Chapter 38
Nick
perched on the edge of the large hotel bed, waiting for Claire to get done
exploring their suite and come back into the bedroom to talk to him. He had to admit, he was a little nervous. It’s nothing bad, she’d assured him,
but she had sounded serious when she’d asked if they could talk.
“This place
is amazing,” Claire said, coming into the bedroom with a look of awe on her
face.
Nick patted
an empty spot next to him on the bed.
“C’mere. Let’s talk.”
Claire
nodded and sat down beside him.
“Okay. Look… when we were talking
about Baylee in the car, and how lucky Brian and Leighanne are, it made me
think. We’re getting married, Nick. We need to talk about the ‘having kids’ thing
again. And we need to be perfectly
honest with each other, lay everything out on the table.”
Nick almost
laughed at the seriousness in her eyes.
She looked so worried… as if he was suddenly going to tell her he just
couldn’t marry her because she couldn’t give him children. The very notion of that was ridiculous. “Claire,” he started, “I already told you how
I feel about that. Having kids is not
the most important thing to me. You
are.”
A hint of a
smile appeared on her lips. “I know
that’s what you told me before,” she said, “but in the car, you sounded… I
don’t know… almost sad, I guess. Like
you wished you could be like Brian and have a son of our own. And we both know I can’t give that to
you…” She trailed off, her eyes
shifting downward.
“Hey, hey,”
he said, taking hold of her chin and gently lifting it towards him so that he
could see her eyes again. “I know. And it doesn’t matter, okay? It doesn’t matter if you can’t get pregnant;
we can always adopt if we want kids down the line. All I want right now is you.” He was still cupping her chin, so he leaned
in and guided her face towards his for a kiss.
He recoiled in surprise when she wrenched her face out of his grasp. Ouch.
“What’s wrong?” he asked her, hurt.
Claire bit
her lip, something she always did when she was nervous or upset. “I’m sorry… but there’s something else I need
to tell you.”
Nick
frowned. “Okay… what is it?”
“When I
first told you I was sterile, there’s something I left out. I’m never going to be able to get pregnant naturally…
but that doesn’t necessarily mean I can’t get pregnant.”
Nick raised
his eyebrows, and it seemed like everything else inside him lifted with
them. “You mean you could get
pregnant?” he asked, his voice high with hope.
“How? You mean with some kind of
fertility drugs or that u-vitro fertilization thing or-“
“In-vitro
fertilization, yeah,” she answered.
“That’s when they implant fertilized eggs back into your body, and if it
works, you get pregnant.”
“Right…” Nick nodded; that sounded simple enough. “So what’s the catch?” There had to be a catch; otherwise
she would sound happy, right? After all,
this was a good thing, wasn’t it?
Claire sighed. “Before my leukemia
relapsed, I was still fertile. But when
that happened, my oncologist told me that more chemo would probably make me
sterile. She referred me to an OB/GYN,
who explained all about the option of in-vitro fertilization, how they could
harvest my eggs, freeze them, and store them so that I could use them to get
pregnant later.”
Nick nodded
his understanding. “So you have eggs
frozen somewhere that you can use someday?”
“Yes,” said
Claire, “but here’s the thing - they only like to freeze fertilized eggs
because they’ve been shown to work a lot better, as far as getting pregnant
goes, so…”
“So your
frozen eggs are already fertilized?” finished Nick, thinking for a moment. “You mean with-?”
“Donor
sperm.”
Nick didn’t
even notice that they were finishing each other’s sentences. He was too busy staring at Claire, as the
reality of her words sunk in. “So you’re
telling me you can get pregnant… but not by me.”
Claire nodded slowly. “Basically.”
“Oh.” Nick wasn’t sure why he felt so disappointed…
the fact that this option existed was a good thing, wasn’t it? It meant that there was a chance Claire could
have children of her own after all. But
not his children. Someone else’s
children. “So do you know who the donor
is?” he asked. “Just wondering.”
Claire got
a funny look on her face. “Yeah… about
that…” she started slowly, twisting her hands in her lap. Frowning, he waited for her to continue. “Most single women that have this done choose
an anonymous sperm donor… which is what I was going to do, but… one of my guy
friends offered to donate. And I let
him.”
“One of
your guy friends?” Nick repeated, narrowing his eyes as a sneaking suspicion
came over him. “Anyone I know?”
Claire
closed her eyes and took a breath.
“Jamie.”
Nick’s
shoulders slumped as he heard the worst possibility confirmed. Jamie.
He began to grow angry as he heard the name echoing in his head; it was
a name that never failed to invoke feelings of inferiority and resentment
within him, though he wasn’t quite sure why.
He was engaged to Claire, not Jamie, and yet…
How could
she??
