Chapter 47
To Claire’s relief, the Tampa General Emergency Room was surprisingly
un-crowded for a Friday night. She had
expected it to be busier, with people going out and doing stupid things (at
this thought, her mind turned to Nick, picturing him hanging all over “Diana,”
who, in her mind's eye, was gorgeous), but she was called from the waiting room
and ushered into a curtained examining area in a relatively short amount of
time.
Once there, however, things slowed down. A nurse asked her questions and took her
medical history, then left, promising that a doctor would come by to examine
her soon. But the minutes ticked by
slowly, and no doctor came. Neither did
Jamie.
“Where the hell is Jamie?” Claire muttered irritably, more to herself
than to anyone else.
She didn’t really expect an answer, but Dianna, who was sitting in a
chair a few feet away from the examining table, piped up, “Don’t worry, hon,
he’ll be here. Maybe he just needed some
extra time… You know he’s not a fan of
hospitals.”
“Who is?” Claire asked through gritted teeth, thinking she had far more
reason to hate hospitals than Jamie did.
Dianna cast her a wary sidelong glance, and Claire shut her mouth. She didn’t mean to be snippy, but she was
distressed and upset by everything that had happened that night. A range of emotions were running through her,
and none of them were good. She was
scared… terrified, in fact, that she might be facing a serious illness once
again. If this rash turned out to be
what she feared it was, it would be a huge setback. She could get sick… very sick, sick enough to
die even, depending on how bad it got.
Minor episodes of rejection weren’t uncommon shortly after a bone marrow
transplant, but after two years, she had thought she was out of the woods. Every check-up she’d had showed that her bone
marrow was working fine, and by now her immune system, which had been weakened
by the transplant, was almost back to normal.
Overall, she’d had a fairly easy time with the transplant, compared to
some of the horror stories she’d heard anyway.
She had been lucky, until now.
Stupidly, perhaps, she’d assumed that her luck would last, that there
would be no unexpected complications this long after the transplant. But now it seemed her luck had run out.
That was not the only thing on her mind now though. Nick, damn him, had made the whole night a
thousand times worse, and at the moment, that was somehow even more upsetting
to her. If Nick had been there with her
at the hospital, talking to her and holding her hand, she felt she could have
handled this a lot better. It was frightening
no matter who was with her, but in the two and a half years she had known Nick,
she had always been especially comforted by his presence. He was like a kindred spirit… he knew what it
was like to have cancer and to go through everything that went hand-in-hand
with it - painful tests and treatments with miserable side effects, low
self-esteem, rejection from friends, the fear of relapsing or dying even… It was the thing that had connected them, and
they had seen each other through hell.
She’d been by his side after he lost his leg, and he’d been there for
her during her transplant. When she’d
run downstairs screaming his name that evening, terrified by the rash she’d
found, she’d never doubted that he would be there for her again. She’d come to him for comfort and support…
and he’d abandoned her.
In some ways, that realization terrified her more than the rash on her
body. Where was the Nick who had loyally
sat by her side and held her hand while she was fighting an infection in
isolation after her transplant, the one who had flown all the way from New York
when she’d gotten worse and who’d sung to her when she wanted to hear his
voice? There was no sign of him in the
Nick she’d talked to last… the crude, drunken Nick who had gone out to get
wasted while she sat at home worrying and waiting for him. And for all she knew, he was cheating on her
too. He’d definitely had another woman
with him; she didn’t even want to imagine what they were doing at that
bar. But of course, she had her
suspicions, each of which made her increasingly more nauseous.
She tried not to think of Nick, but at soon as she stopped picturing
his face in her mind, envisioning him flirting with a beautiful seductress at
the bar, she saw the rash all over her chest and arms instead, and that made
her even more nauseous.
With a rattle, the curtain surrounding her examining area was pulled
aside just a tad. Claire looked up,
grateful for the distraction and expecting to see Jamie, but instead it was the
face of the nurse who had brought her back that peeked around it. “Sorry to keep you waiting, Miss Ryan,” the
nurse said apologetically. “We just had
a large trauma come in, so all of our doctors are very busy at the moment.”
