“You had the exact same thing I had as a kid - bacterial endocarditis,” Brian explained.
“I guess I’ll have the exact same scar now, too, huh?” said Nick hoarsely, as he lowered his chin to look down the front of his hospital gown at the gauze dressing in the center of his chest. He wasn’t ready to see the incision hidden underneath it.
“Yeah… copycat.” Brian smirked. “You always did wanna be just like me. Now there’s one more thing we’ll have in common.”
“I’d rather have matching tattoos than matching scars,” grumbled Nick, stifling a cough.
“Remember to squeeze your pillow,” Lauren put in helpfully, patting the red, heart-shaped pillow they had given him in recovery to hold against his chest whenever he coughed or sneezed. Nick clutched it now as he coughed harder, his eyes watering as shockwaves of pain radiated through his chest. “You okay?” his wife asked when the coughing fit subsided, looking at him in concern.
Nick nodded, wiping his streaming eyes. “Could I have some more of those ice chips?” he choked out.
“Of course.” Lauren grabbed the styrofoam cup off his bed tray. “Here you go, babe,” she said, placing a piece of ice on his tongue.
“Thanks.” Nick sucked on it, savoring the coolness on the back of his sore throat.
Brian picked the conversation right back up where they had left off. “Scars are a lot like tattoos, though,” he pointed out. “They all come with a story. You know how self-conscious I used to be about my scar, but I’ve come to embrace it. It’s part of me now… just another chapter in my story.” He pulled down the neck of his t-shirt to show Nick the top of his own incision scar. “Besides,” he added, running his finger over the thin, white line, “it’s faded so much over time, it doesn’t really bother me anymore. I’ll get you some of that good cream I used to help mine heal.”
Nick nodded, forcing himself to smile as he replied, “Hey, chicks dig scars, right?”
He was trying to look on the bright side, but he saw a dark shadow cross over Brian’s face before Lauren chimed in, “You bet, babe. Battle scars are sexy.” She wiggled her brows, offering him a flirtatious smile, but Nick was watching Brian frown, a faraway expression on his friend’s face. He wondered what that was all about.
“How did you get away from those freaks?” he asked Brian, and that brought him back. Nick listened as Brian told his side of the story, starting from the beginning and finishing with his escape. Several times, Nick’s eyes filled with tears as Brian described being awake, but unable to move or respond in any way. “I knew you could hear me,” he told Brian, gripping the sides of his cough pillow tightly in his fists. He was filled with guilt and regret. “I should have realized what they were doing to us sooner. I could have disconnected the fucking IV drip and gotten us the hell out of there a lot sooner. God, I can’t believe how gullible I was to believe all the bullshit they fed me.”
“It’s not your fault, Nick,” said Brian, putting a hand on his shoulder. “You weren’t the only one they fooled. Heck, they had me convinced I really did have a spinal cord injury - and that you needed a heart transplant, too. How were either of us supposed to know otherwise when they were drugging us the entire time?”
Nick shook his head. “The whole thing’s my fault! You wouldn’t have flown to Key West in the first place if it wasn’t for me.”
“Don’t you dare start beating yourself up over this!” Brian’s tone was surprisingly sharp. “Dani called me to come down there, not you. This was all her doing, and she’s the one we should blame,” he said firmly. “Besides, I’m fine. I clearly don’t have a spinal cord injury or brain damage, so no permanent damage done.”
But Nick knew that wasn’t true. “What about that?” he asked, pointing to the bandage at the base of Brian’s throat. “I’m the one who gave them permission to do that to you.”
“What, this?” Brian peeled back the bandage to show Nick the hole they had cut into his neck. The wound appeared to be healing well; it had completely closed on the inside, but the outside was still open, the skin around it bright pink. It looked painful, but Brian pretended like it didn’t bother him. “Just another battle scar,” he said with a crooked smile.
Nick swallowed hard, his own throat hurting from the breathing tube. “I’m so sorry, Bri,” he whispered. “I wish you hadn’t been dragged into this.”
“I wish neither one of us had been dragged into this,” Brian replied, “but I believe everything happens for a reason. God must have had a plan for us, Nick. Maybe He wanted to bring us closer together, or maybe He just meant to test us and make us stronger.”
Nick had never been particularly religious, but he had always admired Brian’s faith. He had learned a lot from Brian over the years, and he was listening to him now.
