Chapter 73
Nick cleared
his throat as he stepped up to the podium, behind which a man in a suit
stood. “Hi,” he said. “Um, I’m supposed to be having dinner here
with the Ryan party. Their reservation
was for 7:30. I don’t know if they’re
here yet or not, but…“
“Ah, yes,
sir, they’ve already arrived.” He waved
over a woman wearing black dress pants and a white blouse and said to her,
“Could you please show the gentleman to the Ryan party.”
“Right this
way,” the woman beckoned to Nick, leading him through the classy
restaurant. Les Tambours was one of
Tampa’s finest, and he was supposed to be meeting Claire and her family there
for dinner that night. It was a Friday
evening, and after a whole week of tests in the hospital, Claire had been
granted a reprieve of sorts, an evening to leave the hospital. This had seemed somewhat strange to Nick, and
when he had asked her about it, she had explained in her flippant, ‘I’m going
act like this is all one big joke to cover up my real emotions’ kind of way.
“Oh, it’s going to be like the Last Supper… or the calm before the
storm, maybe… anyway, they’re letting me out of this dump for a few hours
because tomorrow I start ‘Phase 2’ of the BMT – bone marrow transplant, that’s
what they call it - oh God, now I’m starting to talk like a doctor - not
cool! Um, anyway, yeah, ‘Phase 2’ means
going into isolation – new, special, super-clean, sterile, germ-free room – and
starting on chemo and immune suppressants drug, and then the actual
transplant. Dr. Rodrigo said it’ll be at
least six weeks before I can leave the hospital after the transplant, and
that’s just if there’s no complications.
So yeah, basically they’re giving me one last look at the outside world
before they lock me away.”
“Whoa,” Nick said, blinking in astonishment. “Sucks to be you. So will you be allowed to have visitors
during all that?”
“Supposedly only immediately family, but hey, the staff up there
likes me. I’m sure I can kiss some ass,
pull some strings, and get them to let you in,” she replied with a cheeky grin.
He laughed. “All right, you
do that.”
Well, Claire
was getting her “Last Supper” indeed, and her parents had picked a fine place
to have it in. It reminded him of when
he was little – every time he’d had to go to the doctor as a child, for
physicals or immunizations or stitches or whatever, his mother had taken him
straight out for ice cream or a toy right afterward. He wished it still worked like that, for he
would have earned a buttload of ice cream cones and Nintendo games by now. Anyway, the fancy restaurant that Claire’s
family probably never would go to normally was like a toy, some kind of bribe
or reward for what she was about to go through.
Well, as far as he was concerned, she more than deserved it.
The hostess
led Nick to a large, round table in a far corner of the spacious restaurant,
where five people were sitting. Nick
hadn’t met any of Claire’s family before, so he didn’t know what they looked
like, and he almost didn’t recognize Claire at first either. He was about to tell the hostess she had the
wrong table when the black-haired young woman looked over at him and waved,
smiling.
Stunned, he
realized it was Claire and immediately hurried over, his face a mask of shock
and surprise at her appearance. She had
traded her usual bandana for a wig of sleek, raven black hair, styled in a
perfectly straight, layered bob that fell to her shoulders. So this was the “goth” wig she had described
at the pizza place that night, the one she only wore for “special occasions”.
“Claire,” he
gasped. “You hair…”
“You like?”
she smiled, self-consciously stroking one side of it.
Actually, he
wasn’t sure he did. It was strange to
suddenly see her with hair, and it looked kind of funny on her… maybe it was
just that the color wasn’t right. It
looked fake. But of course, he wasn’t
about to tell her that, so he returned the smile and said, “Yeah, it looks
awesome!”
“Well, here,
sit down,” Claire said, patting the back of the empty chair beside her. “And let me introduce you to my family.” Nick sat down, smiling nervously at the four
unfamiliar people, and Claire went around the table, introducing them all. “Nick, this is my dad, Kris… my mom, Carrie…
my brother, Kyle… and Kyle’s wife, Amber.
And guys, meet Nick Carter.”
“It’s a
pleasure to meet you,” Claire’s father, a big man with dark, reddish-brown
hair, said, shaking Nick’s hand.
