Nick
In the
emergency room at the hospital, I was poked and prodded. They took my temperature again, drew a bunch
of blood through my port, and made me wait while they ran tests on it. Cary sat with me, leaving only to call
whoever she needed to call at American
Idol to let them know she wasn’t going to make the morning rehearsal.
“You don’t
have to stay,” I told her, but deep down, I was kind of glad she did. It broke up the monotony of waiting to have
someone to talk to, and even if I wouldn’t admit it to her, I’ll admit now that
I was kind of freaked out. Up to that
point, I had done so well with chemo that I had convinced myself I would sail
through the rest of it with flying colors and none of the complications I’d
been warned to expect. I had finally hit
my first patch of rough waters, and it sucked, really sucked.
“I want to
stay at least until your bloodwork comes back,” said Cary. “If your counts are high enough, maybe
they’ll let you go home with some antibiotics.”
That made
me feel better. I hoped she was right,
but I should have known my good luck was gonna run out. When the resident who had seen me earlier
came back, he clapped his hands together and said, “Alright, so… I have the
preliminary results of your bloodwork, and it looks like you’re going to need
to be admitted. I just got off the phone
with your oncologist, and she agrees.”
My heart
sunk. I pressed my lips together,
clenching my jaw, to hold back the tirade of cursing I wanted to let
loose. It raged on inside my head,
instead. I stared at the doctor who had
talked to Dr. Submarine behind my back, smiting him with my eyes.
“The CBC
shows your counts are low across the board, and your ANC is only 600,” he
explained. Two months ago, I wouldn’t
have had a fucking clue that any of that meant, but sadly, now I knew
exactly. CBC stood for complete blood
count, the test I had to have once a week while on chemo, to check the numbers
of red blood cells, white blood cells, platelets, hemoglobin, and all that junk
in my blood. The chemo drugs I was on
lowered them all. The ANC – absolute
neutrophil count – was too low.
Neutrophils, I’d learned, are the kind of white blood cells that fight
infection, and normal is anything above 1500.
Mine was 600. Not good.
“Your blood
cultures won’t be back for another couple of days,” continued the doctor, “but
if you don’t have an infection now, you’re susceptible to one, so the plan for
now is to admit you, start you on a course of IV antibiotics, and transfuse you
to bring your counts up.”
“How long?”
I asked. My flight to New York left
Sunday morning.
The doctor
shrugged. “That’s up to your oncologist,
but hopefully, if your fever goes down, we can have you out of here in a day or
two.”
It wasn’t
what I wanted to hear, but it could have been worse. “Okay,” I muttered, figuring as long as I was
out by Saturday night, I could still go to New York on Sunday as planned. There was no way I was going to miss our show
or the promotional gigs we’d been booked for later in the week. Some of them had been rescheduled from
October, when Brian had swine flu.
Cancer or no cancer, management would kill me if we had to cancel them
again. I wouldn’t even have to wait for
the lymphoma to do it.
“Sorry,
Nick,” said Cary awkwardly, once the doctor had left. I figured she probably felt bad for telling
me I might be able to go home.
“It’s
alright.” I wasn’t mad at her, just
annoyed by the whole situation. “There’s
no point in you sticking around, though.
You should go to your rehearsal.”
“Are you
sure?” She looked uncertain, like she
couldn’t tell if I was saying that because I really wanted her to go or because
I thought it was the right thing to say.
Typical girl. Haven’t they
figured out by now that us guys usually say what’s on our minds? Like, literally, say whatever we happen to be
thinking, with no filter from brain to mouth?
They’re the ones who never say what they mean. They always have some kind of hidden agenda,
some cryptic message you’re supposed to be able to decipher for yourself.
I’m not
good at those kind of girl games. It’s
why I have such a bad track record with relationships; I’m too damn trusting,
to the point of being gullible. When a
girl tells me she loves me, I believe her.
Usually, it turns out that she just loves my money or the attention she
gets when she’s with me. Sometimes I
hate the fact that I love women so much.
But Cary was cool, and when I said, “Yeah, I’ll be fine here; go so you
don’t miss too much,” she went.
