I slept better that night than I had the night before and woke up the next morning feeling more hopeful than I had the previous day.
Maybe Nick’s plan wasn’t so stupid after all, I thought as I stood at the bathroom sink, brushing my teeth. He seemed to be doing remarkably well with chemotherapy. Whether it was because of the ice packs or just a fluke, he still had his hair, and although the chemo seemed to wear him out, he hadn’t had any bouts with nausea like I’d expected. If he could just get over the fatigue and keep his blood counts high enough to avoid getting sick, he might actually be able to handle the tour.
That was what I thought at the start of Day 2, anyway.
The condo was quiet when I left my room; Nick wasn’t up yet. I decided I’d make breakfast that morning, since he’d done it the day before, and started whipping up some french toast. It seemed like a good choice: The eggs would be good for some protein, and the bread would be easy enough on his system. He could doctor it up as much as he felt like or just eat it plain if he wanted it bland.
I brewed coffee while I made the french toast, hoping the aroma would be enough to lure Nick out of his room, but when the coffee pot was full and the french toast was piled high on a platter, he still hadn’t gotten up. I poured a cup of coffee, added a little cream and sugar the way I’d seen him do the day before, and carried it to the closed door of his bedroom. I knocked quietly before opening the door. If he was still asleep, he wouldn’t even know I’d come to check on him, and if I woke him, he couldn’t be too mad at me as long as I brought him coffee.
I tiptoed in. The room was dark; he had blackout shades drawn over the windows. Still, as the natural light from the condo spilled in, I could see him lying in bed, flat on his back and completely still. I inched closer. Nick was totally zonked out, his head lolled to one side on his pillow, his mouth hanging half open, his arms crossed over his bare chest, like he’d fallen asleep hugging himself. I’d never seen anyone else sleep in that position; it was odd, but kind of cute. At some point, he must have thrown his covers off; they were in a pile at the foot of the bed, hanging off the mattress. I wondered if he’d run a fever in the night. Concerned, I set the mug of coffee down on his night stand, then reached out and laid my hand lightly on his forehead.
At my touch, his eyes suddenly flew open, and I jumped back, just as startled. “Sorry!” I said breathlessly, putting my hand over my racing heart. “I just came to check on you. And, um, I brought coffee.” I picked up the mug from the night stand and held it out as a peace offering, as he pulled himself into a sitting position, leaning back against his pillows.
“Thanks,” he croaked, his voice thick with sleep. He accepted the coffee and took a sip, closing his eyes again as he swallowed. His nostrils flared as he inhaled a deep breath. “Mm... what time is it?” He sounded so sleepy, his words were slurring together. I wondered if he was always like that in the morning, or if it was just the chemo making him so groggy.
“Almost ten.” He’d gone to bed around eleven the night before, after his string of Sunday night FOX cartoons were over. “Did you sleep okay?”
He grunted in reply, raising the coffee mug to his lips again.
“I made breakfast,” I added. “French toast. Are you hungry?”
“Not really.”
“You should try to eat something,” I persisted. “I can bring it to you in here, if you want.”
“Breakfast in bed?” He smirked, a spark of life brightening his eyes. “Alright... sold.”
I smiled back. “Coming right up.”
Call me backwards and pathetic, but I really didn’t mind acting like his servant. I’ve always been domestic; I actually like doing traditional, householdy things like cooking and cleaning and sewing. I like taking care of people, too, so even if it wasn’t what I had bargained for, this temporary live-in nurse gig was kind of perfect for me. Of course, it certainly helped that it was a Backstreet Boy I was taking care of; I wouldn’t have done it for just anybody.
But for Nick, I dutifully fixed a plate of French toast and brought it in with a slab of butter and a little cup of syrup and a little dish of brown sugar so that he could load it up however he liked it. If he’d lived in a house with a garden, I’d have cut a fresh flower to put in a vase on his tray, too, just to be cute, but the only plants he had in his condo were made of plastic, so I didn’t.
“Wow... this looks awesome. Thanks,” said Nick, perking up a bit when he saw the plate of food.
“You’re welcome,” I replied, as he started slathering the bread with butter. He didn’t ask me to bring my own breakfast in to eat with him, so I ate a couple slices of french toast alone at his dining room table, opposite the tub of medical supplies. While I ate, I looked at the chemo schedule again to see what was on the agenda for that day.
