Cary
I offered
to make dinner that night. I’m a pretty
good cook – my grandma taught me when I was a kid, and I’ve been cooking for my
dad, who is hopeless in the kitchen, ever since.
Thankfully,
Nick had planned ahead and gotten groceries, so when he turned me loose in his
kitchen, I found I had plenty of options.
I decided to go with something bland, in case he felt nauseous – baked
chicken with white rice and green beans.
Nick had gone to take a nap after his first chemo infusion finished, and
I wasn’t sure he’d even have an appetite when he got up again, so I was
surprised when I heard his voice say, “Somethin’ smells good.”
Closing the
oven door, I looked up as he staggered into the kitchen. He had clearly just woken up; his eyes were
puffy from sleep, his hair was sticking up in the back, and he had a red crease
on one cheek from his pillowcase. I
couldn’t help but smile; he looked less like a polished popstar now and more
like a little boy. “Thanks! Did you sleep well?”
“I was out
like a light,” he replied, his voice crackling with phlegm.
I hadn’t
heard a peep from his room since he’d gone to lie down. I’d gone to check on him once and pressed my
ear to his door, afraid to open it without knocking, yet also afraid to knock
and wake him up. The chemo had clearly
worn him out, but at least he hadn’t been getting up to vomit. “How are you feeling?” I asked.
He
shrugged. “Tired. But otherwise, okay, I guess. Hungry.”
“Really? That’s good,” I said, encouraged. “No nausea, then?”
“Not
really. That Zofran shit works pretty
good. And the pill I have to take in the
morning is a steroid, so it gives me an appetite. Go figure,” he scoffed, “I’ll probably gain
weight doing chemo instead of lose it. I
figured I’d be puking my guts out – gross, but hey, easy way to keep the pounds
off. But just my luck – I still feel
like eating, but not working out.”
“Aww, I wouldn’t
worry about your weight right now. I’m
sure you can take a few days off to recover from chemo without messing up your
fitness routine too much. Just be glad
you still feel like eating and can keep food down. Speaking of which, dinner should be ready in
a few minutes.”
“Awesome. Oh, and hey, afterwards, we should go and get
my car, before you start the second dose of chemo. We left it at the club last night, remember?”
Had it
really only been a night ago? It seemed
ages ago that I’d been bopping around in the backseat of a cab, buzzed out of
my mind, completely oblivious to the real reason Nick had brought me out
here. “Oh yeah,” I said. “Yeah, sure, that’s fine.”
“Maybe we
can get ice cream on the way,” he added.
I laughed at the faraway look in his eyes; he was practically drooling.
“Ice cream
sounds great.”
***
I was still
stuffed full of chicken and rice when we set out in Nick’s white Escalade to
pick up his Benz, but I got an ice cream cone anyway, when he insisted on
treating me to dessert. We sat out in
the parking lot in the SUV, the windows rolled down, enjoying the sea breeze
while we ate our cones.
“I didn’t
know they had places like this in LA,” I said, staring out the window at the
run-down ice cream parlor. It looked just
like the local ice cream shacks I’d frequented as a kid growing up in Illinois,
and the soft serve tasted just as good.
I licked a slow path around the outside of my cone, trying to keep it
from dripping onto the leather seat.
Nick
laughed. “What’d you expect?”
“I dunno…
something more upscale? You know, where
the ice cream isn’t really ice cream at all, but gelato or frozen yogurt.”
He chuckled
again. “Oh, they have plenty of those
places, too. But see, I’m not a true
Californian; I grew up eating Dairy Queen in Florida. I like all kinds of ice cream – too much, if
you couldn’t tell.”
I
smiled. “Everyone has their weakness.”
He smirked back at me. “So what’s
yours?”
“Mm…
chocolate. Anything chocolate.” I took a huge lick of the chocolate side of
my twist cone.