She was
gone the rest of the day, and even though she said the rehearsals were long and
tiring, I was envious. I wished I was at
rehearsal, instead of in the hospital. I
wished I felt good enough to dance. I
wished I was healthy, so I could look forward to the rest of the tour without a
care in the world, instead of wonder how the hell I was going to get through
it, feeling like this.
But by that
night, I actually felt better. I’d been
moved to a private room upstairs on the oncology floor, where they hooked me up
with antibiotics and a blood transfusion and gave me an injection of something
that was supposed to stimulate my body to make more white blood cells. My nurse, Wei, said the blood would
reenergize me, and damn, it did. I was a
fucking vampire.
I was
flipping TV channels, annoyed that there were no NBA playoff games on that
night, when Cary came back. We had been texting
back and forth all day – her out of concern, me out of boredom. I’d given her my room number and told her she
was welcome to visit if she wanted to, but I wasn’t sure she would – if it had
been me, I’d have gone straight home to shower and just chill after a long day
of rehearsal. I was glad to see her,
though. The hospital is pretty lame and
kind of lonely.
“I don’t
know if I’m supposed to be here,” she said in a hushed voice, practically
tiptoeing up to my bed. “I think
visiting hours are over. No one stopped
me when I walked down the hall, though.”
I
laughed. “They probably think you’re my
girlfriend.”
The lights
were off in my room, but I’m sure she blushed.
I loved that about her; she said Brian and Kevin were her favorites, but
I knew she dug me. I milked it,
too. I always do.
“How are
you feeling?” she asked, quick to change the subject.
“Tons
better,” I said, honestly. Then I
repeated the vampire line that had gone through my head earlier, and she
laughed.
“You must
have been anemic. No wonder you feel
better. How’s your fever?” She pressed her hand to my forehead
again. Her skin always felt soft and
smelled like some kind of girly-scented lotion.
“You still feel kind of warm.”
“It’s
lower,” I said. The nurse had been coming
to check it every hour. She used a
thermometer and wore gloves every time she had to touch me, and she stank of
latex and Purell, like the whole damn hospital.
“And you’re
still on the antibiotic drip?” I saw
Cary’s eyes follow the IV line that was hooked into my port up to the bag on
the IV stand by my bed.
“Yeah.” I was about to tell her to cut the nurse crap
for awhile and talk music with me instead, but she was still intent on playing
Twenty Questions.
“Did your
oncologist make it over? Did she say how
long you’ll be in here” were her next two.
“Nope,
haven’t seen her. I guess she’s just
waiting to see me tomorrow.” Ironically,
I had a check-up already scheduled for the next day, before I went on tour. I was supposed to come as an outpatient for a
round of tests to see how well the chemo was working. “I guess it’s convenient that I’m already
here. Just wish I wasn’t…”
She gave me
a sympathetic smile. “I know. I wish you weren’t either.”
“As long as
I’m out by Sunday…”
“About
that…” Cary cleared her throat. “I really don’t think you should be flying
across the country to do a show when your counts are this low.”
I should
have known that was coming. I rolled my
eyes and squared my jaw. “No, I probably
shouldn’t be, but I’m gonna.”
She sighed,
giving me a look of pure exasperation.
“How did I know that’s what you were going to say?”
I gave her
the raised eyebrow look back.
“Yeah? I bet I know what you’re
gonna say next, too. ‘Nick, you’re so
stubborn; you’re so stupid; you’re gonna kill yourself…’ Yeah, well, if I catch a cold and die the day
after the show, at least I’ll die happy, instead of miserable in this place.”
“Don’t even
joke about that…” Her voice went quiet
as she turned her head away from me.
“I’m not
joking. I don’t plan on dying the day
after the show or anytime soon, but damn, Cary, what if the tests tomorrow show
that this shit isn’t even working? What
if I am dying?” I saw her stiffen as my voice rose, but I
kept talking; I had to get it out. “If
this thing’s gonna fuckin’ kill me, I’d rather spend my last days on the road,
seeing the world, than lying in this bed staring at a blue wall.”
