Chapter 114
“This is
your captain speaking. We’re now going
to begin our descent into New York. The
local time is 1:14 p.m., and the temperature is 33 degrees Fahrenheit. Yes, it’s a cold day in the Big Apple today,
folks. There is snow on the ground, but
conditions for landing are good. So sit
tight and prepare for landing.”
Nick looked
out his window as the pilot got off the intercom. He could see patches of ground starting to
appear through the thinning clouds as the plane drifted lower in the sky. Taking a shaky breath, he gripped the armrests
on his seat as he felt the plane shudder with turbulence.
After a
month and a half, the European tour had come to a close, and he and the guys
were on their way home again for a nice, long break. For Nick, it was much-needed. The tour had left him run-down and
exhausted. He’d had a constant headache
from lack of sleep, his sinuses were clogged from the changing weather, and he
could feel a cold coming on – he’d had a cough for the last few days, and he
had a feeling it was going to get worse before it got better.
And yet, he
was exhilarated. Being on tour again had
been amazing, and he was relieved and thrilled that both legs had gone
well. After two months in the U.S. and
almost two more months in Europe, Nick didn’t doubt himself as a performer
anymore. He’d done it.
The last
half of the European leg had been good.
He had celebrated his birthday in Milan, which had been nice because of
the nice big Italian feast of a birthday dinner he’d been given. Valentine’s Day had been spent in Dublin, so
it had been easy for him to commemorate the fact that he was single again by
going pub-crawling with Howie and getting completely trashed on Irish whiskey
and Guinness.
Now it was
the end of February, and he was on his way home at last. He couldn’t wait for the traveling part to be
over. He hated flying with a passion,
and he still had one more flight to go; after the guys landed together in New
York, they would part ways, and he would board a connecting flight to
Tampa. After the long flight from
Portugal, where they’d wrapped up the tour two nights ago, the last thing he
wanted to do was get on another plane.
When the
transatlantic flight landed, Nick hauled up his backpack and made his way
stiffly up the aisle. Once inside the
airport, the five Backstreet Boys congregated to say their goodbyes before they
continued on to different gates to catch their connecting flights. Kevin and AJ were headed back to LA, Brian to
Atlanta, and Howie to Orlando. Nick had
decided to spend a few weeks at his home in Tampa; with the tour over, Veronica
out of his life, and most of his family now in Florida, there was really no
reason to go back to Los Angeles right then.
“Take care,
buddy,” Brian said, pulling Nick into a tight hug. “Have a safe flight home.”
“You too,
bro,” replied Nick, patting his best friend on the back.
“Call me
when you get home, alright, Nicky? We
should get together sometime while you’re still in Florida,” added Howie as
they hugged.
“Sure,
D. You should come and go boating with
me or somethin’,” Nick suggested. His
words caught in his throat as he started to cough, and he put his mouth over
his hand, trying to stifle the hacking.
“I’d hug
ya, bro, but whatever you’re gettin’, I don’t want,” said AJ with a
good-natured smile and thwacked Nick on the back before stepping away. Nick coughed in his direction on purpose and
flashed him an impish grin.
“Very
mature, Nickolas,” Kevin teased, pulling Nick into a rough hug. “Watch that cough, alright?” he warned
quietly when he had Nick temporarily immobilized. “If it doesn’t clear up in the next few days,
go see your doctor. You got that?” He gave Nick a firm look as he released him.
Nick only
smiled and rolled his eyes. “Yes, Dad,”
he begrudged jokingly, but he knew Kevin was right. He’d already learned the dangers of waiting
too long to see a doctor; he wasn’t going to repeat that mistake again.
***
Nick spent
his first few days home catching up on much-needed rest. His house had been well-taken care of while
he was gone, so there wasn’t much for him to do when he got home. That was a relief, for in addition to simply
being drained from the tour, he was also still sick.
What he’d
thought was a cold was now seeming more like the flu. He’d been running a low-grade fever every day
and woke up feeling tired and achy, like he’d been hit by a truck. He still had a nagging cough that seemed to
be getting worse, and his chest felt tight when he breathed.
The latter
two symptoms worried him the most because they were reminiscent of the symptoms
he’d experienced in the weeks before he’d ended up in the hospital with a tumor
in his lung. It can’t be that again;
it’s just the flu, he told himself, but it was hard not to think of the
worse-case scenario. Cancer was sneaky; it
could hide out and pop up again just when you least expected it. Past experience had taught him that much.
