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Chapter 27

Déjà vu.

That’s exactly what Nick was experiencing, as he sat in a hospital bed, his back pressed against the raised head of the bed, a sheet and thin blanket pulled up over his lap. An IV bag hung on a pole beside the bed, dripping powerful antibiotics through a thin line that snaked into a vein in his left forearm, and the bedside tray held his abandoned dinner, which he’d pushed aside after only a few bland bites. An episode of “The Simpsons” played on the TV, the volume down low, but he was hardly watching.

Yep, he’d certainly been in this position before. Too many times, and too recently. It had only been six months since he’d spent over a week in the hospital, recuperating from his lung surgery. Of course, this was nothing compared to that, but it was still no picnic. He hadn’t even been admitted for six hours yet, and already, he was bored out of his mind and miserable.

Claire had hung around for awhile after he’d been moved to a private room shortly before lunch, but she’d gone home three hours ago to pack some more. She had promised she would be back later that evening, and he found himself wishing she’d get there soon so that he would at least have someone to talk to, someone to take his mind off of his discomfort.

In the meantime, he found himself thinking about the upcoming weekend. It was already Thursday, and the doctor in the ER had said he would probably be here for “a few days.” Which meant he probably wouldn’t be discharged by Saturday. He hated the idea that he wouldn’t even be around to help Claire get moved in, and even worse, that he might not even get to spend Saturday night at the house with her. He had been planning to do something nice for her – a romantic dinner, maybe a DVD (something she liked – a romantic comedy, perhaps?), a nice long soak in the Jacuzzi upstairs, scented candles burning all around, and finally, bed. Together. But the whole “together” part wouldn’t work if he was still stuck here, unable to do anything for or with her.

He was feeling sorry for himself, and for her too. The weekend would be ruined for both of them, and Claire deserved better than that. She deserved to be pampered and treated like a queen who had just taken the throne in her new palace, not left to fend for herself because her “king” was laid up in a hospital bed. It just wasn’t fair.

He couldn’t help but be angry. Angry at himself, for getting into such a predicament. Angry at Jamie, for showing off for Claire and giving Nick the push to learn to run again in the first place. Angry at his C-Leg, for giving him a blister when he’d run on it. Angry at the blister, for turning into an ulcer. Angry at the ulcer, for getting infected. Angry at the infection, for not going away. Angry at the antibiotics, for not working. Angry at Dr. Yoder, for making him stay in the hospital. And on and on it went. At that moment, he was basically pissed off at the world.

With a derisive snort, he thought about what Howie might say if he could hear Nick’s self-pitying thoughts. Surely he would give Nick a nice long pep talk – that was Howie’s way. He’d given Nick a lot of them over the years, especially recently, and as much as Nick hated them, he loved them. Despite the fact that Brian was his best friend and that Kevin was the one he usually came to first for advice, Nick had always been glad it was AJ and Howie who had volunteered to live him for those first few months after the amputation, when he was still learning how to get around on his own again. AJ, with his casual air and flair for joking his way out of uncomfortable situations, had managed to keep him laughing through a period of time when he’d thought he would never have anything to smile about again. And Howie, with his unyielding support and compassion, had simply been there with him through everything, from his health problems to problems with Claire, offering him a pick-me-up when he needed it, a listening ear when he wanted to talk, and a shoulder to cry on when he didn’t. Claire had always been the best person to talk to about anything concerning his illness, but Howie had definitely become a close second. Howie hadn’t been there firsthand, the way Claire had, but in a way, he still understood. That was the good thing about Howie – he always seemed to understand.

And that was why, at that moment, Nick decided to call Howie. Not only would Howie need to know what had happened, since he was driving to Tampa on Saturday to help with the move, but right then, Nick really just wanted to talk to him, to hear his warm, familiar voice offering words of hope and encouragement. He needed some of Howie’s optimism to counteract the pessimistic, angry thoughts that had been whirling through his head.

Howie answered his cell phone on the second ring, although his “Hello?” was not one of recognition.

