“Good morning, Nickolas.
I’m Dr. Kingsbury. How are you
doing today?” The question was asked by
a smiling woman in her forties, who was dressed in traditional doctor garb – a
pair of green scrubs covered with a white lab coat.
Nick left early for the hospital that morning, knowing the sooner
he got there, the sooner he would be able to go home. He packed an overnight bag, unsure of how
long he would have to stay. At the
hospital, he had checked in at the admitting desk and was soon led to a private
room upstairs. He had been forced to
change out of his street clothes and into a thin hospital gown and had then
climbed into his bed, where he had waited impatiently for almost an hour. Now, finally, a doctor had come to see him.
“I’m fine,” Nick replied.
“And you can call me Nick, by the way.”
It didn’t really matter, but he thought it might put him more at ease if
the doctor called him by his nickname (AN: hehe, nickname… no pun
intended). Nickolas was too formal.
“Okay, Nick,” said Dr. Kingsbury.
“I’m an orthopedic specialist, and I’m here to check out your leg. Your x-rays were sent here from the clinic
you visited last week, and they show not only a fracture in your tibia, but
also a small hole in the bone.”
“Yeah, that’s what the doc at the clinic said. So when can we get started on those
tests?” Nick didn’t mean to sound rude,
but he couldn’t help but feel impatient, nervous as he was. All he wanted to do was get the tests over
with and go home as soon as possible.
Dr. Kingsbury laughed lightly.
“I don’t usually see patients as eager as you,” she commented. “Well, the first thing I’d like to do is get
your history, and then I’ll send a nurse in to draw some blood. After that, I want to run a CT scan. That’s a type of x-ray that gives a
three-dimensional view of the inside of the body, rather than the typical black
and white pictures. It will give me a
better view of your leg bone.”
“Okay…” Nick said, shifting nervously in his bed. “What else?”
“I’m not sure yet; that will depend on the results of your
bloodwork and scan,” answered the doctor.
“Now, before we get started, I’d like to ask you a few questions. How exactly did you fracture your leg?”
His cheeks reddening, Nick hesitantly explained about how he had
bumped his leg on the side of the bathtub.
Dr. Kingsbury did not seem amused, however, and only nodded, jotting
down something on the clipboard she held.
“Tell me, did you have any pain in your leg before the injury?”
she questioned next.
“Um… yeah, I guess I did a little bit,” Nick said slowly,
recalling several times when his shin had pained him before the bathtub
accident.
“How long have you been experiencing this pain?”
“Uh… well, I know I had it off and on while I was touring… and
that was like three weeks ago… so I guess I’ve had it for about a month,
maybe.”
“Okay.” Dr. Kingsbury’s pen
flew across her clipboard as she scribbled something else. “And have you had any other symptoms? Pain anywhere else, fatigue, anything?”
“No pain anywhere else, no,” Nick said quickly. “As far as fatigue, yeah, I’ve been tired
lately, but I also was on the road for a month, so that’s why.”
Dr. Kingsbury nodded, still writing. “Anything else? Weakness, numbness, weight loss?”
Nick frowned. “Weight loss,
yeah. But not the other things. And I’ve been working out and eating better,
trying to lose weight, you know, so I don’t think that has anything to do with
anything.”
Another nod was the doctor’s only response as she continued to
take notes.
“Um… excuse me, but are you asking these questions for some
particular reason? Like, is there some
specific problem you think I might have?” he asked hesitantly.
Dr. Kingsbury stopped writing and looked up at him. “This is just standard procedure,” she
replied. “I don’t want to leave out any
possibilities.”
What possibilities? Nick wondered, but he didn’t ask. Somehow, he had the feeling he wouldn’t want
to hear the answer.
***
Later that morning, after Dr. Kingsbury had left, a young nurse
came into Nick’s room to take blood.
This he dreaded even more than the promised CT scan, for he hated
needles with a passion. He recalled
having to be held down for shots as a child, and though he no longer kicked and
screamed, he was still wary of them.
However, this nurse made for a nice distraction. She was young, hardly older than him, and
quite attractive.
“Good morning,” she greeted him with a cheerful smile, pushing a
small cart into the room with her. “I’m
Megan, and I’m just here to draw some blood.”
“I’m Nick,” Nick said, offering her a flirty half-smile. She blushed and quickly turned around to her
cart, which apparently contained medical supplies. Nick could see a small rack of glass vials on
top, some of them containing small amounts of reddish liquid. He squirmed in his bed.
“Hold out your arm, please,” Megan said, turning back to face
him. Nick obeyed, reluctantly turning
his arm palm up and holding it out to her.
