The Devastating Young & Restless Twist That’s Set To Leave the Newman Family Heartbroken and In Shock

The Newman family just celebrated their matriarch, Nikki Newman, and the party went off brilliantly. There’s even hope on the horizon that Victor might accept Claire and Kyle’s relationship as a final gift to his wife. But what’s coming will cast a dark shadow over all of this… and, for once, we’re not talking about anything related to Aristotle Dumas. This has absolutely nothing to do with him!

Aside from a few tense conversations and Kyle’s bizarro offer to Victor to leave the town and pay him $5 million smackeroos if he hurts Claire, Nikki’s birthday went off without a hitch. The only upsetting thing to occur was when Cole suffered another coughing fit and some wooziness whilst on the dance floor with Victoria.

Cole’s been insisting that he’s on the mend from his mystery ailment, but our first clue that might not be the case came when he got dizzy upon standing up at Crimson Lights last week. We should have known something was coming, then, when he turned up late to the birthday bash and blamed it on some complications related to this “bug” he’s been battling. Before we knew it, Cole had suffered a setback and Victoria was hollering for someone to call 9-1-1.

In typical stubborn male soap character fashion, Cole once again refused to let Victoria call for help and nixed the notion of going to the hospital. Thankfully, he allowed himself to be dragged up to a suite otherwise he might have infected the whole party and we’d be looking at an entirely different type of storyline.

We’re not gonna lie… we marked Cole for death when he first started coughing after his return from the business trip weeks ago, but he’s since seemed to rally and it appeared as though the plot point would turn out to be, well… pointless.

But much like his nagging cough and shortness of breath, this plot is hanging on, and it’s Cole’s aforementioned stubborness that has us very concerned. That’s where the twist comes in…

After Cole left the birthday party, Victor worried that he had the signs of pneumonia. If that’s true, Cole’s continued refusal to see a doctor or go back to the hospital, could cause something that would otherwise be treatable to turn deadly. Alternatively, Cole could have something far more serious that’s masquerading as pneumonia… like lung cancer. Delaying treatment could prove to be the difference between life and death for Victoria’s man.

It’s also possible that Cole was diagnosed with terminal lung cancer the first time he went to the hospital, and decided to keep the terrible news to himself so as not to burden Victoria and Claire (he was pretty cagey about his test results). If you don’t think this can happen on soaps, just take a look at Bold & Beautiful’s Liam, who didn’t want anyone to know he had an inoperable brain mass. If that’s the case, it explains why Cole is adamant about Victoria not taking him to the hospital… he doesn’t want her to discover the truth and he already knows there’s nothing that can be done.

Either way, it’s not looking good for Cole Howard, and the Newman clan, believing he’s been battling a common cold, will not only be heartbroken, but utterly shocked to lose him so unexpectedly.