Oh duh, thought Nick, realizing he was calling from his hospital room line and not his cell. Of course Howie wouldn’t know who was calling; his name wouldn’t show up on the caller ID. “Hey Howie, it’s Nick,” he said, trying to brighten his voice.

“Nicky, hey!” Howie’s tone had changed instantly to one of warmth and friendliness. “What’s up, man? Getting geared up for Saturday and stuff like that?”

As his stomach clenched, Nick smiled weakly. Howie knew just how excited he had been to have Claire move in with him. He still was… but the excitement of the actual move-in day was gone, replaced with the sick realization that all his plans were going to be ruined now. “Well, uh…” he struggled; what was he supposed to say to that? “Kinda… but not so much.”

There was a moment of silence on Howie’s end; then, “Oh no… she changed her mind?”

“No, she’s still moving in,” Nick replied quickly. “But I don’t think it’s gonna work out quite like how I’d planned. I, uh… I kinda did something dumb last Saturday…”

“What did you do?” Howie prompted after another pause.

“Well… I decided I was going to learn to run again,” started Nick. “So I went out in the backyard and… well, ran. Only apparently it wasn’t such a good idea to run around the yard for an hour, cause I got a blister on the end of my stump, and it got worse, and I found out it was really like a pressure ulcer thingie, and it got infected, and I went to the doctor and she gave me some antibiotics, but they didn’t really help, so… I’m kind of in the hospital right now.”

He said this all fairly fast, and it apparently took Howie a moment to absorb all the information, for it was after yet another pause when Howie asked, “Wait, you’re in the hospital?”

“Yeah… the doc made me check in this morning so I could get some more powerful IV antibiotics. It sucks.”

“Oh man… that sounds terrible. Are you okay?? How serious is it?” Howie asked, his voice brimming with sympathy and concern.

“Eh, I’m fine, dude,” Nick assured him casually. “It’s not that bad, more of a pain in the ass than anything else. The doc said I’d probably have to stay here for a few days though.”

“Oh no… so, Saturday…?”

“Yeah, it’s lookin’ like I might not even be around for the move,” Nick told him glumly.

“Aw… I’m sorry, Nicky. So she’s still planning to move in on Saturday then?”

“Yeah, we can’t really push it back cause her dad already rented a truck for this weekend, and her landlord wants her out of her apartment and stuff. So we gotta do it this Saturday still.”

“Well, I’m definitely still coming to help, so don’t worry about a thing, Nick. I’m sure it will go smoothly.”

“Yeah,” Nick replied hollowly, then continued, “I’m not really worried about that though. I was more thinking along the lines of Saturday night… I wanted to do something special for her, D… you know, her first night in the house and all? Now I won’t be able to. She’ll be there all alone.”

“Well, I could stay the night, if you don’t want her alone…”

Nick laughed. “Damn, Howie, like I want you shacking up with my woman while I’m not around?”

“Well I didn’t mean like that!” Howie exclaimed quickly, sounding flustered. “I just meant-“

“I know what you meant, D, I’m just playin’,” Nick replied, laughing some more as he imagined the embarrassed look on Howie’s face. Sobering, he added, “Nah, I’m not worried about her staying alone or anything… but I wanted to be with her. I wanted to make it special, and now it just won’t be.”

“Aw, I’m sorry, Nick. She’ll understand though.”

“I know she will,” Nick sighed, “but still.”

“I know what you mean,” said Howie. “Well, if there’s anything I can do…”

As Howie trailed off, Nick thought for a moment, ideas beginning to stream through his mind. “Actually,” he began slowly, “Maybe there is something…”

***

Nick hung up the phone feeling much better than he had when he had picked it up. His mood improved even more when he heard a rhythmic knock on his door and looked up to see Claire’s head poking into the room. He smiled. “Hey, get in here!” he called, beckoning to her.

A grin spread instantly over Claire’s face, and she inched in, using her butt to nudge the door shut. Her hands were behind her back, and he knew she had something in them, something she was trying to hide.

“Whatcha got?” he asked, beaming cheekily at her. “Somethin’ for me?”

