Chapter 121
The
Hope-For-All Cancer Support Group met in Conference Room 5B on the oncology
floor of Tampa General Hospital on the second Saturday of every month from 10
to 11 a.m.
At exactly
9:57, Nick peeked his head warily around the doorframe of Conference Room
5B. From behind, he felt the poke of a
finger in his back and the hiss of a voice in his ear. “Go on; I don’t wanna walk in late!”
At Claire’s
impatient insistence, Nick stepped into the room. He hesitated just inside the doorway, looking
around. The conference room housed a
large table and a set of matching, comfortable-looking chairs. The table had been pushed back against one
wall and spread with a few platters of snacks and drinks. The chairs were arranged in a circle in the
center of the room.
There were
about ten other people already there when Nick and Claire walked in. Some were already seated in the circle of
chairs; others were mingling over coffee at the refreshment table. Not knowing a soul and unsure of what to
expect, Nick felt awkward and out of place.
But there was no turning back now; even if he tried to walk out, he knew
Claire wouldn’t let him. After all, she
was the one who had convinced him to come today.
Sitting
directly across from the door, a woman with a clipboard balanced on her lap
glanced up and spotted Nick and Claire.
Her features melted into a warm smile.
“Come on in!” she called brightly, beckoning. Claire took the initiative, stepping around
Nick and leading the way over to the circle.
She paused to introduce herself and Nick to the woman, whom Nick had
already pegged to be the psychologist who was leading the group. Her professional dress and cheery attitude
gave her away.
“Call me
Franzi,” the woman introduced herself, and she spoke more, Nick started to pick
up on a slight accent in her voice. German,
maybe, he thought, the years of experience talking to foreign fans making him
good at picking up on such things. In
any case, he guessed she’d been in the States for awhile now; her English was
impeccable. “I’m a liaison between the
oncology and psychiatry departments here at the hospital, and I facilitate the
meetings of our little group here. Let
me say, we’re so happy to see new faces.
I’m glad you both could attend.”
“Thanks,”
they both said, nodding their acknowledgements.
“Just find
a seat anywhere, and we’ll get started in the next few minutes,” Franzi
offered, and they obliged, Claire staking out a couple of chairs on one side of
the circle. Nick let out a breath as he
sat down beside her and tried to tuck his portable oxygen tank underneath his
chair, hating the fact that he’d had to bring it out in public, even if it was
just to the hospital. But as he looked
around at the others, who were filling in the rest of the seats, he realized he
had no reason to feel self-conscious here.
The Hope-For-All
group offered support to people of all ages, with any kind of cancer. It was the only such general support group
sponsored by the hospital; the others described in the pamphlet Dr. Kingsbury
had given Nick were catered to specific age groups and cancers. There were even special groups for family
members of people with cancer, or those who had lost loved ones to it. There was no group for people with bone
cancer, but there was one for people in their twenties and thirties that Claire
kept suggesting. It sounded like a good
idea, but not for Nick. His peers also
made up the bulk of his fan base, and he knew he would feel uncomfortable
spilling his guts in front of a group of people who might have watched him grow
up on MTV. He’d opted for the most
general group and hoped the people there would be older and less inclined to
already know who he was. He wanted to be
anonymous.
Remembering
the description in the pamphlet, he shouldn’t have been surprised at the
variety within the small group. There
was a wide range of ages represented, from a lone teenage girl to an elderly
couple that had to be in their eighties.
Many of the people were obviously undergoing treatment. The teenage girl looked fairly normal, except
for the bright bandana covering her noticeably bald head. The look reminded him of Claire, who had
bandanas in seemingly every color and pattern there was. The woman next to her, who looked to be in
her thirties, was also wearing a scarf on her head, but the color did nothing
to brighten her sallow, sickly complexion.
Her face was gaunt, her eyes hollowed by dark circles, yet she managed a
weak smile as she talked with the teenager.
On her other side sat another young couple, their hands wound around
each other’s. The woman looked
completely fine, while the man was pale and probably bald beneath his stocking
cap, as evidenced by the fact that he had no eyebrows. Next to him was an older man, probably in his
early fifties, whose baldness was not well-disguised by the bad toupee perched
on his brown skin. In any other setting,
Nick might have giggled with Claire over the fake-looking rug, but sensing what
the man, like all of these other people, was going through, he could only
empathize.
“Excuse me,
are you saving this seat?”
At the
gentle voice, Nick looked up to see a plump, middle-aged woman standing before
him, motioning to the unoccupied seat next to him. “No, go ahead,” he said quickly, waving for
the woman to sit down.