Still, he
tried to keep himself calm and wait it out.
If he wasn’t feeling better in a few days, he told himself, he would
call Dr. Kingsbury.
On his
fourth day back, Claire called. “Hey!”
she exclaimed brightly. “Aren’t you
proud of me for keeping tabs on where you are?
I knew you had to be home by now.”
“Yep,” he
rasped from his bed, smiling, despite the fact that her voice was making his head
pound.
“Are you
home in Tampa or home in LA?”
“Tampa,” he
answered, his voice still hoarse.
There was a
pause, and then she asked, “You don’t sound very good. Lose your voice from all that singing?”
“Nah, I’m
sick,” Nick croaked. “I think it’s the
flu.”
“Oooh,
nasty,” she sympathized. “How long have
you had it?”
“Eh, it was
starting before I left Europe, but it’s only been bad since I got home.” He paused, then added, “I’ll probably go see
a doc if it doesn’t clear up soon.”
“Yeah,
that’s probably a good idea. Better safe
than sorry. There’s probably something
your doc can give you to make you feel better too.”
“Yeah,”
Nick nodded, groaning inwardly. He’d
just had his usual check-up back in December and was not thrilled about the
idea of going back. He’d gotten used to
the regular appointments over the last few years, but even so, he still hated
hospitals and doctor’s offices. Every
time he went, he was accompanied by the fear that he was in for bad news, that
the cancer would be back. He always
tried to reassure himself that the cancer was gone – it had been cut out once
and for all and couldn’t possibly come back.
But he knew better. It had come
back for Casey after almost five years of remission. It could always come back.
“Well, I
won’t keep you if you’re not feeling well,” said Claire. “I just wanted to call and say hi. I’ll check up on you in a few days; maybe
I’ll bring you some chicken soup or something.” There was laughter in her tone, and he
smiled, imagining her slaving over a pot of homemade chicken soup.
“Sounds
good,” he replied, wishing he felt more up for a conversation. But all he wanted to do was sleep, so instead
he said, “Thanks for calling, Claire.
I’ll talk to ya later, alright?”
“Okay. Feel better soon! Bye, Nick,” said Claire, and they hung up.
Nick
coughed harshly and then fell back against his pillows, chest heaving. Every arduous breath seared with pain, and he
balled his covers up in his fists and squeezed his eyes shut, waiting for it to
pass. When it did, he let his body relax
and looked up at the ceiling through watering eyes.
Please God, he pleaded weakly, please don’t
let it be back.
***
A few more
days passed, and when Nick found himself feeling worse instead of better, he
reluctantly called the cancer clinic. He
had no idea if his symptoms were cancer-related or not (for all he knew, it
really was just a bad case of the flu), but he knew and trusted Dr. Kingsbury
better than any other doctor, and he wasn’t going to take any chances. He wanted to be reassured without a doubt
that this wasn’t a recurrence.
The
oncology clinic was very accommodating and found him an appointment slot for
early the next day. And so, at nine a.m.
the following morning, he found himself sitting in the all-too-familiar waiting
room on the fifth floor of Tampa General.
“Nick?”
called Bobbi-Jo, one of the clinic nurses, and Nick stood, walking slowly over
to her. His prosthesis felt like a lead
weight today; he barely had the energy to walk on it. Just making his way from his car to the
clinic had about killed him. “So, you’ve
not been feeling well?” Bobbi-Jo asked, looking at him sympathetically as she
helped him onto the scale to chart his weight.
“No, I’ve
had the flu for the last week or so,” replied Nick wearily. He counted back the days in his head and
realized it had been closer to two weeks since the symptoms had really
started. He’d had a cough since their
last concert in Lisbon.
“You’ve
lost some weight since you were here in December,” the nurse remarked, checking
his chart.
Nick smiled
briefly. “Yeah, I’ve been on tour,” he
said. “I always lose a few pounds when
I’m touring.” This had always been an
added bonus of performing every night, though nowadays he couldn’t afford to
let his weight fluctuate too much – if it did, his prosthetic leg wouldn’t fit
as well, which could cause all sorts of difficulties. He’d already noticed it felt slightly looser
than usual, but wasn’t too concerned; he was due to be fitted for a new one
soon anyway.