“Psh, why would I get something for you?” she asked as she whipped her right hand out from behind her back, producing a bouquet of flowers. Half a dozen yellow roses amid delicate bunches of baby’s breath, and, blushing from the center of the sunny arrangement, a single red rose.

Smiling at the sentiment, Nick took the tissue-wrapped bouquet and cradled it in his arms, lightly running a finger over one of the velvety rose petals. “Thanks, baby,” he said, looking back up at her.

She shrugged. “I thought they might help brighten this place up a bit. And since I figured you might be lonely without me later tonight, I brought someone to keep you company too.” Moving her other hand out from behind her back, she handed him a small stuffed gorilla. He laughed when he saw it, and she grinned. “He reminded me of King Kong,” she explained with a wink.

“Ah… he kinda does look like ol’ Kong,” said Nick, stroking the stuffed animal’s soft black fur and poking at one of its dark glass eyes. “Little small though.”

“Yeah, but he’s the perfect size for hugging at night,” she replied with a sweet, girlish smile.

Nick stuck his tongue out. “I’d rather be hugging you.”

“That can be arranged.” Setting her purse down at the foot of his bed, she came up closer and leaned down for a hug, careful not to bump his IV line. As she pulled back, stopping to brush her mouth against his on the way, she asked, “You doin’ okay?” Her voice was casual, but he could see the concern in her eyes when they met his.

He nodded. “Doin’ okay,” he repeated assuredly. “I just got off the phone with Howie.”

“Oh, good,” she smiled, pulling a chair up to the side of his bed to sit down. “I thought one of us better call him and fill him in on what’s going on.”

Nick nodded. “Yeah. He decided he’s gonna come into town tomorrow afternoon and get a hotel room for the night.”

“Oh, that’s cool,” said Claire. “Then you guys will have some time to hang out too.”

“Psh yeah, just around this place,” Nick muttered disdainfully, his nose wrinkling as he looked around the insipid hospital room.

“Yeah, yeah… well, don’t knock this place too much. It’s not all bad. It is where we first met, you know.”

Nick couldn’t help but smile, thinking of the unconventional way in which they’d become acquainted. “True,” he said with a dry chuckle. “That’ll sure make for a romantic story to tell our kids someday.” He rolled his eyes before looking back at her. When he did, she smiled, but it was a weak smile, one that didn’t quite make it to her eyes. He frowned, momentarily perplexed; then it hit him.

Our kids.

“Hypothetically speaking, I mean,” he added quickly, hoping he hadn’t struck a nerve in her. The weekend he’d spent at her parents’ house, when she had told him she was infertile, he’d walked on eggshells around her, careful not to say anything that might hurt her. But she had told him then that she had come to accept it, and he had quickly seen that she had, or so it seemed. He could tell she was genuinely thrilled for her brother and sister-in-law, who were expecting their first child, and after that weekend, the issue had slipped his mind. Like he’d told her then, it didn’t make a difference to him, and so it was not something he had given much more thought. But he should have thought about it before he’d spoken just now; the last thing he wanted to do was upset her.

To his relief, she smiled again, and this time it looked genuine. “Of course,” she said lightly. “Then we can go on to tell them about our first few ‘dates’ in the cancer clinic and how the first time you told me you loved me was in the Emergency Room.” She slipped her hand into his and gave it a squeeze, along with a wry smile. “We’re something, aren’t we?”

“We sure are,” Nick agreed with a chuckle, touched that she remembered that terrible, yet wonderful moment in the ER last December as well as he did; that she, too, knew it as the first time they had spoken those three words to each other – I love you.

As the words formed in his mind, their eyes met, and for a few breaths, they simply gazed at one another in silence. It was Claire who broke the silence first, her eyes sliding over to his deserted dinner tray. “How was dinner?” she asked, and the topic of conversation was changed instantly as she lifted the cover off one of the dishes on the tray and wrinkled her nose at the uneaten contents beneath it. “Not so good, eh?”

Nick simply snorted. She knew just as well as he did that hospital food was not exactly fine dining. It ranked right up there with airplane food in Nick’s book.