She did,
keeping her arms crossed over her chest. For a moment, she looked silently around the
room. Then she turned to him. “Is this your first time coming to group?”
she asked politely. “I haven’t been
coming long, but I don’t think I’ve seen you here before.”
Nick shook
his head. “No, this is my first
time. I’m Nick,” he said and offered his
hand.
“Nice to
meet you, Nick. I’m Carol,” the woman
replied, shaking it. He noticed that
even as she shook with her right hand, she kept her left arm across her chest,
her hand resting lightly at her bosom.
Her smile was kind, but her eyes, cautious. That was the only word Nick could think of to
describe the emotion in them. She seemed
wary, uncertain. Was it him?
He tried to
study her without staring. He
immediately recognized the signs of someone who hadn’t been on chemo long. Her short, colorless hair was thinning; it
was flat and stringy, with noticeable patches of bald scalp showing through,
but she hadn’t yet started trying to cover it up. Yet she seemed to be trying to cover herself
up, the way she kept gently tugging at her blouse, before moving her arms back
into position over her chest.
The last
one to come over from the refreshment table, his napkin piled with several
cookies, was a man in his sixties or seventies.
He walked with a noticeable limp and was wearing a baseball cap, but
Nick could see that he still had a full head of thick, silver hair beneath it –
it was poking out of the back. He sank
down into the chair on the other side of Claire with a gusty sigh and turned to
grin at her. “Didja get any of these
cookies?” he asked, holding up his napkin.
“Better git ‘em while the gittin’s good, cause this is the only place I
can get my hands on sweets these days.
My wife won’t let me have ‘em no more.
And anyone here can tell ya, ol’ Grandpa Jack likes his cookies.”
A light
chorus of laughter went around the circle, and Claire smiled at the old
man. “Well, who doesn’t? You should tell your wife, life’s too short
to go without a cookie now and then.”
The man let
out a loud guffaw at what she’d said and grinned even wider, showing several
gold-capped teeth on the sides. “There
you go! Now here’s a gal who knows how
to live life. I should have you call up
my wife and tell her just that!” Still
smiling in amusement, he held out his gnarled hand. “The name’s Jack Wallace, but everyone just
calls me Grandpa Jack. You’d think I was
old or something.” He shrugged and then
winked, his brown eye sparkling.
“I’m Claire
Ryan,” Claire introduced herself, shaking his hand, “and this is my friend
Nick.”
“Good to
meet ya, son,” Grandpa Jack said as he and Nick shook hands across Claire’s
lap. His hand was big and rough, from
years of working, no doubt.
“Same to
you,” Nick echoed with a nod, glad that at least some of these people seemed
good-natured and friendly. Maybe this
wouldn’t be so bad after all.
The clock
on the wall read 10:01 when Franzi cleared her throat, ready to begin. The light chatter died down as the circle
fell quiet, but just when the counselor opened her mouth to speak, the door to
Conference Room 5B opened again with a click, and every head turned, including
Nick’s. A woman had come in and was
walking towards the circle, her pace brisk.
She was probably in her forties, but in great shape, her sleeveless Nike
athletic top and shorts revealing a body that was long, lean, tan, and toned,
her leathery skin stretching over visible muscles. Her face was lined, her features angular and
severe, especially with her brown hair slicked straight back into a tight knot
at the back of her head.
These were
all things Nick noticed about her appearance after doing a double-take
at the most obvious feature at all – the fact that her muscular right leg ended
just below her knee, morphing into a sleek prosthesis that hardly looked like a
leg at all. It looked more like a tube
that ended in a springy, J-shaped bar where there should have been a foot. Nick had learned enough to recognize this as
a high-tech running prosthesis, but he’d never seen one up close and personal
before. He couldn’t help but stare as
she crossed the room, the end of the prosthesis bending and rebounding with her
weight at each step.
“Sorry I’m
late,” the woman announced, her voice appropriately loud and sharp. “I decided to put in an extra mile this morning
and nearly lost track of the time.” She
sat down in the empty seat on the other side of Carol and exhaled her breath
with a “Whew!,” drawing her hand across her forehead.
Nick
continued to watch her in amazement, piecing together the realization that
she’d been out running. No one else
seemed as impressed or said much of anything, except for Franzi, who cleared
her throat again and replied, “That’s alright, Deb. We were just about to get started.”
The meeting
began with Franzi welcoming everyone and asking how their week had been. Nick sat back and listened as several people
shared stories from the week. Some
volunteered information about how their treatment was going; the young wife of
the man in the stocking cap patted her husband’s thigh and smiled broadly as
she announced he only had five more radiation treatments to go and would
hopefully be done by their next meeting.
