Chapter 16
“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.
***