Nick
finished his first and started the engine as soon as he’d popped the bottom of
the cone into his mouth. I polished off
the rest of mine on the drive over to the club we’d been at the night before. His Benz was still parked there, a piece of
paper visible on the windshield.
“Fuck!”
Nick swore, ripping the parking ticket out from under the wiper. “Are you fucking kidding me, LAPD? What, would you have rather I drove home
drunk? This is what I get for being responsible
for once? Just my fucking luck…”
I stood
back, letting him rant. When he ran out
of steam, he crammed the ticket into his pocket and turned to me. “Sorry,” he said stiffly, clearly still
fuming on the inside. “Let’s get the
hell out of here. Which one you wanna
drive?”
He was
giving me a choice? I looked between the
massive, white SUV and the sporty, black coupe.
I knew which one I wanted to drive.
“Um… the Benz?” I asked timidly.
He placed a
key fob in my hand. I looked down at it.
There was no key attached.
Seeing the
look of confusion on my face, he explained, “It’s a smart key. Just put that in your pocket, put your foot
on the brake, and hit the start button to start the ignition.”
I
blinked. Back home, I drove the same car
I’d had since I’d graduated college, a 1996 Honda Civic. It was the first car I’d bought all on my
own, a cherry red hatchback with a sunroof, and I loved it, but it didn’t even
have power locks, let alone a keyless start.
I felt a little out of my league.
“Are you sure you want me driving your car?” I asked.
He gave me
a wary look. “Why, are you a really bad
driver or somethin’? You’re not gonna
wreck it, are ya?”
“I hope
not…”
He
chuckled. “You’ll be fine; I trust
you. C’mon, get in.” He opened the driver’s side door for me, and
I slid behind the wheel. To my surprise,
after he closed my door, he came around to the passenger side and got in next
to me. “I’ll have you follow me, but
just in case we get separated in traffic, I’m gonna set up the GPS for ya so
you don’t get lost,” he said. I waited
while he programmed his address into the GPS.
“You’ve got my number – call if you need me,” he added, before he got
out.
I watched
him get back into the Escalade and reluctantly shifted into drive so that I
could follow him. I’m really not a bad
driver, but I’ll be the first to admit that city traffic makes me nervous,
especially when it’s a city I don’t know.
Please don’t let me wreck his car,
I pleaded, gripping the wheel tightly, as I inched out onto the street behind
him.
***
After we
made it back to the condo – in one piece, thankfully – it was time for Nick’s
second dose of chemo. Once again, we
spread the tub of medical supplies out over the dining room table and repeated
the process from that morning. It must
have been awkward for Nick, letting me into his home, letting me see him at his
most vulnerable, when he’d only just met me, but he didn’t complain. Again, I tried to be professional, to be a
nurse and not a fan. It was easier the second
time.
When the
chemo pump was hooked up and running again, Nick went to lie down on the couch,
as he’d done before, while I cleaned up.
After a few minutes, I heard him call, “Cary?”
I poked my
head into the living room. “Yeah?”
“Will you make
me an ice pack?”
“Um,
sure…” I wondered what he needed an ice
pack for. “Do you feel okay? You’re not running a fever, are you?” I hadn’t checked his temperature, but it was
something we’d have to keep an eye on. A
fever when he was neutropenic, low in white blood cells, could mean a dangerous
infection.
“No, no…
I’m fine,” he insisted. From the other
room, he shouted out instructions, telling me where to find a large Ziploc bag,
how much ice to put in it, and what kind of towel to wrap it in. “Thanks,” he said gratefully, when I brought
it in to him. He was stretched out flat
on his back, his head propped up against one arm of the couch, his feet
dangling over the other. When he took
the ice pack out of my hands, he laid it right on top of his head. Not across his forehead, but literally on top
of his head, right over the crown of his hair.
He left it there and closed his eyes.
I
stared. He didn’t move. “Headache?” I asked after a few seconds.
“No. It’s to keep the chemo from getting to my
hair cells, so I won’t go bald.”
