It was getting light out when we finally took a cab back to the hotel. Nick had dozed in the emergency room, while we waited for his lab results, but I had been awake for twenty straight hours and could barely keep my eyes open for the short taxi ride. When we pulled up in front of the hotel, I remembered how we’d walked out of it, his arm over my shoulders, mine wrapped around his waist, practically holding him up. I half wished he’d do the same for me; as I climbed out of the cab, I felt dead on my feet.
But Nick looked just as exhausted. Together, we trudged into the lobby. Thankfully, it was deserted this time of night – morning, rather. If any of the fans who’d crowded it before had stuck around, waiting for us to return, they’d given up by now. Aside from the front desk clerk, we didn’t run into anyone on our way upstairs to the room.
Once we were inside, I made a beeline for the bathroom. There were towels strewn across the floor. I shuddered, remembering the image of Nick lying there. The tub was still full of water, cold now. I pulled the lever that opened the drain, and the water gurgled as it went down. The noise reminded me of why I had come into the bathroom in the first place, and I sat down on the toilet to relieve myself.
When I was done, I went out to the sink to wash my hands. I grimaced at my reflection in the mirror. My face, without makeup, looked pale and haggard. My hair hung limply around my shoulders. I was embarrassed to think I had been out in public looking like that, in my pajamas no doubt, but an emergency’s an emergency. The hospital had surely seen worse. The nice part was, I was already ready for bed, so once I’d dried my hands, I headed straight for it.
Nick was already there, sitting up on his side of the big bed we were sharing again. The blackout shades were drawn over the windows, but he had the TV on and was flipping channels. “Aren’t you sleepy?” I asked, surprised that he would feel like watching TV.
He shrugged. “I’m too wired to sleep right now.”
“I thought that was the problem earlier,” I replied automatically, before I could hold myself back. “All that caffeine should be out of your system by now.”
His face reddened, and he shot me a sheepish grin. “Sorry… about all this…”
I wanted to tell him that he should be sorry, for putting both me and himself through all that panic. I wanted to tell him he was an idiot, and that if he didn’t start taking better care of himself, I wasn’t going to be able to take care of him, either. But I was too tired to speak my mind, so all I said as I climbed into bed next to him was, “It’s done. We’ll talk in the morning.”
He looked relieved. “Thanks. For everything.”
I looked over at him. Idiot or not, it was hard not to feel sorry for him. He had taken off his shirt to go to bed, and his bare chest showed the evidence of all that he’d gone through that night. His port was covered with a fresh bandage from where they’d stuck him to draw his blood and give him the fluids and medications his body needed. Under the port, in the place where you could still see the remnants of one of his feet tattoos, was a large, rectangular, red outline, branded into his skin. There was a matching one on the other side of his chest, underneath his left nipple. They were defibrillator burns, the exact shape of the paddles that had sent a shockwave across his heart to stop it in its tracks and make it slow down. They looked raw and painful, and I hoped they’d serve as a reminder to Nick not to let this happen again.
The results of his labwork had been pretty predictable: there was enough caffeine in his system to cause even the healthiest of hearts to race. It probably wasn’t just caffeine alone, but the fact that he was also dehydrated, that had triggered the arrhythmia in his weakened heart. Between the alcohol at the after-party the night before and the Red Bull before the show, he hadn’t been drinking enough water, and his electrolytes were all out of whack. I felt partly responsible for that; if only I’d kept a closer eye on what he was putting into his body.
I wasn’t sure how much good I could have done, though. Nick did what he wanted, regardless of what I said. His blood counts were low again, too, and the doctor had wanted to admit him to the hospital for further monitoring and a blood transfusion. Nick had refused. “I’m tired,” he’d told the doctor irritably, after we’d been in the ER for several hours. “I just wanna go back to my hotel and sleep it off. We’re driving to California tomorrow, anyway.”
In the end, there hadn’t been a thing Dr. Harrison or I could say to change his mind; he had signed himself out against medical advice, promising to follow up with his cardiologist after the tour. I had the feeling it was an empty promise, made just to get the ER doctor off his back. He didn’t seem to listen much to his oncologist, so why would he care about what any other doctor said – or me, for that matter? The sheepish “thanks” was probably all the acknowledgment I’d get.
“You’re welcome,” I told him shortly, before I slid beneath the covers and rolled onto my side, away from him. I closed my eyes to block out the flickering light of the TV. The sound was on low; it wouldn’t bother me. I was so tired, I was sure I’d be asleep in a matter of minutes. But sleep didn’t come right away. I was overtired, and my head hurt so bad it was pounding, but inside it, my thoughts were still racing. I kept hearing the thud of Nick collapsing… feeling his erratic pulse beneath my fingertips… seeing his body jerk with the shock of electricity. I couldn’t relax enough to fall asleep, and after I’d lain there awhile, I realized it might not only be because I kept reliving the last few hours, but because I hadn’t felt Nick relax yet, either.
