Emergency
Been a while since I wrote for My Two Dads. Comments and kudos are awesome. Thank you for reading!
"I don't feel good."
Joey wakes to these words sometime after four in the morning. Nicole is standing at the top of the stairs and even in the dim moonlight cast through the windows of the loft, he can see something is wrong. He gets out of bed swiftly, circles up the steps. "What's the matter?"
She's curled in on herself as much as she can be while still standing, her arms wrapped around her middle. "My stomach hurts so much," she explains, close to tears. "And I feel like I'm gonna be sick." She leans on him as he helps her down the stairs.
"Alright, alright," Joey says, sitting her down on the sofa. He is definitely not panicking. "How long have you felt bad? Did it just start?"
"I felt kinda bad at dinner but it's so much worse now. I can't even sleep."
Now, he recalls that she didn't really eat much at dinner. They'd had pizza from one of her favorite places and she'd barely eaten anything. Dealing with sick kids isn't exactly something he's had a lot of practice at. In the time they've had Nicole she's been injured – there was the broken foot incident at camp, after all – but never ill. He doesn't really know what he's doing, so he does what his mom would always do when he felt bad. He presses a hand to her forehead, not entirely sure that he'll be able to judge accurately, but she's notably warmer. "I think you might have a fever, Nic," he observes. He has no idea if there is an actual thermometer in the loft. He knows he didn't have one before Nicole and Michael moved in, but all sorts of things have appeared here since then and he's always finding things that have just appeared (a pasta strainer, a chalkboard, a countless number of hair ties…). "I'll be right back," he assures her, hurrying off to the bathroom to rifle through the cabinets in search of one.
But he hears Nicole whimper in pain and gives up on the search. When he returns, it's to the alarming sight of Nicole sliding slowly off the couch to the floor. He rushes to her side to find her unresponsive – she must have passed out. From the pain? From something more serious?
"Nic! Nicole!" He calls, shakes her lightly to try to stir her. Then, a frantic shout of "Michael!" in the general direction of the bedroom. He knows the other man is a light sleeper, that he'll be quick to respond and sure enough, it's only seconds later that he emerges, clearly concerned by whatever would cause Joey to wake him at such an hour.
"Joe? What's going on?" He asks, but then he catches sight of Nicole. "What's wrong?"
"Nicole's sick, she just passed out. Call 911?"
She stirs just as Michael picks up the phone, confused and half-delirious. She promptly throws up the remains of her meager dinner on the floor. Joey keeps her hair out of her face until it's over and rubs soothing circles on her back. When it's finally done, she looks up at him, miserable, "Oh, I really don't feel good…"
"It's okay," Joey assures her, helping her to get back onto the sofa while Michael talks to the dispatcher on the phone. She's pale and clammy now and she promptly curls up in the fetal position. "We're taking you to the ER."
In the few minutes it takes the ambulance to arrive, they both quickly duck out of the room to change out of pajamas. Michael grabs a change of clothes for Nicole and Joey hastily cleans up the vomit on the floor while Nicole continues to whimper in pain on the sofa. The paramedics are quick to get to work – taking vitals and asking questions before they load her up on the stretcher. It all happens so fast. Michael and Joey follow after as they head down to the ambulance.
On arrival at the hospital, things move quickly, too. There's not a ton of people waiting to be seen in the middle of the night, even in a New York City hospital on a Tuesday morning, and that gets the three of them into a room rather swiftly. A nurse pops in to take another round of vitals, and she takes blood for lab work and starts an IV, too. Nicole is too miserable to care about any of it. She holds tight to Michael's hand, where he sits beside her.
"The doctor should be in to examine her soon, and then we can give her some medicine for the pain," the nurse tells them before she leaves the room. "It shouldn't be long."
She's wrong, though. It does take a while. So long that Michael and Joey trade spots. Michael anxiously pacing in the small room, occasionally poking his head out to the hallway in search of any approaching doctors, while Joey holds her hand. Finally, the doctor does arrive, and does a quick exam while asking Nicole yet more questions. Nicole recoils in pain when the doctor presses on certain spots on her abdomen and she 'hmm's in consideration. "We're going to do an ultrasound to confirm it, but I think it's probably appendicitis. The lab results should tell us more, too."
"What's that?" Nicole asks, when the doctor's left to order the tests. "Is it bad? Am I going to die? It feels like it."
"No, you're not gonna die," Michael assures her, joining Joey at her side. "My sister had it when she was in college. If you do have appendicitis, they'll do surgery to remove it and you'll be fine in a few days."
A look of panic crosses Nicole's face at that, "Surgery?"