“We may not know the reason why until we meet Him in Heaven,” Brian went on, “but in the meantime, what’s done is done. There’s no point in dwelling on the past. We can’t change what happened. All we can do now is focus on the future, on getting better and moving on from this, stronger than we were before. I know it’s not gonna be easy, but I’m gonna be here to help you.” He gave Nick’s shoulder a squeeze. “We can get through this together.”
Nick finally nodded, but for the first time since he had woken up, he was hit with the full weight of what Elizabeth and Dani had done to him. It rested heavily on his chest, which was starting to hurt more as his pain medication wore off. The floating sensation he had felt before was gone now; his feet were firmly back on the ground. As the fog around him lifted, he began to get a clearer picture of where he was and what he would be facing in the coming days and weeks. He felt overwhelmed as he realized what a long road of recovery lay ahead of him, not only physically, but emotionally as well. He knew how lucky to have someone to walk that road with him. “Thanks,” he said, a lump rising in his throat as he looked from Brian to Lauren. “Thank you both for being here.”
“You bet, buddy,” replied Brian.
Lauren offered him a tender smile. Softly, she said, “I wouldn’t want to be anywhere else.”
As he met her misty blue eyes, Nick felt another wave of guilt wash over him. There was a lot left unsaid between him and his wife, things they still needed to talk about and work through together. He wasn’t sure whether Lauren had forgiven him for leaving her to go back on tour or was simply choosing to forget about their fight for the time being, in light of what had happened to him. But he had to wonder, would she still stand by him if she knew what had had done with Dani? Would she take him back when she found out he had been unfaithful to her?
Brian must have noticed the way Nick and Lauren were looking at each other because he suddenly stood up and stretched. “I’m gonna go take a little walk, give the other guys a call to tell them how you’re doing, and let you two have some time alone,” he told them. “Y’all need anything before I leave?”
Nick shook his head, knowing there was nothing Brian could do to relieve his pain. For that, he had to rely on his PCA pump, a computerized device that was programmed to deliver a dose of morphine through his IV with the push of a button. Picking up the controller his nurse had given him earlier, Nick pressed the button and waited for the numb, floaty feeling to return.
“Thanks, but I think we’re okay for now,” Lauren said, beaming up at Brian.
Are we? Nick wondered, glancing again at his wife. Had his brush with death brought them back together for good, or would things be different once he got better?
“All right. I’ll be back soon,” said Brian. “Hang in there, bro.” As he leaned in to give Nick a light hug, he whispered into his ear, “Don’t worry… she doesn’t know anything about you and Dani.”
Nick felt his face redden as Brian drew back. His best friend had always been able to read him like a book. “Thanks, Frick,” he replied softly. He felt as if Brian had just given him permission to keep his little fling with Dani a secret from his wife… but was that what he wanted to do? Lauren was one of the few people in his life he trusted completely, and she trusted him, too. He had never kept secrets from her before. Starting now didn’t seem like the best way to fix his marriage, but telling her the truth could ruin it forever. He didn’t know what to do.
While Nick was contemplating this, his nurse, Christina, came in to check on him. “How are you feeling?” she asked as she looked at his monitor, making notes on the tablet she carried around with her.
“I think my pain meds are starting to wear off. I’m pretty sore,” he admitted.
“On a scale of one to ten, how bad is the pain?” the nurse wanted to know.
Nick never knew the right number to say. “I dunno… like a six, maybe?”
“Have you been using your PCA pump?”
He nodded. “I just pushed the button a few minutes ago.”
“Good,” said Christina, looking up from her tablet with a satisfied smile. “No need to be a hero. Pain will only lead to setbacks and slow your healing, so go ahead and push that button whenever you start to feel it. It’s impossible for you to overdose - the pump is programmed to only deliver a certain amount of morphine at a time. Once you hit the maximum dose, it won’t give you any more for a while, no matter how many times you push the button.”
Nick nodded again. She had gone over all of this with him earlier when she had first given him the controller for the pump.
“Where exactly does it hurt?” she asked next.
“My chest, mostly, but my back and shoulders are sore, too.” He wanted to roll his shoulders to work out the tension, but knew it would tug too much on the muscles in his chest.
Christina pursed her lips as she considered his answer. “Let’s try raising the head of your bed to sit you up a little bit,” she said after a moment. “The change in position might help relieve the pain in your back and shoulders by taking some of the pressure off them. You’ve been lying on your back in this bed for a long time.”