“We’ve heard
so much about you from Claire,” added her mother, who was small and blonde,
offering a petite hand to Nick from across the table.
Claire’s brother, who had to be close to thirty and looked a lot like his
father, with dark red hair and the physique of a football player, gave Nick a
quick handshake and a hello, and his wife Amber did the same.
“So you’re
going to be Claire’s donor?” Nick asked Kyle, but Claire answered before her
brother could get a word out.
“Yes,” she
said, “but we’re not going to talk about that tonight.” Smiling sweetly at Nick, she picked up her
menu and glanced at it. “You ever been
here before?” she asked him. “I haven’t
– way too hoity-toity for me. Look, I
even had to put on a dress tonight.” She
looked down at herself, her lip curling in distaste. Nick followed her eyes to see that she was indeed
dressed nicely in a short, halter-top dress made of red fabric with little
white polka dots. That was a new one too
– he’d never seen her in anything but t-shirts and pants before.
“You look
nice,” he complimented her, sensing that she was feeling insecure.
“Well,
thanks. You look nice too,” she
returned, eyeing the button-up shirt and dark gray slacks he had grudgingly put
on for the night and adding in a whisper, “And you look more comfortable than
me too – my back is killing me. I just
need to be lying down with my sweats on.”
She stuck out her bottom lip in a pout.
“Ohh, that’s
right. You doing okay?” Nick had almost forgotten about Claire’s
“harvesting operation,” which they had done Wednesday morning. It had been a very minor surgical procedure
to take out some of her bone marrow. The
intent was to keep it frozen and stored in case her body rejected Kyle’s marrow
later; then they could put back her old bone marrow long enough to keep her
alive until a new donor was found. She
had compared the operation to “about 50 million bone marrow aspirations,” and
he bet she was pretty damn sore… he hurt bad enough after just one bone marrow
test.
“Yeah, I’m
okay,” she said with a shrug. “But on
top of that, this damn wig is itching the hell out of my head, my shoes hurt to
walk in, and my bra feels like it’s about to fall down. Being a girl sucks sometimes, you know that?”
“Whoa, okay,
TMI,” he said, holding up his hands in defense.
She giggled,
looked at the menu in her hands a second time, and asked again, “So, have you
been here before? What should I get?”
He had been
there before, but it had been awhile.
Picking up his own menu and looking it over, he shrugged. “I dunno… I think I’m gonna go for the
steak.”
“Yeah, that
sounds good,” she agreed, reading the description of the steak dinner in the
menu. “I think I’ll have that too.”
“Cool,” he
said, impressed. Most girls he went out
to eat with ate like birds and ordered light things with chicken or just a
salad or something.
“I told ya I
have a healthy appetite,” Claire said with an impish grin. “Besides, this is going to be the last good
meal I’ll have for awhile – better make the most of it, right?”
“Right,” Nick
agreed. “You go for it.”
She
smiled. “I think I will.”
***
“Oh my God,
I’m stuffed,” Claire groaned to Nick awhile later, as the others finished
eating amid light conversation.
“Me too,” he
chuckled. He pushed back his plate and
played with the cloth napkin in his lap, balling it up in his hands and
twisting it around until he realized what he was doing and set it back on the
table. Now that dinner was over, he was
rather bored. He felt removed from the
family’s conversations most of the time, not knowing any of them except
Claire. Luckily, she was paying plenty
of attention to him and seemed to notice he was getting restless (could it be
the napkin-twisting that gave him away?)
“You wanna
walk outside?” she whispered to him.
“Sure,” he
replied.
Clearing her
throat, Claire caught the attention of her mother and said, “Nick and I are
gonna step outside. I want some fresh
air.”
“Are you
feeling okay?” her mother asked, her eyes boring into Claire with concern.
Claire rolled
her eyes. “Yeah, I’m fine. So we’ll be outside, okay?”
“All right,
hon,” Carrie relented.
Claire
started to get up from her seat, but almost immediately, her face contorted
into a grimace of pain, and she sank back down again. “Claire, you all right?” Nick asked quickly.
