Chapter 106
Once Nick’s decision had been made, things moved quickly. Jane had come on a Sunday and gone on a
Monday. Kevin, AJ, and Howie joined
Brian at Nick’s house on Tuesday. Most
of Nick’s Wednesday was spent at the hospital, filling out paperwork and going
through a rigorous series of tests. And
now, on Thursday, the first day of April, he was back there again, lying flat
on his back upon a gurney in a small, curtained-off section of a large room
known as the “surgical holding area.”
He only wished he were part of some elaborate prank.
But this was no April Fool’s joke.
It was really happening. In a few
hours, he would wake up to find his leg gone, and the famous Nick Carter would
begin his new life as an amputee.
Still, though he was tethered to an IV, already growing drowsy
from the sedatives he’d been given, and surrounded by the somber faces of his
four brothers, he felt cut off from reality, as if this were some sort of
nightmare. But ironically, the real nightmare
would begin when he woke up.
The curtain was pushed aside, and a woman’s head peered around
it. Nick’s stomach flip-flopped when he
recognized the face of Dr. Lynn Chavez, the surgeon who would be performing the
operation, whom he had only just met the day before during his pre-op evaluation
and testing. He had been nervous at the
prospect of being handed off to yet another doctor, but Dr. Kingsbury had
assured him that Dr. Chavez was a fine surgeon.
He wasn’t sure about her surgical skills, but she seemed like a nice
enough woman.
“Good morning, Mr. Carter,” she said with a slight smile, stepping
around the curtain to enter the small enclosure. She was decked head to toe in hospital blue,
wearing a pair of scrubs and a cap that hid her hair, except for a few wisps
that poked out from underneath. “How are
you doing?”
Nick tried to answer, but his voice betrayed him, so he simply
gulped and forced himself to nod once in acknowledgement. This didn’t really answer the question, but
Dr. Chavez accepted it just the same, smiling, and saying, “Well, I just came
to check on you real quick, sweetie.
I’ll leave you with your visitors for a few more minutes. Transport should be here to take you down to
the OR in a little while, and I’ll see you when you get there, okay?”
No, this is not okay! his mind screamed
in protest, but he only nodded again.
Dr. Chavez left, pulling the curtain shut behind her, her pristine
shoes squeaking on the tiled floor as the traipsed away. As the squeaking faded, the fivesome was left
in an awkward silence.
AJ cleared his throat in a stifled, uncomfortable fashion, looking
almost apologetic for disrupting the quiet.
“That sedative stuff kickin’ in?” Brian asked.
“Yeah,” Nick answered hoarsely.
Brian nodded. “Good stuff,
eh? It relaxes you.”
“Mm-hm,” Nick murmured. In
truth, he did feel quite relaxed, much calmer than he had been earlier that
morning, when he had awoken from a few hours of restless sleep with his stomach
already tied in knots. The knots were
still there, but he was less aware of them.
Still, he couldn’t help but be afraid.
What if… what if something went wrong?
What if there were complications, and he died? “Guys,” he said steadily, “I… I just want you
to know that if something happens, and I don’t make it… well, um, I… I don’t
wanna be buried, okay, I want cremation.
And I want you to… to dump my ashes in the ocean… only don’t just dump
‘em, kinda scatter them right along the beach, or… or let the wind carry them…
something like that, you know? And-“
“Nicky, what are you talking about?” Howie interrupted him, his
brown eyes wide with concern. “Don’t say
that, please. Nothing’s going to happen;
you’ll come out of this just fine, okay?”
Nick shook his head, tears rapidly rising in his eyes. “N-no, th-they said yesterday that I should
think about my… my wishes, just in case… you know… I-I don’t got no will or
anything like that, so… so if I die, you guys be in charge of all that,
okay? K-Kevin, you do it… I want you
guys to have most of my stuff, but give some to AC and the girls, nothing to my
mom though, and-“
“Shh, Nick, calm down,” said Kevin in his low, soothing
voice. “Thanks for telling us that. Now we know just in case, God forbid, we
would need to.”
“Jesus, Kevin,” hissed AJ and then turned a pair of sharp,
sunglass-less eyes upon Nick. “Kaos,
don’t worry about it, we’re not gonna need to know any of that shit because
you’re going to be fine, got it?”
Nick nodded quickly, smiling a little at the serious, yet slightly
panicked expression on AJ’s face. “I-I
know,” he stammered softly. “Just… just
in case, okay?”
He felt Brian gently squeeze his shoulder, meeting Nick’s eyes
knowingly. “It’s okay, Nick. I had to do the same thing… think about my
last wishes and all that, just in case.”
“But he didn’t need that, and neither will you,” added AJ with the
same rapid firmness, and Nick suspected he was trying to reassure himself just
as much as he was Nick.
