Never is a long time
Claudia: Who are you?
Nadine: Nadine Crowell.
Nikolas: She’s here to — she’s here to help you.
Nadine: I’m a nurse at General Hospital.
Claudia: Well, I’m fine. I don’t — I mean, it’s just a flesh wound. You really didn’t have to come all the way down here.
Nadine: Well, as long as I’m here, might as well take a look. Let me see. How did this happen?
Claudia: I’m accident-prone.
Nadine: The wound is pretty deep. Good news is, you started to clot.
Claudia: What’s the bad news?
Nadine: Someone tried to kill you.
Claudia: Look, I don’t know how much Nik told you. No one else can know I’m here, Okay?
Nadine: I promised Nikolas I wouldn’t say anything and I won’t.
Nikolas: How is she?
Nadine: There’s no sign of infection. She could still use some stitches, though.
Claudia: She’s sitting right here. Am I going to make it without them?
Nadine: As long as you stay off your feet and get plenty of rest.
Nikolas: What about, like, antibiotics or –
Nadine: Of course it’s generally recommended, but she can’t get a prescription without seeing a doctor.
Claudia: That’s not an option.
Nadine: So your best case is to keep it clean and try not to move around too much. So no tossing or turning or bouncing.
Claudia: Bouncing?
Nadine: Just don’t do anything that would aggravate the wound.
Nikolas: Thank you.
Nadine: I’m glad I could help.
Claudia: You know, you could help a lot more if you forgot that you ever saw me here.
Nikolas: She’s given me her word. You can trust her, Okay? And I trust her. Nadine, I’ll — I’ll see you out.
Nadine: Is this your room, the one you shared with Emily?
[Phone rings]
Johnny: Yeah.
Claudia: John, it’s me.
Johnny: Where are you?
Claudia: Oh, well, I’m fine. I just wanted to call and let you know that I was okay and that you don’t have to worry, okay?
Johnny: What happened?
Claudia: I will tell you about it later. I just didn’t want you to worry and I wanted you to know that I love you.
Johnny: Goes both ways.
Claudia: Ow! Where’s Nurse Betty?
Nikolas: She had to get back to the hospital.
Claudia: Yeah? Couldn’t wait to tell her friends, huh?
Nikolas: No, she would never breathe a word about you staying here.
Claudia: Are you sure? She didn’t seem very happy about it.
Nikolas: Nadine has proven herself a trustworthy friend. She makes a promise, it’ll be kept.
Claudia: She wants to be a lot more than friends with you. Trust me.
Nikolas: She knows I’m still grieving over my fiancée.
Claudia: Yeah. Well, once you’ve had time to grieve, Nurse Nadine is going to be the first in line to mend your broken heart.
Nikolas: She also knows that I will never love anyone but Emily.
Claudia: Never?
Nikolas: Never.
Claudia: Never is a long time. I mean, a guy like you must get lonely.
Nikolas: Look, you don’t know me, Claudia. You don’t know what I felt for her, how the life that we had was ripped away from us.
Claudia: You have a point; I don’t know anything about you. I know even less about your late fiancée. So why don’t you tell me something.
Nikolas: Don’t patronize me.
Claudia: I’m not. I — I honestly want to know what made her so special.
Nikolas: Anything I say about her right now would just sound trite, so…
Claudia: Try me, Nikolas. She’s obviously very beautiful, and –
[Nikolas chuckles]
Claudia: Yes?
Nikolas: Okay, fine. She knew me better than I knew myself. There you go.
Claudia: Well, how did you meet her? Come on, I’m trapped in this bed. Tell me stories.
Nikolas: All right. We met through my brother.
Claudia: The cop?
Nikolas: The cop. She was a friend of his. And she was in love with me when she was just a teenager.
Claudia: Mmm.
Nikolas: I was sure that I would only ever think of her as just a friend. But I was an idiot. I threw away too much time that we had together. And you know, I have a beautiful son.
Claudia: You do?
Nikolas: Mm-hmm. All the money I could ever want. But it doesn’t matter, because I don’t have her.
Claudia: Well, give it some time. You never know who you’re going to meet.
Nikolas: Even if I were to fall in love again, it would pale in comparison to what I had with her. She was my whole life.
