It ain’t easy trying to get the Carter clan all together. Usually it takes a funeral or an E! reality show to do it, but somehow, I managed all on my own. Granted, I had to foot the bill to fly BJ and Aaron in from Florida and pay for Leslie’s plane ticket from Canada, too, but it was worth it to be able to talk to them face to face. At least Angel lived close enough to drive herself over – not that we ever got together much. I wondered if that would change once she found out I was sick.
Looking around at the four of them, I tried to remember the last time we’d all been in the same room together. It had been a long time. Years, probably. I couldn’t remember us having done much as a family since we’d finished filming House of Carters. That was sad, and so was the fact that it usually took bad news to bring us together.
“So what’s the deal, Nick?” Leslie broke the silence that followed the small talk. I hadn’t wanted to spring it on them without at least giving us a chance to catch up first, but with that part out of the way, I was glad she had asked. “You said you had something important to tell us.” She seemed antsy; she’d been jiggling her foot nonstop since she’d sat down in my living room, practically bouncing in her chair. We’re all a little ADD in this family, but it was starting to get on my nerves.
Chill out, Leslie, I wanted to say. Once I’m done crushing you with my cancer diagnosis, you can turn around and go back to Canada if you want. But of course, I didn’t say it. Leslie’s like a land mine; it just takes one wrong step to set her off. She used to be like that, anyway. It seemed like she’d grown up over the last few years, though. Marriage suited her; she had never sounded happier or looked better. She’d lost weight and had sort of a glow about her that made me feel guilty for the bad news I was about to give her.
Then again, maybe it wouldn’t crush her. Maybe she would just shrug it off and go back to her own life, where she’d forget all about me and my problems. That seemed to be her best coping strategy for all the shit our parents had put us through. We all had them. Aaron was an attention-seeker. Angel was a partier. BJ was a drunk. And Leslie was like me – an avoider. She had followed the same path I’d taken years ago, moving far away and isolating herself from the family. It was no secret she had always felt like a black sheep, but she and I weren’t so different, really. Still, I felt more distant from her than any of the others, like I barely knew her at all anymore.
We had never been close – not like BJ and I, the two oldest, or Aaron and I, the only two boys. Even Angel and I shared a special bond that I can’t really explain, except to say it existed. Maybe it was because Angel was the only one who never seemed to resent me for my success, for being gone so much when we were kids, for making more money than the rest of them put together. I’d always gotten that vibe from BJ, who was bartending at a Ruby Tuesday to support herself, and Leslie, who had been forced to try to follow in Aaron’s and my footsteps by our stage mom. That was why it was weird that on the day I’d called Leslie to invite her to LA, I’d found a voicemail she’d left for me first, asking me to call her. It had taken another day of playing phone tag to actually get a hold of her, and when I finally did, she just said, “I have news, too, but it can wait – this way I can tell you in person.”
I wondered vaguely what her news was, but then Angel chimed in, “Yeah, Nick, spit it out,” and I realized they were all looking at me, waiting to hear mine. I couldn’t stall any longer. They were going to kill me when they found out I’d already been keeping this secret for four months.
“It better not be about a reality show,” said BJ dryly, rolling her eyes. “No way in hell will I sign up for that again. Those douchebags at E! made me look like a total alchy the first time around.”
Angel snickered. “I don’t think that was just the editing. You were pretty drunk most of the time, Beej.”
“Tipsy!” corrected BJ, waving a finger at Angel. “I prefer the word ‘tipsy,’ thank you very much.”
“You guys, shut up!” Leslie bellowed over the two of them, leaning forward in her seat. “I wanna hear Nick’s news!”
“Yeah, me too. Wuzzup, bro?” Aaron cocked his head at me. He hadn’t bothered to take off his baseball cap when he’d come into my condo, and he was wearing it tilted to one side, his greasy hair sticking out from under it in tufts. He looked like a complete jackass.
I cleared my throat and coughed into my first. Shifting awkwardly in my seat, I said, “Sorry to bring you all out here to hear this, but it ain’t good news. Um… I’ve been, um, keeping this from you guys… from everyone, really… for awhile now, but it’s time I told you what’s been going on.”
As I paused to collect myself, my eyes darted around the room. They were all staring back at me, looking worried now. Aaron’s eyes were narrowed; Angel’s were huge. BJ and Leslie were both frowning. I sucked in a deep breath. This was the fourth time I’d had to do this, but that didn’t make it any easier, especially when it was my brother and sisters I was breaking the news to. I still had to force the words to come out.
“I’m… sick. I’ve got something called lymphoblastic lymphoma. It’s a kind of cancer.”
***
Their reactions were pretty much what I’d expected.
BJ and Leslie got all dramatic. BJ broke down into tears, while Leslie screamed at me about how I should have told them sooner. Then she cried, too.
The twins were more stoic. Angel just hugged me, holding on a little longer than usual. Aaron sat in the corner and hugged himself, looking sort of lost.
He came around the next day, when I brought them all to the cancer clinic to be tested for the transplant. “It’s all good, bro. I’m sure I’ll be a match,” he kept assuring me. “How could I not be? I mean, look at us. We’re completely alike. We both got the blonde hair, the good looks, the musical talent, the star power…”
“…The humility,” added Leslie from the backseat, and I looked up into the rearview mirror just in time to see her roll her eyes.