Bobbi-Jo
led him back to an examining room and gave him a gown to change into. Once he had changed, she came back in to run
through the usual list of questions about his symptoms and medical history and
take his vitals. “Dr. Kingsbury will be
in to see you in a few minutes,” she said when she was finished.
Nick sat
and waited, reading the medical posters on the walls of the exam room until the
doctor came in. “Well, I didn’t expect
to see you back here so soon, Nick,” she said as she walked in, giving him a
thin-lipped smile. She sat down on her
wheeled chair and looked up at him.
“Bobbi tells me you’ve had a bad cough and some shortness of breath?”
Nick
nodded. “I think it’s just the flu,” he
said. “It feels like the flu or a bad
chest cold or something, but… I… I just wanted to be sure.”
Dr.
Kingsbury smiled knowingly. “I
understand, and you were right to come in.”
She glanced down at his chart, reading the notes the nurse had made
earlier. “So you’ve been feeling this
way for about week?”
“About a
week-and-a-half, I think,” confessed Nick.
Dr.
Kingsbury nodded, scratching out something on his chart and jotting down
something else. “Alright,” she said,
setting his chart down, and stood up.
She whipped off the stethoscope she wore around her neck and placed it
in her ears. “I’m just going to listen
to your lungs,” she explained as she slid the other end of the stethoscope
inside the front of his hospital gown.
“Take a deep breath in… and out… in… and out…” she instructed slowly,
looking towards the ceiling she listened.
Then she moved the stethoscope around to his back and repeated the
process.
“You’ve
definitely got some junk in your lungs,” she said when she was finished,
slipping the stethoscope back around her neck.
“I heard crackles on both sides.
I’m concerned that you might have pneumonia.”
Nick’s
heart flip-flopped and his hands grew cold as he remembered the last time he’d
gotten pneumonia. It had been during his
first round of chemo three years ago, and he’d ended up unconscious in ICU with
a tube down his throat for a full week.
“Shit, that’s bad, isn’t it?” he asked miserably, resting his head
against his hand.
“It can be
more serious for you than for the average person,” Dr. Kingsbury admitted. “Pneumonia causes fluid to build up in the
lungs, and because your lung capacity is already slightly decreased from the
lobectomy you had two years ago, you have less room to spare. If it’s pneumonia, we’ll need to keep a close
eye on you.”
Nick
swallowed hard, nodding.
“I want to
get you in for a chest X-ray right now, and we’ll see if the film shows
anything conclusive,” said Dr. Kingsbury, and Nick nodded resignedly again.
The chest
x-ray was part of his usual routine, and it was painless, so he didn’t
mind. Once it was over, he was taken
back to the exam room to wait while the technician and his doctor examined the
results. It was a long wait, but
finally, Dr. Kingsbury came back, x-ray slides in hand. She slapped them up onto the light board in
the room and turned it on so that the bright white light illuminated the dark
films.
Nick
studied the series of x-rays with an experienced eye. He’d had enough of them done to have an idea
of what they should and shouldn’t look like.
“Do you see these cloudy patches?” Dr. Kingsbury asked, her finger
drifting over one of the x-rays, pointing out a trail of semi-transparent white
blobs in spaces where Nick knew there should have been black.
He nodded,
nervously licking his dry lips.
“These have
me concerned,” the doctor went on, pursing her lips as she narrowed her eyes at
the x-rays. “There’s definitely
something building up in your lungs; it’s just very hard to tell what just from
these films. It very well could be
pneumonia, but a lot of things can disguise themselves as pneumonia in an
x-ray. I’d like to get a CT scan too, to
get a better picture of what we’re dealing with. Because of your history, I don’t want to rule
out any other possibilities.”
Noticing
the way she said the word possibilities, Nick felt the old, familiar,
icy hands of fear creeping down his throat, squeezing his heart. “You mean like a relapse, don’t you,” he said
flatly. It was not a question.
Dr. Kingsbury
took a few seconds before answering. “I
think it’s unlikely that this is a recurrence of the cancer you had in your
lung,” she said, in measured tones.
“Your last chest x-ray and CT scan in December looked clean. However, it is possible. That’s why I want to run most tests, just to
be sure.”
Nick
nodded, trying to take a deep breath.
The effort just made his chest ache, and his heart started to race. “Can we do them today?” he asked anxiously,
trying in vain to keep himself calm.