Before Michael and Joey can reassure her, someone comes to get Nicole for the ultrasound. Joey goes along to keep her company, leaving Michael in the room – he takes the time to call his secretary and explain the situation, that he won't be into work today, and likely won't be in tomorrow, either. Joey and Nicole return soon after he finishes the call, and they wait another significant length of time for the results. However, as is often the case, the ultrasound proves inconclusive, so the doctor orders a CT scan, instead. The lab work comes back with signs of infection – likely the appendicitis – and the CT, when it's performed some time later, confirms further signs of inflammation in the appendix. "We'll get you on some antibiotics and some pain medication and schedule you for surgery as soon as possible," the doctor tells them, when all the information is available.
Now that they have answers, Michael and Joey are a little calmer, but Nicole isn't just yet. "Have either of you ever had surgery?" She asks, once the pain medication starts to kick in and she isn't perpetually in pain.
"In seventh grade I broke my arm when I fell out of a tree at my cousin's house – they had to do surgery to fix it," Joey tells her. "And Michael had to get his tonsils out when he was, what, seven?"
"You'll be asleep, Nicole," Michael assures her, "you won't feel anything."
"And when you get outta here, we'll rent a bunch of movies and get some ice cream and camp out on the couch together, okay?" Joey promises, and that seems to take the edge off the panic a little.
It's just after noon when they take Nicole off to prep for the surgery and exile her two fathers to the surgical waiting room. They settle into two uncomfortable chairs in the corner of the mostly empty room with a pile of old, out of date magazines on the table in front of them. Michael makes a run for absolutely terrible coffee from the hospital cafeteria and they wait.
"For the first time she's been sick since we got her, she sure went at it hard, huh?" Michael comments, reclaiming the seat beside Joey and handing over the styrofoam cup of caffeine sludge.
Joey nods in agreement, winces when he takes a sip, "I thought I was out of my depth when she told me she didn't feel good. Watching her pass out was an entirely different nightmare scenario I wasn't prepared for. Being a parent is terrifying sometimes – a lot of times."
"Yeah, you can say that again," Michael agrees. "I'll be happy if I never have to see our daughter in pain like that ever again."
"On the plus side," Joey argues, "at least she can only have appendicitis once."
"There is that," Michael concedes, finally relaxing a little himself.
Given that they didn't get a lot of sleep themselves with the early wake-up call and the rest of the night spent anxiously awaiting answers in the emergency room, it's no surprise that eventually they fall asleep while they wait for word that the surgery is over. Michael rests his head on Joey's shoulder and Joey curls his arm around Michael's back to keep it out of the way. It's not until they hear a nurse call out, "For Nicole Bradford?" sometime later that they're both jolted awake again. They're quick to stand and approach. "You're family?"
"I'm her father," Michael says.
"Also her father," Joey adds.
The nurse, while clearly befuddled by this, chooses to get on with the relaying of information. "Alright, well… Nicole's out of surgery and in recovery. They'll have her in a room shortly, and you can see her then. Everything went fine, but they'll keep her overnight for observation just to be sure and barring any complications, she can go home in the morning."
Michael and Joey both heave sighs of relief at the news.
"Great," Joey says, as the nurse turns to leave, "thank you."
Another nurse comes to fetch them when Nicole is settled in a room, but it's immediately clear that she is still very much out of it from the anesthesia when they get there. "Heeeeeey, Dads," she slurs out when she catches sight of them.
"How're you feeling?" Michael asks, as he and Joey take seats on either side of her. She looks from one to the other over and over again and so Michael eventually moves to sit beside Joey, instead, to keep her from making herself dizzy.
"I don't think I know anymore," she answers, very seriously. "Everything feels floaty and numb and not really real. Am I supposed to feel like everything's floaty and numb and not really real? Is everything going to feel floaty and numb and not really real forever because I don't think I would like that."
Joey struggles valiantly to keep a straight face and is only sort of successful. "It'll wear off soon, Nic," he assures her, taking her hand.
She clings to it like an anchor, relief on her face. "You don't feel as floaty now," she observes. "You need to hold Michael's hand, too, so he can be not floaty. I need you both to be really real."
They don't fight her. Michael takes the hand he offers and stifles a laugh. "Whatever you say."
"That's better," she mumbles, and they watch as her eyes slip closed now that that's resolved. She smiles and quickly drops into a post-anesthesia nap.
Surprisingly, Michael doesn't let go of his hand even when it's clear that she's going to be out for a while yet. He raises an eyebrow at the other man but Michael's only response is to shift their hands so that their fingers entwine. Joey finds he doesn't mind and settles in – perhaps they can see where that leads once things are back to normal.
In the morning, they'll release Nicole and the three of them will head home – with a stop off at the market for ice cream and another stop at Blockbuster to rent some VHS tapes. They'll get Nicole settled on the sofa with her favorite blanket and the two of them will join her there, sitting on either side of her while Back to the Future or Ghostbusters plays on the television.
But, for now, he and Michael are just glad their daughter is on her way to feeling better.