Chapter 5
Nick sucked in a nervous breath as he
walked through a door marked "Oncology Outpatient Clinic" and set
foot inside the small waiting room, a place he knew all too well.
His senses were invaded by all the familiarities - the smell of
antiseptic, the sounds of feet shuffling and magazine pages turning and the
occasional ruffle of paper coming from the receptionist's desk, and the sight
of anxious and sick-looking people slumped in chairs. Some of them were
very gaunt, while others looked bloated. Many were bald.
But then there were some that looked
perfectly normal, and as he sat down beside Claire and glanced over at her,
Nick was glad she was among the latter group. Her hair had grown
long enough to be pulled back into a short ponytail, there was color in her
naturally fair cheeks, and her body had settled into a healthy medium between
the two extremes at which he'd seen it. Someone meeting her for the first
time would never know how deathly ill she had been less than two years ago.
He shuddered inwardly, picturing her
how she had looked after her bone marrow transplant, when she had been so sick
he was afraid he was going to lose her. He didn't like to think of those
times, and he hoped he would never have to see her that way again. He
wasn't sure he could handle another episode like that.
Which was why he was so nervous.
He had accompanied Claire to the hospital that day for one of her bi-yearly
check-ups, and although he was sure everything was fine with her, he couldn't
help but feel a little uneasy. It was probably just the whole atmosphere
of the place... to him, the oncology floor represented nothing but pain, fear,
and bad news. It was a place where you couldn't afford to be
"sure" about anything because nothing was certain. Even Claire, who
had been in remission from her leukemia for a year and a half now, was not
totally out of the woods yet. There was always the threat of a recurrence
of the cancer or an episode of rejection of the bone marrow she had received
from her older brother, Kyle. The chances of either of those things
happening diminished as time went by, but the risk was still there.
Otherwise she would have had no reason to be sitting in that waiting room right
then.
It was she who looked over at him now,
concern registering in her eyes. "Hey, are you alright?" she
asked quietly, patting his hand. "Jeez, you look more nervous than
me. Your hand is like ice!" She picked it up and rubbed it
between hers, smiling at him. "Don't be nervous; it's just a
check-up. You know I'm fine."
It was amazing how well she could read
him sometimes. He returned the smile sheepishly and nodded. "I
know," he said. "I think it's just being in this place... it
freaks me out."
He had sat here himself just over a
month ago for a check-up of his own, three months after his lung surgery.
He'd been just as freaked out then, worrying about a re-growth of the tumor
that had been taken out of his lung, or a new tumor popping up somewhere else
in his body. But all his tests had been clean, and Dr. Kingsbury had
ushered him out of the clinic with a smile, telling him to take care until she
saw him in another three months.
He just hoped it would be the same for
Claire today.
"Yeah, it kinda freaks me out
too," she was saying now, "but not as much as it used to. I
don't worry as much about it anymore. You shouldn't either.
Especially not about me. I'm fine now." She flashed him
another quick smile and then reached for the selection of magazines piled on
one of the end tables that separated sections of chairs. Nick watched as
she sorted through the magazines, discarding the pregnancy and parenting ones
that had been on top of the stack and settling on a copy of People.
She handed Nick a crinkled Highlights and smirked as he accepted it.
"What?" he asked
defensively, as he opened up the children's magazine and scanned the table of
contents, looking for the hidden pictures and Goofus and Gallant.
She only smiled and turned back to her
own magazine. They waited awhile longer, until finally she was called
back by a nurse that Nick didn’t recognize.
After two years of having doctor’s appointments anywhere from every
three weeks to every three months, and four long hospital stays, Nick had
gotten to know the fifth floor staff fairly well. He glanced at the nametag pinned to the
young, Hispanic nurse’s scrub top – Angela.
He didn’t know an Angela and figured she had to be new. She looked younger than Claire, and he
couldn’t imagine she’d been out of college long.
Angela smiled at them both and led
them back to one of the examining rooms.
Nick waited outside while Claire changed and then went in to sit with
her. It felt strange to be sitting
there, not as a patient, but as… well, whatever he was. And it was even weirder when the doctor came
in, not Dr. Kingsbury, but Claire’s oncologist, Dr. Rodrigo. Nick sat silently and listened to the two of
them talk. He stayed out of the way
during the examination, and he turned his head when the nurse came back to draw
blood, not wanting to watch the needle slide into Claire’s arm.
