“Can I get you anything?” Elizabeth offered, once Dani had turned in for the night. Now that the danger was over and they weren’t all needed at once, the doctors and nurses had decided to take it in turns to watch over Nick and Brian. Elizabeth and Patrick were working the night shift, while Rob and Dani slept. In the morning, the married couple would relieve them so they could get some rest, too.
Nick couldn’t help but feel jealous of Rob - not only because Dani was amazing, but because he missed his own wife so much. He would be so much more comfortable in his own bed at home in Las Vegas, with his arms wrapped around Lauren. And nothing would cheer him up more than seeing his son. Their absence in his life these last few months only seemed to magnify the ache in his chest. That was why his first answer to Elizabeth’s question was, “My family?”
She smiled at him sadly. “I wish that was possible, but with this weather, it may be a few more days before the airport’s able to open back up. Is there anything else?”
He shrugged his right shoulder; the left one was immobilized by a sling once more. “I dunno… I guess a new heart would be nice, too.”
“I’ll do everything I can to make that happen,” she promised. “The transplant process will move much faster once the hurricane is over and we can get you transferred to a different facility and officially listed.”
Nick nodded, but his heart skipped a beat. The relief he’d felt had been short-lived: now he had a new reason to panic. In spite of his prognosis, he was in no real hurry for the transplant to happen. Though he hated being hospitalized and wanted to get better, the thought of having his heart cut out and replaced still terrified him.
He didn’t tell Dr. Elizabeth that, not wanting to sound ungrateful. But she must have been able to read the fear in the expression on his face, because she suddenly added, “Did Patrick tell you he had a heart transplant as a teenager?”
Nick’s eyes widened with surprise as he looked across the room at the nurse who was tending to Brian. “No way - really?”
Elizabeth nodded. “It’s true. Ask him. He can tell you all about it.”
Nick waited until Patrick was finished with Brian before waving him over to his bedside. “Hey… so a little birdie told me you’ve had a heart transplant?”
“Yep,” Patrick replied, pulling down the neck of his scrub top to show Nick a thin, white scar in the center of his chest. It didn’t look much different from the scar Brian had sported ever since his own heart surgery, yet Nick leaned closer, staring at it with morbid fascination.
“Wow… that’s crazy. Did you have cardiomyopathy, too?”
Patrick shook his head. “No, mine was a congenital condition. I was born with a bad heart that gradually got worse as I got older. I finally had a transplant when I was fifteen.”
“That must’ve been scary,” said Nick. He thought about himself at fifteen, recording his first album. He couldn’t imagine going through this at that age and realized he should be grateful for the many years of good health he’d gotten to enjoy before his heart had failed. Patrick probably never took his health for granted, the way Nick had.
“Yeah, it sucked, but I felt better afterwards,” replied Patrick. “It was worth the wait. I wouldn’t have lived much longer without a new heart.”
Nick swallowed hard. “I bet it gave you a new lease on life, huh?” he asked, trying to focus on the positive and not let the fear and negativity he could feel lurking in the back of his mind creep to the forefront. “Is that why you became a nurse?”
Patrick shrugged. “Something like that.”
He didn’t elaborate, and Nick didn’t ask any more questions. He didn’t want to dwell on the topic of transplants, but he did wish Patrick would keep talking to him. Instead, the conversation came to an awkward close as Patrick shuffled away.
Desperate for someone to keep him company and distract him from his pain, Nick closed his eyes and pictured Dani’s pretty face. But when he finally drifted off to sleep, he dreamed of Lauren.
***
Nick woke the next day with a smile on his face, having spent the night with his family. In his dreams, he had walked the dogs with Lauren and played in the pool with Odin - perfectly ordinary things that, nonetheless, he was no longer able to do. When he opened his eyes and found himself back in his hospital bed, far away from his family, Nick felt like he was in the midst of a nightmare. But he was wide awake now, no longer dreaming. This sad existence was what his real life had become.
Blinking groggily, he glanced over at the other bed, wanting to make sure Brian was still in it. His best friend looked the same as he had the night before - still unconscious, but also still breathing, his chest rising and falling steadily as the ventilator filled his lungs.