Others talked about things totally unrelated to their cancer, things
from their personal lives. The sickly
woman with the scarf, whose name was Nadine, shared a couple of cute things her
children, apparently young ones, had done, which prompted the oldest couple
there, Ike and Evelynn, to tell a story about one of their grandchildren.
As he
listened to the conversation flow across the circle, Nick could pick up on the
camaraderie between the group members.
They obviously had come to know each other well and were willing to
share intimate details of their lives with one another. Nick supposed this shouldn’t be a foreign
concept to him; after all, his life was basically an open book to the
public. But he’d never quite experienced
anything like this before.
After a few
more minutes had passed, Franzi announced, “Well, as you might have noticed, we
have two new faces in the circle tonight.”
She looked to Nick and Claire, as did everyone else. “Would either of you like to introduce
yourselves and share your story?”
Nick
exchanged glances with Claire. He didn’t
feel much like talking yet, though he wasn’t sure why. The other people seemed nice enough, and he
was used to talking about himself in interviews and speaking in front of
massive groups of people when he was onstage.
Yet that morning, even in the midst of this small circle, he felt shy
and uncomfortable. A part of him always
had been shy, but as a Backstreet Boy, his more outgoing stage persona usually
took over. Today, he felt so removed
from his Backstreet Boy image that he couldn’t conjure up that confidence he
displayed for the media. “Go read People,”
he wanted to tell the group, remembering the in-depth interview he’d given the
magazine a few months after his leg was amputated. But instead, he found his mind racing, trying
to mentally prepare what he was going to say so he wouldn’t come off sounding
stupid.
But as he
paused, Claire scooted forward on her seat and started talking. “Hey, everyone. My name’s Claire,” she introduced herself,
and, surprised, Nick turned to watch her.
“I’m twenty-seven; I’m a Florida girl, born and raised; I work as a
dental hygienist; and I’m a four-year survivor of acute lymphocytic
leukemia.” Every set of eyes in the
room, Nick’s included, was upon her as she told her story. “I was diagnosed when I was twenty, second
semester of my sophomore year of college.
I did a course of chemo that lasted through the rest of the semester and
into the summer, and then I was declared in remission. I took a semester off to recuperate and then
took some courses to get my associate’s degree at community college. I started working as a hygienist and did that
for about a year-and-a-half, until I started feeling bad again. I found out I’d relapsed just before
Christmas in 2002. I started back on
chemo in early 2003, and when that didn’t help, I got a bone marrow transplant
from my brother in August of that year.
I’ve been in remission ever since… it’ll be four years this August.”
Four years, thought Nick, almost surprised to
hear it had been that long. He
remembered Claire’s bone marrow transplant like it had happened yesterday, the
fear it had evoked in him permanently etched in his memory. Yet, looking at her now, one would never know
what she had gone through. The only
physical traces her ordeal had left on her body were the tiny scars hidden
beneath her clothes, marks left from central lines, spinal taps, and bone
marrow aspirations, and they were hardly noticeable now. She looked unscathed and completely normal,
her hair kept short because that was the way she liked it, her pale skin just a
part of her natural complexion. Had she
not just shared her story, Nick figured the others would have assumed she was
just there as a support for him, the one who obviously had the medical
problems, not as a survivor herself.
“Wow, four
years… that means you’re almost to the five-year mark! Congratulations!” exclaimed the wide-eyed
teenager, whose name was Jessie. “I’m
just trying to get through my first course of chemo.”
Claire
smiled knowingly. “You’ll get there,”
she encouraged the younger girl. “It’s
rough, but eventually it’ll be behind you, and you’ll look back and go, ‘How
did I ever get through all of that??’”
Jessie
smiled back and nodded, the back of her bandana fluttering against her balding
scalp.
“Have you
ever taken part in a support group like this before?” Franzi wanted to know.
Claire
shook her head. “No… actually, I was
kind of against the idea when I was younger.
I thought I’d be a martyr and just get through it on my own, you know. My friend Nick’s the one who talked me into
coming today.” She smiled over at Nick,
giving him a secret wink. He smirked and
knew it was now his turn to talk.
Clearing
his throat, he held up his hand in a half-wave and said, “That would be me…
Claire’s friend Nick.” Smiling, he
continued nervously, “Um… I’ve never been to one of these things either, but
I’ve been through enough by now that I guess it’s probably a good idea.” Light chuckles rang through the circle, as
heads bobbed up and down knowingly.
