Chapter 119
For as
eventful as Friday was, Nick’s weekend was quite the opposite. Claire went to Gainesville to visit her
parents, so he did not see her all weekend, which was okay with him. He was almost nervous about seeing her again,
the happenings of Friday refusing to leave his mind. That kiss… he relived it mentally every time
he thought of her, which was quite often.
And every time he felt her soft lips against his, he was filled with a
rapturous rush. But then, just as
quickly, his stomach would flip-flop, and he’d feel almost sick, wondering if
he’d been right to make a move on her.
Sure, she’d been just as involved as he had been, but he couldn’t help
but feel that if things didn’t work out, he would be to blame.
His life had
been in such a stage of upheaval for the past few months that the last thing he
wanted to do was complicate their friendship.
The kiss would have consequences, he was sure. Something had to happen, didn’t it? They couldn’t just ignore it, pretend it
hadn’t happened, could they? Deep down,
he didn’t want to ignore it. He wanted
to be with her. But now just didn’t seem
like the right time to start a relationship.
On Tuesday,
he would begin yet another leg of his journey through hell, chemotherapy. The first time around, he’d been scared. He was not scared anymore, just depressed. Chemotherapy was no longer the great unknown,
but something that was familiar too him, all too familiar. He knew what it would be like and how it
would make him feel, and he could do nothing but dread it.
His therapy
session on Monday went well. Now that he
was able to walk without crutches, most of the session had been spent simply
walking laps around the therapy room under the supervision of Susan, practicing
and getting better and faster at it.
Susan was impressed with the progress he had made and assured him that
at this rate, he would probably have a permanent prosthesis, a more advanced
leg designed especially for him, by the beginning of August.
All in all,
Monday was a good day, but Nick’s spirits quickly sank that night and were no
better when he woke up Tuesday morning.
The day was humid and overcast, and the sky sporadically spit rain as
Howie drove Nick to Tampa General, where he’d be receiving his treatments.
“This sucks,”
muttered Nick, gazing out his window into the foggy distance.
“I know,”
Howie said quietly as he turned the car into the parking area marked “Visitor
and Outpatient Parking.” He let Nick off
near the entrance of the hospital and told him to wait inside while he parked
the car. Nervously tugging his baseball
cap down, Nick cast a wary glance around him and walked slowly into the large
lobby of the hospital. Luckily, there
were not many people about, and those who were seemed too occupied with their
own situations to notice him.
When Howie
got there, he and Nick set off for the elevators to ride up to the oncology
wing. The walk was slow, for Nick had
opted to go without crutches and walk solely on his prosthesis instead. Yet Howie had made sure to fold up the
wheelchair they had rented and store it in the trunk, just in case. And as much as Nick hated to admit it, he
knew there was a good chance he might have to rely on that wheelchair by the
time this chemotherapy treatment was done, if he ended up as sick afterward as
he had following all the other rounds of chemo.
On the fifth
floor, Nick took Howie along the familiar route to the outpatient clinic where
he had been for so many appointments in the last year. Brian had been there once, but Howie never
had.
“I dunno
exactly how long this is gonna take, but I heard it could be a few hours,” Nick
remarked as he and Howie sat down in the waiting room. “So you don’t gotta sit here and wait for me
the whole time if you don’t want to, dawg.”
“Well, what
else would I do?” Howie asked, glancing observantly around the room.
“I
dunno. There’s supposedly an ice cream
place downstairs,” Nick said with a shrug.
“Yeah? Well, I might have to go check that out,”
replied Howie, smiling slightly. He was
silent for a moment and then added hesitantly, “Um, I guess they probably won’t
let me come back with you then?”
Nick shrugged
again. “Dunno. They let Brian come back for my check-up
once, but that was different. I dunno
what the policy is for getting chemo like this.”
Howie
nodded. “Well, let me know if you want
me to come with you, and I’d be more than happy to – if they’d let me, that
is.”
Nick opened
his mouth to protest, but changed his mind before the words came out. “Okay,” he said softly instead, thinking it
might be sort of nice to have someone sit with him during the treatment.
After a short
wait, a nurse named Kathy came out and called Nick back. “Do you mind if my friend comes with?” he
asked her, nodding to Howie.
“Oh sure,
that’s fine,” replied Kathy. “Come on
back.” She led Nick and Howie to one of
the examining rooms in the back of the clinic, where she measured Nick’s height
and weight, took his vital signs, and drew some blood. “Dr. Kingsbury will be in to see you in a few
minutes before you head down to the chemo room for your treatment,” Kathy said
when she had finished.