“The
sooner, the better.” Dr. Kingsbury
offered him a gentle smile and put a comforting hand on his back. “The sooner we know what we’re dealing with,
the sooner we can start treating you and get you feeling better.”
Nick smiled
at her maternal touch and nodded again, feeling slightly reassured.
“I know
you’re not going to like this, but I’d like to admit you,” she said. “It could take a few days to get the test
results back and analyzed, and in the meantime, I’d like to monitor you and
start you on antibiotics to see how your body responds.”
Somehow,
Nick had known that was going to happen.
In the past, he might have protested, but this time, he merely nodded
compliantly. He hated being in the
hospital, but he would feel more secure there, knowing he was being taken care
of. And Dr. Kingsbury was right. The sooner they got to the bottom of what he
was sick with this time, the sooner he could get better.
At least
that’s what he hoped.
***
As darkness
fell that evening, Nick lay alone in the artificial twilight of his private
room on the fifth floor of Tampa General.
All of the lights were off, except a small one above his bed, and he’d
hoped the soft glow and low drone of the TV in the corner would help lull him to
sleep, but no such luck – no matter how weary he felt, sleep would not
come. Instead, his mind was alert and
filled with worries that kept him awake.
He was
plagued by déjà vu of all the times he had spent the night in the hospital like
this, but the one that stood out most vividly was the night of his collapse
after the charity concert, when he’d lain in a hospital bed in the early hours
of morning, burdened by the decision to have surgery to remove the tumor in his
lung or not. This time, he didn’t know
for sure what he was facing… but he couldn’t stop thinking about the worst
possible scenario, that the cancer had flared up in his lungs again and that,
this time, he wouldn’t have an option for how to get rid of it.
The worry
kept him awake, despite the fact that he was exhausted. It wasn’t late, but he’d been up early and
subjected to several different tests over the course of the afternoon. First, a nurse had come to take a blood
sample so that they could measure his blood counts. Then it had been time for the CT scan,
followed by a series of lung tests. He’d
had to breathe into a special device called a spirometer, which measure his
lung function, according to the tech who had administered the test. Not long after that, he’d been taken to a special
airtight booth and forced to breathe into a different kind of mouthpiece that
would measure his total lung capacity.
The breathing tests had left him fatigued and out of breath, and he had
been relieved when he’d finally been allowed to go back to his room.
He’d been
trying to sleep ever since, but to no avail.
If his fears were not enough to keep him awake, the nurses who kept
coming in to check on him were. For the
latter part of the afternoon, he’d had an older nurse doing his vital checks,
but at seven o’clock, a younger nurse came in.
Even in the dim light, Nick recognized her instantly as Samantha, who
had always been one of his favorite nurses on the floor. She’d cared for him often when he was in and
out of the hospital the year he’d been diagnosed, and he liked her because she
was young and cute and sweet and more laidback than some of the other
nurses. She was a fan, too, but not the
kind who pestered him.
“Nick
Carter,” the auburn-haired nurse drawled his name in a teasing voice, smiling
as she came up to his bed. “Haven’t seen
you up here in awhile.”
Nick gave
her a wry smile. “No offense, but I’d
rather not be up here now.”
Samantha
laughed. “I certainly understand,” she
said with a smirk. “How are you
feeling?”
“Alright, I
guess,” Nick replied tiredly. “The
oxygen’s helping a little.” He fingered
the thin, clear line of the nasal canula he’d been given. He hated wearing the thing, but the oxygen
was making it easier to breathe, so he tried to grin and bear it.
“Good,”
said the nurse, as she wrote something down on the clipboard in her hand. “You know, I just have to tell you – I came
to your concert back in October, and you guys were so good!” She giggled, looking girlish.
Nick
smiled. “Aw, really, you were
there? I didn’t know. Thanks for coming; I’m glad you liked it.”
“Oh,
believe me, I wouldn’t have missed it!” she exclaimed with a laugh. “I had my tickets bought the day they came
out.” She chattered on in her lively
Southern twang as she looked over the readings on his monitors, jotting down
notes on his chart. “Your sats are a
little low,” she commented, checking the little pulse ox monitor clipped to the
end of one of his fingers. “I’m going to
turn up your O2 a bit more; that should help.” He watched as she adjusted a gauge on the
oxygen tank and made another note on his chart.