Again, Nick nodded in an attempt to reassure AJ as well. He was freaking out enough as it was; they were
supposed to stay relatively calm. Well,
at least in front of him anyway - he had visions of AJ pacing back and forth
outside with a cigarette in his mouth for the majority of the surgery, which
was only supposed to take about an hour.
That had surprised him, considering it seemed like such a major process…
then again, hacking off a leg couldn’t be too hard, could it?
He felt sick to his stomach just thinking about it and quickly
tried to turn his thoughts to something less disturbing. He didn’t have much success. He racked his brain for something to say,
something random and stupid and pointless, anything to break the silence and
tension. He came up with nothing.
Suddenly, the curtain rattled again, and another face poked around
it, this one unfamiliar.
“Hi, it’s just Justin, from transport,” said the curly-haired
young man. “And you’d be Mr. Carter?”
“Uh-huh,” Nick croaked.
“Great. They’re ready for
you now.”
Any sense of calmness quickly seemed to melt, as panic bubbled in
Nick’s throat. “No… oh God… I can’t…
please don’t do this…” Tears were
rapidly springing to his eyes, but he was too distraught to be humiliated.
Brian quickly seized Nick’s hand and squeezed it tightly. “Shh, calm down, Nick. You have to stay calm. It’s gonna be okay; you’re gonna be fine.”
“But I… I don’t wanna lose my leg,” he whimpered, tears streaming
down his cheeks. Though his vision was
blurred, he couldn’t help but notice how Kevin and AJ both turned away. And was it just him, or did Brian and Howie
look a little misty-eyed too?
“I know, Nick, I know, but you have to. You made the right decision; now you have to
get this over with. It won’t be as bad
as you think. We’ll be there for you,
buddy,” Brian assured him, rubbing the back of his hand.
“Mr. Carter, are you ready?” the orderly, Justin, asked patiently.
Sniffling and trying to stop crying, Nick shakily nodded, knowing
he had no other choice. As Justin raised
the sides on his gurney, Howie leaned over and attempted to give Nick an
awkward hug. “I love you, Nicky. We’ll see you in a couple hours, okay?”
Nick nodded, as Howie backed up to let AJ step forward. Only AJ didn’t step forward, but instead
stayed as far back as possible, biting his lip and looking at the ceiling. Nick could see the tears pooling in the
corners of his friend’s eyes and did not feel the least bit offended by AJ’s
sudden aloofness. AJ McLean did not
handle displays of emotion well, and it did not take him hugging Nick and
telling him he loved him for Nick to know.
They were brothers, after all.
Words were not needed. They just
knew.
Kevin looked almost calm when he bent over to give Nick a gentle
hug, but when Nick noticed the redness around his friend’s green eyes and the
slight trembling of his lower lip, he knew otherwise. He said nothing of this though and dutifully
patted Kevin’s back, whispering a hoarse, “Love you, Kev.”
“I love you too, Nick,” Kevin said steadily, swiping at the corner
of one eye with his index finger, as if brushing away a stray eyelash.
Brian followed suit, hugging Nick with tears sparkling in his
crystalline eyes. “See you in a little
while. I love you, Nick.”
“Love you too, Bri,” Nick whispered as he clutched his best
friend’s small frame.
Now that they had all said their goodbyes, Nick felt himself begin
to move, as Justin pushed the gurney from behind, slowly wheeling him out of
his curtained corral. His four bandmates
were at his side the whole time, walking slowly with him as he was taken out of
the holding area and down a long hall.
Stopping outside a pair of doors marked “Authorized Personnel Only,”
Justin said, “This is the furthest you guys can go. There’s a few waiting rooms back that way
down the hall if you want to wait on this floor.”
They nodded reluctantly and turned without speaking, only sending
tearful smiles and reassuring nods in Nick’s direction before they started back
down the hall. Justin had just pressed a
button that opened the double doors when AJ came running back, his footsteps
pounding on the shiny, tiled floor.
“Hey, Nicky,” he said breathlessly, stopping beside the gurney,
“um, I just wanted to say that…”
Nick smiled a little, watching awkwardly as AJ struggled to say the words…
“… I, uh… “ AJ’s voice grew
gruff. “I’m gonna see about having some
Playboy pin-ups mounted on the ceiling above your bed when you get back to your
room, so, uh, look forward to that, okay, Kaos?” Blinking rapidly, he flashed a wicked grin.
That brought a genuine smile to Nick’s face, as his heart swelled
with emotion. “Sounds good, J,” he
managed.
“Um, Nick, that’s not really all I wanted to-“
“It’s okay, Bone,” Nick interrupted him softly. “You don’t gotta say it. I know.”
