Blue Sky Days (29 page)

“Emma, honey, it’s Sam.” His voice carried a sense of urgency that made me sit up quickly and grope unconsciously in the dark for Daisy’s hand. “I’ve been trying to get you all night, but the line’s been busy so I finally thought to try Daisy’s cell phone. Emma, the hospital called me and said Nicholas woke up coughing blood, and has a fever of a hundred and four. Do you think you can come to the hospital?”

I was already out of bed, signaling silently to Daisy to get dressed before starting to pull my pants on with my free hand. “We’ll be there as soon as we can. Tell Nicholas to hang on and I’ll be right there.” I snapped the cell phone shut and tucked it in the pocket of my jeans.

I ran downstairs, shoving my head and arms into a shirt as I went. I remembered that I had been using the wall phone earlier that night when I talked to my mother. I ran into the kitchen and looked at the phone that was lying slightly askew on the cradle. When I had slammed the phone down after my conversation with my mother, the impact must have made it bounce back off the hook, and that’s why Sam hadn’t been able to get in touch with me.

“Damn it!” I yelled, nearly throwing the phone across the room. Anger and fear warred inside me, turning my stomach sour.

Wiping tears from my eyes with an impatient hand, I knocked the phone back into place, grabbed Daisy’s car keys from the kitchen table, and met her in the front hall. Daisy took the keys from me, and we both broke into a run to reach her car.

Having broken the speed limit and several other laws to get to the hospital, Daisy and I arrived less than an hour later. We got off the elevator and I ran straight for Nicholas’s room. As we suited up in the disposable garb from a trolley in the hallway, I peered in the window built into the door. Sam was standing on one side of the bed, and Doctor Roy was on the other, listening to Nicholas’s chest with a stethoscope and making marks on a chart.

When Roy stepped out of the way and I got my first look at Nicholas, my heart sank. He looked so much worse than he had just a few hours before when I’d left the hospital. His haggard appearance—sunken cheeks and eyes, gray skin, dark purple circles under his eyes—made him appear older, and he looked small and fragile lying there in his hospital bed.

I stepped into the room. When Nicholas saw me, he tried to say my name but nothing came out so he held out his hand.

I crossed the room to stand by his bed. “Hi baby. How are you feeling?” Now that I was closer, I could see the thin sheen of sweat that covered his brow and beaded on his upper lip.

Nicholas looked at Roy, who looked almost as weary as Nicholas. “Nicholas has a lung infection. Because his system is run down from the chemo, the infection seems to be spreading fast. We won’t know more until we get the latest set of tests back, but we’ve started him on drugs to fight the infection.”

Nicholas was watching my face closely, his eyes appearing huge in his thin, ashen face. This wasn’t good and we both knew it. What Roy hadn’t said was that an infection like this could kill Nicholas.

I was afraid to speak. I didn’t trust that my voice would work past the lump that had formed in my throat. Not caring that the floor was cold and hard, or that Roy, Sam, and Daisy were watching with worried eyes, I knelt on the floor and lowered my head onto Nicholas’s chest. I closed my eyes and listened to his slow but steady heartbeat as he moved his hand in a gentle caress through my hair and over my face. With every raspy breath he took, I tried harder and harder not to cry.

*****

Almost a week passed, and Nicholas’s infection continued to get worse. Roy temporarily stopped the chemo treatments so the drugs for the infection could do their job.

Only they weren’t doing their job.

Nicholas was on oxygen all the time now, and Roy was beginning to look frantic. Even when we reassured him that we knew he was doing his best, he told us repeatedly that he was doing everything he could. Roy had another doctor take over his patients in Riverview, and he moved to the doctors’ temporary living quarters in the hospital so he could be on call for Nicholas at all times. I had known before that he was invested in Nicholas’s recovery, but he was going so far beyond anything any of us expected.

Near the end of the week, Roy came rushing into the family lounge where Daisy, Sam, and I were eating dinner, and told us about an experimental drug a fellow doctor had sent him information on. He explained to us that it wasn’t covered under Nicholas’s health insurance, and when he showed us the form with the cost of the drug, I thought I would go into cardiac arrest.