I
blinked. “Really? And that… works?”
“I still
have my hair, don’t I? They said it’d
start falling out in three weeks, and it’s been six.”
“And you’ve
been putting ice packs on your head this whole time?” I wondered if he had done this while I was in
the shower earlier.
“Yeah, ever
since I read about it while I was in the hospital.”
“Where did
you read about it?” I asked, sitting down.
I have to admit, I was skeptical, but intrigued. I was a nurse, and I’d never heard of such a
thing.
“Online.” Well, that explained it.
“Isn’t that
uncomfortable?” I shivered just thinking
about it. I couldn’t even stand to go
out in the winter without a hat.
“Yeah, it’s
fuckin’ cold, but I can’t exactly show up to the first concert bald, can
I? I think people will notice.”
“Tell the
fans AJ dared you to shave your head.” I
smiled. “They’d eat it up.”
“Yeah, but
AJ would know he didn’t dare me to do that.”
“Then tell
AJ the truth.”
He
frowned. “I told you I’m not doing
that. Not till after the tour.”
“Then tell
AJ Brian dared you. No, better yet, tell
them all that Kevin dared you. It’s not like they’ll call Kevin up and ask.”
Nick
cracked a smile, opening one eye to squint up at me, so it looked like he was
winking. “Yeah, I could see Kevin doing
that. It’d be payback for the time I
tried to shave off his eyebrows in his sleep.”
“You
didn’t!” I gasped, laughing.
“I didn’t
succeed. But I did try,” he snickered.
I laughed
too, but just a little – his story had made me think of something else, a fact
I wasn’t sure he knew. “You know, if you
do lose your hair, you’ll probably lose all of it – not just on your head, but
everywhere. Your eyebrows, eyelashes…
and other body hair…” I trailed off,
glad he had his eyes closed again so he couldn’t see the way my face got
red. “But your excuse will still work,”
I went on quickly. “Payback for the
failed attempt on Kevin’s brows; he got yours instead.”
Nick
chuckled a little at that, but I saw the way his forehead creased, his lovely
eyebrows furrowing together. It was hard
to imagine him without them. “Maybe I
should be icing those too,” he muttered.
Then he said, “Will you grab me a blanket or something? This really is fucking cold.”
“Sure. Where do you keep extra blankets?” He directed me to a linen closet, where I
found a pile of mismatched blankets. I
chose a soft, warm-looking fleece one and brought it back to him. “Here,” I said, as I covered him with the
blanket, tucking it around his shoulders and under his chin, so that only his
head was uncovered. It looked like he
was starting to shiver. “How long do you
keep the ice on?” I asked, thinking this couldn’t possibly be good for him.
“As long as
I can stand it,” he replied with a grimace.
I wanted to
tell him it wasn’t worth torturing himself, that he’d be lucky if losing his
hair was the worst side effect he had from the chemo. But he’d already snapped at me about telling
AJ the truth, and I didn’t want to get my head bitten off, so I kept my mouth
shut.
After a few
minutes, he asked quietly, “Do you know anyone who’s gone through chemo and
hasn’t lost their hair?”
I thought
for a minute. “Well… some of our
residents don’t have much hair to begin with…”
And the ones who did lost it to chemo.
But then I did come up with an exception. “But actually, yeah! I do know of one person. Luke Menard – he was on American Idol a couple seasons before I was; he made the top
sixteen. I actually knew of him before
he was on the show; we went to the same college, Millikin. He was a couple years ahead of me, so I
didn’t really know him, but he sang in an a capella group there called Chapter
6. They’re still together, and they tour
and release albums and stuff.” I had
prided myself on owning an album autographed by Luke from my college days when
I saw him on Idol, having no idea I
would be there myself in two more years.
“Anyway, he was diagnosed with Hodgkin’s lymphoma after he got voted off
the show, and he did chemo and radiation and everything, but didn’t lose his
hair.”