Claire nodded her understanding, vaguely wondering what had
happened. Car accident, was her
first thought. Probably drinking
involved… again, stupid people out on a Friday night, doing stupid things. And again, this made her thoughts turn back
to Nick.
It was a vicious cycle she could not escape, for what else was there to
think of other than the rash and Nick?
There were certainly no happy thoughts she could muster up, for right
now it seemed her life was on the verge of falling apart. The bone marrow transplant, which was the
only reason she was even still alive, might be failing, and the man she was
planning to marry was at a bar with another woman when he should be at the
hospital with her. It was unbelievable
to realize that this had all happened in the last few hours.
But it had. Earlier in the day,
while out boating with Dianna and Jamie, she’d been perfectly happy. And now this.
Life was cruel.
Wistfully, she remembered the boat, the loud, rumbling roar of its
motor and the way it had bounced rapidly across the waves, sending up sea spray
that hit her face like a cool mist and left a taste of salt on her tongue. The water had been cold, the sun hot, the day
beautiful and perfect. She had enjoyed
it immensely, but even thinking of that did not comfort her or distract her in
any way. For again, she thought of Nick
and his slurred words over the phone.
“Claire doesn’t like to hang out with me. She won’t invite me out with her
friends. Instead she stands me up at the
hospital, and she goes out boating, my favorite activity. Right Claire?”
She closed
her eyes, pained by the sound of those words echoing in her memory. Nick had clearly been drunk when he’d said
them; she could hear it in his voice.
But that didn’t mean they weren’t true.
On the contrary, they probably were
true. He probably did feel that way, for
as she’d thought before, Nick didn’t lie when he was drunk. He’d spilled something he’d probably been
keeping to himself earlier, when she’d come home and found him in his
studio. No wonder he’d been so short
with her.
Angry as
she was with him, a wave of guilt rushed through her. Boating was
one of Nick’s favorite pastimes; he loved
being out on the ocean. Maybe she should
have made her friends wait so he could come with them. But as she chewed over that thought for a
moment, her guilt was quickly drowned with a flood of annoyance. Her
friends… Dianna and Jamie were her
friends. Sure she wanted Nick to get to
know them and like them the way she had grown to like his bandmates, but that
didn’t mean she had to bring him along to everything they did together. She certainly didn’t expect him to bring her
to every Backstreet function; surely, some things were meant to be just for the
five of them. Couldn’t he see that?
Dianna was
right, she
decided. Nick and I are not attached
at the hip, we don’t have to go everywhere together, and he shouldn’t be so
bent out of shape that I did something with my own set of friends and didn’t
invite him. As far as she was
concerned, she hadn’t done anything wrong.
And if she had, it certainly hadn’t been as wrong as what he was doing
to her now. Maybe this was his form of
payback. Maybe he was trying to get back
at her for making him feel left out. If
that was the case… She shook her head as
a wide range of names to call him flashed in her mind, everything from ‘big
baby’ to ‘huge asshole.’
Dianna’s voice interrupted her tormented thoughts. “Are you okay?”
Claire clenched her jaw and fought hard to keep from snapping again,
reminding herself that Dianna was the one acting like a true friend tonight,
dropping everything to be there for her.
She was only trying to help. But ‘are
you okay?’ Oh, how she hated that
question, especially in times like these.
Dianna didn’t understand though.
“I’m fine,” she mumbled, thinking of how not fine she was. She wasn’t okay, in any context. Emotionally, she was a wreck, and physically,
she might be headed that way too.
The curtain rattled as it was drawn back again, and her nurse appeared
once more. But this time, she was
accompanied by the familiar face of a tall, dark-haired man. “Claire,” he said when he saw her, and she
saw his adam’s apple bob as he swallowed hard.
“Hey, Jamie,” replied Claire dully, motioning him in. “Come on in; sit down.”
The nurse left as Jamie pulled the remaining empty chair up to Dianna’s
and sat down next to her. “Did I miss
anything?” he asked, looking between the two women.
Dianna spoke up, and Claire was grateful; she didn’t feel like talking
much. “Nothing yet. We’re just waiting for a doctor to take a
look at Claire. The nurse said it might
be awhile cause the doctors are busy with a trauma.”
