Chapter Twenty-Four

Chapter Thirty



Dr. Takaghishi came in to check Nick. He was baffeled by his weakened state. Three days ago Nick was starting physical therapy, speech therapy and everything was looking good. Everything on Nick’s chart indicated that he should be getting better but instead Nick was taking a complete turn for the worse.

Dr. Takaghishi found Nick laying in bed sleeping, he didn’t appear to notice anyone had entered the room.

The doctor thumbed through Nick’s chart. All of the recent labwork that had been done came back clean. The only think that had popped up abnormal was an electrolyte imbalance which could be fixed with an IV.

From the nurses notes, Nick had been eating and drinking all of his meals. The doctor decided to keep track of imput/output readings.

“Nick, it’s Doctor T, how are you feeling?”

Nick’s eyes barely opened. Dr. T decided to have a central IV line done and have some IV feedings done to ensure that Nick would build up his strength. He also wanted Nick to be moved back to the intensive care unit.

Nick didn’t answer Dr. Takaghishi, he felt too tired to respond. He closed his eyes hoping that the doctor would just go away and leave him alone.

“Nick, we’re going to move you back into ICU and get a central line put in.” Dr. T. looked at Nick to see if he was understanding what was being spoken. Nick was in a deep sleep and didn’t answer or even aknowledge that he had heard him.

Dr. T. was completely baffeled at how Nick was slowly slipping away. He had consulted Dr. Gaynor to come back and take a look at Nick. He figured that Dr. Gaynor may be able to provide some type of answer to this situation since he had been with Nick from the beginning of his injuries from the car accident.

Jess, Brian and Kevin entered Nick’s room as they were preparing to move him up into the intensive care unit. None of them realized that Nick was progressively getting weaker, he managed to cover it pretty well. They were shocked when they learned that he was being moved to ICU.

Dr. Gaynor was in the room when they came in. He spoke to them in a quiet tone.

“Nick has been getting weaker instead of stronger. The bloodwork came back clean, and to be quite honest with you, I think Nick had stopped eating and drinking fluids about four days ago. To put it quite simply, he is trying to starve himself.”

Jess couldn’t believe what she was hearing, she thought he had gotten over the bout of depression he had been suffering from earlier. He never really indicated that he was slipping into that again. She knew he was unhappy about his voice, but she thought he understood that his voice would improve with time and with the therapy.

“What happens now?” Kevin asked Dr. Gaynor.

“We have put a central line into Nick which we will more or less be force feeding him. We will start him up on several IV’s and we will be monitoring his mental status as well as his physical improvements. I will have the psych doctor come in once Nick is better and start to work with him again. I thought he was keeping up on his prozac.”

“He took himself off that several weeks ago, when they gave it to him here, he would spit it out once the nurse left. He said he didn’t need it.” Jessica told the doctor.

“He really is one that needs to be monitored continuously when it comes to medications. I will make sure that he is watched while he is here.” Dr. Gaynor wrote notes down in the chart.

Jessica was starting to feel more like a stool pidgeon instead of a friend. She felt like she had betrayed Nick in some way.

Brian, as usual, had sensed that Jess was feeling upset about the whole situation and he put his arm around her to comfort her.

“Jess, you are doing what’s right for him, you know, don’t you?” Kevin spoke softly.

“I guess so, I just feel so awful. This isn’t fair, why can’t he just let himself get better, he keeps doing things that are creating more harm than good and it just keeps working against him. He’s been lucky up to this point, what if one of these times he were successful? I couldn’t think of life without Nick.” Jess sobbed.

Brian took Jessica’s chin in his hand. “Jess, it’s not gonna happen. We are all going to make sure of that.” He wiped the tears from her cheeks.

They all followed Nick’s bed as they moved him into the intensive care unit. Nick never opened his eyes during the whole trip. Once they had everything in place around Nick in his new room, Jess moved up to the side of the bed and looked down at Nick sleeping. He was laying on his side almost curled up into a ball. It almost looked as if he were in a fetal position. Jess smoothed his hair back.

“Nick, I don’t understand why you’re doing this to yourself, there are so many people that love you. We don’t care if you’re a singer or a truck driver, we want you here with us. Please, you have to fight to survive. I love you and I want you to come back to me, please.” Jess softly pleaded with Nick hoping that he would hear her.

“That’s right, buddy. We all love you. You should know that, you do know that. You have to fight this, you are making a lot of people upset when you do this kind of stuff. How am I going to explain this to your fans?” Brian was choking on the words, he was almost too upset to speak. He knew how bad suicide was, and he felt so sorry that he couldn’t help his friend.

“Nick, you have to pull through this. I am getting tired of coming to this god forsaken place as much as you are getting tired of being here. You have a lot of people that love and need you. Don’t be checking out on us yet, you have a lot more to accomplish in this lifetime.” Kevin was trying to reason with Nick and was hoping that he could hear him.

Reluctantly, the three of them left the room without ever having Nick aknowledging that they were ever there.