Dr. Kingsbury
was quick to arrive that day, making it to the room just a few minutes after
Kathy had left. She smiled broadly when
she saw Nick, and he watched her eyes travel down to his left leg, which looked
perfectly normal hidden beneath his baggy track pants. Surveying it, she nodded, her eyes rising to
meet Nick’s. “Looking good,” she said,
flashing him a quick thumbs up. “And
word is you’re already walking on it without crutches or a cane or anything?”
Nick felt a
rush of pride and couldn’t help but smile a little. “Yeah,” he said. “It’s hard, but… you know… I’m getting
there.”
“I knew you
would,” said Dr. Kingsbury, squeezing his shoulder. “And it’s only been, what, about a month and
a half?”
“Little over
a month and a half, yeah,” he nodded.
“That’s what
I thought. Impressive, Nick, very
impressive. I knew we wouldn’t be able
to keep you down for long.”
“Oh, you
still can,” he countered pessimistically.
“I’m sure the chemo’s going to knock me right back down on my ass –
sorry, butt – again.”
“You’ll get
through it,” Dr. Kingsbury assured him.
“Think of this as the last leg of a race. The end is in sight, you’re almost to the
finish line, and all you have to do is get past this last stretch. Ever run track in high school?” she added
with a smile.
“Nope. Didn’t go to high school,” replied Nick.
“Oh…”
“I was
tutored.”
“Ohh. Well, of course,” said the doctor with a
little laugh.
Nick
sighed. “Yeah, Howie here and Kevin are
the only ones who made it through high school in a regular school.”
“Howie,
that’s right,” Dr. Kingsbury said, turning her attention to Howie and shaking
his hand. “I think we’ve met before.”
“Yes,” said
Howie, pumping her arm. “Um, I don’t
know what your policy is here, but would it be possible for me to stay with
Nick while he gets the chemo?”
Dr. Kingsbury
nodded. “Sure. We don’t like to have a lot of extra people
in the chemo room, but one visitor would be fine. It’s always good to have family and friends
involved in the treatment process.”
Howie
smiled. “Well, Nicky’s definitely got
his friends. And as for family… well…
the guys and I are close enough to be family.”
“Closer than
my own family,” added Nick, pasting a fake smile on his face. “You’ve met my mom.”
“Uh… yes,
we’ve met,” Dr. Kingsbury said hesitantly.
“Yeah. ‘Nuff said.”
The doctor
smiled rather uncomfortably and proceeded to change the subject. “Okay, so, Nick,” she began, pulling up a
stool on wheels and sitting down, folding her hands in her lap, “I’m just going
to examine you briefly, and then I’ll explain what’s going to happen with the
chemotherapy. After that, a nurse will
take you down to the chemo room and get you set up there. Sound okay?”
“I guess,”
replied Nick. Really, what else was he
supposed to say?
***
“You know,”
Nick said contemplatively, “this is where Claire and I first met.”
Howie’s eyes
traveled in a sweeping circle around the pale yellow chemotherapy room. “Really,” he said. “That’s romantic.”
Nick
snorted. “Yeah, for su- Hey!
What do you mean ‘romantic’? Why
would it matter if it was romantic or not?” he asked defensively, feeling his
cheeks grow warm.
Howie grinned
at him. “Oh, come on, Nicky… something
happened with you two on Friday night.
AJ and I both know it – you blushed like a little schoolgirl any time
one of us mentioned her name all weekend.”
“Nuh-uh!”
“You did
too! Not to mention, you were all ‘who
was it??’ whenever the phone rang. Since
when do you care about getting phone calls?
You’ve been avoiding that thing like the plague for weeks!”
Not knowing
quite what to say back to that, Nick pressed his lips together tightly, shook
his head, and looked away, pretending to be deeply interested in watching the
toxic chemicals leak from the bag hanging on the IV pole beside his chair to
the thin tubing that snaked into a vein on the inside of his left arm.
“How are you
doing, Nick?”
Tearing his
gaze away from the IV, Nick looked up to find that the nurse in charge of
monitoring his treatment, Laureen, had come up.
“Okay,” he
answered honestly. The drugs had burned
a little when they had first started dripping into his vein, but everything
felt fine now, and he wasn’t even nauseated yet. Of course, it had only been about ten
minutes, and he knew the side effects would start setting in sooner or later.