When I rolled over to check on him, he was still sitting up, his back straight against the headboard, his eyes glued to the TV, his hand resting on his chest. “You okay?” I whispered.
He looked over at me. His eyes were glazed with fatigue, and it seemed to take him a few seconds to focus on me and process what I’d said. Finally, he answered, “Yeah…” He sounded uncertain, though, and the way he left the word hanging in the air, I sensed there was more he wanted to say. A few more seconds passed before the “but” came. “But… what if it happens again?”
I understood then. He was afraid. I saw the fear in his eyes. He liked to play tough guy, with his whole “too cool for cancer” act, but this close call had not just shaken his confidence; it had rocked him to the core. He was scared to sleep, scared his heart might start going haywire again. My exasperation with him melted into sympathy.
“I don’t think it will,” I said honestly, pulling myself up to sit beside him. “Some people do have episodes of SVT that come and go, but usually they have something wrong with the electrical conduction system in their heart. You don’t have that. Yours was triggered by overexerting yourself with too much caffeine and not enough fluids in your system. Your heart was trying to tell your body to slow down and take care of itself.”
He smiled sheepishly again at the warning look I gave him. “I know… I was stupid.”
I nodded. “Thank you for admitting that.”
He chuckled, then shook his head, his expression sobering. “Seriously… I thought I was having a heart attack or something. When I saw those paddles coming for me, I thought that was it… that I was gonna die.” He shuddered, rubbing the spot on the left side of his chest where the defibrillator paddle had burned him. Maybe he didn’t remember the shock itself, but he hadn’t forgotten the fear that came before it.
I felt sorry for him, but I hoped this would be the wake-up call he needed. “It was scary for me, too,” I said. “You’re lucky it wasn’t life-threatening, but it just goes to show what happens when you push yourself too far. Your whole body’s weakened from the chemo, Nick… it can’t handle all the stress you’re putting it under, trying to finish this tour.” I took a deep breath, knowing he was going to hate what I was about to say, yet again, but I said it anyway: “You need to talk to the guys. You need to tell them what’s going on.”
He shook his head, but slowly, not as automatically as he usually did. It seemed like he was at least considering what I had said. But when he answered, he sounded just as stubborn as ever. “I can’t. I don’t want to. Not yet. This leg of the tour’s almost over,” he added, as if that would justify his bad decisions. “I don’t want us to cancel it with only a few shows left… and that’s what would happen if I told them now. They’d freak out, and we’d have to cancel the rest of the shows, and all this would’ve been for nothing. I started this tour, and I wanna finish it.”
I sighed. It was hard being his nurse and his fellow singer, his friend and his fan all at the same time. As a medical professional, I knew he was being irrational, jeopardizing his health for the sake of a few more shows, but as a musician, I understood how much those last few shows meant to him. As a friend, I felt for him, caught in the middle of a tug-of-war between his common sense (or lack thereof) on one side and his passion for entertaining on the other. And as a fan, though I wished he would tell the guys, his brothers, I could see why he was delaying that moment as long as possible.
It would kill the other guys to know what he was going through. They’d probably be angry at him, at first, for hiding it from them so long, but then they would rally around him. Of course they would; they were his family, and he was their little brother. That was exactly why it would be so hard for them to watch him go through cancer treatment. In a way, Nick had been protecting them from that burden the whole time. This tour wasn’t just for him or for the fans; it was for Brian, AJ, and Howie, too.
I swallowed the lump in my throat and said, “Okay… let’s make a deal, then.”
He eyed me skeptically. “What kind of deal?”
I took a deep breath, trying to get my tired brain to focus enough to choose my words carefully. “I will do my very best to get you through the last few shows. But you have to take care of yourself. That means getting as much rest as you can and drinking enough water. No more alcohol, and no more caffeine. Alcohol’s just going to make you feel worse, and caffeine doesn’t give you any actual energy; all it does is cause an adrenaline rush, which activates your body’s ‘fight or flight’ response – the feeling you get when you’re in a high-stress situation. By chugging caffeine all day, you kept your body in a constant state of emergency… no wonder your heart was racing. You can’t do that anymore. Got it?”
I felt like I was lecturing a child, and with his wide-eyed expression, Nick looked almost little boyish. I was glad to see him nod, like he was taking me seriously.
“If you drink one more drop of booze or Red Bull on this tour,” I went on, looking him right in the eye, “then our deal is off, and I will tell the guys. Everything.”
I wasn’t above threatening him anymore. Tough love… he needed it. If I couldn’t convince him to give up this whole charade, the least I could do was put the fear of God into him so that he could fulfill it without killing himself.
