t have it back, even if she did change her mind. But why would she? The ring represented the past and Jamie. Nick was her future, if only he could live to put a new ring on her finger.

***

Jamie turned up with her bag and the twin stroller, Caitlin and Delaine packed into it like two fat sausages in their winter clothes. The babies looked around at their new surroundings in bewilderment, taking in the bright fluorescent lights and strange sounds and smells, but when they saw their mother, they were all smiles.

Claire, who had thought of no one but Nick since last night, felt her heart leap at the sight of her daughters. “There’s my girls,” she murmured, sinking down to kiss the tops of their heads. “Mama missed you. I wish I could pick you up…” She looked down at her bandaged hands helplessly.

Jamie reached out and took her wrist gingerly, looking at the gauze. “Your hands… what happened?”

“Second degree burns,” she replied. “I wish Cait and Lainey were old enough to understand; this could be a good lesson for them – never stick your hands into open flame.”

“Open flame??” Jamie’s eyes bugged. “You mean, the car caught fire?” Claire nodded grimly, and his eyes darted all over her body, looking for other signs of injury. “Are you all right?? I mean, other than-”

“I’m fine,” she answered dully. “I had already gotten out by the time the fire started; I was just trying to get Nick out. His clothes were on fire, and I was trying to put it out. I wasn’t thinking straight. But they’ll heal.”

Jamie nodded slowly, surveying her with his piercing eyes. “How about Nick? How’s he doing?” he asked.

“Not well. But I guess it could always be worse. Last night was worse.” She swallowed hard, unable to get the image of that nurse doing chest compressions on Nick’s lifeless body out of her head.

“I’m sorry,” Jamie offered, pressing his lips together grimly. “I hope he’ll be okay… I really do. If you want, I can pray for him.”

“Thanks,” was all Claire said.

Jamie nodded again. “I’m just glad you’re alright,” he said, and he gave her a delicate hug. “I’m really sorry,” he added, as he pulled away. “About what happened last night, I mean. Not just the accident, but back at the house… right before he showed up.”

Claire understood, but she wasn’t willing to forgive just yet. She couldn’t forget that Jamie’s little mistletoe stunt was what had set Nick off in the first place. “You should be,” she replied, letting her voice frost over. “That was completely inappropriate. You can’t let anything like that happen ever again… especially not in front of the girls. They’re too young to understand now, but when they get older, it will only confuse them, you acting like that with me. They need to understand that we’re not together anymore, and we’re never going to get back together. I think you need to understand that too.” She gave him a cold look, letting her message sink in.

Jamie returned the look with a sheepish smile. “I know… I do,” he said. “I just… got carried away, I guess.” He shrugged. “It’s not easy, you know, just letting go of you. I’ll always love you…”

“And you’ll always have a special place in my life. But you can’t say things like that anymore,” chided Claire. “I know it’s not easy… it isn’t for me either. But we both need to move on. It’ll get easier once we do.”

Jamie studied her again, his icy blue eyes seeming to penetrate into her soul. “Have you moved on already?” he asked. “Right back to Nick? Is that why he showed up at our door last night?”

She shrugged. “I don’t know… I don’t want to say anything now. Who knows what the future holds. I… I just want him to make it through this, and then we’ll see.” But she knew by the scowl on Jamie’s face that he could see right through her half-assed attempt to stumble around the question. And yet, she didn’t care.

The twins’ fussing interrupted any retort he might have had for her; they were getting antsy, fidgeting in their stroller, reaching their chubby hands out for Claire to pick them up.

“I’ll get them,” Jamie told her. “Sit down on the bed.” She did, and Jamie placed both babies carefully on her lap. Balancing one on each knee, she brought her arms around them both and snuggled them close to her chest. It felt good to be holding them again, after everything she’d been through last night. She hadn’t really thought about it before now, but if the car had struck the tree on the passenger side, it could have been her on that gurney last night, moments away from death. Her daughters could have lost their mother. But thanks to Nick’s last, desperate actions or fate alone, the car had impacted on his side instead.

Fate…

What did fate have in store for Nick and her now? It was the question she was dying to know the answer to. She couldn’t take this waiting. But, as she would find out, waiting was all she could do.

***