Chapter 114
As soon as
Nick opened the car door, he could smell the ocean. The familiar, salty scent filled his nostrils
and brought comfort to his soul.
He was home.
For a brief
moment, his throat felt tight, as his eyes swept over the beautiful seaside
manor he had purchased with his own hard-earned fortune and the picturesque
ocean landscape that served as its backdrop.
He felt like Gilligan, finally home after decades of syndicated episodes
spent on an uncharted desert isle. Only
Nick had been stranded in a hospital instead, and it had only been two
weeks. And, of course, there was no
coconut radio or sexy movie star named Ginger… then again, Claire was a
redhead, so maybe she could substitute.
Either way,
he was home at last, back to his own little slice of heaven after half a month
of hell. But of course, not everything
was perfect, and there were little reminders of this everywhere, from the ramp
that had been installed on part of the steps leading to the front door, to the
newly rented wheelchair and crutches that Kevin and Howie were unloading from
the back of Nick’s Durango.
“Jesus,” Nick
heard Kevin glanced back just in time to see AJ whip his rented BMW into Nick’s
driveway practically on two wheels.
Killing the engine, AJ flung open the driver’s side and bounced out, while
a rather white-looking Brian slid out of the passenger side.
“AJ, if you
ever drive like that with Nick in the car while you’re here, you’re a dead
man,” Kevin muttered severely, as AJ sauntered on past him.
“Hey, if
you’re gonna drive a car like that, you gotta drive it fast,” Nick called from
the backseat, grinning at the annoyed expression on Kevin’s face. “Is somebody gonna help me out here, or do I
gotta get myself out?”
“Oh, sorry,
Nick.” Kevin and Howie were quick to
come to his assistance, helping him out of the backseat. Brian appeared with the wheelchair they had
rented before Nick had been discharged and parked it beside the Durango,
locking the wheels into place.
“I don’t need
that,” Nick said with a grimace when he saw it.
“Where’s my crutches?”
“No, Nick,
just get in the chair. You haven’t used
crutches outside yet, and you haven’t been up stairs on them, and the last
thing we want is for you to trip and fall,” Kevin reasoned. Knowing better than to argue, Nick sighed and
let Kevin and Howie help him lower himself down into the wheelchair. Unlocking the wheels again, Howie pushed him
down the walkway that led to the porch, up the newly-built ramp, and into the
house.
The inside of
the house was dim and cool, a stark contrast to the bright, sunny warmth of the
mid-April day outside. Nick looked all
around the foyer, taking in every detail, feeling, strangely, as if he were
returning to a place he hadn’t been to since childhood. It had only been two weeks, but in those two
weeks, he felt he’d aged considerably.
So maybe the feeling wasn’t so strange after all.
He noticed the ocean landscape painting hanging in its usual spot
on the wall and drew in a breath, remembering the scent of the sea. “Will you take me out back?” he asked, as
Howie started to guide the wheelchair into the only bedroom on the main level
of the house, which the guys had dubbed Nick’s room until he could navigate the
stairs easily on his own.
“Oh… sure, Nicky,” Howie replied and instead pushed the wheelchair
through to the back of the house and outside again, where the sun beat down,
and the heat rose off of the patio. The
aquamarine water of the in-ground pool nestled a few yards away glistened
invitingly, but Nick’s eyes drifted past it, past the large patio and deck
area, past the green grass which faded to light, gleaming sand, as the lawn
merged with the beach… his eyes looked even further than the sand, focusing on
the vast expanse of rippling blue water beyond it. Watching as the waves gently lapped against
the beach, he longed to run along the water’s edge, his bare feet leaving
prints in the wet sand, the water sloshing around his ankles as it washed the
prints away.
But obviously, that just wasn’t feasible, so he would have to
settle for looking instead… looking and listening and smelling… taking in the
whole beautiful scene around him.
“Where do you want to sit, somewhere in the shade?” asked Howie,
looking around the sun-drenched patio for a cool refuge from the eighty-degree
heat.
“Nah, anywhere is fine,” said Nick. “I like being out in the sun.” It was probably not the best thing for him;
he had been warned about exposure to the sun while receiving his radiation
treatments. But he had finished
radiation almost a month ago and hadn’t even been outside, let alone in the
sun, in two weeks. Surely a little
sunlight couldn’t hurt.
“Okay,” shrugged Howie, parking the wheelchair in a spot toward
the edge of the patio that offered a nice view of the beach and the gulf. “You, uh… you want me to hang here with you,
or would you rather be alone?” he asked carefully.