It was pretty much the same as the previous one, except that another drug was added to the mix. Methotrexate, 12 mg IT. That one scared me a little. I knew “IT” was an abbreviation for “intrathecal,” which meant the medication had to be injected into the spinal canal. The idea was to kill off any cancer cells that managed to spread to the cerebrospinal fluid before they had a chance to set up shop in the central nervous system. Unfortunately, it required what was basically the equivalent of a spinal tap. Spinal taps were a challenge; I hated doing them on patients, and I wasn’t looking forward to doing one on Nick.
What have I gotten myself into? I wondered yet again, as the hopeful attitude I’d woken up with faded away.
I had just finished cleaning up the kitchen when Nick came out, freshly showered and looking more awake than he had before. “You’re a good cook,” he said, sliding his plate into the dishwasher before I closed it.
“Thanks! I’m glad you found your appetite.”
“It’s never lost for long,” Nick said with a smirk, as he moved around me, opening a cupboard, taking down a prescription bottle, filling a glass with water. I watched him pop a round, white tablet and knock back the water like it was a shot. He swallowed with a loud gulp, then turned back to me. “So. You ready to get this show on the road?”
I wished he was talking about the tour, but of course he meant his chemo. “So, I know you guys probably don’t really need to rehearse much or anything, since you’ve already toured Europe and Asia,” I said, hopefully off-handedly, as I got everything set up, “but I’m a little nervous about my part in all this. The performance part, I mean.” The U.S. tour started in less than three weeks, and except for our little “jam session” on Saturday, I hadn’t practiced my act in front of anybody. On American Idol, I’d only had a few days to prepare a song, but at least then I’d had the benefit of intensive rehearsals to get ready. “Will I have enough time to rehearse?”
“Oh yeah, yeah,” Nick replied casually. “We’ll have a few rehearsals before the first show in Miami, and you can run through your set then, too. But I was thinking, if you want, I can take you into the studio later this week or next week to mess around. AJ said he’d come, too; he wants to meet you.”
“Really?” My heart leapt with excitement at that, and even though I was standing in front of a spread of needles, tubing, and chemo drugs, I forgot, for a second, why I was really there. I wasn’t just a nurse, but a musician again. “I’d love that!”
Nick smirked. “Thought you might. You’ll meet the other guys in New York. We got a gig there on the twenty-third and then a few days of TV appearances before we head down to Florida for the first show.”
It was impossible to keep myself from grinning at the thought of jetting across the country with the Backstreet Boys, but then I looked down at the port needle in my hand, and my smile faded. “That sounds great,” I said, “but won’t you start your next cycle of chemo the week after that? How are you gonna keep up that kind of schedule when we have to follow this schedule, too?”
“We’re not always that busy,” Nick insisted. “Once the tour starts, there’ll be more down time in the morning and at night after the shows.”
I stared at him, flabbergasted at how casual he sounded about his little scheme. Was he delusional, or just in denial? “Nick, look at this schedule!” I said, passing the paper I’d been studying earlier across the table to him. “Two three-hour infusions of cyclophosphamide, twelve hours apart. Plus, you’re supposed to get intrathecal chemo today, which basically means a spinal tap, which means you’re gonna spend most of the day lying flat on your back so you don’t get a killer headache.”
“Ugh, that happened to me the first time; it sucked balls,” Nick groaned, grimacing.
“I bet! And what are you going to do if that happens to you on tour?”
“We’ll just have to do that part overnight. I usually sleep on my back anyway.”
I sighed; he had an answer to everything, but he was missing my point. “I just think this is kinda crazy,” I said quietly.
He scowled. “Yeah, well, crazy or not, you said you’d come along and help me. Are you gonna bail on me now?” His eyes bored into mine, and I felt myself blush.
I quickly lowered my eyes, focusing on the port in his chest. “No, Nick,” I replied, plunging the needle firmly into it. “I’m not gonna bail on you.” I reached for a syringe of saline to flush the port. “I just wish you’d think about what’s best for you.”
“Touring... living my life like normal... that’s what’s best for me.”
I gave him a shot of the prescribed anti-nausea medication and almost wished I had another syringe of plain saline handy to inject instead. It would give him a reality check if he had to experience the full effects of the chemo drugs, but I wasn’t that cruel. I hooked up the chemo pump like I was supposed to and fixed another ice pack, double-bagging it this time, so that Nick could freeze his hair while the chemo flowed into his system.
And that night, I repeated the process all over again.
Once the second dose of cyclophosphamide was infusing through the chemo pump, I packed up the tub of medical supplies and followed Nick into his bedroom. We’d decided the intrathecal chemo would be better off done there, rather than in the dining room, so that he could lie flat as soon as I was done administering it.
