Zach Braff remembers Nick Cordero's last days with COVID-19 battle

Zach Braff is in mourning following the death of Nick Cordero from complications brought by COVID-19, and he shares how his friend relied on life support in the final days of his battle.

The "Scrubs" star revealed that Cordero did not have COVID-19 anymore when he died. He was battling through its complications because, by that point, the disease had taken such a hard toll on his body.

Braff remembered that the doctor described his friend's lungs looking like "Swiss cheese," as if they belonged to someone who "had been a heavy smoker his entire life." He mused that had Cordero lived, he would still have to go through medical procedures to live a healthy life.

"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 shared on Tuesday's episode of his and "Scrubs" co-star Donald Faison's "Fake Doctors, Real Friends" podcast.

Braff added that Cordero's fingers and toes would have to be amputated too had he lived, since the tips were blackening because "his blood pressure was not strong enough." The theatre star had his leg amputated because of blood clots, he was placed on dialysis and put on a pacemaker before he died.

"He just deteriorated, deteriorated, deteriorated, until the point where they put them on the ventilator and then he never came back," Braff revealed and talked about the "exciting" and hopeful moments too when Cordero "kind of woke up for a little bit."

"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," he revealed.

In the same episode, Braff also praised Cordero's wife, Amanda Kloots, for being the "ultimate" wife. He sympathised with her and shared how she dealt with her husband's hospitalisation and tragically, his death.

According to ET Canada, Kloots stayed with Braff and his girlfriend Florence Pugh at a guest room during the ordeal, but they observed social distancing. He called it "f*****g tragic" that they could not be there to hug and comfort her as she sobbed.

"She would be 10 feet away from us, Florence and I, and sobbing, and we couldn't go hug her. We would literally stand 10 feet away from her and watch our friend sobbing," he shared, and lamented on the fact that Kloots could only FaceTime Cordero while he was at the hospital. She could not be there by his side, hug him, kiss him, and cheer him on because of social distancing.

Cordero died on July 5 after 90 days at Cedars-Sinai hospital. He was 41. Ahead of Braff's tribute to his friend, Kloots remembered her husband in a post on Instagram.