Jamie nodded briefly and didn’t say anything. He looked pale and uneasy. Now that he was here, Claire realized she was
actually kind of surprised. She’d
expected him to show up because he’d said he would, but she knew Dianna had had
a point when she said Jamie was no fan of hospitals. He didn’t handle sickness well. Not that many people did… but most people
found ways to cope when they had to.
Jamie’s only way of coping was to avoid it altogether as long as he
could. He was that way with every
uncomfortable situation he had to deal with.
He didn’t like to have serious conversations and talk about things that
were bothering him; instead, he kept them inside and let the tension mount
until he exploded into a torrent of emotion.
When she’d first been diagnosed with leukemia during her second year of
college, Jamie had distanced himself from her.
It had hurt her a lot. He’d been
off at a different school for the last year and a half, making new friends,
living a totally different life, but they’d always kept in touch and stayed
friends, even after their relationship ended.
His rejection stung, and she’d been angry at him for a long time because
of that, thinking he was abandoning her for his new set of friends and party-boy
college life, that he was too concerned about having fun to be there for a sick
friend. Later she’d realized he was only
scared and didn’t know how to deal with it.
Through a flood of tears and a huge hug, he’d apologized to her months
later, and since then, he’d been a lot better.
When she relapsed, he was living in Iowa, but he’d come back to Florida
to see her as soon as he could. It was
during that visit that he’d gotten wind of her need for a sperm donor and
begged her to let him be it as reconciliation for hurting her before. Perhaps stupidly, she’d let him, and he had
loyally gone through with it. They had
been there for each other ever since, in spirit if not actually in person
because of the miles that separated them.
And she was grateful to see that this trend was holding up. For, as visibly uncomfortable as he was,
sitting with her in a hospital room, Jamie was still there. And that was all that mattered.
“Sorry I took so long getting here,” Jamie spoke up, clearing his
throat. “I would have been here sooner,
but, uh… I ran into your boyfriend.”
His eyes were on Claire, who immediately felt nauseous again. “You saw Nick?” she asked in a low voice.
“Uh-huh. He got home just as I
was about to leave. Had to call a cab to
get him there apparently – the guy was plastered, Claire.”
Claire nodded briefly; no surprise there. “So did he see you? Did you talk to him?” Forget about Nick; you don’t want to
know, instinct told her, but she was dying for information.
“Yeah. He was really pissed
off. First he cursed at me… and then he
attacked me.”
Claire’s eyes widened. “He attacked
you? What does that mean? What did he do??”
“He tried to knock me down.
Lucky for me, he was totally wasted and ended up falling over himself.”
Claire rolled her eyes. “Okay,
so he didn’t ‘attack’ you, Jamie.”
“Well, he tried to!” Jamie insisted.
“I’m serious, you should have seen the look on his face. He was ready to beat the shit out of me.”
Somehow Claire didn’t doubt that.
Nick had never liked Jamie, and if he was drunk and had come home to
find him there... She swallowed
hard. “So what did you do?”
“I left,” Jamie replied matter-of-factly, as if it were the obvious
answer. “I drove away and came
here. What, did you think I would stick around
to beat up on your drunken, one-legged fiancée just because I could? You know me better than that.”
Claire leaned over, wearily resting her forehead against the heel of
her hand. She hated the way Jamie and
Nick talked about each other. It was
like they were jealous of each other for some reason, though it made no sense
why. So she’d dated Jamie once… seven
years ago. Big deal. She was marrying Nick; he had no reason to
see Jamie as some kind of competition because it simply wasn’t like that. And Jamie… he didn’t love her anymore, not as
anything more than a friend anyway, so why did he seem to resent Nick so much?
“Thanks for being the bigger man, Jamie,” she mumbled flatly, without
looking up. “I’m sorry Nick tried to
beat you up.” She wondered if he could
hear the sarcasm in her voice.
“Hey, you don’t need to apologize,” Jamie said in a gentler voice, and
she felt a hand on her back, rubbing it in small circles. “It’s not your fault. He ditched you to go out and drink, remember? He’s the one who came home shit-faced
and tried to pick a fight with me. You
had nothing to do with that.”