Turning his head to the right, Nick was relieved to see Dani standing by his bedside, looking pretty in a pair of bright pink scrubs. She was in the middle of changing his IV bag when she realized he was awake. “Good morning!” she greeted him with a radiant smile.
“Morning,” Nick croaked back. It didn’t feel much like morning, but without windows, it was impossible to tell what time of day it was. His circadian rhythm had been disrupted by periods of unconsciousness, and the recent power outage had rendered the wall clock incapable of providing a reliable clue. Even if the clock had been reset since the secondary power was restored, Nick could hardly see its hands from across the dimly-lit room. He wondered if they were deliberately keeping the lights low to conserve energy. Clearing his throat, he asked, “Is the main power back on yet?”
“Not yet,” Dani replied, shaking her head. “It may be awhile. We’ll know more when Rob gets back; he went out to drive around and see how bad the damage is.”
“So the storm’s over?”
“Uh-huh.” She hung the new bag on his IV pole. “It’s still pretty windy outside, but the worst of it has moved past us.”
“What time is it?”
“Wow, you’re just full of questions today, huh?” She smiled down at him again. “It’s almost eight. Did you sleep okay last night?”
“Surprisingly, yeah,” he replied. “It took me a while to fall asleep, but once I finally did, I was out. I don’t think I woke up once during the night.”
“You must have needed the rest,” she said knowingly.
He made a face. “I don’t know why. All I’ve done for the past week is rest. I mean, how much rest could a person possibly need?”
“You’ve been under a lot of stress lately - not just physically, but emotionally, too,” she said, giving his right shoulder a reassuring squeeze. “Think about everything that’s happened in the last week: first all the stuff with your heart, then Brian ending up in the hospital, and finally the hurricane. All that has taken a toll on you. I bet your brain needed a good night’s sleep even more than your body did.”
Nick nodded, knowing she was probably right.
“You must’ve had some good dreams, too, huh?” Dani added with a wink.
He arched his brow, giving her a bemused look. “And what makes you think that?”
“Well… you were smiling right before you woke up,” she replied, raising her eyebrows right back at him.
He cracked a smile. “Yeah… I was dreaming about my family. God, I miss them so freaking much.”
“I know,” said Dani sympathetically. “I’m so sorry. I wish there was more we could do, but there’s just no way to reach your wife right now. As soon as the phones are working again, we’ll get a hold of her.”
“I know. It’s not your fault.” He sighed. “I just wanna get out of here and go home.”
“Believe me, so do I,” replied Dani. Nick reminded himself that she, too, had been stuck at the hospital, but at least she had volunteered to stay there. Besides, her husband was with her, whereas his wife and son were clear across the country. She couldn’t really compare her situation to his.
“Do you know if your house is okay?” he asked her.
“No idea. Rob’s going to drop by there and find out. Fingers crossed.” Tucking her index finger under the middle one, she held up her hand for Nick to see.
He imitated her, crossing his own fingers for good luck. “Hopefully there’s no major damage. But if there is, that’s what insurance is for, right?”
“Yeah, tell that to the residents who had to rebuild after Irma. Their insurance checks weren’t nearly enough to cover the cost of all the requirements for new construction.”
“Wow, really? That sucks,” said Nick. He knew it was a lame reply, but he wasn’t sure what else to say. He felt bad for those people, but it was hard to relate when he hadn’t had to worry about money in his whole adult life. He was fortunate in that respect, but money certainly hadn’t solved all his problems. His wealth would pay his hospital bills, but it couldn’t buy him health or happiness. No amount of insurance guaranteed he would get a new heart before his old one gave out.
“It does. But hey… let’s hope for the best,” replied Dani with a shrug. She finished adjusting the flow rate of his IV drip and then filled a basin with warm water for his daily bed bath.
Now that he’d gotten over his embarrassment, Nick found himself actually looking forward to this part of his morning, not only because it broke up the monotony of lying in bed all day, but simply because it felt good. He enjoyed having his hair washed, feeling Dani’s hands massaging his head as she worked the shampoo into his scalp.
“I always liked your hair like this,” she remarked, spiking his lathered locks between her fingers.
He smiled. “Like what - wet and soapy?”