“Any pain
from the IVs, or are they okay?” she asked, turning around the two bags hanging
on the IV stand next to his bed. They
were each connected to a line that ran into a vein on the inside of his elbow,
one dripping saline to keep him hydrated, the other pumping him with
antibiotics.
“They’re
fine,” replied Nick, marveling over how used to IVs he was by now. He’d developed small calluses on the inside
of his arms from all the needles that had been threaded into the veins there
over the years; it was all routine to him by now.
“Good.” She wrote one more thing on the chart and
then asked, “Is there anything I can get you before I go?”
He was
about to say no, but then changed his mind.
“You think I could get a sleeping pill or something? Nothin’ too strong, just something so I can
get some sleep?”
“Sure!”
said Samantha. “I’ll just run it by Dr.
K first to make sure it’s okay, and I’ll be back in a jiff. I don’t blame you for not being able to sleep
in this place,” she added with a chuckle.
“It’s gotta be tough, with all of us coming in and fiddling with things
all the time.” She smiled knowingly, and
Nick laughed wheezily, then coughed.
Samantha
watched him carefully, waiting for the coughing spell to pass, and then gave
him another gentle smile. “I’ll be back
soon with something to help you sleep,” she assured him. “Just hit your call button if you need
somethin’ before then.”
“Okay. Thanks,” Nick replied, managing a smile back
before she left the room. Then he
relaxed against his pillows, inhaling the oxygen that flowed into his nostrils
as deeply as he could.
As
promised, Samantha was back within a few minutes with a large pill in a small
paper cup. She poured a glass of water
for him from the pitcher on his bed tray and handed him the cup. “This should help you get to sleep,” she said
sweetly.
Nick
thanked her and gratefully took the pill.
Within half an hour, he had drifted off into a dreamless sleep.
***
It was the
following evening before Dr. Kingsbury came to talk to Nick about the results
of his tests from the day before. He’d
spent the day resting, watching TV, and worrying because he didn’t seem to be
feeling any better, despite the antibiotics.
And Dr. Kingsbury didn’t do much to quash his fears.
“How have
you been feeling today, Nick?” she asked when she came in to his room.
He pressed
the mute button on the TV remote before turning to her. “Eh,” he grunted honestly, “about the same.”
The
middle-aged doctor nodded, pursing her lips.
“Well, I’ve been going over your test results with the pulmonology
department, and I’m afraid they’re still not giving us the diagnosis we’re
looking for. Your blood work showed that
your white count is high, which usually means you have an infection. With the way you’ve been feeling, that’s no
surprise. The lung function tests showed
that your lung capacity is only 60% of what it should be, even taking into
account the lobectomy you had. That
means something’s building up in your lungs, taking up space, which, again, is
not a surprise – we could already tell that from the x-ray.”
“What about
the CT scan?” asked Nick, wanting to know what that “something” that was
building up in his lungs was. Was is
cancer, or was it just fluid from pneumonia?
Dr.
Kingsbury smiled briefly at his question.
“CT scans are a lot clearer than x-rays, but in your case, the scan
didn’t tell us much more than the x-ray did.
The same white infiltrates I pointed out to you on the x-ray yesterday
showed up, but unfortunately, a lot of different lung diseases look that way in
a scan,” she explained. “I won’t be able
to make a clear diagnosis until I know exactly what those patchy spots are,
what they’re made of. I want to schedule
you for a lung biopsy tomorrow.”
Nick’s
heart flip-flopped at the word biopsy.
He’d had a biopsy done on his leg three years ago, when he’d checked
into the hospital for further tests on what he’d thought was just a simple
fracture. It was the biopsy that had
given Dr. Kingsbury his diagnosis of Ewing’s Sarcoma.
Biopsies
diagnosed cancer.
“Are you
looking for cancer cells? Is that why
you want to do a biopsy?” he asked, his voice catching.
Dr.
Kingsbury smiled again. “I’m looking to rule
out cancer. The doctor who does the
biopsy will take a small sample of tissue from an area where we see the patches
on your scans, and if no cancer cells show up, we can rule out metastasis. We’ll also be able to analyze the tissue
sample to see what is in those patches.
Does that make sense?”
Nick
nodded, but he still didn’t feel much better about the whole thing. Another biopsy… The last time, he’d been more afraid about
the procedure itself than what it might reveal.
He’d been too naïve to know any better; he’d never even considered the
possibility of cancer. But now he was
wiser. This time, it was the results he
feared.
***