“So let me
get this straight,” he muttered through clenched teeth. “You had your ex-boyfriend donate his sperm
to you.”
“I told
you, he offered,” Claire replied immediately. “What was I supposed to do? Say, ‘No thanks, Jamie, your sperm’s not good
enough, I’d rather get it from some random guy I don’t know’?”
“How about
‘no thanks, Jamie, it would be too weird because you’re my ex-boyfriend’? Did you think of that one??”
Claire
sighed. “I know, Nick. I did think of that… but… I dunno, I
guess I thought it would be okay… ex-boyfriend or not, he’s still my friend.”
“Yeah, and
someday he might be the father of your children, even when you’re married to
someone else – me! You don’t think
that’s a little weird?”
“He won’t
be though… We talked about it, Nick; we
had to sign an agreement. He did this
for me with no strings attached. We
weren’t together when it happened; we hadn’t been for five years. He wanted to do this for me because he’s my
friend, and he felt bad. He understands
just as well as I do that if I ever use the eggs to get pregnant, he won’t have
any responsibility toward the children.”
Nick shook
his head. “And you expect him to be able
to look at a child of yours, knowing full well that he’s its father, and
not feel anything?” he asked, his voice laden with skepticism.
“Ours,
Nick… it would be ours. Yours and
mine. Not Jamie’s.”
“But-“
“The
biology of it doesn’t matter,” Claire interrupted. “If we adopted a child, it wouldn’t be
biologically yours either, Nick. Would
that bother you too?”
Nick
sighed. This wasn’t fair. She was tiptoeing around the point here. “No,” he answered firmly, “but that’s
different. I probably wouldn’t know
the father. And even if I did, he sure
as hell wouldn’t be one of your ex-boyfriends.”
“Could you
stop calling him my ex-boyfriend? That
was in high school, alright? We
were friends before we dated, and we’ve been friends since we broke up seven
years ago. He’s not just my
ex-boyfriend. He’s one of my best
friends, and it bothers me that you don’t like him.”
“I hardly
know him, Claire,” Nick replied irritably, annoyed at the fact that she could
tell he didn’t like Jamie. “And this
isn’t about him personally. It’s about
you letting your old boyfriend give you his sperm.”
“Yeah, I
get it, okay? It was probably a stupid
thing to do, but I had my reasons,” Claire muttered, looking away from
him. “Somehow I knew you weren’t going
to take this well, and that’s why I didn’t tell you this before. But it doesn’t matter now… it’s just an
option, and we definitely don’t have to use it.
I just wanted you to know.”
Nick shook
his head; what was he supposed to say?
Thanks? “Well, I guess I’m glad
you told me,” he said flatly and sighed again, unable to hide his annoyance
with her.
She didn’t
say anything else, and neither did he.
For what seemed like a long time, they just sat in silence, side by
side, yet isolated by the distance between them. They stared into space in opposite
directions, each lost in their own tumultuous thoughts.
Finally,
she spoke. “I’m sorry,” she murmured,
her voice small and meek.
He only
gave a short nod in reply, his worries not yet put to rest by her hushed
words. The bed jostled beneath him as
she stood up, and he watched as she walked into the bathroom and shut the door
with a click. He heard the sounds of her
rustling around inside the room and water running and figured she was getting
ready for bed. He stood as well and
walked out of the bedroom, letting the door shut softly behind him. Wandering into the main room of the suite, he
sank down onto the couch and picked up the remote. No use trying to go to bed now. He knew he wouldn’t sleep.
It was
going to be a long night.
***
As she lay
flat on her back in bed, staring up at the ceiling above her, Claire let out a
long sigh. It’s going to be a long
night, she thought.
She’d been
lying there for half an hour already, but sleep seemed hours away. There was no way she could sleep now, upset
as she was by the conversation she’d just had with Nick. Truthfully, she wasn’t surprised by his
reaction – in a way, she had expected it.
But that didn’t stop it from hurting.
She rolled
onto her side and clutched a fistful of pillow, squeezing hard.
Sure, she
had hoped he would take the news well, that he would see things from her
perspective and be glad that she still had the option to carry a child
someday. But she wasn’t naïve. She knew that Nick wasn’t a big fan of Jamie,
and she figured he wouldn’t exactly celebrate when he found out Jamie had
volunteered to be her sperm donor. That
was why she had waited so long to tell him.
And really,
who could blame him? As much as she
hated having him upset with her, she certainly understood why he was. But there was nothing she could do to fix it
now. There was no going back… although
if she could, maybe she would.
I get it, okay? It was probably a stupid thing to do, but I
had my reasons,
she heard herself saying.
