‘Scrubs’ Star Zach Braff Describes His Friend Nick Cordero’s 'Tragic' Last Days
Grab your tissues. Nick Cordero's good friend Zach Braff recently opened up about his difficult and "tragic" final days. The 41-year-old Canadian died this week after a months-long battle with COVID-19 complications.
Braff was joined by his former Scrubs co-star Donald Faison on the latest episode of their podcast, Fake Doctors, Real Friends.
During the one-hour-long chat, the 45-year-old explained that he first met Cordero in 2014 when they starred in Bullets Over Broadway together.
That's the same play that Cordero met his wife Amanda Kloots on. The couple married in September 2017 and share one-year-old son, Elvis Eduardo.
During the podcast, Braff explained the heartbreaking fact that Kloots wasn't allowed to visit her husband because of social distancing protocols.
"Can you imagine how tragic this is, your partner's in the hospital, you can’t even be there?" he said. "You can’t be by their side, you can’t hug them, you can’t kiss them, you can’t cheer them on. You have to do it over FaceTime that a generous nurse has arranged."
Braff added that Kloots stayed with him and his girlfriend, Florence Pugh, but was in their guest home in order to maintain distancing measures.
Meanwhile, in the hospital, the Hamilton-born actor was slowly deteriorating "until the point where they put them on the ventilator and then he never came back."
"He kind of woke up for a little bit and there was some exciting moments where they would say, ‘Nick if you can hear us look up’ and he would do that, but he wouldn’t do it all the time. It was only occasionally."
Braff added that towards the end, Cordero's lungs looked like "Swiss cheese" and as if he spent his entire life as a heavy smoker.
"Even to live he would’ve needed a full double-lung transplant and you only get those if you’re healthy in all other ways. So the machines were really truly keeping him alive," the actor added.
Blood clots from the disease caused Cordero to have his leg amputated, which Kloots shared on Instagram in early May.
Braff also said that his friend was put on dialysis and a temporary pacemaker, while his blood pressure dropped.
"So the tips of all his fingers and toes were blackening and they would have had to have been removed had he lived," he said.
Braff is one of the many celebrities who are devastated over Cordero's death.
Kloots has been posting emotional montage videos that document her five-year-old long relationship with her late husband.