Nick
I can’t even begin to describe what goes through your mind when
you hear the words, “You’re dying.” Really, I’m not even sure Dr. Submarine
actually used those words. That might
have just been the voice in my head.
But I knew. Somehow, I
knew, even before she gave me the odds.
It was the look on her face, the tone of her voice, when she told me the
cancer was back. Of course she wanted to
treat it, but that was only because she was a doctor; it was her job. She didn’t really think I could beat it, though. Neither did I.
It’s weird, but after the initial shock and devastation and anger,
after I exploded in her office and shouted that I didn’t want any more chemo, I
felt this calming sense of relief. It
was like a huge weight had been lifted off my chest, and I could finally
breathe again. No more poison being
pumped into my body… No more tubes implanted in places they didn’t belong… No
more treatments making me feel sicker than the cancer itself would. I was free of it all. I was done.
I would make the most of the next six months, or however long I had
left, I would live the rest of my life to the fullest, and then, I would die.
And oddly enough, I was okay with that.
I don’t mean to make it sound like acceptance came easy. Before it came denial, anger, depression, and
all the other emotions that go along with grief. I cycled through them worse than a crazy
chick on the rag; I was up, then down. One
minute I was calm, and the next, fighting panic.
The night I found out, I went to bed early and lay in the dark
with Cary for a long time. We didn’t try
to talk; we just held each other. After
awhile, when she must have thought I was asleep, she got up and left the
room. I found out later that she stayed
up all night, researching other treatment options on the internet. Alone for the first time, I finally let the
tears come. I cried myself to
sleep. She never knew.
I stayed in bed the whole next day, my blackout shades drawn, sunk
in a deep depression. What was the point
of getting up, of getting dressed, of going through the motions? I was just going to die anyway. Cary brought me food, tried to get me to eat,
but I had no appetite. She sat down on
the edge of the bed and tried to talk to me, but I wasn’t ready to talk about
it yet, either. Eventually, she gave up
and left me alone. I know she was trying
to deal with it on her own, too. It
couldn’t have been easy for her to accept that I was dying, any more than it
was for me.
On the third day, I woke up and was blinded by bright light the
second I opened my eyes. Cary must have
put up the blackout shades; the afternoon sun was streaming through my
windows. I squinted, rubbing my eyes as I
slowly sat up. I wanted to get out of
bed and pull the shades again, but I didn’t have the energy, so I just sat
there, staring out the window. The sky
was blue, and so was the water sparkling beneath it.
A lump clogged my throat as I gazed out at the ocean. I hadn’t been to the beach in forever. When I was recovering from the stem cell
transplant, the last thing I’d felt like doing was slathering my bald head with
sunscreen and strolling out in my swim trunks, only to scare off all the
beachgoers with my pasty white, hairless body and attract the paparazzi to
plaster sickly photos of me all over the tabloids. I didn’t have any desire to do so now,
either, but I thought, It’s a beautiful
day outside, and I’m spending it inside this room. It might be one of the last days I have left,
and I’m wasting it.
That epiphany didn’t get me as far as the beach, but it at least
got me out of bed. It occurred to me
that if I was going to spend the last six months of my life lying around,
feeling sorry for myself, I might as well have agreed to try the treatments; it
wasn’t like I would have anything to lose.
But I didn’t want it to be like that.
My days were numbered, and I knew I had to make each of them count,
starting with that one. I didn’t know
how many more good days I’d have.
My back was still sore, which I knew now was from the cancer cells
floating around in my spinal column, screwing with the nerve endings in there,
but other than that, I felt fine, physically.
I just knew it wouldn’t last. I
shuffled out to the living room and found Cary sitting on the couch with her
laptop. She quickly minimized the
webpage she’d been looking at, but not before I recognized it as a medical
site. She’d been researching again.
That was when she brought up the possibility of a second stem cell
transplant, which I flat-out refused.
After she dropped that subject, she asked, “When are you going to
tell other people? Like the guys? And your family?” She looked worried, like she thought I’d try
to hide it from everyone again. I guess
I couldn’t blame her for thinking that.
My track record was against me.
