From my seat, the CA works and NGINX is not returning the
OCSP response. In fact, I can generate the stapling manually.

Barred the various considerations of what is or is not possible,
I think that a more robust solution is in order, for example,
nginx could (should at this point?) log the stapling progress,
so that sysadmin knows that the process is being executed,
possibly with relevant warnings and error messages.