Cary didn’t
say anything, but her silence was interrupted by a sniffle, and with a jolt, I
suddenly realized she was crying.
“Aw, c’mon,
don’t do that,” I begged. “I was just
bein’ dramatic. I’m not going
anywhere. Well, I mean, I’m going to New
York, but I’ll be fine. I told you, I
feel way better already.”
She shook
her head, and I couldn’t tell if she wasn’t talking because she was too choked
up or because she didn’t want to say what was on her mind. A startling thought occurred to me then: what if, being a nurse, she knew something I
didn’t? What if I really was dying? What if I had no chance in hell at beating
this thing, and no one had told me? I’d
seen the statistics; I knew how serious my cancer was. But I also felt confident that I was going to
beat the odds. I really did feel
better. I was tired from the chemo, but
since I’d started it, my other symptoms, the shit that had sent me to the
doctor in the first place, seemed to have gotten better. I wasn’t having chest pains anymore, and I
had an easier time breathing, even when I was lying down. That meant the chemo had to be working,
didn’t it?
“Cary?”
Finally,
she looked back at me. By the light of
the TV, her eyes were extra bright and glossy with tears.
“What is
it? C’mon, why you cryin’? I didn’t mean to make you cry…”
She
sniffled and shook her head again. “I
just hate the idea of you gambling with your life like this.”
That
annoyed me. “Oh, c’mon; now you’re the
one being dramatic. I let you bring me
here, didn’t I? Here I am!” She didn’t argue, but I still found her
silence more unnerving. I kept babbling
on, just to fill it. “What if you were
in my place, huh? What if this had
happened to you? Think about it… What if you’d found out you were sick, right
before you were supposed to go on American
Idol? Would you really not do
it? Would you really let it keep you
from living your dream?”
“I don’t
know… I know I couldn’t do what you’re doing,” she replied. “I couldn’t handle doing treatment on the
road, away from home. I’d want to do
that part at home, so my dad could be there with me. I can’t imagine going through something like
this without my family nearby.”
I jumped on
that answer. Inadvertently, she had just
proven the point I was trying to make.
“Exactly,” I said. “That’s the
other reason I want to tour. That way, I
am with my family.”
I saw the fresh
batch of tears that sprang to her eyes when she got my meaning, even though she
tried to blink them away. “Tour or not,
I’m sure the guys would be there for you in a heartbeat if you just told them
the truth. They wouldn’t let you go
through this alone.”
“Yeah,
exactly – and then I’d be messing up their lives, too. That’s why it’s better this way – we’ll all
get to have fun on the road together, just like old times; I’ll be with my
brothers, and they’ll treat me the same as they always do, the way I want it to
be. It’s the best of both worlds. I wouldn’t have it any other way.”
Her frown
became a watery smile, as her eyes finally overflowed, a couple of tears
trickling down her cheeks. “Oh, Nick,”
she sighed. “You’re so misguided, it’s
almost endearing.”
I smirked
back at her, turning on the ol’ Carter charm.
“Endearing… I’ve heard that about myself before.”
She
giggled, and the sound made me feel better.
I don’t like making women cry; it kinda freaks me out. Luckily, she wiped her eyes, and I changed
the subject, asking how her rehearsals had gone, about the songs she was
performing with the other Idol contestants for the finale, if she knew what
celebrities were going to be on the show.
If it wasn’t for her, I wouldn’t have cared, but it gave us something to
talk about that wasn’t related to my illness.
Music was the one thing we had in common; we could talk about it all
night.
As it was,
it was late when Cary finally snuck out of my hospital room to head back to the
condo. “I’ll come back tomorrow when we
break for lunch,” she promised. “I’ll
even bring some food over for you.”
“You’re an
angel,” I told her, flashing another grin.
I was a lucky guy, to have found just the girl I could get to go along
with my moronic plan, even if she thought it was “misguided.” I knew I couldn’t have done it without
her. And after she was gone, when I
found myself alone again in my dark hospital room, with just the TV for
company, I realized I was glad I didn’t have to.
***