“Okay,” Nick agreed. He was willing to try anything to alleviate his discomfort.
Christina pushed a button on the side of his bed to adjust the settings, and he felt it begin to move beneath his upper body, slowly inclining until he was at a forty-five degree angle. “How does that feel?” she asked.
Nick was light-headed, but it felt good to be on the same level as Lauren again, to be able to gaze into her eyes without her having to look down or lean over him. “Not bad,” he answered. “I’m a little dizzy, but my back does feel better.”
“Let me check your blood pressure to make sure it didn’t drop too much,” said Christina, strapping a cuff around his arm. She sat down on a stool next to his bed and took his hand in hers, turning it palm up. Slipping her stethoscope into her ears, she pressed the end to the inside of his elbow and inflated the cuff until it was tight around his arm.
Nick was triggered by the sound of her squeezing the bulb to pump up the cuff. He took a deep breath and tried to stay calm, imagining his blood pressure skyrocketing as he was reminded of Dani. It was hard for him to put his trust in a new set of nurses and doctors after what he had been through, but he told himself this time was different. Lauren was here now, and he knew she would never let them do anything to hurt him.
Christina let the air out of the cuff, listening in concentration as it deflated. “One hundred over seventy - right in the normal range,” she said with a smile, unstrapping it from his arm. She seemed nice enough, but then, so had Dani. “The rest of your vitals look good, too,” she added, as she recorded his latest blood pressure reading on his chart. “You’re doing great, Nick. Let me know if you need anything, okay?”
He nodded. “Thanks.”
After the nurse left, Lauren looked at Nick. “I hate to see you hurting,” she said sympathetically, stroking his hand. “Is there anything I can do to make you more comfortable?”
“Just having you here helps,” he told her truthfully. “You can take my mind off it. Talk to me. Tell me more about what’s been going on. How’s Odin? Is he back home?”
She nodded. “My dad’s staying at the house with him. We FaceTime every night before he goes to bed. It’s been hard for him, not having me there, but Dad says he’s doing okay. I don’t know if I made the right decision or not, leaving him behind,” she admitted, raking a hand through her hair. “I didn’t want to disrupt his whole routine by bringing him out here with me, but I had no idea when I left how long I would be gone. It’s been a whole month since I’ve seen him in person. I miss him so much...”
Nick wished he had the strength to reach up and wipe away the tears that had welled up in her eyes, but the slightest movement made the muscles in his chest wall scream with pain. “Me too, but think you made the right decision,” he reassured her, though a lump rose in his throat as he thought of his son. He hadn’t seen Odin since he had left for the North American leg of the tour, which felt like a lifetime ago. “As much as I wish he was here, it’s probably better that he’s not. I wouldn’t want him to see me this way, with all these wires and tubes. It would only scare him.” He swallowed hard. “I just hope he hasn’t forgotten me.”
“Are you kidding? Of course he hasn’t forgotten you,” she assured him with a rueful smile. “He asks about you every time we talk.”
“What have you been telling him?” Nick wondered.
“Well, while you were missing, I just pretended you were still on tour,” said Lauren, shrugging sheepishly. “I didn’t know how to tell him his daddy disappeared without scaring him. But once you were found, I started giving him a watered down version of the truth. He knows that you’ve been in the hospital because you’re sick and that I’m going to stay in Florida until you get better and can finally come home.”
“Come home?” he repeated hopefully. “You mean that?”
“Of course I do,” she replied, rubbing the back of his hand. “You’re gonna need someone to take care of you while you recuperate.”
He raised an eyebrow. “Is that the only reason?”
Lauren returned his questioning look with a crooked smile. “No. I want you to come home. I love you, Nick. I never should have told you to leave.”
“I never should have left,” he admitted. “Going back on tour like that after you begged me not to… That was a mistake. I know that now. You were grieving, and I should have been there for you so we could go through it together.” Turning his hand over so that their palms were touching, he laced his fingers through hers. “I’m so sorry, Lauren.”
She shook her head. “No, I’m sorry,” she said, gripping his hand. “I shouldn’t have asked you to stay home. Yes, I was grieving, but so were you. It wasn’t just about me.” She paused as Nick started to cough again, clutching his pillow to his chest. She waited until he was finished, then handed him the cup of ice chips so he could help himself.