I turned on all of the lights to make it as bright as possible, washed my hands, and spread all of the equipment I would need across Nick’s dresser. It was all familiar to me, and I was feeling okay about it right up until it was time to start. “Do you wanna lie down or sit up for this?” I asked Nick.
“Lie down,” he said, and before I even had to tell him how I needed him positioned, he crawled onto his bed, rolled over on his side, and curled into a ball, hugging his knees to his chest. It broke my heart to realize that he’d been through this before; he knew exactly what to do.
I tugged on a pair of surgical gloves and got the shot of local anesthetic ready, but in the middle of probing my fingers along his lower back, trying to feel out the right two lumbar vertebrae to inject it between, I suddenly stopped.
“Everything okay?” Nick asked after a minute. “You didn’t stick me already, did you? If you did, you’re fuckin’ good, cause I didn’t feel a thing.”
I forced a laugh. “No,” I said. “I’m not that good.” I was still holding the syringe in one hand and staring at the KAOS tattoo that ran down his spine, up higher on his back. To the left of it, on his shoulder blade, was an angry-looking man in the moon, and to the right, a large pair of eighth-notes. It struck me - like I really could have forgotten - that this was Nick Carter, the Backstreet Boy, the most popular member of one of the most popular boybands of my generation, and here I was, about to stick a needle into his spinal column. What if something went wrong? “Nick, I don’t know if I can do this...”
He rolled over onto his back so that he could look at me. “What do you mean?” he asked, frowning. “You don’t know how?”
“No, I know how...” I struggled to explain what was going through my head. “It’s not just the spinal tap. It’s just... what if I mess up? Or what if there’s some complication that’s not my fault, but still happens because I agreed to do this for you?” I was thinking suddenly of Michael Jackson, and of his private doctor, who had been charged with manslaughter for his role in the King of Pop’s death. That guy must have thought he had it pretty good, too, working for Michael Jackson, preparing to go on tour with him. With a chill, I realized that his situation wasn’t much different from mine. Granted, everything I was doing for Nick was legal and prescribed by a legitimate doctor, but still... what if something happened to him? And what if I was blamed for it?
“You’re not gonna kill me, are ya, Cary?” His voice was teasing, but the look in his eyes was serious. I shook my head, not knowing what to say back to that. “Listen,” he went on, “if you can’t help me, the cancer will kill me. Personally, I’d rather take my chances on you.”
“Why don’t you just let me take you to the hospital for this part of it?” I pleaded.
“No.” His voice was firm, matter-of-fact. “No more hospitals.”
I sighed in frustration. “You have cancer, Nick! You can’t just pick and choose what you will and won’t do. This is your life we’re talking about!”
“Yeah, that’s right, I have cancer,” he retorted, sounding angry now. “If nothing else, I think that gives me the right to do whatever the fuck I wanna do. I’m doing the goddamn treatment, every last form of torture the doctor ordered, but I’m doing it on my terms, okay? I thought you understood that.”
Tears sprang to my eyes, and I quickly ducked my head, hoping he wouldn’t see. I wasn’t sure if I was crying out of frustration and fear, or if I was just upset because he was yelling at me. Suck it up and stop being a baby, I ordered myself fiercely. Out loud, I said, “I don’t understand why you’re being so stubborn.” Stubborn and stupid! I added in my head.
He snorted. “I’ve always been stubborn. I’m just not gonna let this thing ruin my life - or whatever’s left of it. I ain’t ready to die, so I’m gonna do the chemo, but like I said, I’m gonna do it my way. With your help, of course,” he added, his tone softening. The look he gave me tore at my heart. “I can’t do it without you, Cary.”
“Yes you could. You could find some other hopeless schmuck to do this for you.”
“But I chose you. Believe me, when I say I want it that way...”
I started to reply, then cocked my head at him, my words dying on my tongue. Had he really just quoted “I Want It That Way,” so deadpan like that? Yes... there it was, a little twitch at the corner of his mouth, which grew into a smirk, then broke into a full-on, shit-eating grin. I sighed, totally defenseless. I wasn’t going to be able to say no to him, and he knew it. He knew how to play me like a fiddle, and I knew it, too, and still, I just let it happen.
“C’mon, Cary,” he coaxed, rolling back onto his side and tucking himself into the fetal position once more. “Just get it over with, please. You said you know how to do this; you’re not gonna hurt me. I trust you.”
“Why?” I asked. “You hardly know me.”
“Because,” he said, after a moment’s pause. “I got no one else to trust.”