Nick smiled; good old Howie, he knew exactly what Nick wanted and
needed. “I think I wanna be alone for a
little bit. Thanks, Howie,” he said
gratefully.
“No problem, kiddo.” Howie
squeezed Nick’s shoulder affectionately.
“I’ll come back out in a little while to check on you. We’ll be right inside, so call if you need
anything or want to come back in.”
“I’m not totally helpless; I’m sure I can manage wheeling myself
around in this thing,” said Nick with a playful roll of his eyes. “Besides, I don’t really need this thing
anyway, I can walk…”
“What, you don’t like having us chauffeur you around?” Howie
teased. “And you can’t walk if you don’t
have your crutches, by the way, and I think Kev hid those so you wouldn’t trip
on them and fall flat on your face first thing.”
Nick let out a derisive snort, yearning for the day when he would
be able to get around without the wheelchair or the crutches. That won’t be anytime soon though, he
thought despondently, his eyes falling to rest on the empty leg of his shorts,
which were long and baggy enough to hide his stump. After nearly a week in the IPOP that had been
put on him, he had graduated to taking tiny steps between the set of parallel
bars, leaning heavily on the bars to take some of the weight off of his
still-healing residual limb. But just
when he was starting to grow accustomed to that, the IPOP had come off, and the
sutures had come out. The bulky cast that
had covered his stump had been replaced with a shrinker, a tight-fitting “sock”
that protected the stump and reduced swelling.
Though this made the stump much lighter, it also made it feel quite
unprotected. It was healing well, but
was still tender, and Nick was afraid of hurting it. Without the IPOP, he was left fully dependant
on crutches or a wheelchair (which Susan had insisted he rent for the time
being) until he got his preparatory prosthesis, the next level up in artificial
legs, which he would be measured for in just under a week.
In the meantime, he had scheduled physical therapy sessions at the
hospital with Susan for two hours a day, three days a week. And in another month, he’d be making daily
trips to the hospital…
A queasy sensation gripped his stomach as he recalled the
conversation he’d had with Dr. Kingsbury the day before his discharge. He’d been glad to see her when she had
stopped by to check up on him, but the feeling had faded fast as soon as the
initial small talk was over and the real conversation began…
“Nick, I know you’re probably not going to like this, but we need
to go over an option that I think you should consider,” Dr. Kingsbury began.
Though it was nice to hear the word ‘option’ come out of her mouth
and not be clumped together with scary phrases such as “last resort” and
“amputation,” her tone told him that, indeed, he was probably not going like
this “option” he was supposed to consider.
“Wh-what’s the option?” he asked tentatively.
“Another course of chemotherapy,” answered the doctor.
Nick’s mouth dropped open – his assumption had been correct; he
wasn’t liking this option one bit. “More
chemo?!” he cried, his voice rising.
“But… wh-why would I need more chemo?
The cancer was in my leg, and my leg’s gone, so what’s the point of
chemo?”
“It’s just a precautionary measure. Although your scans have been clean, there’s
always the possibility that some cancer cells could have migrated from the
tumor in your leg to other parts of your body.
The reason you have to go through the bone marrow aspirations and chest
x-rays is because Ewing’s likes to spread, and two of the first places it will
go to are the bone marrow and the lungs.
If even a few cells escaped, they could hide out there and start
reproducing, and then you’ve got metastasis – spreading.”
“But you said the scans were clean!” protested Nick in confusion.
“They are, as far as we can tell, but the scans can’t pick up
every trace of cancer… like I said, if a few cells escaped, it could be months
before they built up enough to the point of being detectable. What chemo would do is hopefully hunt out any
refugee cancer cells and kill them before they had a chance to do any damage.”
“But what if there aren’t any more cancer cells?” Nick asked
desperately. “Then the chemo would be
for nothing, right? It would just make
me sick without helping anything!”
“That’s right,” Dr. Kingsbury nodded seriously, “and that’s why
some patients decide against adjuvant chemotherapy – chemo after surgery. This isn’t something you have to do at all,
Nick. It’s just an option that I think
you should at least consider.”
“Well… well, do you think I should do it?” Nick looked up and into her eyes, dreading
the thought of more chemotherapy, yet knowing there must be a reason for her to
bring it up.
Dr. Kingsbury pursed her lips.
“In your case, the risk of the cancer having spread is fairly low, and
chances are, it won’t reappear. But
there’s still the chance it could, and if we didn’t catch it in time, it could
cause problems. I know you don’t want to
go through another course of chemo, and I don’t blame you one bit, but it could
potentially mean the difference between a cure and a reoccurrence.”