She laughed. “No, silly. I meant more of the spiky, messy, bedhead look. So much better than your middle-part mushroom cut.”
Nick wrinkled his nose. “Hey now... you already made fun of me for my mushroom hair. In case you don’t remember, that was a huge trend thanks to me.”
“In case you don’t remember, Devon Sawa had it first,” Dani shot back, as she started rinsing the shampoo out of his hair. After a beat, she added, “You know I’m just messing with you, right?”
“I know,” he replied. “I don’t mind. It’s a good thing you prefer the bedhead look, though, ‘cause that’s about all I can pull off right now.”
“It’s perfect,” she assured him with a wink, wrapping his head in a towel before she began washing the rest of his body.
When she was finished, she brought him a banana and an English muffin for breakfast. Nick took a few bites out of the muffin and barely touched the banana. He was still slightly nauseous, and nothing tasted good.
“Not hungry?” Dani asked after a while, looking down at his plate.
Nick shrugged. “No, not particularly.”
She pursed her lips. “You need to eat so you can keep your energy up.”
“Why?” he scoffed. “I barely do anything but lie in this bed; it’s not like I’m burning a lot of calories.”
“Well, maybe it’s time to get you moving then,” she replied. “How about I show you some of those bed exercises I mentioned the other day?”
“Yeah, sounds good,” said Nick eagerly. So much had happened in the last two days, he’d almost forgotten about Dani’s promise to teach him ways to prevent his muscles from weakening. Now he looked forward to learning, wanting to keep his body as fit as possible. “It’ll be like my morning workout.”
“That’s the spirit,” said Dani with a smile. “Let’s start with your legs.” She lowered the head of his bed until he was lying flat and pulled back his blankets to free his feet. “First I want you to point your toes toward the foot of the bed until you feel a nice stretch. Good,” she said, as he followed her directions. “Hold them like that for three seconds… and relax. Now you’re going to flex your feet so your toes bend backward…”
She guided him through a series of simple stretches, from pointing and flexing his toes to rotating his ankles and bending his knees one at a time. He was doing leg lifts when Rob returned.
“How does the house look?” Dani asked him immediately, biting down on her bottom lip as she awaited his answer.
Rob sucked in a deep breath. “You want the good news or the bad news first?”
“The good news, please.”
He sighed. “Sorry, I lied. There is no good news. The house is uninhabitable.” Dani gasped, clapping her hand over her open mouth, as Rob continued, “Half the roof’s been ripped off, and the whole neighborhood is flooded, so I can only imagine what it looks like inside. I wasn’t able to get close enough to go in.”
Nick felt like a fly on the wall, watching with dismay as Dani’s face fell. He lowered his leg back to the bed and lay there silently, not knowing what to say or do. Rob wrapped his arms around his wife and pulled her into a tight hug. He held her like that for a few seconds, letting her bury her face in his shoulder. “It’ll be okay,” Nick heard him whisper reassuringly as he rubbed her back. “We’ll get through this.”
Dani nodded as she slowly straightened up, wiping her eyes. “What about the rest of the island?”
Rob shook his head. “It’s bad, babe. Really bad. Melissa must’ve strengthened to a Category 5 before she hit. All the cell towers have been knocked down, a section of the Overseas Highway has been washed out, and someone said the main power line was severed, too. That means we may be going weeks, even months without electricity.”
Nick’s heart began to race. “Won’t the hospital run out of fuel for the generators way before then?” he asked, unable to stay silent any longer.
Rob looked over at him and nodded. “We only have enough to last us a few more days. Unless we can get more delivered, we’ll have to evacuate.”
Dani’s eyes wandered from Nick to Brian before she shook her head. “I still don’t think either of them are stable enough to be moved,” he heard her whisper to Rob.
“Yeah, well, I’m not sure how we’d move them anyway, with the bridge washed out and the helipad underwater,” he muttered back. “By boat, maybe?”
She raised an eyebrow, giving him a skeptical look. “You’d put a comatose patient with a spinal cord injury on a boat?”
“Only if there was no other option… but it’s a risk we may have to take if we run out of fuel before the floodwaters recede,” Rob replied with a shrug.