With a sigh, I steadied the syringe in my hand.
***
“Why won’t you trust the guys with this?” I asked later, once the spinal tap was over and Nick was lying flat in bed. “I thought you were like brothers.”
I was feeling calmer now that the intrathecal chemo was out of the way. It had gone as smoothly as I could have hoped, and now, with the lights off and the TV playing softly in the background while the rest of the IV chemo ran in, I could finally relax. I’d pulled a chair up alongside Nick’s bed, wanting to stay for a few minutes to make sure he was really okay before I left him for the night.
“We are,” Nick answered, staring up at the ceiling. “It’s not that I don’t wanna trust them. It’s not even that I don’t want them to know. I know they’d wanna know, and I’ll tell them eventually, but I’m not ready to yet. I’m not ready for things to change.”
I thought about my family, how they’d tried to keep life normal for me for as long as possible during my mother’s illness. I’d been shipped off to school every day and tucked into my own bed at night, right up until the very end. When that changed - when I was allowed to stay home from school one day, even though I wasn’t sick, and spend the night on a cot at my mom’s bedside - that’s when I knew she was really dying. Life was never the same afterwards. I could understand where Nick was coming from, his need to preserve what was normal for him for as long as he could.
“I know what you mean,” was all I told him.
“Thanks,” he said. “I mean, not just for understanding, but thanks for everything you’ve been doing. I didn’t mean to snap at ya earlier. I appreciate it; I really do. I know it can’t be easy for you. I know you’re giving up a lot to be here with me.”
“It’s okay. This isn’t really that different from what I do for a living. Really, I have it a lot easier - only one person to take care of, and it’s... you,” I finished awkwardly, feeling myself blush. There was so much else behind that “you,” so much else I could say about how much I admired him, even when he was moody and stubborn and downright foolish, but I didn’t want to embarrass myself sounding like a fangirl, so I left it at that.
He chuckled. “It takes something special to do what you do for a living. My folks owned a retirement home when I was a kid, and I liked going to entertain the residents there, but that was different from a nursing home. We didn’t have to wipe asses and change Depends.”
I smiled. “It’s not always pretty, but I like my job. I like the people. They’re interesting just to sit and talk to; they have great stories if you’re willing to listen, and they love the company. I think that’s why I like it better than when I worked in a hospital; I get to know my patients better, and the care is more personal.”
“Is that why you changed jobs?”
“That was part of it. I dunno, I guess this’ll sound weird, but I’ve always enjoyed being around old people. I was really close to my grandparents, on my mother’s side, and when they moved into a nursing home together, I visited all the time.” A lump rose in my throat, and I swallowed hard. I missed my grandparents even more than I missed my mother; they had been a part of my life for a lot longer and had practically raised me after she died. I forced myself to keep talking so I wouldn’t succumb to tears just thinking about them. “I got to know their friends there ‘cause they loved to show me off, of course, and so it was like I had lots of grandmas and grandpas. When I was in high school, I used to go and sing for them; it was so much easier than performing in front of people my own age. That’s how I got used to singing to an audience, not just myself.”
“Same here,” said Nick, smiling. “My mom used to make me practice my act at the retirement home, back when I was doing auditions and talent competitions and stuff.”
I giggled, remembering grainy clips I’d seen of him singing and dancing as a little kid. “I’m sure they thought you were adorable.”
He snorted. “Yeah...”
We fell into silence, and when I could think of nothing else to add, I said, “Well, I should let you try to sleep. Can I get you anything before I go?”
“I’m okay. You don’t have to leave, though - I mean, if you don’t want to,” he added quickly. “I’m just gonna watch TV till I fall asleep.”
There was something about the way he said it that made me ask, “You want me to hang out for a while?”
“Sure,” he said, with measured casualness. “If you want to.”
I smirked at the way we were tiptoeing around each other. He wanted me to stay, but didn’t want me to feel obligated. I wanted to stay, but didn’t want to impose. And neither of us would admit it, afraid the other felt differently.
“I’d love to,” I said.
“Cool. I could use the company.” He smiled over at me. “Makes for a long night when you’re not supposed to move.”
I returned his smile. “I can imagine.”
We settled back into a silence that was comfortable, not awkward, and occasionally broken by bits of conversation. In the lulls, we watched TV on the flatscreen mounted on his bedroom wall, and eventually, Nick’s breathing became deep and regular. I looked over and smiled when I saw that he had fallen asleep, his chin to his chest, his arms folded, just the way I’d found him that morning. Odd... but kind of cute.
***