“Dr. Rodrigo said she must get a bone
marrow sample,” the nurse, Angela, told Claire.
“I’ll tell her you’re ready for the aspiration.”
Claire nodded and glanced over at Nick
as Angela left the room. “Are you having
fun?” she teased.
“Tons,” Nick replied flatly. “Does your arm hurt?”
She looked down at the crook of her
arm and pressed on the cotton ball that had been taped there. “Nah,” she said, “I’m tough. My hip’s gonna hurt a lot more in a few
minutes.”
He grimaced. “I hear ya.
Wish you didn’t have to go through that.”
“Yeah, me too, but… no such
luck.” She shrugged. “It’s okay; I’ve had it done so many times,
I’m used to it by now.”
He didn’t think he would ever get used
to the bone marrow tests, the large needle they stuck in your pelvic bone, the
horrible pain and pressure you felt as the marrow was sucked out of you. He’d had it done many times himself, and it
never got an easier or any less painful.
The doctor and nurse returned a few
minutes later to do the procedure.
Angela lowered the head of the examining table, and Claire knowingly
flipped over and stretched out flat on her stomach. She turned her head to the side on which Nick
was sitting and motioned him over. He
scooted his chair closer to the table, positioning it near the head, out of the
way of Angela and Dr. Rodrigo, who were setting up for the test. Wordlessly, he reached out his hand, and
Claire, smiling, took hold of it. She
had sat with him through two of these and held his hand, and he realized now,
he had never done it for her before.
That was going to change though.
They were in this together.
He gave her hand a gentle squeeze, as
Dr. Rodrigo parted the back of her hospital gown and rubbed her skin with an
antiseptic that stained her skin orangey brown.
“She’s going to give you the lidocaine
now, and then the worst will be over,” Angela said, as Dr. Rodrigo prepared a
syringe.
Claire let out a derisive snort and
glanced up at the young nurse. “Have you
ever had one of these yourself?” she asked.
“No… I haven’t,” replied Angela.
“This isn’t the worst. Trust me.
The worst is when the needle hits the bone.”
Nick winced, and the nurse bit her lip
awkwardly. “I’m sorry. Try closing your eyes and imagining you are
somewhere else. Sometimes that
helps. My last patient pictured herself
on the beach in Hawaii.”
Claire chuckled. “I went to Hawaii last year. Spent most of the week with my head in the
toilet.”
Nick saw Angela look uncertainly
across the table at the doctor. He gave
Claire’s hand a firm squeeze and murmured under his breath, “She’s just trying
to help.”
“I’m sorry,” Claire said, directing
the apology to the nurse. “I don’t mean
to be a bitch; it’s just that whole ‘imagining you’re somewhere else’ stuff
doesn’t work on me. Just stick the thing
in me.”
Nick forced himself to look at
Claire’s face and not the needle going into her back as Dr. Rodrigo pushed the
lidocaine to numb her skin. But watching
the pain in her eyes was harder than watching the injection. He squeezed her hand as the doctor pulled out
the needle. “Half over,” he said, giving
her a grim smile.
She nodded wordlessly and squeezed his
hand back.
A few minutes passed, and then it was
time for the bigger needle that actually withdrew the bone marrow. Had Nick been smart, he would have kept his
eyes on Claire’s face the entire time and not looked as Dr. Rodrigo prepared
the second needle. But his curiosity got
the better of him, and he couldn’t help but let his eyes wander over to the
doctor. In two years, he had had around
eight of these, but he had never actually seen one done. When he was lying on his stomach with his
head down the whole time, it was impossible to see what the doctors were
actually doing. But now he was on the
other end of things… and he could see everything.
And when he saw the actual needle for
the first time, he wanted to throw up. That was what had been put into his hip all
those times?! That was what they were going to plunge into Claire’s bone
now?! It was huge! It didn’t even look
like a needle, more like a big, long nail that should be hammered into a thick
block of wood, not drilled through a living person’s flesh and bone!