Nick felt sick to his stomach, remembering what had happened the last time they’d tried to evacuate him. He had the same nervous, fluttery feeling in his chest he’d had then. He took a deep breath and let it out slowly, trying to calm his heart down.
“I’m gonna get on the satellite phone and see if I can arrange for a fuel drop,” said Rob. “I’ll be back.”
After he left, Dani looked at Nick. “It’ll be all right,” she said reassuringly. “Rob will figure everything out.”
Nick was frowning. “You have a satellite phone?” He wondered why she hadn’t mentioned it before.
“Only for emergencies,” she replied. “It lets us keep in contact with the mainland, but it’s too expensive to use for personal calls.”
“Oh.” He paused, suddenly realizing how insensitive he must have sounded, asking about a satellite phone when she had just found out her home was ruined. “I’m really sorry about your house, by the way.”
She sniffled. “Thanks.”
“I’m not sure how much I can do to help,” he added, “but you can count on me to donate money to the recovery effort as soon as I’m able to access my accounts.”
Dani managed a tight-lipped smile. “That’s so sweet of you,” she said. “Thank you.”
Nick shrugged. “It’s the least I can do. You’ve done so much for me... and don’t say you were just doing your job, because you’ve gone way above and beyond that by now.”
She laughed. “Alright… I won’t say it this time. But hey, if it wasn’t for you, Rob and I might have been in our house when the storm hit. Who knows if we would have made it out alive? So in a way, you might have saved our lives, too.”
“Yeah, well, if it wasn’t for me, you and Rob would have gone to Gainesville, right? You guys would have been safe - and you wouldn’t have been stranded here.”
“You don’t know that,” she said, shaking her head.
Nick wasn’t going to argue with her. “Do you think you could take me up to the roof later? Or at least a room with windows?” he wondered. “I want to see what it looks like outside.”
Dani pursed her lips. “You know you're not supposed to get out of bed.”
“Then wheel my bed. Please?” he begged, giving her his best puppy dog eyes.
She offered him a sympathetic smile in return. “We’ll see. Why don’t you finish your last set of reps while I get Brian started on his workout?”
Nick was distracted from his disappointment when he watched her walk over to Brian’s bed and pull back the blankets. Somehow, Brian’s body seemed even smaller than usual. His skinny legs looked like toothpicks poking out of the bottom of his hospital gown, though his bare feet were as big as ever. “What are you doing?” Nick asked, as Dani picked up Brian’s right arm and slowly pulled it up over his head.
“Passive range of motion exercises,” she replied. “It helps to keep his joints flexible.”
As Nick returned to his leg lifts, he watched her raise and lower Brian’s arm, straight up and down at first, then out to the side. The whole time, Brian’s hand hung limply from its wrist, his fingers loose and floppy. It was strange to see Brian looking lifeless and still, so unlike his usual energetic, athletic self. It unnerved Nick.
“Can he feel you pulling on his arm like that?” he asked Dani.
“I don’t know. That depends on his level of awareness and how much sensation he has. It’s hard to assess right now, since he’s been unresponsive so far.” Nick frowned. “I’m not hurting him,” she added quickly, “if that’s what you were wondering.”
He shook his head. “No, I know you’re not. I just wish he would wake up - or at least react in some way. It’s weird to see him like this.”
She nodded. “I know. It’s weird for me, too. I’ve never even met him before, but just from seeing him perform, I know how full of energy he was.”
Noticing her use of the past tense, Nick swallowed hard. He hoped with all his heart that Brian would be full of that same energy again someday. He couldn’t bear the thought of his best friend being bedridden for the rest of his life. Having been confined to a hospital bed for a full week now, Nick knew this was no way to live.
Already, the days of inactivity had taken a toll on him. He could feel the stiffness in his muscles and the strain across his sore chest as he slowly raised and lowered each leg, one at a time. It was a lot harder than it should have been. A mere two months ago, his body had been so well-conditioned, he could dance and sing at the same time for over an hour without getting out of breath. Now the slightest movement made his heartbeat accelerate as if he were in the middle of a strenuous aerobic workout instead of what amounted to a simple warmup. He’d had to stop and rest after each set of reps, just to catch his breath and allow his heart to calm down.