“Well,” Claire went on, “if you’re hungry, I can at least go on a vending machine run, find you something edible to smuggle in.”

“Nah, don’t bother, I’m not really hungry anyway,” Nick declined, finding it amusing that Cheetos and Twinkies from a vending machine would be considered “edible” compared to the full meal provided by the hospital.

Claire nodded.

After a lull in the conversation, Nick asked, “So… how’s the packing going?”

“Eh, it’s coming along,” replied Claire. “I’ll do some more when I get home tonight, and then I’ll only have a little bit left to do tomorrow.”

“Good,” said Nick, feeling bad that she’d had to do it all by herself; if he’d been able, he would have spent that day and the next at her apartment, helping her. Once again, he cursed his leg and the ulcer and the infection and the entire situation. He supposed it could have been worse though – at least she hadn’t recruited Jamie to come help her instead, since he was in town. Speaking of which… “So, Jamie’s flying home tomorrow, right?”

“Oh yeah… he is,” Claire said, as if that fact had just dawned on her. “And crap, I think he’s expecting me and Di to go out for breakfast with him tomorrow.” Nick was pleased to see that she didn’t exactly looked thrilled about this. “I don’t know if I’m going to though,” Claire went on, looking torn. “I’ve still got a lot to do, and with you being stuck here…”

Nick tried hard not to smile. Okay, maybe being in the hospital wasn’t such a bad thing, if it meant scoring points with Claire. Wednesday night, she had ditched him for Jamie, with the excuse that Jamie only had a couple of days left in town. Now she seemed to be on the verge of ditching Jamie for him. He was about to play the sympathy card, telling her how much more appealing his breakfast the next morning would seem if she were there to critique it with him, but at the last minute, he changed his mind. “Aw, don’t worry about me,” he said. “Do the breakfast thing with Jamie while he’s still in town, and maybe you can smuggle some real food in here for me at lunch.” What the hell did he care if she ate breakfast with Jamie? Either way, the guy would be gone by tomorrow afternoon, and Nick would have her all to himself again.

Claire hesitated only a moment, then smiled and said, “Okay, that sounds like a plan.” She paused, then added, “Thanks for understanding, Nick,” and leaned over to kiss him softly.

Now Nick let himself smile – more points scored. “No problem, babe,” he replied, suddenly enjoying the role of the “understanding” boyfriend. “I know Jamie’s your bud.” Bud, he repeated to himself. That’s all they were these days. Buddies. Friends who lived over a thousand miles apart.

As far as he was concerned, there was really no reason to be jealous.

***

Jamie called as soon as Claire got out to her car later that evening. She’d had her cell phone turned off inside the hospital and had only turned it back on just now – she figured he’d been trying to call her for awhile. Part of her was still angry at him for what had happened in the bar the night before – her bruised knuckles had been a painful reminder of that all day – but she knew she couldn’t hold that against him for long. He was leaving the next day, and she would have felt bad if she didn’t see him again before he left.

They spoke only briefly on the phone, just long to decide on a place and time to meet for breakfast the next morning. Jamie offered to call Dianna and confirm their plans, and Claire used the fact that she was driving home in the dark as an excuse to get off the phone with him. As soon as she’d hung up, she set the phone aside and turned up the radio, but her mind immediately wandered, tuning out the song that was playing.

She could not get over what Nick had said earlier that night. That’ll sure make for a romantic story to tell our kids someday.

The words played over and over in her mind like a broken record that had begun to skip. Our kids someday… someday… someday…

The way he’d said it so casually, as if it seemed perfectly natural to him, she could only think one thing – Nick was planning a future with her.

Okay, maybe ‘planning’ wasn’t the right word. But, clearly, he had at least envisioned a future with her. Or so it seemed. And that had caught her by surprise.