Sam left the lounge immediately and began making calls. Daisy and I sat huddled together on the love seat clutching each other’s hands until our knuckles were white. When Sam returned, the defeated look on his face made my hands go slack in Daisy’s.

“I don’t see how we can come up with the money,” he told us. He opened his mouth to say something else, but then closed it and turned away, his face reddening with the effort to hold back tears.

“You would be able to if you hadn’t invested in the gallery,” Daisy said. Her voice was flat and hollow, and when I looked at her, her face had become ghastly white.

“There’s no way we could have known this would happen, Daisy.” Sam crossed the room and knelt in front of us, taking one of Daisy’s hands, then one of mine, and holding on tight. “I can’t regret investing in the gallery. It’s your dream. There’s absolutely no way we could have known we’d need that money to…” His voice trailed off, but his unspoken words rang in my mind.

To save Nicholas. There’s no way we could have known we’d need that money to save Nicholas. To save his life. Every day that he’s off the chemo is another day the cancer has a chance to spread. And every day he has that infection, he’s another day closer to dying.

A choked sob escaped my lips, and I stood abruptly. “I need to get out of here,” I said. “I’ll be back.” All I wanted to do was get in my car and drive, but I knew that wasn’t a good idea. Driving while distracted and worried is like driving drunk—your reflexes are slower, your judgment is impaired, your mind is unfocused. I didn’t need to get into an accident on top of everything else that was happening.

I bundled up in my coat, scarf, mittens, and boots, before making my way through the hospital and out the back doors. A light layer of snow covered the ground, hiding the plants and flowers Nicholas and I had enjoyed that fall. Everything had turned so ugly and dead-looking when the flowers died and the trees lost their leaves, but covered in snow that sparkled from the light of the full moon and the hospital’s recessed flood lights, it looked beautiful, almost magical.

I thought of Nicholas and how much he would love it out here on a night like this. I could imagine him pointing things out and encouraging me to get my camera to take pictures.

I brushed the snow off our favourite bench and sat down, too numb to feel the icy cold from the stone or the tears that seeped from my eyes and froze on my cheeks. My mind raced with ways to come up with the money for the drug that could save Nicholas. I could sell my car, but that would take time. I had an emergency credit card that I’d never had to use—I could withdraw money from that, but it wouldn’t be nearly enough.

I’d gone through almost all my savings since moving to Riverview, especially once Daisy and I decided to open the gallery and I had to buy equipment and invest money for repairs and other business expenses.

I closed my eyes and pressed my palms to the lids until stars erupted in the darkness. There was a way, there had to be a way. We would figure something out. We had to—Nicholas’s life depended on it.

*****

Daisy, Sam, and I spent most of the next day making phone calls. We had come up with a small chunk of the money by pooling our savings, but it wasn’t enough.

I called home, hoping my parents would be able to help. My mother, very cool and distant after our last conversation, told me that my father was away on business, unreachable, and she just couldn’t see giving me that kind of money without his consent.

“Daddy would give me that money in a heartbeat, and you know it!” I cried angrily.

“I’m sorry, Emma, but I just don’t have the authority to transfer that much money from his accounts without his approval.” She sounded almost bored on the other end, and I could picture her examining her perfectly manicured nails.

I knew what she said wasn’t true. I also knew she thought I was exaggerating Nicholas’s condition. For a moment, I even considered having Roy talk to her, but I was sure it wouldn’t do any good. Just as I was sure there was no repairing the damage this would do to our relationship. The man I loved was lying in the hospital dying, and she could save his life, but her own hurt feelings and childishness were preventing her from helping.

There was part of me that was surprised she didn’t want to play the hero, save the day by paying for the drugs that would save Nicholas’s life, so that in her mind, I’d be forever indebted to her. It was then I realized how far gone she was. Her selfishness had only ever hurt me before, but this was a whole new low for her.

In that moment, I didn’t care if I ever saw or spoke to her again. Without another word I simply hung up on her, resisting the urge to bang the phone in her ear repeatedly before doing so.