She wrapped a thick strip of rubber around his upper arm and then rubbed
the inside of his elbow with a cotton ball wet with antiseptic. Nick winced as the cold liquid touched the
sensitive skin.
Megan smiled. “Sorry,” she
apologized. She turned back to her cart,
and Nick knew she was preparing the syringe.
His hands grew clammy, and he tried to keep his mind off of blood and
needles by gazing at Megan’s rear end, which looked quite nice in her pink
scrub pants. Quickly averting his eyes
as she turned back around, he gritted his teeth and prepared for pain, trying
his best to keep a brave face.
“This will only hurt a second,” Megan said dutifully, holding up
the syringe. Nick looked away as she slid
it into the crook of his arm; he had been told before that it would hurt less
if he wasn’t watching it. This obviously
wasn’t true, for he definitely felt the sharp point of the needle as it
punctured his skin. He grimaced and
tried not to flinch.
“There, all done,” Megan said soothingly, a moment later, pressing
a cotton ball to the needle wound and securing it with a band-aid. Removing the rubber band from his arm, she
said, “You did great, Nick.”
“Uh… so did you. I didn’t
feel a thing,” Nick lied, putting on his macho act.
Megan smiled. “Really? Good.
I’m a little new at this, so that’s good to hear,” she admitted.
Nick laughed, just relieved that it was over.
***
The CT scan later that day turned out to be much less painful than
the blood test. In fact, it wasn’t
painful at all, except for the small injection Nick was given before the
test. “It’s just some fluid to make your
bones show up better on the scan,” the technician told him before giving him
the shot.
After that, Nick was forced to sit and wait awhile while the fluid
absorbed into his bones; then he was taken to a small room with a large,
tubular contraption in the center.
“Oh no,” Nick groaned under his breath, realizing he was going to
be put in that tube; he had seen this done on TV, and it did not look
exactly pleasant.
“You’re not claustrophobic, are you?” the tech asked, helping Nick
onto a table positioned in front of the tube.
“No,” Nick replied, thinking that if he wasn’t before, he surely
would be after this test.
“Good. Then just lie back
and try to remain as still as possible while you’re inside the machine. It gets pretty noisy in there, so keep these
headphones on.” He handed Nick a big
pair of headphones, which Nick warily slipped over his ears. What was he getting himself into?
He lay flat on his back on the table, and the technician left the
room, saying, “I’ll be in another room adjacent to this one, running the
machine. There’s a speaker that connects
the two rooms, so if you need anything or start to feel claustrophobic, just
say the word.”
“Okay,” Nick said nervously and watched as the man
disappeared. A moment later, the large
machine behind him began to hum loudly and move towards the table on which he
lay, slowly encasing him within its tunnel.
He squeezed his eyes shut and pictured the ocean, the vast, open expanse
of water he loved so dearly. It helped
to relax him, and he was able to almost block out the whirring of the machine
as he imagined the sound of the waves washing up onto the beach.
The scan took a long time, almost half an hour, but as it went on,
Nick realized it wasn’t really so bad and just lay there, trying to be as
relaxed as possible. When the scan
ended, the tube moved back, leaving Nick out in the openness of the room
again. He let out a sigh of relief and
removed his headphones just as the technician emerged.
“You did great,” he said, helping Nick off of the table and back
into his wheelchair. “The results should
be in by tomorrow, and your doctor will discuss you with them then.”
An orderly was waiting in the hall to take Nick back to his
room. He pushed Nick in his wheelchair
down to an elevator bank at the end of the hallway. When the doors to one of the elevators slid
open, Nick was relieved to see that the elevator was virtually empty; the only
occupant was a young woman dressed in a light yellow robe and leopard-print
slippers. She had an IV pole standing
beside her and a hot pink scarf wrapped around her head, contrasting sharply
with her pale skin. Nick knew
automatically what was wrong with her.
She had cancer.
Nick had visited sick children in hospitals many times with the
Backstreet Boys and alone (it had been part of his community service following
his arrest the year before), and he was well aware of how to recognize a cancer
patient. And though he had met many of
them, the sight of those ghostly, gaunt faces and bald heads still made him
uncomfortable. He loved meeting such
people and making them happy; he hated the disease they had. It scared him, to be honest.
He gave the woman a slight smile, which she returned
unselfconsciously. He realized then that
he probably didn’t look much better off than she did, dressed in his hospital
gown and sitting in a wheelchair. It was
almost as if he were one of her… one of them…
Well, sorry, but that ain’t true, Nick thought dismissively. I’m gonna be out of here in another day or
two, and everything’s gonna be just fine.
At some point in their lives, most people have that same “It can’t
happen to me” attitude.
But the truth is… it can.
***