“You sound
like Mom,” Claire groaned, then added, “I’m fine… just the back, you know… I
forgot how stiff it was…”
“Here,” Nick
said, sliding his arm underneath hers and slowly helping her up. “You good?” he asked when she was on her
feet.
“Fine.
Thanks,” she said sheepishly. “Come on,
let’s go.” She started to walk quickly
away from the table, but he noticed how she slowed down after just a few steps. She was hurting and trying hard not to show
it. He didn’t say anything when he
caught up to her though and simply walked slowly alongside her as they
navigated between tables and made it outside the restaurant.
“Phew, that’s
better,” Claire said, inhaling deeply as they got outside. It was a beautiful night out, warm, but not
too hot, a light breeze tickling their skin as they walked slowly down the
landscaped sidewalk in front of the restaurant. “Look at the sky,” Claire sighed, glancing
up. Nick followed her gaze to see a
gorgeous array of twinkling stars spattered across the cloudless, darkening
sky. On the horizon, the sun was
setting, a medley of golden and pinkish hues tingeing the sky around it and
slowly melting into shades of blue, which dimmed to the velvety navy of night.
“It’s
pretty,” Nick said softly. “Sometimes I
take my boat out at night… you can really see the stars when you’re out on the
ocean, away from the city and the lights and everything… they’re beautiful.”
“I’d love to
see that,” she said huskily, and he smiled at her.
“I’ll take
you sometime,” he promised.
“Okay… hey,
mind if we sit down up here?” She had
spotted a stone bench along the end of the sidewalk.
“No, sounds
good to me,” he said, walking toward it with her. He noticed how her body was slightly hunched
over, almost like an old lady’s, and knew her back must be just killing
her. They reached the bench, and he
helped her sit down, then sank down beside her.
She was sitting stiffly on the backless bench, and, realizing her
discomfort, he scooted back and slung one of his long legs over the other side
of the bench, so that he was straddling it.
“Here,” he said, “Turn this way and put your feet up.” He eased her back so that she was leaning
against his chest, and she pulled her legs onto the bench, stretching them out
straight in front of her. “Is that
better?” he whispered in her ear.
“Much,” she
said, glancing up at him, a smile on her face.
“You’re good to me, you know that?”
“Well, you’re
good to me too. That’s what friends are
for, right?” he asked with a chuckle.
“Cheesy, you know, but true…”
“Sure,” she
agreed, laughing lightly.
They fell
quiet, simply enjoying the pleasure of each other’s company and the silence,
interrupted only by the soft chirping of crickets, the whispers of the trees as
the soft summer breeze ruffled their leaves, and the occasional car passing by.
“Nick?”
Claire said softly.
“Yeah?”
“I’ve been
thinking…” Her voice trailed off, and he
sat waiting for her to continue.
“About?” he
prompted after a moment, when she did not go on.
She let out a
sigh and slowly pulled herself off of him, painfully swinging her legs off of
the bench so that she was sitting properly.
She turned to face him, her blue eyes large and luminous in the soft
glow of the moon and distant streetlights that played across her face, the
sun’s dying rays bathing the world behind her in dim, golden light. The smile she gave him was wavering and
uncertain, but when she spoke, her eyes radiated conviction.
“I don’t know
if it’s the right time to say this, but I just feel like… if I don’t say it
tonight, I might not have another chance.”
She bit her lip, yet never took her eyes off him, looking at him in a
way that made him uncomfortable.
“So say it,”
he whispered, perplexed. Honestly, he
was anticipating another conversation like the one they’d had at the hospital
on Monday, with her suddenly opening her heart to him and pouring out her
feelings, how scared she was about what might happen to her… he braced himself
for this and was fully prepared to take her in his arms again and let her
cry. Crying girls made him
uncomfortable, and he hated to see her in tears… but if any girl had a reason
to do so, it was Claire. He didn’t mind.
He sat still
and waited for whatever it was she had to say.
But when she finally did say it, it was the last thing on Earth he was
expecting to hear.
“Nick,” she
said softly. “I… I think I’m falling in
love with you.”
***