Blue Sky Days (30 page)

She had somehow managed to avoid my eyes that entire time, but she met them then, and I almost wished she hadn’t. They were so full of sorrow and pain it made my heart ache even more. I wasn’t the only one who loved Nicholas. Daisy had known him most of his life, as had Maggie, Vince, and Roy, and of course Sam wasn’t only Nicholas’s father, he was his friend.

The thought of losing Nicholas had hysteria building inside me again. Daisy gripped my arms and took a few deep breaths until I did the same. I couldn’t break down right then and I knew it. It wasn’t going to do anyone any good.

As we left the restroom I realized Daisy hadn’t said a word since Roy had entered the lounge. I wondered if she, too, had a lump in her throat that made it hard to speak. Or if she worried that when she opened her mouth, the only sound that would come out would be one long, mournful wail that would never end. That was how I felt. I wanted to cry again, but was afraid if I started, I’d never stop.

“I think we should take turns being with him all night,” Sam said when we reentered the lounge. “That way each of us…” His voice broke and tears slipped slowly down his cheeks. “That way each of us can say goodbye to him.”

I wanted to lash out, scream at him, demand that he tell me how he could have given up, how he could possibly be suggesting we say goodbye to Nicholas. But as he met my eyes, I saw the same pain and sorrow I had seen moments before in Daisy’s eyes, along with a weariness that had nothing to do with exhaustion.

He had been through this before, years ago, with his wife. If Nicholas died, he would have nobody but Daisy and me, and I wasn’t going to do anything to alienate him. We all needed each other far too much.

Because Sam was more collected than the rest of us, I suggested he go into Nicholas’s room first. He opened his mouth as if to argue, but then simply nodded, kissed my cheek, then Daisy’s, and followed Roy down the hall to get suited up in his paper visitor’s wardrobe.

I paced the lounge for a while until Daisy pulled me onto the couch beside her. She still hadn’t spoken a word. I was partly unsettled by this fact and partly comforted by it, because I knew she didn’t expect me to speak either.

I had never been the praying sort. My parents weren’t religious, and I had never even so much as said grace before coming to Riverview and growing accustomed to Sam giving thanks before all our dinners together. I wasn’t even really sure who I was praying to, but I prayed hard as I lay down next to Daisy, resting my head in her lap. I prayed for a miracle, because I knew that was what it was going to take for Nicholas to recover.

CHAPTER 19

Without meaning to, I must have drifted to sleep. The next thing I knew, I heard Sam and Daisy’s voices and then Sam was gently shaking me awake.

The lights had been turned off, and I glanced at the clock to see it was 3:30 am. I had been sleeping for nearly four hours. I felt a surge of panic, and when I sat up the room spun around me, making everything blurry. Anything could have happened in four hours. I had slept away precious time I could have spent with Nicholas—possibly the last hours and moments I would ever have with him.

When my eyes finally focused on Sam, my chest tightened painfully. His eyes were red and swollen, and his face was tear-stained. He looked as though he had aged fifteen years in the last four hours.

Wordlessly, he took my hand, and the panic inside threatened to suffocate me. I looked behind me and grabbed Daisy’s hand, and the three of us walked silently to Nicholas’s room.

A million thoughts ran through my head in the short walk: was he gone? What if I had missed my opportunity to say goodbye? What was I going to do without him, and how could I possibly survive? How could
any
of us survive? He was the heart and soul of our little makeshift family. I had been lost before meeting him, alone and confused and unsure of who I was or what I wanted, and he had shown me how life could be, how it
should
be.

As Sam opened the door I saw Roy leaning over Nicholas’s bed. The lump in my throat that never seemed to be far away returned. When he heard the door open, Roy stepped aside and I saw a new bag of IV fluids slowly making its way through the tubes and into Nicholas’s arm.

Nicholas still looked small and pale, but Roy’s tired eyes were smiling.

“We got the drug,” Roy said, his voice no more than a strained whisper.

“You…what? How?” I asked, stepping forward and gripping Roy’s arm.