Claire didn’t reply. Instead,
she just sat there, head in her hand, letting Jamie rub her back as she
wondered what Nick was doing now.
***
At precisely the moment Claire wondered what he was doing, Nick was
still passed out on the couch. Wasted,
he slept for hours, and by the time he awoke, the sun had already risen. “Shit,” he cursed and tried to scramble
up. He managed only to roll right off
the couch and hit the coffee table in front of it with a dull thud. As he sat in a heap on the floor, rubbing the
throbbing shoulder that had broken his fall, the past night’s events began to
return to him in bits and pieces, triggered by the effects of the hangover he
was starting to feel.
Slowly and painfully, he pulled himself up and returned to the couch,
where he sat, his aching head in his hands, trying to think. He had screwed up royally the night before;
that much was clear. He didn’t remember
everything, but a few events stood out as he tried to backtrack in his
mind: Jamie knocking him down (he was
sure he had some bruises as a souvenir of that)… the kiss with the girl at the
bar (Diana?)… and hadn’t he talked to Claire on the phone at one point?
Claire… where was she?
As he realized he didn’t have a clue, Nick tried again to stand
up. This time he succeeded, and after
getting his balance, he made his way through his house as quickly as he could,
calling her name, searching for her. He was
not particularly surprised to discover that she was not there. But where had she gone? Was she okay?
Digging his cell phone out of his pocket, Nick speed-dialed her
cell. It didn’t ring, but went straight
to her voicemail. Her phone must be
turned off, he thought as he listened to the voicemail message. He debated over leaving a message, and when
it came time, he realized he didn’t have a clue what to say. He ended the call without saying a word,
knowing he had to talk to her in person.
That is, if he could find her.
He remembered Jamie and wondered if Claire was him. Even if she wasn’t, Jamie would surely know
where she was. He’d been over here last
night anyway, and if Nick remembered correctly, he’d driven away in Claire’s
car. The problem was, he had no idea how
to get in touch with Jamie.
He stood in the doorway of the living room, scratching his head and
trying to think. All of a sudden, he
remembered Claire leafing through the pages of her address book in search of
her doctor’s phone number. She’d have
Jamie’s cell phone number in there too, wouldn’t she?
Nick hurried to his office and found the address book still lying on
his desk, open to the R section. Turner,
he thought. His last name’s Turner,
isn’t it? He flipped to the Ts and
quickly scanned the first page. Sure
enough, there was Jamie’s name at the bottom, complete with an Iowa address,
home phone, and cell phone number too.
He dreaded the thought of actually calling that number, but he had to
know where Claire was.
He had just picked up the phone when something else caught his
eye. Dianna Treborn. Her name was written in Claire’s neat,
rounded handwriting right above Jamie’s.
Her cell phone number was jotted there too, and with a sigh of relief,
Nick quickly dialed that instead, wondering why he hadn’t thought of Dianna
first. She was Claire’s closest
girlfriend, and if Jamie knew where she was, Dianna probably would too. And he would rather talk to Dianna any day.
Dianna answered her phone with a rather suspicious-sounding “Hello?”
“Hey, Dianna? Um, this is Nick…
Carter. I was just wondering if Claire
was with you?”
There was a long pause, and finally Dianna answered in a cold, abrupt
voice. “No. She’s not.”
“Well, do you know where she is?”
Please, please don’t say she’s with Jamie, he pleaded mentally,
his blood pressure rising as he imagined Claire spending the night in Jamie’s
hotel room.
“Where do you think she is?
She’s in the hospital, you dumbass!” Dianna cried
scathingly. Nick had hardly had a chance
to process this information when she continued, “How many brain cells did you
kill off last night?! Are you too
hungover to remember that your fiancée might be really sick?? What were you thinking last
night?! How could you do that to
her?! She needed your support, and you left
her! You left her to go get drunk with
another woman!!”
Nick closed his eyes and held the phone slightly away from his ear,
wishing he could block out her loud, almost hysterical shouting. If he had felt bad before, it was nothing
compared to how horrible he felt now. As
much as he hated to admit it, Dianna was right.