“Thanks,” Nick rasped, his eyes streaming. He popped another ice chip into his mouth to moisten his irritated throat and lay back against the pillow beneath his head, in pain and exhausted.
Lauren leaned closer to him. “I knew what I signed up for when I married you, Nick,” she continued, looking him in the eyes. “I knew how much you were willing to sacrifice to make your fans happy, but I also knew how happy it made you to perform for them - and how cathartic it could be. I should have known you needed to get back to work and stay busy just as much as I needed to stay home and wallow for a while before I was ready to face the world again. We’re two different people, and we dealt with the same grief in different ways. I just didn’t understand that at the time.”
“I don’t blame you, baby,” said Nick. “You don’t need to apologize for anything. I’m the one who should be apologizing.”
“You already did,” argued Lauren. “It’s done.”
But Nick knew that it was not done. Taking a deep breath, he said, “No, you don’t understand. There’s something else I need to tell you.”
Lauren cocked her head to one side, looking at him in confusion. Nick cleared his throat, trying to summon the courage he needed to continue.
“The woman who did this to me, Dani... I met her at one of the bars on Duval Street on Halloween. I was there by myself; she was there with her husband, Rob. They recognized me, bought me a drink, and invited me to join them, so I did. They seemed harmless,” he said, shaking his head as he realized how wrong he had been. “We had a nice conversation about horror movies. Then her husband got called into work and had to leave, or so he said. He told his wife to stay and have fun and asked me to make sure she got a ride home, so I said I would. When we were ready to leave, she ordered an Uber that we ended up sharing. The last thing I remember was riding in the back seat with her. I was so tired, I just wanted to rest my eyes for a minute, and the next thing I knew, I was waking up in what I thought was a hospital room.”
“She drugged you, Nick,” Lauren said, shaking her head. “The detective showed us surveillance footage from the bar. That bitch put something in your drink while you went to the bathroom.”
Nick nodded, not surprised. “I don’t know what happened after we got in that car together. She told me we went back to my place, I invited her in, and we… we hooked up.”
“Bullshit!” Lauren spat. “That’s not what really happened, and you know it, Nick.”
“But that’s just it: I didn’t know. Not for sure, anyway,” said Nick. “I woke up with no memory of the rest of that night, so I had to take her word for it. According to Dani, I collapsed while we were having sex and went into cardiac arrest. She called an ambulance and kept me alive until it came.”
“Well, obviously that’s not true because if it was, they would have taken you to a real hospital.” Lauren rolled her eyes. “That’s just what she wanted to happen because she’s a freak who gets off on that stuff. Seriously, she and her pervy husband have a whole medical fetish porn site full of videos of hot people having heart attacks and giving each other fake CPR.”
“What?” Nick gasped. This was new information to him.
“I shit you not,” said Lauren. “Seriously, you don’t even wanna know. But that bullshit story she fed you? That was nothing but her own sick fantasy. She never had sex with you, Nick. All she did was drug you and take you back to their little hospital porno set to play out that fantasy in real life.”
Nick thought Lauren was probably right, but there were parts of the story she still did not know. “Well, she got what she wanted. I was naive enough to swallow the bullshit she fed me,” he admitted with a heavy sigh. In hindsight, he felt stupid for falling for Dani’s farfetched story, but at the time, he’d had no reason to doubt her. “She and Elizabeth made me think I was dying. They gave me drugs to make me sick so I would believe them.”
“That must have been so scary,” said Lauren softly, stroking the back of his hand. “I don’t blame you for believing them, baby. Brian told me what it was like... what they did to you...”
“He didn’t tell you everything.” Nick took a shuddering breath. “He didn’t tell you about me and Dani.”
Lauren’s eyes narrowed. “What do you mean? What about you and Dani?”
He swallowed hard. “Well, first of all, you have to understand how much she manipulated me. I was kept in this windowless room, connected to all this scary equipment, and I couldn’t leave my bed without some alarm going off. The first couple times I tried, I almost passed out, probably from the drugs they were putting into my IV, but I thought it was because of my heart, and that kept me from trying again. There was no phone, no TV, nothing to do but lie there and listen to the monitors beeping. I was scared, and I was bored, and I was lonely. Dani was the only one I had to talk to. She kept me company... took care of me... distracted me from thinking about the fact that I was dying, or so I thought. I didn’t know then that she was the one doing this to me. She played her part well: this perky, sweet, pretty nurse who genuinely seemed to care about me. We got… close. It felt like a friendship at first, nothing more than that, even though I knew we had supposedly hooked up. But then she told me she was pregnant and that the baby had to be mine because Rob was sterile. And I believed her.”