“Good,” said
Laureen. “Call if you need anything.”
She passed by
him and went to check the only other patient in the room, a frail-looking
elderly man, and Howie leaned forward.
“So, tell me, Nicky… what did happen on Friday night?” He had the air of a seventh grade girl just
itching to hear the latest batch of junior high gossip, and Nick couldn’t help
but laugh.
“Nothing!” he
insisted.
“Right. Nothing,” said Howie, winking.
“Shut up,”
Nick muttered, growing slightly irritated.
He really didn’t feel like confessing to Howie that he and Claire had
kissed because although Howie probably wouldn’t give him too much crap about
it, he would almost certainly tell AJ, and if AJ knew, the jokes would never
end. Nick wasn’t about to talk to anyone
about what had happened until he talked to Claire about it, which had
not happened yet. “Hey, can you grab
that newspaper over there?” he asked Howie, changing the subject.
“Sure.” Getting up from his seat, Howie retrieved a
rather crinkled newspaper from a table piled with magazines and brought it over
to Nick. “It’s two days old,” he pointed
out, looking at the date.
“That’s
okay,” said Nick, thumbing through the paper and pretending to be interested.
“Since when
do you care about current events?”
“I care! Gotta keep myself informed, you know.”
Howie stifled
a laugh. “Yeah. Right.”
Ignoring him,
Nick glossed over the obituaries, remembering how as a child he had liked to
read them, his morbid curiosity only heightened by living in a retirement
home. Death was no longer an innocent
fascination to him now though; instead, it was a fear that hit too close to
home. Death did not just happen to old
people; it could snatch away anyone, even young people with decades of life
left to live. So he quickly turned the
page to a much less depressing section, the birth announcements. He smiled at the black and white pictures of
newborns that graced the page and was about to flip on when a name caught his
eye. His heart skipping a beat, he
leaned forward to look more closely and felt an empty, sinking feeling as he
read one of the announcements.
David Hammond
and Leah Gaylers of Tampa are announcing the birth of their first child, a
daughter, Elaina Jesimae Hammond, on April 13, 2004 at Tampa General
Hospital. She weighed 7 pounds, 3 ounces
and measured 19 inches at her 6:06 pm birth.
Grandparents are Arthur and Joan Hammond of Tampa, and Ed and Lori
Gaylers of Ruskin.
“Elaina,”
Nick whispered under his breath, staring at the small, blurry photograph of an
infant baby girl pictured beside the brief announcement. Leah’s baby.
His baby, he’d once thought.
“But just wait till our baby comes. Elaina…”
Whispering the potential name, Leah rested her hand on her stomach
beneath the covers.
“Terra,” Nick countered playfully.
“Cassandra.”
“Lara.”
She reached out and slapped him lightly in the darkness. “I told you, we’re not naming her after Lara
Cr-“ But her sentence was cut off by a
sudden gasp.
“Leah? What is it?” Nick
asked, rolling to face her. “Are you-“
“Nicky!” she whispered.
“Feel!” He felt her hand grab his
underneath the covers and guide it to her stomach. He laid it there and felt her hand come to
rest on top of his.
“What am I feeling for?” he whispered back.
“She kicked! Just wait a
minute, maybe she’ll do it again.”
He waited, holding his breath, his fingertips tingling in anticipation. And then, it happened. He felt movement from inside Leah’s belly,
two jerky palpitations. “Oh my God,” he
breathed. “She is kicking!”
“Nick? What is it?” Howie’s voice made the memory fade away, and
Nick shook his head.
“That’s her,” he said softly, holding out the paper to Howie and
pointing at the picture. “Leah’s
baby. Elaina…”
“Oh.” Howie pursed his
lips, studying the picture. “Did you
know she’d had the baby?”
“Nope. She had it in this
hospital though… while I was here…” he murmured, almost wistfully, reminiscing
on happier times.
“Are you okay?” Howie asked, gently touching Nick’s shoulder. “I know it’s gotta be hard, man…”
Nick shrugged away. “I’m
fine,” he replied curtly.
But it would not be long until he was not fine, not at all. When he left the clinic later that day, it
was slumped in a wheelchair, barely able to control his nausea, let alone walk.
“Hold on, Nicky,” Howie kept saying on the ride home. “We’re almost there.”
But as he leaned his head against the cool glass of the car window
and shut his eyes, all Nick could think was, here we go again…
***