It wasn’t like she herself hadn’t envisioned a future with him. She had… as she had with other guys before him. All her life, she’d dreamed of getting married and having a family someday. She supposed that at some point, she’d wondered of every man she’d dated, Could he be the one? Usually it did not take long for the answer to become glaringly obvious – No! Tim was one of those. But just once, she’d thought, Yes. That had been when she was with Jamie. Of course, she was only eighteen then, young and idealistic, planning a perfect future for herself. She and Jamie would date all through college, and once they had both graduated, they would get married. He would work, and she would go to dental school, and when the time was right, they would start a family together.

Of course, none of that had happened. They’d broken up before the summer before their first year of college (which had broken her heart in the process), and not even two years later, she’d gotten sick. College had been put on hold, dental school forgotten, and eventually, her natural ability to bear children taken away from her.

For awhile, it seemed like all her dreams had been shattered, her perfectly planned-out future reduced to nothing but a big question mark.

But now she was twenty-five, healthy once again, and back in a serious relationship, this time with Nick. And she had envisioned a future with him, asked herself the big question – Could he be the one?

It was certainly possible. She loved Nick like she had loved no once since Jamie. He was not just a boyfriend, but her best friend, and to her, “the one” had to be both. But at the same time, they hadn’t even been together six months yet. It seemed too soon to start thinking seriously about more than just a relationship – marriage, children, and the like. And in a way, she was almost afraid to start thinking about all of that. The future was uncertain, and theirs seemed even more uncertain than most – who knew where they would be in five years? Or in two years, or even one? Just two years ago, she didn’t even know if she would be alive now, and even though she’d been in remission for almost two years, there were still no guarantees. It was the same for him.

But maybe that’s all the more reason to start thinking about it, she thought. Life was precious; there was nothing better than a life-threatening illness to make a person realize that. All the days she’d spent getting sick from chemotherapy treatments had made her appreciate the days when she felt well even more, and the fear of death had given her the desire to live as much as she could. And that meant doing things she ordinarily wouldn’t have done, taking chances, refusing to be afraid.

Nick was right in what he’d said to her before she’d agreed to move in with him. “I know neither of us know what’s going to happen in the future, whether we’re always going to be together or not, but we are now, and I think now is the time to focus on us… Life’s all about taking risks – you and I both know that.”

If he practiced what he preached, it made sense that he would have thought about their future together. He’d said he was just speaking hypothetically, but that had come after a pause, during which she was sure she had reacted visibly to his words. “That’ll sure make for a romantic story to tell our kids someday.” She wasn’t sure it was so hypothetical.

And then another thought came to her. Maybe it was because he said ‘our kids’… maybe he thought I was upset because of that. It wouldn’t have been the first time it had happened – not with Nick, but with other people. Her family and friends – the female ones especially – were always very guarded around her when it came to the topic of having children, as if the very mention of being pregnant or having a baby would throw her into some emotional upheaval. This never failed to annoy her – didn’t they realize she was stronger than that? The loss of her fertility had been devastating at first, but it was not the end of the world. She looked at it as a sacrifice, one she’d had to make in order to go on living her life. Nick had made a very different sacrifice for the same reason. Neither were easy, but both were something they had to eventually come to terms with, and she had. She knew she would never be able to get pregnant the way most women could, but that didn’t mean she would never have children. There was always adoption, of course, and other options she hadn’t even talked about with Nick yet.

She would, someday, if they became more serious than they were now. But as far as she was concerned, they had a ways to go. Right now, she was content just to think about the next step, living with him. It was less than two days away, she realized, as she pulled into the parking lot outside her apartment complex. In two days, this place wouldn’t be her home anymore. Nick’s house would be.

But that’s a good thing, she thought with a smile as she parked her Toyota right next to his silver Jag. The Jaguar had been sitting in the lot ever since she’d come back from the hospital earlier, without Nick. She’d traded it with her own car to drive back that evening, not feeling entirely comfortable driving his nice car around without him in it. As she shut off her ignition and climbed out, she made a mental note to recruit Howie to help her get the Jag back to Nick’s house the next day.

By the time she had walked into the building and plodded up the steep staircase Nick hated, her thoughts had come to rest, and her mind was now on the task that lay ahead – more packing.

Oh, the joys.

***