He paused and looked up at Lauren, who had tears in her eyes. “Just say it, Nick. Did you sleep with her?” she asked quietly.
“No.” He shook his head. “But I did kiss her.”
Lauren arched her brow. “Is that all?”
He hesitated. “We may have made out once or twice… but I swear, it never went any further than that. I’m so sorry, Lauren. Believe me, you were always on my mind… always. I never stopped loving you, but Dani made me think you didn’t love me anymore, and somehow I developed feelings for her, too. I don’t have them anymore, obviously, after what she did to me, but I won’t deny that I found her attractive then.”
Stop talking, Nick, said a little voice in the back of his mind, but he feared the damage had already been done. Perhaps he shouldn’t have been quite so honest. He had really put his foot in his mouth now. His wife was never going to forgive him.
“I’m sorry,” he whispered again.
Deep lines had appeared in Lauren’s forehead, and tears were streaming slowly down her face. What she said next took Nick by surprise: “Dani made you think I didn’t love you anymore?” She sounded more hurt than angry.
“She told me she called to let you know I was in the hospital, but that you weren’t coming,” he explained. “She knew we were separated, and she used that to her advantage to try and drive us further apart.”
“Did you really think I wouldn’t come when you were in the hospital?” asked Lauren, still frowning at him.
“Of course I thought you would. That’s why it hurt so much when you didn’t.” Nick paused before adding, “I’m not blaming you; I know now it’s because Dani never called you in the first place… but at the time, it felt like you just didn’t care enough to come.”
“Oh Nick…” Lauren shook her head, looking at him sadly. “I would fly to the ends of the Earth for you. Do you know how many days I drove around Key West looking for you after you disappeared? How many sleepless nights I spent curled up in this damn chair next to your hospital bed because I couldn’t stand to leave your side? How many weeks I’ve gone without seeing my son because I didn’t want to go home without you? If that’s not love, I don’t know what is. I’m sorry I made you doubt my feelings for you.”
Nick’s eyes were swimming with tears now, too. “You didn’t,” he said. “She did.”
“No, I obviously did, too, or you wouldn’t have believed her. I really am sorry, Nick. Sorry for kicking you out and causing you to question our relationship.”
“Well, I’m sorry for being so stupid,” Nick replied with a sheepish smile. “I’ll never question it again.”
Lauren finally cracked a smile in return. “You better not. But I forgive you.”
“Really?” he asked hopefully.
“What else am I going to do?” she said with a shrug. “I didn’t come all this way to ask you for a divorce. These last few weeks have been the scariest of my life. I almost lost you, Nick. I hope I never have to go through that again. I want to make our marriage work. Without forgiveness, it never will.”
Nick nodded, wiping his eyes. “I want it to work, too,” he relied earnestly. “I love you, Lauren.”
Rising from her chair, Lauren leaned in, took his face in her hands, and tenderly kissed his lips. “I love you, too,” she whispered back.
The morphine was kicking in now, and Nick felt better, as if a weight had been lifted off his chest. The pain and pressure were gone. The floaty feeling had returned. His head felt like a hot air balloon, rising slowly through a thickening layer of fog.
“You and I both have a lot of healing to do,” Lauren added, as she sat back down. “But, you know, maybe Brian was right with what he said about everything happening for a reason. Maybe this was meant to bring us back together.”
He nodded again and reached out his hand to her. “I hope so. I’m gonna need you, babe… now more than ever.”
“I know,” she replied, wrapping her hand around his and squeezing it tightly. “But for now, you just need rest. You look so tired...”
“I am tired,” he admitted. “That morphine’s working wonders, but man, does it make me drowsy.”
“Then close your eyes and go back to sleep,” she coaxed him. “You heard the nurse - you don’t have to be a hero. I’ll still be here when you wake up.”
He flashed her a weary smile. “You better be.”
Lauren pushed the button to lower his bed back down until he was lying almost flat and fluffed up the pillow behind his head, helping him get as comfortable as possible. When he finally closed his eyes, Nick fell asleep almost instantly. And when he opened them again, he was comforted by the sight of his wife sitting patiently beside his bed, just as she had promised him she would be.
***