A tingle ran through Nick’s body at the word “cure.” It was a word he’d rarely heard come out of
his doctor’s mouth, and hearing it now gave him hope. Hope that this year-long nightmare would soon
end, that as soon as his rehabilitation was complete, he’d be able to walk away
from all of this and never look back.
But, of course, Dr. Kingsbury’s “cure” went along with another
word, a word that Nick hated.
Chemo. How could she ask him to
even consider that hellish treatment again, especially now? It was like kicking him when he was down.
“You’ve been through so much, Nick,” Dr. Kingsbury said softly,
voicing Nick’s thoughts, “and I know this is the last thing you want to think
about now. But picture it as a kind of
insurance, a way to make almost absolutely sure the cancer won’t come
back. And I say ‘almost absolutely’
because in medicine, nothing is absolute… but I know the statistics, and it’s a
proven fact that receiving chemotherapy after surgery ups the survival rates.”
“So you think I should do it,” Nick said flatly. It was not a question, but a statement. She’d made her point clear.
“I think it would be wise,” answered Dr. Kingsbury with a short
nod. Nick sighed. “It’s not something you have to decide right
away,” the doctor went on quickly. “Even
if you decide you want to do it, you probably won’t start for another month or
so. After major surgery, your blood
counts can be a little out of whack and will need to get back to normal before
you can go on chemo. Besides, I’d like
to give you a head start on your rehabilitation first before we add chemo to
the equation.”
Nick nodded. “I’ll think
about it…”
But by the end of that day, he’d made up his mind. He was going ahead with the chemo.
To say the choice had been solely his would be a lie, for the
other guys had factored into it as well.
After hearing the news, they’d all urged him to go through with it,
assuring him that a few more months of chemo were a small price to pay if the
treatment bought him more time and returned him to good health. Yeah, but you’re not the ones who have to
actually go through it, he’d thought sullenly. But in the end, he’d had Dr. Kingsbury paged
and told her that he’d made his decision.
He had known he’d be going home the next day, and they’d agreed
that he would start chemo a month from then, on May eighteenth, a Tuesday. He would come to the hospital for treatments
three times a week, rather than having a continuous cycle of chemo delivered
through another catheter in his chest.
Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays would be spent getting chemo and then
dealing with the immediate after-effects, while Mondays, Wednesdays, and
Fridays would mean going to the hospital for physical therapy. This left Sunday as his only free day, and
the thought of all the treatments and rehabilitation was depressing. Yet if it all paid off, a hellish summer
would mean a much better fall, winter, and beyond. It would, as the guys had assured him, be a
small price to pay.
Still, the months ahead loomed before him like storm clouds on the
horizon, and it was hard not to feel overwhelmed. He tried to focus on the present, on the here
and now, not on the next day, or the next week, or the next month. Right now, he was home, surrounded by the
people he loved, and that was enough to make him count his blessings.
Brian and Kevin would be there for a few more days to help Nick
get settled in, and then they would be leaving, each heading home to the
respective families they had neglected for the past two weeks. But AJ and Howie would be staying. It had become very clear that Nick was not
going to be able to live on his own yet, and the hospital refused to discharge
him unless they were sure he had help at home.
AJ and Howie were the obvious choices, as the two other Backstreet Boys
who did not have families of their own elsewhere, and naturally, neither one
had protested. (“Don’t expect me to cut
off my own leg in support of you though,” AJ had joked, running a hand over his
re-grown head of hair.) The two men had
made plans to move in, while Kevin and Brian took care of making necessary
changes to the house, such as moving Nick’s bedroom downstairs. All four of the guys had also been involved
in holding a press conference to inform the public about the latest with
Nick. The conference had been open to
select members of the press only and was not broadcast on TV, though of course
the news was all over the music and entertainment channels, and according to
Nick’s publicist, Barbara Walters and Diane Sawyer were already fighting to get
the first interview with Nick himself.
But Nick wasn’t ready to be interviewed and doubted he would be
for a long time. For now, he was content
to sit there, docilely watching the waves roll onto the beach, content to
seclude himself in the safety and solace of his own home and focus on simply
getting through the next few months’ trials.
And that he would do, one day at a time.
Or as Susan had told him again and again during those first few
frustrating therapy sessions, one step at a time.
***
AN: Thanks again, Carrie! I
didn’t forget! :)