Reassured by the feedback, Nick found himself slipping into interview
mode as he went on with his story, telling them of how he was diagnosed with
bone cancer over four years ago, how he’d lost his leg after a relapse, and how
his lungs were currently struggling because of a disease with a funny
name. “That’s the explanation for this,”
he added with a nervous chuckle, giving his oxygen line a gentle tug.
Before
anyone else could say anything, the woman who had walked in late, Deb, asked,
“What kind of prosthetic do you use, Nick?”
She spoke in the same tone a teacher might use, the kind of voice that
made it sound like it was she, not Franzi, who was actually in charge of the
group.
Nick was
only mildly surprised by the question and willingly pushed up his pant leg to
show her his blue and silver titanium leg.
Before he could actually answer her question, though, Deb exclaimed,
“Oh, a C-Leg! Very nice. I know a lot of people who use those; they’re
supposed to be very good. Not great for
running, though; they tend to overheat.
What do you think of it?”
“Oh, it’s…
it’s pretty good, I guess,” Nick shrugged, not sure what else to say. He hadn’t known anything else since the first
artificial leg he’d trained on after getting out of the hospital, and while the
prosthesis he had now was certainly easier to walk on than that, it would never
be the same as his real leg. But he
supposed it was better than nothing.
Deb seemed
unsatisfied by his lack of a detailed response, but had no chance to press him
further, for at that point, Franzi started talking again, and the group moved
on.
When the
meeting was over, and Deb was off talking to Franzi, the old man known as
Grandpa Jack came up to Nick. “Thirteen
people here, and three of ‘em gimps – what are the odds, eh, sonny? Even in a cancer group, those is high
numbers.”
Nick
started to nod at first, but then he stopped, looking around. “Wait – three?” he asked, confused. There was him and that lady Deb, but who-?
He
remembered Jack’s limp just as the grizzled older man started hitching up his
pant leg. Looking down, Nick saw that he,
too, was wearing an artificial leg, and a much more rudimentary one at
that. He stared for a moment and then
looked up in surprise. “You had bone
cancer too?”
Jack threw
back his head and laughed, the same hearty guffaw he’d let out earlier. It was the kind of laugh that just made you
smile, but Nick was too perplexed to smile at that moment. “Nope,” said Jack. “Prostate cancer. Just diagnosed a couple months ago. No, this here is a souvenir of the war,” he
added, patting the metal limb. “You know
which war I’m talking about, sonny? How
good’s your American history?”
Not very good, thought Nick, licking his lips as he
tried to think back to his hotel room tutoring sessions. “Uh… World War II?” he guessed.
Jack
guffawed again, his eyes sparkling with amusement. “I was in the fourth grade when the Japs
bombed Pearl Harbor. Nope, it was Korea,
1952. Been walkin’ on a metal leg longer’n
I walked on a real one.”
Nick’s eyes
widened as he did the math. Fifty-five
years, this guy had been an amputee. And
now he had cancer. He had just about as
bad of luck as Nick; they might as well start calling this the Bad Luck Club.
“Now this
lady,” Jack added, waggling his thumb over his shoulder to where Deb and Franzi
were standing, “she had bone cancer.
Osteo-something or the other; I can’t pronounce half of them big
mumbo-jumbo medical names. Anyways,
she’s somethin’ alright. Had it in her
twenties, and she still comes to these meetings. Seems to think she knows everything and can
be of service to us all.” Jack snorted,
and a smile crept over Nick’s face. The
old man apparently wasn’t fond of Deb, and though Nick couldn’t exactly put his
finger on it, he could understand why.
“She’s a runner… used to compete in the Paralympics – you know, those Olympics
they have for gimps like us.” He shot
Nick another toothy grin. “Likes to
remind us all of it too. I’m surprised
she’s not still wearing her bronze medal around her neck.”
Nick
chuckled. Being a part of the celebrity
crowd, he had met plenty of people like Deb, people who thought they knew it
all and were better than everyone else for it.
He didn’t like people like that.
But he was sure he was going to like Jack. Grinning, he said, “Well, I can tell you I’m
not gonna win any medals like this” and kicked at his oxygen tank with his good
foot.
Jack smiled
and clapped Nick on the shoulder, replying, “Ehh, you’re a young’n. You’ll be fit as a fiddle again, soon
enough. Come back and join us again next
week, huh, son?”
Nick smiled
back and turned to look at Claire, who had been drawn into a conversation with
the teenager, Jessie. Turning back to
Jack, he nodded. “I think I will.”
***