But I knew I couldn’t keep this from the people who cared about me
most. Hiding my illness in the first
place had been hard on me, but failing to mention that I was dying would be
downright cruel to them. They deserved
the truth, so they had time to deal with it, the same as me.
Brian was back in Atlanta, but I called AJ, Howie, and Kevin that
afternoon and invited the three of them over for dinner and drinks. Cary cooked, and I kept our glasses filled,
figuring it would help to mellow everyone out before I broke the news. It felt a little like the Last Supper… and as
that thought crossed my mind, I wondered, was this how it was going to be from
now on? Was I going to constantly dwell
on every “last” thing I did? I wasn’t
even religious, yet I was making religious references in my mind. Was I going to “find Jesus” in my dying
days? Brian would appreciate that. I wished I could believe as strongly as he
did in things like God and Heaven; at least, then, death wouldn’t feel so
final… or so fucking scary.
I was afraid, but I knew I was going to have to face my fear, just
as I had to face telling the guys I was dying.
There was no time for denial.
“I got something to tell you guys,” I said after dinner, when it
was just the four of us sitting out on my balcony. Cary had excused herself to the bathroom and
gone inside, but I had a feeling she wouldn’t come back out. It reminded me of when she’d left me alone in
that hotel room to tell the guys about my cancer on my own. Maybe she thought that this, too, was a
conversation better kept between us. Or
maybe she just couldn’t stand to hear it again.
“What is it, Nick?” Kevin asked.
He sounded casual enough, but the way his eyes seemed to stare right
through me made me wonder if he knew, deep down, that something was wrong. I’d tried to act normal at dinner, but I
didn’t think I’d done a very good job at pulling it off.
I swallowed hard, trying to summon the strength I needed to say
the words out loud. I couldn’t look at them
as I muttered, “My cancer’s back. It
relapsed in my spinal fluid. Even with
chemo and radiation, my odds of surviving are only twenty-five percent, so I’m
not gonna do any more treatment. I’m
gonna die. Probably in about six
months.”
It was bluntest I’d ever been about my condition, but I knew if I
didn’t spit it all out at once, it would be harder to get out at all. Now that the truth was out there, I just had
to deal with their reactions to it.
Howie gasped out loud.
Kevin’s head fell into his hand.
And AJ just stared… first at me, then out at the ocean. I could see tears starting in the corners of
his eyes, until he slammed his sunglasses down onto the bridge of his nose.
“I’m sorry,” I added.
Howie was looking at me in disbelief, his forehead creased, his
eyes wide. “There’s nothing else the
doctors can do?” he asked in a whisper.
I shook my head. “Nothing I
want. I don’t wanna get more chemo
through a fucking tube in my head… and I don’t want my brains nuked with
radiation. I don’t want another stem
cell transplant, either. Not for a
fucking twenty-five percent chance of survival.”
“But Nicky… twenty-five percent… that’s still a chance.”
I smiled sadly at Howie.
“Yeah, but come on, Howie. Let’s
be realistic here. You know how this is
gonna turn out. Your dad went the same
way.” Lung cancer, lymphoma, it didn’t
matter. Once it spread to the nervous
system, you were pretty much screwed.
I’d figured that out by now.
His eyes filled with tears, but he didn’t have anything to say
back to that. He knew. He knew I was right.
Kevin spoke quietly, without looking up. “Have you gotten a second opinion?”
“Sort of. Cary called a few
people, cancer doctors she used to work with.
They all said the same thing.”
“But they don’t know your case.
You can’t get a good second opinion through a long-distance phone
call. You need to physically go see another specialist. What about the Mayo Clinic, where Brian had
his heart surgery done? They’re always
on the cutting edge of things – maybe there’s a new drug you could try, or-”
“Kev, no,” I interrupted him.
“Sorry, but no. I told you, I
don’t want any more drugs. I don’t wanna
be someone’s lab rat. I’m done with all
that shit. I just wanna enjoy what life
I have left and die in peace.”
When Kevin finally looked up at me, his nose was red, and his eyes
were bright. I could tell he was trying
hard not to cry, and it made me want to cry, too. I looked from him back to Howie. Both of them had lost their dads to
cancer. Now they were going to lose
their little brother, too. It killed me
to know I would be causing them that kind of pain – no pun intended.