He couldn’t watch as Dr. Rodrigo did
the procedure; he was afraid he would pass out if he did. Instead, he squeezed Claire’s hand and never
tore his gaze from her face. Her eyes
were closed tightly, her mouth contorted into a grimace of pain, and she
squeezed his hand back so hard he thought she was going to break all the bones
inside it.
After what seemed like an eternity,
Dr. Rodrigo announced, “All done, Claire,” and Nick let out a shuddering
breath. Claire still had her eyes
squeezed shut. With his free hand, Nick
lightly ran his hand over her back, rubbing it in small circles until she
relaxed a little and opened her eyes. It
hurt him to see that they were brimming with tears, which she quickly blinked
away.
“Are you doing all right?” the nurse,
Angela, asked, leaning over Claire.
Claire nodded weakly and directed the
question to Nick. “Are you all right? You look kinda pale.”
He smiled crookedly, embarrassed, and
nodded. “I’m fine. And I bet I’m not as white as you are.”
“No one will ever be as white as I
am.”
He chuckled and patted her back again,
as the doctor and nurse bustled around the small exam room, cleaning up.
Half an hour later, Claire and Nick
were in the elevator on the way to the ground floor, having left with Dr.
Rodrigo’s promise to call if anything was off with the results of Claire’s
tests. Nick prayed there would be no
reason to call.
The elevator lurched to a stop on the
first floor, and the door slid open with a ding. Claire walked out first, her hand on her
back, lightly touching the spot where they had done the bone marrow test. Nick knew from experience how sore it was and
was careful not to bump into her when he came up alongside her and slid his
hand into hers. They walked out of the
hospital together, setting their pace slow.
When they finally reached Nick’s
silver Jaguar (Claire had been especially excited when he’d picked her up that
morning – the Jag was her favorite of all his vehicles), Claire announced, “I
think we should go get ice cream. Your
treat.”
“My
treat?” Nick repeated, trying to sound flabbergasted. “First you drag me to the hospital for your
doctor’s appointment when you know there’s a million other things I could be
doing, and now you’re making me buy you ice cream?”
Claire snickered. “If you weren’t here with me now, you’d just
be sitting on your ass at home playing Nintendo, and you know it, so don’t even
start with that. And of course I’m
making you buy me ice cream – I’m the one who just had a fifteen gauge needle
shoved into my back, not you.”
He blanched and made a face. “Fine, you win,” he said, turning on the
ignition. “Ice cream it is. Where to, milady?”
She snickered again and replied,
“Anywhere with a drive-thru. I’m not
getting out of the car.”
He nodded and headed to the nearest
Dairy Queen. When they had gotten their
ice cream, Nick parked in a shady corner of the parking lot and rolled down the
windows. “You know,” he said, taking a
bite of his Blizzard, “we should go to Hawaii.” He looked casually over at Claire to find
her staring at him, eyebrows raised.
“Are you serious?” she asked. “Or are you just saying-“
“I’m serious,” he answered
quickly. The idea had come to him
earlier in the clinic, when Claire mentioned her less-than-satisfactory trip to
Hawaii with Tim the year before. He
recalled the promise he’d made to her after she got back from that trip…
“I’ll take you back to Hawaii sometime
and make it up to you,” he offered, flashing her his famous half-smile.
She returned the smile. “Sometime, sure,” she said lightly, blowing
him off. “No time soon though.”
Nick wasn’t
sure what qualified as ‘soon,’ but surely six months from then didn’t. “I said I would take you to Hawaii and make
up for the crappy time you had there with Tim, didn’t I?” he reminded her. “So… let me make it up to you.”
She was
still staring at him, her barely-touched sundae slowly beginning to melt in the
warm spring afternoon. Slowly, she broke
into a smile. “You’re serious, aren’t
you?”
“Yeah! I said I was!” Nick exclaimed. “So do you wanna?”
“Well…
when?”
“I dunno,
whenever you want to. Next week… the
week after that… whatever you want.”
She shook
her head. “I can’t just hop on a plane
and go to Hawaii, Nick, it’s not that simple.
I’ll have to ask for time off from work.
How long would you want to stay?
A week?”
“However
long you want,” he said patiently.
She
giggled. “Well, okay… I’ll talk to my
boss at work on Monday and see when I can get a week off. Sound good?”
Nick smiled. “Sounds excellent.”
***