“Stop it, Nick, it isn’t funny.”

“Yes it is, dawg…” Nick was wheezing, “Yes it is, oh my God.” He thumped his hands on the steering wheel. “Oh shit,” he gasped.

I held my hand up over my face. “I can’t believe ya’ll talked me into this. If Leighanne could see me right now…”

“She’d laugh her ass off, that’s what,” Nick answered, “Cos oh my sweet Jesus, I can’t believe this is happening.”

“It’s not funny, Nick.”

“This is like my birthday, Christmas, Easter, Halloween and the night I lost my virginity, all combined into one! Only better,” he crowed.

“Great. My malady is being compared to the first time you had sex.”

Nick grinned.

Nick pulled into the parking lot for the hospital, the wheels on the car squealing just a little bit. He’s a horrible driver, very reckless. He has several texting-while-driving tickets under his belt… and despite investing that $200 into the lovely landscaping projects of the state of California, he still hasn’t learned his lesson.

“See,” he said, trying to be comforting for once, “There’s like nobody here.”

“Good, only the doctors will see how fricking retarded I am.”

Nick smirked.

He parked the car and I got out and we both made our way across the parking lot. I kept my hand over my face carefully.

When we got inside, the receptionist looked up from her phones. She blinked at us, her face paling with recognition. “You’re –“

“Hey baby,” Nick said, turning on the charm. He leaned against the counter and lolled his head at her.

I rolled my eyes, “Nick, my injury?” I reminded him.

She looked between him and me, her expression awed.

Nick flashed her the Carter Grin. “We uh had a little… mishap… on the bus.”

“Mishap?” she looked at me in concern, and apparently realized my hands hadn’t moved from my face yet.

I lowered my hands.

She gasped. “Oh my God, how—“

“It’s like this,” Nick said, launching into his story-telling mode, “See, as everyone in the known universe knows, Brian’s nostrils are honkin’ fuckin’ huge, right?”

“Thank you Nick,” I said sarcastically.

He winked at me. “So we like trying to shove crap up them… see what we can fit up there, right?”

The receptionist’s eyes registered realization.

“Yeah,” I said, “Apparently the big marbles are the limit.”

Nick nodded, “Yeah. It won’t come out.”

The receptionist looked at me, then back at Nick. She looked like she was waiting for Ashton Kutcher to announce she was being Punk’d. If only it were that easy, I thought, shaking my head. After all, she wasn’t the one that got to live with Nick, Howie and AJ reminding me of the day I had to go to the ER because I got a colossally huge marble stuck up my right nostril.

She handed Nick a clipboard reluctantly, evidently still waiting for the punch line, and pointed to some chairs, “You can have a seat…” she said.

We sat down and Nick grabbed the Bic pen from the top of the clipboard and quickly scrawled out my information in his messy handwriting. I reached over and corrected him periodically. “My last name is spelled with two T’s, Nick… And my birthday’s the twentieth, not the thirteenth. Dude how long have you known me?” I demanded.

Nick’s tongue was sticking out of the side of his mouth as he wrote my address down. He paused at the phone number line, then scribbled out “Speed Dial 4”.

I rolled my eyes.

Nick caught me. “Hey, I might be retarded filling out this form, but I’m not the one with a ball of glass up my nose.”

“It’s not like I come up with this crap on my own,” I reminded him.

He grinned.

When he was finished with the form, he gave it back to the receptionist, who was still looking oddly suspicious of whether we were a practical joke or not. He sat back down next to me and folded his arms. “I’m hungry,” he complained. Nick looked around.

“You just ate,” I reminded him.

“Nuh uh,” he argued, “That was hours and hours ago…”

“It was thirty…” I looked at my watch, “…four minutes ago.”

“Well it was roughage,” he argued. I wondered if he got word of the day toilet paper again. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d heard someone who did not have a degree in nutrition refer to salad as roughage.

“So go look at the vending machines,” I suggested.

He pooled the change in his pocket and scowled. “Do vending machines accept credit cards?”

“Not usually,” I answered. I fished in my own pocket and pulled out a handful of quarters. “Here.” I dropped them into his hand.

“YES!!!” he yelled, ecstatic.

I watched, my nostril aching, as Nick bolted across the waiting room to the vending machine. “SANDWICHES!!!!!” he screamed, his face red from the excitement. He glanced back at me. I must’ve looked annoyed because he lowered his voice. “I love sandwiches!”

Nick enthusiastically jumped at the machine and started feeding it quarters. I leaned back in the chair and closed my eyes, which felt heavy. If it wasn’t for the lack of ability to breathe around the marble shoved up my nose, I’d be asleep…

“CRAP!!!!!!!” Nick’s voice echoed through the waiting room, making me look up. “Brian help me!!” he yelped, sounding panicked.

He was on his knees in front of the machine, his elbow, forearm and hand missing inside the slot at the bottom.

I laughed. Really hard.

I even snorted.

The marble popped out of my nostril like Winnie the Pooh out of Rabbit’s door and hit the carpet with a soft thud before rolling away under a chair, never to be seen again – or at least not to be stuffed up anyone’s nostrils again!