My eyes shifted to AJ next.
He hadn’t said a thing yet, but at least he hadn’t run off, either, like
he had back at the hotel. His jaw was
clenched, but otherwise, his face was blank, his eyes hidden behind his
shades. “You alright, J?” I asked
quietly.
His head snapped towards me.
“No, I’m not alright. What the
fuck makes you think I would be alright?”
I shrugged. “At least
you’re not the one dying, man.”
“No… you are. And you think
I’m alright with that?”
“It was just a joke.”
“It’s not funny.
“I know.” I raked my
fingers through my hair. It almost felt
normal again, like I’d just cut it short on purpose. At least I’d be buried with a full head of
hair. Or maybe I wanted to be cremated…
I wasn’t sure. I’d never given it enough
thought to decide one way or the other.
I realized I’d have to, now.
AJ looked off into the distance again, and for a solid minute or
so, no one spoke. In the silence, I
could hear crickets chirping from the ground, cars driving down on the streets,
and waves crashing against the coastline.
It was like my senses were heightened, and I was noticing things I’d
never noticed before, all the little things in the world I’d always taken for
granted. It made me appreciate the
moment, sitting there on the balcony with my three brothers. It also made me realize how much I was going
to miss moments like that… moments I’d never taken the time to appreciate
before.
In some ways, I felt like the unluckiest guy in the world, only
thirty-one years old and dying of cancer.
But in other ways, I realized I was one of the luckiest. What an extraordinary life I’d lived in my
three decades on Earth. I’d been raised
by two different families, my biological one and my Backstreet brothers, and
I’d been loved and admired by far more people than I even knew. I’d had a full and successful career, reached
a level of wealth and fame most people only dream of achieving. I’d lived in four states and set foot on six
continents; I’d traveled all around the world.
I’d made my living doing something I loved, and I’d been living my dream
since the age of thirteen. There were
still things I hadn’t done, things I wanted to do, but I didn’t feel like I’d
missed out on much that life has to offer.
I’d touched people’s lives, and I hadn’t wasted my own. Realizing all of this brought me comfort and
clarity, and all of a sudden, I knew one thing I wanted to do before my time
was up.
“So I’ve been thinking…” I said, even though the thought had just
occurred to me. The silence between us
broken, the guys all sat up and looked my way.
“I want us to do one last tour as a group, while we still can. You know, we never got to finish the This is Us tour last summer ‘cause of my
transplant-”
“Don’t worry about that now, Nicky,” Howie interrupted, and Kevin
asked, “Do you really think that’s a good idea right now?”
“If we don’t do it now, we’ll never get another chance,” I said flatly,
glaring at them both. “I’m not talking a
whole tour, anyway. It could be more of
a mini one… like the ‘100 Hours’ thing we did for Black & Blue.” I was
just making this up as I went along, but the more I talked, the better it
sounded. “We could go all around the
world – one big concert on each continent or something. The fans could decide the set list for each
show, through a vote on the fan club, because it would be for them as much as
for us. It would be like one last
hurrah… and a chance for me to say goodbye.”
That was when my throat closed up, and I had to stop talking. Luckily, AJ jumped in. “I think it sounds like a kick-ass idea. I say if Nick’s up for it and wants to do
this, then let’s do it,” he said, looking around at the others.
I swallowed hard, tears prickling at the corners of my eyes. I swiped them away with my knuckles and
cleared my throat. “If we’re gonna do
it, it needs to be all of us, though.
All five.” I looked right at
Kevin.
He didn’t even hesitate, just nodded once and said, “You got it,
Little Man.”
Little Man… God, he hadn’t
called me that since I was a kid.
That was what broke me. The
tears started in my eyes again, and this time, I couldn’t wipe them away fast
enough. Kevin got up and came over, tears
leaking from his eyes, too, and pulled me into a hug. And I realized, as he held onto me, that what
I would miss more than anything else, more than music and sunlight and the
ocean, were the people in my life, the people I loved more than life itself.
***