Nick looked sufficiently rattled, as he nodded to accept my terms. “Deal,” he mumbled, his cheeks flushing.
I offered him my sweetest smile. “Good.”
Nick smiled back, then tipped his head to the side. “Rockstar Energy Drink’s okay, though, right?”
My mouth dropped open, and I was halfway through saying, “Are you kidding me?” before I realized his smile had turned into a wicked little smirk. He was messing with me.
With a quick wink, he replied, “Yes, I’m kidding.”
“Ugh,” I groaned, flopping my head back onto my pillow. “I’m gonna go to sleep now. We can talk more in the morning, okay?” It already is morning, my tired brain thought.
“Yeah, okay,” Nick agreed. He turned off the TV and scooted down under the covers so that he was lying on his back, his arms folded over his chest in that odd sleeping position of his.
Almost like a mummy in a coffin, I thought, then immediately wished I hadn’t. I lay back down and rolled over again, closing my eyes and trying to fall asleep.
I was almost out when I heard Nick’s voice drift out of the darkness. “I can still feel my heart beating…”
Forced out of my sleepy, semi-conscious state, I muttered, “That’s nice… glad to know it hasn’t stopped.”
“It’s freaking me out…”
“Is it going really fast again?”
“No… not like before. I just… don’t like feeling it.”
I sighed and rolled over to face him. “It’s just because you’re concentrating on it. After what happened tonight, you’re more aware of it than usual. Try to think about something else.”
“I can’t. I keep thinking about everything that happened. Like, what if you hadn’t been here?”
A shiver ran through me that had nothing to do with the air conditioning. What if I hadn’t? I wondered. Hopefully, he would have woken up alone on the bathroom floor and been scared enough to get himself some help. Even if he hadn’t, his heart probably would have reverted to a normal rhythm on its own after awhile, once the caffeine wore off. Probably. But sometimes the type of tachycardia he’d had turned into a more dangerous arrhythmia, a lethal one. He could, potentially, have died. It was unlikely, but just thinking about it made me feel sick.
I knew Nick had to be feeling the same way. I remembered how anxious he’d sounded when he asked earlier, “But… what if it happens again?”
I sat up and turned on the light on my side of the bed. “Do you know how to take your pulse?” I asked.
“No… not really,” said Nick, sitting up, too.
"Your phone has a stopwatch, right?"
“Yeah…” He reached over and grabbed it off the bedside table.
“Set it for fifteen seconds,” I said, and he did. “Now give me your wrist.” He gave me his free hand, and I turned it palm up in mine. “You put your index and middle finger over the radial artery in your wrist, right… here,” I said, putting my fingers over the right place on his wrist to show him. “It’s usually pretty easy to see in guys, especially ones with veiny arms like you, but you’ll know you’re in the right spot when you can feel the pulse under your fingers. Never use your thumb; it has its own pulse, so it’ll throw you off. Then you just count the beats for fifteen seconds and multiply that number by four. Here, you try, and I’ll time it.”
He handed me his phone, and I helped him guide his fingers to the right spot on his wrist. “Can you feel it?” I asked.
His brow was furrowed in deep concentration. “Yeah,” he said, “I feel it.”
“Okay, now start counting when I say when. Ready? Go.” I started the stopwatch on his phone and stayed quiet while he counted, his head bowed in concentration. His phone beeped at the end of the fifteen-second countdown, and I said, “Stop. How many beats?”
“I think twenty?”
“Oh, easy. Multiply that by four, and you’ll get the beats per minute.”
He looked up at the ceiling as he did the mental math. “So… eighty?”
I nodded. “Like I said, normal is anywhere from sixty to a hundred, so eighty’s right smack dab in the middle. See? You’re perfect.”
“Good,” he sighed, letting out a breath of relief.
I smiled. “Now if you’re worried, or you wake up and something doesn’t feel right, you can check your pulse. If it’s over a hundred when you’re just lying around like this, or if it doesn’t feel steady, wake me up or come get me.”
He nodded, looking more at ease. “Thanks. Again.”
“Sure,” I said, sliding down under the covers again. “Now stop worrying and try to get some sleep. You’ll be fine.”
“Okay,” he sighed, lying back down beside me. I felt the mattress move and the covers pull as he flopped around a few times, trying to get comfortable, but finally, he relaxed and got quiet and still. If he was still lying there awake, obsessing over his heartbeat, he didn’t bother me about it again.
I normally wouldn’t mind, but my head felt like it was pounding as hard as his heart had been earlier, and I was desperate for sleep. I closed my eyes and let my body relax again. While Nick may have fallen asleep counting beats, I drifted off to the steady sound of his breathing.
***
