Chapter 72
Claire
checked into the hospital at the end of July.
Her hospital room, clean and cool and pristine white, contrasted sharply
to the world outside the hospital, which was bright and unbearably hot, typical
of a Florida summer. The sunlight
streaming in through the open mini-blinds of Claire’s single window provided
the only connection to the outside world, and as Nick sat in a chair beside her
bed, his gaze kept flitting to that window.
He wished he could be out there, particularly on his boat in the ocean,
where the fresh aquatic breeze would keep him cool, and he would smell the
salty sea, rather than medicine and antiseptics.
He liked
Claire and all, but God, did he hate being here.
Still, a
promise was a promise, and he had sworn to Claire that he would come here to
visit her. Okay, so he didn’t remember
actually swearing he would… but he had told her he would anyway, and
that was about the same thing. And as
much as he didn’t want to be sitting around a hospital, he knew it was just
something he had to do. She had been
there for him during his last hospital stay (until his psychotic mother had
scared her out of the room, of course), and he would be there for her now.
“Anything
interesting going on outside?” Claire asked, jarring Nick from his thoughts.
He glanced
over at her. “Huh?”
“You keep
looking out the window,” Claire pointed out with a slight smile.
Damn. She had caught him. Did the girl miss nothing?
“Oh, I was
just watching a… bird. Yeah, there was
this cool bird…”
“I see,” she
smirked, looking as if she didn’t quite believe him. He did not reply, but forced himself to look
back at the television. He had no idea
that Monday afternoons were so lame.
There was absolutely nothing on.
Claire had finally found one of those stupid decorating shows on the
Discovery Channel and was totally engrossed in watching some flamer reupholster
a chair. Nick, on the other hand, was
bored out of his freaking mind. Which
was why he had gone back to looking out the window and wishing he could be
anywhere but here. Until Claire had caught
him.
“I can tell
you’re not liking this. Want me to see
if there’s anything else on?” Claire asked.
“Sure,” Nick
replied dully and allowed her to flip through the channels again. VH1, it seemed, was having yet another marathon
of their “I Love the 80’s” series, which Nick had seen one too many times
already (hey, when you’re stuck at home with nothing to do other than trying
not to throw up, even VH1 can look good, and come on, reflecting back on the
80’s is funny), but it was better than Christopher Lowell and his “just raaavishing!”
shade of magenta fabric. Exchanging
glances and consensual shrugs, they settled on “I love 1987,” and Nick forced
himself to watch it and not the “cool birds” outside.
“So,” Nick
said as the show went to a commercial break, “they start your tests and stuff
tomorrow then?”
“Yup,”
replied Claire with a sigh.
“What kind of
tests?” Nick asked, biting his lip at the thought of whatever torture they were
going to subject her to.
She shrugged. “Basically everything, it sounds like,” she
replied flatly. “And not just physical
stuff… they’re supposedly going to send some psychiatrist to talk to me too, to
make sure I can handle the ‘emotional burdens’ of getting a bone marrow
transplant.” She shook her head and
rolled her eyes in exasperation.
He
snickered. “What, do they think the
‘emotional burden’ of it is gonna make you freak out and try to hang yourself
with your IV line or something?”
“Probably,”
she laughed. “So yeah, anyway… should be
fun.”
“Oh yeah,” he
sarcastically agreed.
They fell
into silence again, and Nick absently let his eyes travel back to the
window. Watching the wispy white clouds
drift lazily across the vast, blue sky, he became lost in his thoughts and was
only yanked back into reality by the sensation of someone watching him. Suddenly, uncomfortable, he tore his eyes
away from the window and looked at Claire to find her staring back at him. They both looked away as their eyes met, Nick
immediately focusing his gaze back on the TV, watching it unblinkingly.
“Hey, Nick?”
Claire’s voice drifted softly over.
“Hey,
Claire?” he mocked, grinning.
Rolling her
eyes, she smiled. “I was just gonna say…
with all this going on now, I haven’t had a chance to ask you… how are you
doing? I mean… well, you know…
health-wise?”
Oh God, why
did she have to ask that? What
was he supposed to say? The truth? That he was probably headed for a remission
when she needed a bone marrow transplant to live?
The look on
his face must have given him away, for, looking at him in concern, Claire
asked, “Nick, what is it? You’re not
hiding anything from me, are you? Come
on, you know you can tell me anything.”
He
sighed. “I know… I just… I didn’t want
to say anything ‘cause it just didn’t seem fair, but-“
“Are you in
remission?” Claire asked, her eyes growing round.
The corners
of his mouth twitched into a guilty, crooked smile. “Not quite… but my doctor said I probably
will be soon.”