“Just after you fell asleep, we had a last minute donation that was enough to cover the entire cost of the drug. It arrived about three hours ago and we started the IV right away. We tried to wake you, but you were so out of it, we decided to just leave you until the drug had a chance to work. Now we just have to hope…”

His voice trailed off, and once again, his unspoken words rang in my ears.
We just have to hope it’s not too late.
“All we can do now is continue to wait. But this is what we hoped for, what we wanted so badly. It’s like a miracle.”

I was tired and frazzled and relieved and so many other things, I nearly laughed. A miracle. I said a quick, silent prayer and promised that if Nicholas survived this I would never doubt miracles ever again as long as I lived.

“You can stay in here with him now,” Roy said. “Get some sleep if you can. I’ll be checking on him every half hour or so, and I’ll wake you if there’s any change.”

I nodded, unable to express my gratitude. I hugged him silently, then moved past him to hug Sam and Daisy. When they left, I closed the door and turned off the lights, leaving the room in darkness except for the glow from the monitors and machines, and a muted light that came in through the window.

I pulled a chair close to Nicholas’s bed and took his hand in both of mine. “You’re going to be all right, Nicholas. This drug is going to work. You’ll go back on the chemotherapy, and you’re going to get better. You’ll be in remission before you know it. We all need you and love you so much.
I
love you so much. I can’t wait to spend the rest of my life with you.”

I wasn’t sure if the fatigue had me imagining things, but I could have sworn Nicholas’s hand contracted in mine at that moment. I wanted to believe he could hear me, and was letting me know in some small way that he loved me too, and that he was going to fight with everything in him to get better and come back to us. To me.

I bent to kiss his hand, limp now in my own, then pressed a kiss to his cheek. “I’m going to be right here,” I said, leaning against the bed and resting my head on my arms. I fought sleep at first, jerking upright every few minutes until I remembered Roy’s promise to wake me if anything changed. I was sure he’d be in more than every half hour, and with that knowledge, I closed my eyes and welcomed sleep.

*****

That night and the following day were the longest of my life. After a few more hours of sleep, I woke up feeling edgy, anxiously checking Nicholas’s monitors every few minutes. I didn’t understand what the numbers and lines meant, but I was watching for a change—any sign that meant the medicine was doing its work.

Roy was in and out regularly. He looked as awful as I felt; his hair was standing on end from running his hands through it so many times, and his eyelids looked so heavy I was amazed he could keep his eyes open at all.

At noon, Sam came into the room and told me he would sit with Nicholas while I went to get some lunch with Daisy. I started to tell him I wasn’t hungry and that I didn’t want to leave Nicholas’s room, but my stomach growled, the sound of it cutting off my words before I could speak.

I found Daisy waiting in the hall, and the two of us went down to the cafeteria. I managed to eat most of my beef barley soup and half a roll before my nerves got the best of me and I felt I had to return upstairs.

My eyes were sore and gritty, and I was so tired it was a struggle to stay awake. Finally, I leaned forward, resting my head on Nicholas’s bed as I had the night before, and closed my eyes. It felt like only moments passed before I wished I hadn’t fallen asleep.

I had the most awful nightmare where I woke up, looked down at Nicholas, and realized he wasn’t breathing. I shook him, saying his name over and over until my voice was a hoarse cry and doctors ran into the room to pronounce him dead. It was one of those nightmares that feel so real you’re not sure if you’re actually asleep at all. You struggle to wake up, maybe even dream that you do wake up, but you’re trapped in that dream world, smothered and drowning.

I thought I heard someone say my name, and I finally awoke with a gasp. My eyes were level with Nicholas’s chest, and it took me a minute to grasp through the haze of the dream and the blurriness of my eyes that his chest was slowly rising and falling. Blinking my eyes in an attempt to clear the nightmare, I realized there was light pressure on the back of my head.

When my gaze slid up to Nicholas’s face and met those true-blue eyes, I thought I was still dreaming. Only now, the dream had turned sweet and the nightmare was a quickly fading memory.

“Nicholas?” I whispered, my voice sounding like a plea and a prayer.

He pulled the oxygen mask from over his face, letting it rest around his neck. His lips curved into the barest hint of a smile and I knew for sure I wasn’t dreaming. Not even the best dream in the world could compare to my reality at that moment.

“You didn’t think I’d give up the fight, did you?” His voice was a rough whisper, barely audible from little use in the last week, but it was the most beautiful sound I’d ever heard.