Later that day a small glimmer of hope arrived. It came at the same time from two unexpected sources. First, Maggie and Vince arrived at the hospital with a thick envelope full of money. They had cashed in their savings for their trip to New York, and wanted Nicholas to have it. We all argued with them, saying they had worked hard for that money and saved for a long time.

“Nicholas is so much more important than any trip,” Maggie said vehemently, her eyes shining with tears. “We don’t know how much it’ll help, but we had to try.” She thrust the envelope at me, closing her hands around mine and holding on tight before wrapping her arms around me.

I could feel her body shaking against mine, and when she buried her face in the side of my neck I felt hot tears run down my skin. I held onto her like my life depended on it, with my own face buried in her long hair, which still smelled like frost and snow from outside.

I don’t know how long we stood like that, but we broke apart when Daisy entered the lounge, her eyes bright. “We’re close,” she said. “I just got off the phone with Jimmy O’Hanlon, and he said that your postcards are selling so well he’s had to do a second print run. He’s sending you an advance. With that, our savings, and the money from Vince and Maggie, we almost have enough.”

Almost
. Unfortunately, almost wasn’t good enough in a situation like this. When I remained silent, my gaze locked with Daisy’s, her face fell, and I knew she had come to the same realization.

“We’ll figure something out, Em. I promise. We’re not going to let…he’s not going to…” Her voice broke and trailed off. We had all been dancing around it, unable to say the words, although it had been on all of our minds. Nicholas didn’t have much time.
  

Nicholas’s condition continued to deteriorate overnight and through the next day. He was still on oxygen, and with the sedative and pain medication Roy had given him, he spent most of the time sleeping. It was a relief in a way, because then he couldn’t see our worried faces, or watch us scramble to come up with money.

I had been sitting by his bed for an hour, holding his hand and talking to him, hoping that some part of him could hear my voice and find comfort in it. Every breath he took seemed to be an effort, even with the aid of the oxygen. Roy came in and suggested I go wait in the lounge with the others while he checked Nicholas over.

Daisy and Sam were sitting silently in the lounge, holding hands. When they saw me, they separated and Sam patted the space between them. I sat and they each took one of my shaking hands. We remained silent, staring ahead, waiting for Roy. We all knew something bad was coming.

When Roy finally appeared in the doorway, I jumped to my feet. His eyes were red and the look on his face made me feel sick to my stomach. “It doesn’t look good, guys,” he said, his voice quavering as he tried to hold back tears. “It…it doesn’t look like…without the medication, I don’t think he’s going to make it through the night.”

A loud buzzing filled the room, and it took me a minute to realize it wasn’t an external sound, but an internal one. My heart had started pounding so hard that my ears were buzzing and pulsing with the sound of my rushing blood, and it blocked out everything else. I felt dizzy, light-headed, numb, a million different things at once.

When my knees gave out, Daisy and Sam caught me before I hit the floor, and held on, their grips tight, fingers biting painfully into my skin. But I didn’t feel it, not really. I was too busy replaying Roy’s words over and over in my head.

I lurched forward and grabbed Roy’s shirt, yanking him close. “No,” I said desperately, trying to smother the hysteria that was rising inside me. Some part of me worried that Nicholas would hear me, even though I knew it wasn’t possible. “No, you’re wrong. You’re wrong! He’s not going to die!”

Roy gently pried my fingers from his shirt, his eyes never leaving mine. When he finally freed my white-knuckled grasp, he put his arms around me, murmuring words I couldn’t hear. His voice was soothing, and his touch was gentle as he ran his hand down my hair and over my back, again and again.

I could feel his body shaking with silent sobs, but when he spoke, his voice was quiet and controlled. “I don’t want to believe it either. And I didn’t want to be the one to tell you. But nothing is working against the infection and it’s spread so much in such a short time. There’s just nothing else we can do, Emma. I’m so sorry.”

I clung to him and sobbed uncontrollably until Daisy pulled me away and led me down the hall to the visitor’s washroom. Without a word, she pushed me gently until I sat on the closed lid of the toilet, then she wet a paper towel with cool water and ran it over my face. She pushed my hair back, gathering it up and securing it with the elastic she always kept around her wrist.