I had my reasons…
In her
mind, she traveled back to that time, almost three years ago. She could still recall vividly sitting in the
kitchen of Dianna’s apartment, sipping cocoa and tugging at her hair, hair that
she knew would probably be gone in a matter of months, as she mulled over the
decision she had to make.
“I think you should just go with it,
Claire,” she
remembered Dianna saying. “Jamie
wants to do this for you. Why not let
him? He’s been one of your best friends
since we were in high school.”
“I know… but I don’t want him to do
this because he feels sorry for me. And
I don’t want things to get weird between us… weirder than they already have
been since we broke up.”
“It’s not that he feels sorry for
you. Personally, I think he’s mad at
himself, for not being there for you the first time. But that’s only part of it. He cares about you, Claire; he wouldn’t have
offered to do this if he didn’t.”
“Well, I care about him too. You know I still love him… but not the way I
used to. That’s why I’m so unsure about
this.”
“What’s love got to do with it? It’s not like you two are going to have a
baby together, Claire. He would just be
giving you the means to have a baby someday, when you’re ready. By then you’ll have some guy you do love to
be that baby’s daddy. It won’t be
Jamie. Using him would be just like using
any other sperm donor… only with him, you know what you’re getting. And that’s a good thing, if you ask me. Jamie’s smart, he’s athletic, he’s a nice
guy… and he’s attractive too, if you don’t mind me saying so. The curly hair… those blue eyes… Good genes, Claire. Think about it. You’d be doing your baby a favor.”
They’d both
laughed. And Claire had thought about
it, long and hard. And in the end, she’d
taken Dianna’s advice and used Jamie’s sperm.
It had seemed like a good decision at the time. It made her happy, to have been given a “Plan
B,” something to fall back on, a way to bear a child later on if the upcoming
cancer treatments made her infertile, as her oncologist said they probably
would. It had made Jamie happy too, to
be able to give her that option.
But now she
was not so sure. Because it certainly
hadn’t made Nick very happy, and he was the one who mattered most to her
now. Maybe she should have just gone
with a random donor. Then there would be
no argument. She would have done what
she had to do, given the circumstances.
It wouldn’t change the fact that she and Nick could never conceive a
child together. But it would change the
possibility of having a child that was biologically Jamie’s.
She
supposed she could have just kept the whole thing from Nick. Or lied and said she had used an anonymous
donor. But neither would have felt
right. She was glad she had told him… he
had a right to know. Even if he was mad
at her for what she had done, she didn’t regret telling him. She just hoped that when morning came and he’d
had a chance to think, he would come around.
They had been through too much to let this come between them.
***
Nick woke
up with a horrible crick in his neck and found himself stretched out in an
awkward position on the couch, where he’d evidently fallen asleep the night
before. No pillow, no blanket, but at
least he’d taken his leg off and plugged it into its charger for the
night. As he sat up, massaging the side
of his neck, he heard the bedroom door open.
A moment later, Claire appeared.
She had clearly just woken up too – she was still bleary-eyed, and her
hair was sticking up and out in funny angles.
“Morning,”
she greeted him in a low voice, wrapping her arms around herself and looking
uncomfortable.
“Morning,”
he echoed, his voice deep and gravelly from sleep. He cleared his throat and tried again. “Sleep okay?”
She
shrugged. “I guess. How about you? Did you sleep there?”
He
nodded. “Wasn’t too comfortable,” he
confessed, rubbing his neck again.
“Doesn’t
look like it,” she said, shaking her head.
“Weren’t you cold? The air is
cranked in here. I’m freezing.” She hugged herself tighter and shifted her
weight, crossing one leg behind the other.
Nick just
shrugged.
“Well, I’m
getting back into bed, where it’s warm,” she said after a moment. “Are you coming?”
He met her
eyes and realized she wanted him too.
She wanted to make up. Though he
was still not thrilled about the bombshell she’d dropped on him the night
before, he had to admit, so did he. He
hated fighting with her. Nodding, he
twisted his body around and got up from the couch. He caught his balance on one leg and hopped
after her as she led the way back into the bedroom of the hotel suite. They collapsed into bed together, burrowing
beneath the warm layer of covers.
“This is so
much more comfortable,” he sighed as his head landed on a soft pillow. “That damn couch did a number on my neck.”
“I’m really
sorry, Nick.” Nick wasn’t really sure
what she was sorry for – that he had slept on the couch? Or that she had let Jamie donate sperm to
her? The way she sounded, maybe she was
apologizing for it all.
He
sighed. “You don’t have to be sorry,
Claire. What’s done is done.”
“You’re not
mad at me?” There was a note of
uncertainty in her voice that matched the uncertainty inside him. Was he mad at her? No. He
still wasn’t happy about what he had found out… but he wasn’t mad at her.
“No,” he
told her honestly. “I’m not mad at you,
Claire. I’m just…” He sighed in frustration, searching for the
right words to express what he was feeling.