But on that last set, his heart didn’t cooperate. Instead of slowing down, it continued to speed up. Nick broke out in a cold sweat as his heart began to race out of control. He tried to call out to Dani, but his chest was tight, and he could barely breathe, let alone speak. He didn’t have to, though - a second later, the alarm on his monitor sounded, issuing a series of high-pitched beeps that brought her running to his bedside.
“Nick?” He heard her say his name and briefly saw her hovering over him before his vision blurred and faded, blackness closing in. “Stay with me!” she barked over the frantic beeping in the background, pressing her fingers to the side of his neck to feel his pulse. Her face swam in and out of focus as he struggled to stay awake.
He was still semi-conscious when the ICD fired inside his chest, knocking the wind right out of him. He hardly recognized the harsh, guttural sound that came from his own mouth, half groan, half strangled cry. In agony, he clutched at his chest. It felt like he’d been kicked by a horse.
Dani put her hand over his, gently prying it away from his chest. “It’s okay, Nick,” she said, squeezing his hand tightly as she lowered it to his side. “You’re okay now.” She let go of him and reached for her stethoscope. He felt a shock of cold as she slid the metal disc down the front of his gown. “Just relax and breathe.”
Nick was struck with a sense of deja vu as he lay still and let her listen to his heart. Relax and breathe. He had heard that line before. How many times had something like this happened by now? It was beginning to feel almost routine, as if he and Dani were players in a real life drama, rehearsing the same scene over and over again. The dialogue and stage directions had become second nature, and the setting never changed. Yet Nick was far from comfortable in his role as the helpless patient. No matter how many times he had survived one of these episodes, it was still terrifying to feel his own heart turn against him - and his newfound fear of experiencing another shock made it even worse now.
“What happened?” he was finally able to ask, once his heartbeat had stabilized and he could breathe again. His vision was still blurry; Dani looked almost like an angel with a halo of golden light glowing around her head as she leaned over him.
“You had another arrhythmia - it looked like ventricular tachycardia that time,” she answered, her eyes darting to the monitor behind his bed and back again. “Your ICD caught it and cardioverted your heart back to a healthy rhythm before it turned into a lethal one. If V-tach continues for too long, it can become V-fib, which causes cardiac arrest.”
Nick felt a swooping sensation in his stomach, which made him nauseous. He was hyper-aware of the way his heart was thumping inside his chest and wondered how it sounded to Dani’s trained ears.
“It was a close call,” she continued, “but I think you’re okay for now.” She removed her stethoscope and reached for his right hand, rubbing the back of it reassuringly. “Just take it easy - no more exercise until Dr. Elizabeth’s had a chance to examine you.”
He sighed. “I take it that means no going to the roof either,” he said, as she slipped a blood pressure cuff around his arm and inflated it.
She shook her head, pressing the end of her stethoscope to the inside of his elbow. She listened in silence for a few seconds as she let the air out of the cuff. “Sorry,” she said finally, unstrapping it from his arm. “Not until we know what’s triggering these events.”
Nick nodded to show he understood, then closed his eyes so she wouldn’t see the tears welling in them. He had never felt so worthless. What was the point in living like this? He was hardly better off than Brian. In some ways, Nick had it worse. At least Brian didn’t seem to know what had happened to him. Nick hoped he didn’t, anyway. It was awful to be so helpless, confined to a bed, betrayed by his own body, with nothing to do but wait for his heart to give out on him again. He wouldn’t wish that feeling on anyone.
He rubbed his aching chest, trying to alleviate the pain that continued to throb through it. He couldn’t tell if it was coming from his cracked rib, his bruised sternum, or his broken heart, but in that moment, it was almost unbearable. He tried to take deep breaths, but couldn’t because it hurt too much. Squeezing his eyes even more tightly shut, he felt a few tears trickle down his cheeks. He didn’t even bother to brush them away. He was afraid to move, afraid of triggering another arrhythmia. Instead, he let the tears flow as he thought about his family, focusing on the familiar faces he’d seen in his dreams. He had to stay alive long enough to see his wife and son again in real life. Lauren. Odin. He chanted their names in his head, over and over again, drawing strength from them as he tried to distract himself from the pain.
***