A nearly-hysterical laugh bubbled up in my throat and escaped through my mouth. I realized I was crying when he reached up and wiped my cheeks, his hand lingering on my face.

I clutched his hand, pressing it to my face, unable to believe he was awake and looking at me with those beautiful eyes that I loved so much. He was alive. Just hours before, I was wondering how I would survive his death.

He cleared his throat—a dry, scratchy sound that made me swallow hard in sympathy. When he motioned to the water pitcher beside his bed, I poured him a glass with trembling hands and held the straw to his lips while he took tentative little sips, then long pulls until the glass was empty. I refilled it and we repeated the process before he eased back on the pillows and looked up at me.

“We thought…I thought you’d…” I couldn’t say the words. I didn’t know if he was aware how close he’d come to dying.

“You should have known that a little life-threatening infection wouldn’t stop me,” he whispered, his tired eyes dancing with mirth. I laughed and smacked his arm without thinking, and he moaned in mock pain. “Hey, I almost just died, I think I deserve a kiss, not a slap.”

“You deserve the slap for making us worry like that,” I said as I lowered my lips to his. It was a bare meeting of lips, but I never wanted to pull away. The night before, I had tried to remember my last kiss with Nicholas, worried it really would be our last.

Nicholas struggled to take a breath, his brow creasing in pain. I asked if he was okay, and was just replacing the oxygen mask over his face when a gasp from the doorway had my head snapping up to see Daisy standing at the threshold.

Her red-rimmed eyes were wide with shock and her hand covered her open mouth. “Sam! Roy!” she yelled, stepping back into the hallway. “He’s awake! Get in here!”

The next few minutes were a confusing whirl as Nicholas was poked, prodded, and checked over thoroughly by Roy and a team of nurses. Sam and Daisy pulled me into a corner of the room where the three of us stood huddled together, arms wrapped tightly around each other, unable and unwilling to take our eyes off Nicholas.

When the nurses finally cleared out, Roy ushered us forward to stand around Nicholas’s bed. “I know I’m supposed to be a man of science, all logic and reason, but it really is a miracle. Without that donation, we wouldn’t have gotten the medication on time, and without
it
…”

I closed my eyes, not wanting to hear the words. It had been so close, it felt almost like jinxing it to say the words aloud:
without it, Nicholas would be dead right now
.

Nicholas gripped my hand hard and my eyelids flew open. For the first time, I noticed they had replaced his oxygen mask with a tube that went across his face and into both nostrils. “I hear I have you to thank for making the call that saved my life.”

“What?” I looked from Nicholas to Roy in confusion. I had made dozens of phone calls in the last couple of days, but none of them had gotten me very far. Nobody had been able to donate enough money for the drug.

“It’s true,” Roy said, smiling at me and looking over my shoulder. I turned to follow his gaze and saw my dad standing in the doorway, pulling on a visitor’s gown. “We all have your father to thank for paying for the experimental drug that saved Nicholas’s life.”

My dad crossed the room and put his arms around me, pulling me close. “When I got home and your mother told me what was going on, I got right back in my car and drove here. Dr. Bernard told me there was still time, and I knew I could donate the money, so there was no question. The drug had arrived by the time I made the transaction and signed the papers.”

I was speechless. My dad had donated the money without any qualms, whereas my mother had balked when I’d all but begged for her help.

“Mr. Ward,” Nicholas said, struggling to sit up and reaching for my father’s hand. “I don’t know how I can ever thank you for what you did.”

My dad shook his head and I almost smiled despite myself when I noticed his ears turning pink. “There’s no need to thank me, son,” he said, releasing his hold on me to cover Nicholas’s hand with both of his. “You love my daughter. That’s enough for me.”

Nicholas’s gaze moved to me, and the love there was so intense it made my heart constrict in my chest. “I do love your daughter. More than anything.”

“Which proves a theory of mine,” Roy said, stepping forward and slinging an arm across my shoulders. “It’s against all medical odds that the drug worked this fast. I think I was right all along—your love and the love of Nicholas’s friends and family is what got him through this. The drugs may have worked on the infection, but it was your love that’s kept him alive.”