“Yeah?” That made Nick smile. “Well, see, then, this might just work. Is that guy… is he still alive?”
“Oh, yeah!”
I replied quickly. “Yeah, as far as I
know, he’s in remission and doing well. I
read his blog and follow him on Twitter.”
“Kaw, kaw!”
Nick crowed, without opening his eyes.
“Did you follow me on Twitter before I followed you?”
“Yeah,” I admitted, giggling. “I follow
all of you.”
“So you’re,
like, an actual fan then?”
“Well, yeah…
I thought you knew that. How else would
I have known ‘Evergreen’?”
“Good
point. You’re not, like, posting about
this on LiveDaily or something, though, are you?”
At first, I
thought he was just kidding, but I looked over at his face and saw no hint of a
smirk at the corners of his mouth. He
was asking me for real. Before I could
feel too offended at the implication, though, I reminded myself that he had
every reason to be skeptical. He had
been screwed over by plenty of people in the past, including girlfriends and
his own family. He had no reason to
trust me, and yet he had trusted me. He
hardly knew me, yet he’d let me into his home and let me in on a secret he
hadn’t told anyone else. I was a prime
position to exploit him if I wanted to, and he knew it. He was just desperate enough to take the
risk, I supposed. Luckily for him, I
wasn’t out to exploit him.
“No
way! I would never do that!” I said
emphatically. “Besides, LiveDaily sucks
now.”
“But you do
go there?”
“I’ve been there before…” I said slowly.
“To be honest, though, I haven’t had much time for message boards
lately, between doing Idol and then
going back to my regular work hours and then coming out here.”
“What’s
your screen name?”
He opened
his eyes and looked over at me. I
blushed furiously, picturing the username I’d registered there a long, long time ago and just never
changed. KFC4Dessert. It had nothing
to do with chicken. (Did I mention Brian
and Kevin were my favorite Backstreet Boys?)
No way was I going to tell him that one, though, so I shot back, “What’s
yours?”
It was
common knowledge among Backstreet fans that Nick knew of LiveDaily; he’d
mentioned it before, and everyone was sure he secretly had an account
there. But Nick admitted nothing. He just smirked and replied, “Touché.”
I smiled
back and quickly tried to change the subject.
“Seriously,” I said, “your secret’s safe with me. Even if I did want to spill, I wouldn’t –
patient confidentiality and all.”
He
chuckled. “Doesn’t that only apply if
you’ve signed some kind of confidentiality agreement?”
I
considered that. “Well… you wouldn’t
still let me tour with you guys if I broke your confidentiality, right? There’s our contract. If you want me to sign something to make it
official, I will. I would never sell you
out, Nick. I’m not like that.”
“I
appreciate that,” he said, and it sounded like he believed me. Good.
I didn’t want him to think I was some kind of mole.
“How’s your
head?” I asked to change the subject again, my eyes drifting back to the towel
of ice on his head.
“Numb from
cold,” he replied, deadpan. “You just
had to ask, didn’t you? I had almost
forgotten about how fucking cold I am.”
I
giggled. “Sorry!”
“Keep
talking. Distract me.” He closed his eyes again.
“Okay… um…” Well, of course, now that he’d asked me, I
couldn’t think of anything else to say.
“Time’s up,
you fail.” He heaved an exaggerated
sigh. “So what’s your favorite
Backstreet record?”
“Backstreet’s Back.”
He made a
face. “Really? I was like seventeen when we recorded that
thing.” He said it like it was something
to be ashamed of.
I smirked,
remembering how whiny his voice sounded on that album. “Oh, totally.
My favorite track’s the ‘All I Have to Give’ Conversation Mix.”
“Shut up.”
I giggled
again. “Sorry. Do I fail as a fan, too?”
“Do you
have ‘This is Us’?”
“Yeah.”
“Then you
don’t totally fail. D-minus for
mentioning the Conversation Mix, though.”
