luscious_purple | "Other than that, Patty, how was your Christmas Day?"

CONTENT WARNING: DEATH.

And, yes, I know I am writing about something that happened seven weeks ago.

I don't think I ever mentioned this on Dreamwidth before, but the person I've been calling "the boy toy" for many years had a real name: Nicholas, shortened to Nick.

Nick and I had such a wonderful Christmas Day together. Until the worst happened.

We started off with a bit of his sweet holiday bread (berries and chocolate chips) for breakfast. Then we had crabcakes Benedict for lunch. VERY tasty! For an afternoon appetizer he cooked some shrimp (with a curry dipping sauce) and creamy artichoke soup topped with a bit of shredded cheese. We had an early dinner consisting of roast beef with both gravy and blue-cheese sauce (a once-a-year treat), homemade creamed spinach, and Nick's own version of "bubble and squeak" (a mix of smashed potatoes and chopped Brussels sprouts).

Shortly after Nick put away the leftovers and Beyonce had finished singing for the Baltimore Ravens, he started to feel pain in his belly. He thought he had food poisoning, even though I told him that could not be true -- I had been eating the same exact stuff he did for at least the past two days and I felt fine. (Just concerned.) He asked me to go to the pharmacy to get him Pepto-Bismol, as we had none in the house. I did that.

Nick took a dose of the (generic) Pepto, but he was feeling worse faster than the medicine could take effect. He was getting wobbly and in more pain. At first he said he didn't want to go to the hospital, but finally he said I could take him there.

Since our apartment is on the second floor, I had a feeling that Nick would fall down the stairs if I let him walk down by himself. I probably weigh more than Nick, but I don't have much upper body strength, so I phoned our landlord next door (a rather large fellow with more upper body strength than yours truly) to help him down the stairs. But then Nick sank to his knees and couldn't get up. My landlord called 911 while I squeezed Nick's hand and tried to keep him conscious.

But Nick died at the hospital.

A firstborn son who died on Christmas Day.

Exactly halfway between one of his birthdays (June 25) and the next.

The ER team originally thought that Nick had had a ruptured aortic aneurysm, but the medical examiner's office later told Nick's mother that the rupture that caused sudden internal bleeding happened around his pancreas. Remember how I wrote that he was diagnosed with chronic pancreatitis in late 2017 and early 2018? You can scroll back to those months in my Dreamwidth archive if you really want to.

Anyhow, I'm getting ahead of my story....

I didn't ride in the ambulance because I figured that Nick would be admitted and I would need my car to get home. The hospital is less than two miles away, but who wants to walk home on streets with few or no sidewalks on the evening of a major holiday? So I made sure I put a few things I thought he would need -- like his eyeglasses and phone -- into his "man purse." And then I drove to the hospital, which has become quite familiar to me over the years (between his health crises and mine -- I once went there for a scratched cornea before I knew Nick or joined the SCA).

When I got to the hospital, I gave my name to the ER security guard to get my visitor's sticker, but he didn't have Nick's name in the system. So I asked at the regular check-in desk for patients. The woman behind the desk said she didn't have a record of anyone with his last name (which is a fairly uncommon last name). Almost immediately, someone popped out of the double doors that separate the ER from the waiting area and escorted me to a small room labeled the "Family Consultation Room." It was set up like a waiting room, with wooden-armed chairs and a Keurig. This had never happened before; when I had brought Nick there in the past, I was allowed to stay with him while we waited for him to be seen.

I sat there alone until a young Black doctor came in. I think his last name began with an O, so I'll call him Dr. O. He sat down on a chair across from me, asked me how I was connected to Nick, then went into the standard emergency-room spiel about how doctors worked very hard to restart Nick's heart, but ... he died.

I ... couldn't believe it. HOW COULD HE BE DEAD???? Someone (the doctor? an aide?) asked me if I would like to see Nick. I said yes. They had me wait a few minutes. Then they took me to one of the ER treatment rooms. Nick was lying there with his head and arms visible. Under the sheet I could tell that he had been put into a hospital gown and his hair had been combed. Except for the intubation thing still stuck in his mouth, he looked as if he was sleeping. I touched him and he was still warm. He looked so peaceful.

Nick always told me that he didn't believe in love. We never said "I love you" to each other. But, just in case some flicker of life was left in his brain, suddenly I started saying, "I love you, Nick," in between my tears.

To be continued...