“I don’t know… disappointed, I guess.
Not in you though… I just hate this whole situation.”
“I
know. I hate it too. I wish we could be like other couples – get
married, have kids, simple as that. But
it’s not gonna be that easy for us.”
Nick
snorted. “Since when has anything
been easy for us?”
Claire
didn’t answer, and at least a minute passed without either of them speaking. Finally, Claire said, “Listen, I didn’t mean
for us to start the day off with some deep, serious conversation. We don’t need to talk about this now – the
children thing, I mean. We can bring it
up again later, when the time’s right. I
just want you to know though – if we ever do decide we want to become parents,
we’ll choose whatever option will work best for both of us. I don’t want to make you uncomfortable or to
have you resent me for the choices I’ve made.
I just wanted to tell you about that.
It seemed wrong not to.”
Nick
nodded. “I understand. And Claire… I don’t resent you for any
choices you’ve made. You did what felt
right to you at the time, and I can’t blame you for that. I was just upset last night, but I shouldn’t
have gone off on you like that.”
Claire
shook her head. “No… I understand. Believe me, I understand. I can’t blame you for being upset either. Like we said before, this whole situation
just sucks.”
Nodding
again, Nick let out another sigh. There
was really only one culprit they could blame for all this grief, and that was
the disease they had been battling together for over two years. Even though the cancer had been driven out of
their bodies, remnants of it would always remain - in the scars on their skin…
the stump of Nick’s missing leg… and their inability to conceive a child. They were like veterans of a war now, and try
as they might to escape it, their battle wounds would never fully heal.
Nick had
realized this before, and as his hand drifted down to touch the taut skin of
his stump beneath the covers, it became clear to him once again. He was going to have to accept this, just
like he had come to accept the amputation… just like Claire had accepted
it. They both had suffered at the hand
of cancer; the disease had taken things from both of them that they could never
get back. But through it all, they had
found each other. And as far as Nick was
concerned, there was nothing that could separate them now.
Not even
Jamie Turner.
***
There were
other things on Nick’s mind by the time lunch rolled around. He’d left Claire at the hotel for the
afternoon with the promise to take her sight-seeing later while he’d gone to
join his bandmates, their manager, and several big-wigs from their record label
for a lunch meeting. Sitting around a
large table in one of the VIP rooms of an upscale LA restaurant, Nick had found
his thoughts shifting from his future with Claire to his future with the
Backstreet Boys. The group was unanimous
on wanting to record another album. Now
they were discussing the specifics – mainly when they would start recording and
what they would record.
“There have been some major changes since your
last album was released,” one of the label execs was saying. “Music has changed, for one thing. The ‘boy band’ era has been over for
years. Your 2004 release put up some
good numbers, but it didn’t do nearly as well as Black and Blue or Millennium. If you want this new album to succeed on the
charts, you’re going to have to continue to reinvent yourselves and try to
incorporate some of the new sounds and styles that are out there right now.”
They’d
heard this speech time and time again.
Nick knew it made some of the others nervous, but he personally didn’t
care. Boybands were out – rock on. He’d be glad to leave behind the poppy love
ballads they’d become famous for and explore other genres of music, like
rock. Standing behind a mic stand with
his guitar or beating the hell out of his drums sounded a lot more feasible now
than busting a move from the “Everybody” dance anyway.
“And of
course, you all have grown and changed since the last album as well,” the exec
continued, and Nick noticed the flickering of eyes as everyone glanced at
him. Self-conscious, he felt a warm
blush began to creep up his neck just as he heard his name. “Nick – you might consider using this album
as a chance to reflect on what you’ve been through in the past couple of years
and express your feelings on that by writing some songs. I’m sure the fans will expect your ordeal to
manifest itself in the music on this new album.”
Nick nodded
in agreement, wondering how on earth he was going to be expected to write songs
about having cancer and losing his leg that people would actually enjoy
listening to.
“So let’s
try to plan out a tentative time frame.
When would you like to start work on the album?”
Nick
listened as months and dates were thrown around. After some discussion, they decided to get
together again in October, two months from then, to start working on material
for the album. They’d do some writing,
individually and as a group, and meet with other songwriters. Once they had something to go off of, they
would get back into the studio. If all
went well, the album could be out as early as the following summer.
It seemed a
long way off, but Nick knew he’d have plenty to keep him busy. He and Claire hadn’t even discussed wedding
dates yet, but he had a feeling he was in for a year of wedding planning, in
addition to working on the album. He had
no complaints though. He’d be surrounded
by his two greatest loves – music and Claire.
If all went as planned, the next year would be a good one.
It was
funny, though, how things rarely worked out the way he’d planned.
***