“Okay,
okay, so that’s not really my favorite track.
My favorite is ‘If You Want to Be a Good Girl (Get Yourself a Bad
Boy)’.”
Nick
snorted. “Okay, now you do fail. Don’t ever bring up that song again.”
I was
tempted to plug my nose and start singing it, but I wasn’t quite that brave
around him yet.
“So what is
your favorite track, really?”
“‘10,000
Promises’.”
“Yeah? Good call.
Man, we haven’t sung that one in forever…” Even with his eyes closed, his expression was
wistful.
“You should
sometime. It’s even better live.”
“Thanks.” A smile flickered on his lips. “Who’s your favorite Backstreet Boy?”
Oh, now
there was a loaded question. “Kevin,” I
replied quickly.
“Current
Backstreet Boy,” he amended.
“Then
Brian.”
His eyes
flashed open, and I smiled sweetly at him.
He put on a pout. “Not me? I’m wounded.”
“Sorry. It’s those Littrell genes, I guess.”
“Ouch. That’s cold.”
“Sorry,” I
giggled again.
“No, I
meant my head.” He sat up suddenly,
sweeping the ice pack off the top of his head.
“I can’t take that shit anymore.”
He started to get up, forgot about the chemo pump he was tethered to,
and shouted “Fuck!” when the IV line pulled taut. The ice pack fell with a splat onto the
hardwood floor and burst, cold water and chunks of ice flying everywhere. “SHIT!” Nick screamed.
The
laughter had died on my lips. I watched,
wide-eyed, as he collapsed back onto the couch and buried his head in his
knees, both hands clutching at his hair.
For a second, I was afraid he was going to start tearing it out, but he
didn’t. He took a shuddering breath, and
I couldn’t tell if it was more from frustration or from pain. “Are you okay?” I asked hesitantly, worried
the IV had pulled at his port and hurt him.
“I’m fine,”
he muttered after a few seconds, his voice muffled.
“Don’t
worry about the floor. I’ll take care of
it.” I got up and went into the guest
bathroom, where I’d found the extra bath towels for my shower. I grabbed an armload and carried them back
into the living room.
“You don’t
have to do that,” he mumbled when I returned.
“I don’t
mind. Relax.” I started dropping towels everywhere I saw
puddles, stamping down them with my bare feet to absorb as much water as
possible.
After a few
minutes, I saw Nick slump back onto the couch.
His face was red. My heart went
out to him, but I didn’t know what to say.
I finished mopping up without another word, carried a towel full of
melting ice cubes in to the kitchen to dump in the sink, and deposited the pile
of wet towels in his laundry room. I’ll do a load of laundry for him tomorrow,
I thought, since I’d be there another few days, anyway.
“Thanks,”
Nick said stiffly when I sat down again.
I could tell his good mood was gone.
“No
problem,” I replied simply, turning my attention to whatever he was watching on
TV. The
Simpsons. Well, maybe that would
cheer him up again.
In the
middle of the show, I got a text. I
looked at my phone to find that it was from Jessica. I hadn’t talked to her since the ride over to
Nick’s place the day before, which felt like a century ago.
Sooo?! she’d texted. Why havent u called yet? How’s it goin? Ya havin fun?
Makin beautiful music? Bangin
nick carter? I want details damnit!
I smiled
down at my phone. Then I glanced over at
Nick, half-asleep on the couch, the blanket draped over him again with the
chemo pump resting on top. This was so
not how I’d expected my time in California to be spent, but it wasn’t like I
could tell Jess the truth.
Can’t talk now, but I’ll tell you all about it later, I texted
back. I’m having the time of my life.
***
AN: Shout out to Luke Menard from Chapter 6 and American Idol Season 7! The stuff Cary said about him is true, except
I’m the one who had his CD autographed before he was on Idol from when Chapter
6 performed at my high school… I was pretty stoked about that, LOL. Click here to check out his blog.