AJ smiled and looked away for a moment, then quickly grabbed
Nick’s hand and gave it a brief squeeze.
“Hang in there, man,” he said softly.
“See ya.”
“See ya,” Nick echoed hollowly, as AJ started back down the hall,
and Justin pushed his gurney on through those double doors, which very well
might have been the gateway to Hell, in Nick’s mind at least.
He was met by a group of people who were all “gowned up” in scrubs
and surgical caps, masks, and gowns.
Their sanitary garb reminded him of the times he had gone to visit
Claire in isolation the previous summer.
He felt a lump rise in his throat, along with the sudden urge to see her
again. He wished she were there with
him… just having her nearby might comfort him, as it had when he was afraid and
alone in the ICU, and she had come to visit.
But it was too late to think of that now. Already, he was being brought into a bright,
sterile operating room, where stainless steel equipment gleamed
sinisterly. The surgical team parked his
gurney right next to the table in the center of the room and helped him slide over
to it. From there, they instantly began
swarming around him, each doing their assigned part to finish preparing him for
surgery.
“Hi, Nick,” said a voice, and he looked up to see a vaguely
familiar pair of eyes peering at him from above a blue mask.
“Dr. K,” he realized, oddly consoled by his doctor’s presence.
Her eyes crinkled in the corners as she smiled beneath the
mask. “I’m going to scrub in and observe
the surgery, so I’ll be right here with you the whole time, okay?” He felt her hand on his upper arm and nodded
in relief. “The anesthesiologist will be
here in a minute to put you under, and when you wake up, the surgery will be
over, and you’ll be in post-op,” Dr. Kingsbury explained. “You’ll feel pretty out of it from the
anesthesia and will probably just want to sleep, which is the best thing you
can do. You might be in some discomfort,
but you’ll be on a morphine drip for the pain, so it shouldn’t be too bad. You might have what are called ‘phantom
pains’ though… a lot of people say they feel like their leg is still there and
that it hurts, but that feeling will go away as your body adjusts. Your throat might be sore too because they’ll
put in a breathing tube after they put you to sleep. You’ll also have a foley cath in your bladder
to drain urine so that you won’t need to get up to use the bathroom, and you’ll
be on oxygen for at least a little while.
Do you have any questions?”
Nick just shook his head miserably, almost wishing she hadn’t
given him all that information. He
wondered if he could get them to just knock him out for a week or two and let
him sleep through all the pain and mortification he would have otherwise have
to endure.
Dr. Kingsbury nodded. “Okay
then. Don’t you worry, you’re going to
do just fine.” She patted his arm again
and then stepped back, letting an unfamiliar woman come forward.
“I’m Dr. Stevens, your anesthesiologist,” she announced. “Have you had anesthesia by mask before?”
“Um… no,” Nick said uncertainly.
“I-I think they put it in my IV last time…” He was trying to recall the biopsy he had
gone through a year ago, almost to the day, right before he had first been
diagnosed.
“Oh wow, sweets. You may be
my first patient this week who hasn’t.
Okay, I’m going to put a mask over your mouth and nose, and when I do, I
want you to breathe in deeply. Try to
count down from one hundred in your head; I bet you won’t make it past ninety.”
He wanted to erase the smugness from her eyes by telling her that
he damn well would make it past ninety.
Then he realized that was really quite a stupid thing to strive for, and
why would he want to stay awake past ninety anyway? Maybe he’d end up staying awake the whole
time, and wouldn’t that suck? A tremor
ran through him as he thought vaguely of the surgical horror stories he’d heard
bits of on TV, stories of people who had been given the wrong anesthesia and
ended up paralyzed, but not numbed, able to feel everything that was happening
to them, but not communicate it.
“What if it doesn’t work?” he blurted in a panic.
“It’ll work right away; I guarantee it,” she replied. “I’m the best, after all.”
He grimaced, just wanting to inhale the stuff and get this over
with.
“Okay, Mr. Carter,” said Dr. Stevens, lowering a mask over his
face. He caught a whiff of something
that smelled like oranges as her hands neared his face, but it was quickly
replaced by an odor that was just plain funky-smelling when the mask was placed
over his mouth and nose. “Deep breath
in,” instructed the anesthesiologist, and Nick obeyed. “Now count back. One hundred… ninety-nine…”
But Nick did not want to count.
As the strange-smelling gas filled his nostrils, he could only chant
inwardly, please God… please let this go okay…
He had never been religious like Brian, never been one to pray or
talk to God. But if there was one thing
he needed now, it was strength, and it was for this that he prayed.
Please God… give me strength…
That was the last thought he had as his eyelids grew heavy and
began to droop, the world he had once known fading away to darkness, never to
return.
For when he came out of that darkness, both his body and his world
would be forever changed.
***