Quickly, I scurried to Nick’s side. “What the hell did you do?”

“My sandwich!” he whined, pointing. It was stuck, lodged across the long side of the triangular cut, suspended in air. Nick’s arm was inside the machine. You could see his hand flailing around the $1.75 packs of gum at the bottom. He had tears in his eyes. “Brian,” he whimpered. “I’m really, really, really, really, really stuck.” He tugged his shoulder and it wouldn’t budge.

I blinked down at him, trying to resist the urge to laugh harder.

Aw helll, why bother?

I cracked up.

“BRIAN!” Nick shouted, “BRIAN IT ISN’T FUNNY!!! BRIAN!!!”

Suddenly the receptionist’s head tilted around the corner sheepishly. “I – uh – I heard you yelling… is… is everything okay over here?” she asked.

“Well,” I said, “The marble came out of my nose, I’m happy to say, but um. I think we need to report another malady.” I gestured at Nick, who had straddled the machine and was frantically kicking the machines on either side of it, trying to force himself out.

She stared at him a moment.

“FUCKING SANDWICH!” he yelled, defeated. He dropped his head against the glass of the machine and closed his eyes, sitting still, all rejected like. He banged his forehead.

“Oh my,” the receptionist gasped. She disappeared.

I knelt down next to Nick. “It’s okay, buddy,” I said, rubbing his back.

“Nuh-uh,” he muttered.

“Yup,” I disagreed, “It really is, you know why?”

“Why?” he asked quietly.

“Because instead of talking about the night I went to the ER to get a marble out of my nostril, the story we’re gonna be talking about for decades on the bus is the night you got your freaking arm stuck up a vending machine in the ER.”

Nick’s eyes widened. “You bastard,” he gasped. But he was already smirking.

I nodded, “It’s true. Thirty years from now, when we’re like Backstreet Raisins and we’re doing the 47 year anniversary tour… and you’re like paralyzed because you finally fell off the stage and got mauled while you were grinding and teasing those girls… we’ll say to each other.. ‘hey, remember the night Nick got his arm stuck up the vending machine trying to get his sandwich at the ER?’”

“And the fact that there were sandwiches in a vending machine will still be awesome,” Nick said excitedly. He paused, “Why the hell do I gotta be the paralyzed one? Dawg, we been through this back on the Black&Blue tour…”

“You didn’t thrust as much on the Black&Blue tour.”

Nick squinted, thinking.

I patted his head.

A janitor came around the corner with a huge ring of keys, followed by the receptionist and a couple of LNAs. They paused in the doorway for just a moment. One of the LNAs gasped and the receptionist turned to her and whispered, “I told you it was them.”

The janitor came over and unlocked the door of the vending machine, making Nick lobster crawl backwards. The sandwich dropped. Nick’s eyes widened, “My sandwich,” he said, pointing with his free arm. The janitor gave him a Seriously? That’s what you’re worried about right now? look, but picked up the sandwich and handed it to his free hand. Nick grinned and hugged the sandwich to his chest triumphantly.

The janitor started working on taking the little protective door off the front of the vending machine slot, which was what had Nick lodged in there. As he worked, Nick started biting at the sticker that held the plastic sandwich box closed. “Dude, Nick, you’re gonna wreck your teeth, stop that.” I reached down and took it and slid my finger across it and popped the plastic container open, propping it on Nick’s lap.

“Yes!” he said, excited.

The LNAs and receptionist were all hanging back near the door, like nervous fans who didn’t dare to approach us, all giggling and whispering to each other. I bent down and whispered in Nick’s ear, “Just so you know, the fans are gonna be talking about this for months.”

Nick frowned, “I’ma have to tell the marble story at soundcheck.”

He snatched the first half of the sandwich out of the container and took a big honking bite. He started choking.

The janitor looked up at him through the glass as Nick hacked and bits of sandwich flew and stuck to the door of the vending machine.

I slapped him on the back and he widened his eyes, “Oh my God,” he gasped. “Gross.” He threw the sandwich, which landed a couple feet away on the carpet, near the LNAs. One of them sheepishly bent down and picked it up. I prayed she was just clean and not keeping it as a momento.

“Gross?” I asked.

Nick was scowling, scraping his tongue on his shirt sleeve. “Tuna with fucking onions,” he gasped. His tongue was getting covered with red lint from his sleeve.

I stared at him.

The janitor hooted triumphantly and the little wavy door fell off the vending machine with a click and Nick’s arm was free. His biceps was an odd yellowing bruise color and he clutched it with his other arm and groaned promptly. “Oh oww,” he whined.

The LNAs practically fell over each other, suddenly having an excuse to approach him.

“Are you okay?”

“Can I help you?”

“Move so I can examine him!”

“You move!”

“LADIESSSS…” Nick cried, waving his hands, “Ladies, ladies… please…” he said, his eyes glowing. “There’s enough Nick to go around!! You can take turns healing me, I got all night.”

I rolled my eyes as the two girls fawned over him.

Only Nick.