Claire broke
into a huge grin that lit up her face.
“Nick! That’s awesome! I can’t believe you didn’t tell me all this
time!”
“Well, I
would’ve, but that was the day you got your… news… and, you know, I…” He trailed off, wondering how to put it into
words.
“Felt
guilty?” she finished for him, hitting the nail on the head.
“Yeah.”
“Nick Carter,
don’t you dare feel guilty! This is
great, and I’m so relieved! You should
be happy, not all worried about what I think.”
He smiled
sheepishly and shrugged. “Well, I am,
but… you know… it’s just not fair…”
“Hey, don’t
worry. I’ve been in remission before
too, and if this whole bone marrow thing works out the way it’s supposed to,
I’ll be cured.” She grinned, but
somehow, the smile didn’t seem sincere.
He could sense the insecurity behind it and frowned.
“Really?” he
asked. “If this will cure you… then why
didn’t you do it before now?” It seemed
the obvious choice to him – just get the whole thing over with from the start
and be cured, not go through months of chemotherapy, only to go into remission,
relapse three years later, and have to repeat the whole process. But there had to be a reason…
“Well… it’s
too big a risk, I guess. That’s why they
try chemo and everything first. This
treatment is just sort of a last ditch effort…”
She went quiet, her voice trailing off into nothing, and he felt a
tremor of fear ripple down his spine.
“What kind of
a risk?” he asked. “I mean… how
dangerous is this thing?”
Her eyes
locked with his, no trace of the usual twinkle of amusement alighting
them. Instead, all he saw when he gazed
into their light blue depths was fear.
And he realized the truth… as hard as she was trying to hide it, as
upbeat as she was trying to be, this was totally freaking her out.
She was
scared to death.
“Claire?” he
asked softly, not tearing his eyes from hers.
“Fifty-fifty,”
she whispered, looking away.
His stomach
lurched. Fifty-fifty. It was a coin toss. Heads, she won. Tails, she lost. And this was not just any game, but a battle
of life and death. If she lost, she’d be
losing her life…
He wanted to
say something optimistic, but when he opened his mouth, nothing came out. He couldn’t find the right words; what was he
supposed to say to that?
He chose to
say nothing. Instead, he reached out and
gently cupped her chin in one hand, tilting her head to look at him. When he met her eyes again, they were filled
with tears. Sniffling and smiling
sheepishly, she blinked, trying to force them back, but to no avail. All it took was one single tear to escape,
staining her skin as it traveled slowly down her cheek, and the floodgates
opened. She did not burst into tears and
fall back dramatically on the bed like he saw in movies, but just sat there,
crying silently and trying to avoid his eyes.
“Claire,” he
whispered, getting up from his chair and perching himself next to her on the
edge of her bed. He put an arm around
her and hugged her close to him, letting her cry.
“I’m so
sorry, Nick,” she whimpered. “I hate
crying… especially in front of people… I can’t believe I’m doing this to you again.”
“Jeez,
Claire, I don’t mind - you have a reason to cry,” he said exasperatedly. “What, you think I didn’t cry when I found
out I had… you know…”
She pulled
back and looked up at him, her eyes filling with fresh tears. “You did?” she sniffled, looking at him in
sympathy.
“Yeah,” he
admitted, oddly unembarrassed. “Right
there in front of the doctor. I just…
lost it…”
She smiled
tearfully and wrapped her arms around him, hugging him close. “Hey, wait… Claire?” he said, caught
off-guard by this. “Um, I’m supposed to
be comforting you here…”
Laughing, she
pulled away and looked up to him, her eyes regaining some of their
sparkle. “That’s okay. I think I’m done now. I just… get kinda depressed, you know,
thinking about all this… it scares me, it really does. I mean, fifty-fifty… When you think about it, the odds could be
much, much worse, but still… it’s like somebody with their hands behind their
back going, ‘Pick a hand.’ And one hand
has the cure in it… and the other one has… well, death. What if… what if I pick the wrong hand?” Her forehead creased with worry as the fright
came back into her eyes. “I’m afraid to
die, Nick. I know you’re not supposed to
fear death, but… God, I’m twenty-three… I want to get married, have children,
travel… you know, the usual kind of stuff.
What if I never get to do all that?”
You will, Claire. You’ll be
able to do all of that. You’re not going
to die, he wanted to tell her, but he knew she
wouldn’t buy it. The truth was, he
didn’t know what was going to happen any more than she did, and it scared him
too. His life wasn’t at risk; he was
getting better.
But he was in
danger of losing the girl that was quickly becoming one of his best friends.
***