He wished he could yell right back at her, but what was he going to
say? He had nothing with which to defend
himself, no good excuses to explain his actions. He’d freaked out, plain and simple. Pulled an AJ and turned to alcohol to escape
from all his worries and fears. Drank
more than he had intended, and… well, it had all gone downhill from there. That was the truth, but it didn’t excuse what
he had done to Claire, and he knew it.
He was sorry… but somehow he also knew an “I’m sorry” wasn’t going to
cut it for Dianna.
Still, he had to try, because he had to find out what was going on with
Claire. He took a few deep breaths,
trying to keep himself calm. “Look,
Dianna,” he started slowly, choosing his words carefully. “You’re right. I know what I did last night was… was horrible,
and I’m sorry… I-I’m really sorry. I
need to talk to Claire though. I need to
tell her that.”
“You’re gonna have to do more than say ‘I’m sorry,’ Nick,” Dianna
snapped – but at least she had stopped shouting. “You completely shattered her trust in
you. It’s gonna take a lot to fix that.”
“I-I know…” he whispered thickly, his throat closing up.
“You asked her to marry you!
Doesn’t that mean anything to you?
Wedding vows – haven’t you heard of those? ‘For better, for worse… in sickness or in
health…’ Do you think she wants a
husband who’s going to walk out on her if she gets sick again??”
Nick swallowed with difficulty, trying to keep his composure. He got the feeling Dianna was trying her
hardest to make him feel like shit. It
was working.
“Claire’s been hurt like this before by people she thought were her
friends. But I never expected you to be
one of those people. And neither did
she. You’re the one person – well,
besides me – she thinks she can count on to be there for her when she needs a
friend, especially because she’s always been there for you. And this is how you repay her? By bailing the minute you think she might be
sick again?”
Finally, Nick found his voice.
“I-I didn’t bail on her!” he cried hoarsely. “I would never bail on her. I love her, no matter what. I was just… scared. And I needed a drink to calm my nerves. I planned on coming right back, but… things
just got out of hand, and I…” He trailed
off, not wanting to admit that he’d totally lost control of the situation. He figured Dianna already had a good idea of
what had happened anyway.
“Whatever, Nick. Bad
decision. Really bad decision.”
“Yeah, thanks,” Nick muttered irritably. “You don’t have to keep lecturing me; I
already know. I just want to find out
where Claire is.”
“I already told you, she’s at the hospital. I took her there last night so she could get
that rash checked out.”
Nick felt sick to his stomach, imaging her laid up in a hospital room
identical to Casey’s. “H-how is
she? I mean… do they know if-?” If she was rejecting her transplant? If she was really sick? If she was going to die? That was what he wanted to know, but he
couldn’t bring himself to say the words.
“Not yet,” Dianna said shortly.
“They ran some tests late last night and then admitted her for the night
while they waited on results.”
Nick let out a shaky breath.
“What room is she in?” he asked.
“I don’t think it would be a good idea for you to go see her now,”
replied Dianna in an icy tone. “She’s
under a lot of stress already – I don’t want her to get even more upset.”
“Well, it’s not really up to you, is it?” Nick retorted, thoroughly
annoyed now. “You’re not her mom. Either tell me what room she’s in, or I’ll go
and find it myself. I have connections
at that place, you know.”
“Oh right - you’re Mr. Hot Shit Backstreet Boy. You do what you want, Nick. I’m warning you though, don’t you dare go
upsetting Claire again. She is my best
friend, and I can’t stand seeing her hurt.”
Nick felt a flash of anger.
“She’s my best friend too, damn it.
I love her. I don’t want
to hurt her anymore than you do.”
“Then why did you, Nick? Why did
you?”
Nick clenched his jaw. Fuck
you, Dianna, he thought, but he knew it wouldn’t be a good move to say
that. Instead, as calmly as he could, he
said, “I don’t want to get into this with you again. It’s Claire I need to apologize to. Thanks for the info, Dianna.” And he hung up.
He went upstairs long enough to change his clothes, which reeked of
cigarette smoke and alcohol fumes, brush his teeth, splash a little water on
his face, and rake his fingers through his hair. Then he walked back downstairs, grabbed his
car keys, and left for the hospital.
***