I pretended to check my side mirror to hide my smirk from Aaron. He was right, in a sense – he did remind me of myself at his age, in all the wrong ways. He seemed to be heading down the same dark path of addiction I’d stumbled along for years before cleaning up my act, and of course, he was in complete denial about it. Aaron was a cocky little shit, and his attitude didn’t help things.
“…So why shouldn’t we have gotten the same kind of stem cells?” he finished with confidence, ignoring Leslie’s jab at him. “I’ll share mine with you, bro, no worries. Mi stem cells es su stem cells.” He laughed at his own joke, and I forced myself to chuckle, too.
I was worried that the testing would involve a bone marrow aspiration, like the ones I had come to dread, but it turned out to be a simple blood draw. The results wouldn’t be back for a few days, so Aaron, BJ, and Leslie all arranged to hang out in LA longer than they’d planned, until we found out if any of them were a match.
“What about Mom and Dad?” BJ asked at one point. “Do they know? When are you going to tell them?”
I just shrugged. “I dunno. You know how Mom is. I don’t really wanna deal with her bullshit on top of everything else. And Dad…” I trailed off, not knowing what to say. I hadn’t felt close to my father in years. He’d basically turned his back on us when he’d divorced Mom – not that I could blame him for that – and married his third wife. He had a new family now, and he was probably happier not knowing what I was going through. He would find out eventually, of course, and so would Mom. Either one of my siblings would tell them, or they’d hear it on the Ellen show, which was where I planned to go public, keeping the promise I’d made to Ellen months ago, when she’d given me Cary’s phone number.
My secret had all but completely unraveled, and soon, everyone would know. I wasn’t looking forward to all the press I’d get for it, but at least I wouldn’t have to hide it anymore.
When my new German doctor – Dr. Schnaz, I called him for short, on account of the fact that he had a bigger nose than Brian’s and a last name even harder to remember than Dr. Submarine’s – called to tell me he had the results of the stem cell testing, the whole Carter clan plus Cary headed back to the clinic to meet with him and Dr. Submarine. We gathered around the same table we’d sat at the first time, filling all of the chairs.
“Thank you all for coming in,” said Dr. Schnaz, nodding around the table at us. “As I told you over the phone, vee have the results of the HLA typing. Let me explain briefly vat vee vere looking for. HLA stands for Human Leukocyte Antigens, vich are special proteins, or markers, found on cells in your body. You inherit half your HLA markers from your father and half from your mother, vich means all of you have a tventy-five percent chance of having the same markers. There are ten in particular that vee look at ven considering a match for bone marrow or stem cell transplantation, and vee require that nine out of ten match the donor’s markers in order to proceed vith a transplant.”
He showed me a diagram, where the markers were represented with different-colored circles. In a perfect match, the patient’s circles and donor’s circles were all the same color. In an acceptable match, only one circle stood out, different from the others. I looked up from the diagram and around the table, studying the faces of all of my siblings. It was obvious we shared the same genes. Surely, at least one of them would share the right combination of those markers, too.
“So did any of us match?” Angel asked impatiently.
“One of you did,” answered Dr. Schnaz, and I saw Aaron sit up straighter, puffing out his chest and looking pleased with himself. I watched his face fall as the doctor added, “Your sister Leslie.”
“Me?” Leslie squeaked, as Aaron slumped back in his chair.
“Yes, you vere the only nine of ten match. Unfortunately, there is a problem.”
I was still getting used to the idea that Leslie would be my donor, when I heard him say “problem.” My head whipped towards the doctor. “What problem?”
He didn’t answer at first, looking at Leslie instead of me. To her, he said, “I think perhaps you know?”
Leslie sat there, open-mouthed, for a second, before she put her head in her hands. Oh great, I thought, staring at her with a sinking feeling in my stomach. What now? It wouldn’t have surprised me if they’d told Aaron he couldn’t donate because of all of the drugs and shit he’d been putting into his body, but I thought Leslie was above all of that. I guess I didn’t know for sure, though, since it wasn’t like I hung out with her very often.
When Leslie finally looked up again, her eyes were filled with tears. “I’m sorry, Nick,” she said, and then she looked back at the doctor. “It’s because I’m pregnant, isn’t it?”
Pregnant?! I was so stunned, I didn’t even see the doctor nod, though I guess he must have. “You’re pregnant??” I asked.
She nodded, smiling through her tears. “I just found out last Tuesday. I wanted to tell you… that’s why I called, that day you called me, but when you said you wanted me to come here, I figured I’d just save it to tell you in person. But then you gave us your news, and it just didn’t seem like the right time…” Her face suddenly crumpled, the tears spilling down her cheeks. “I’m so sorry… I should have said something before I got tested, but I didn’t think… I didn’t know if…” She looked over at Dr. Schnaz again.
“Unfortunately, vee can’t use pregnant vomen as donors,” he gently confirmed.
“I’m sorry, Nick,” Leslie started again, but I shook my head quickly to stop her.
“Don’t be sorry,” I replied, still trying to wrap my head around these two major revelations I’d heard in the span of, like, two seconds. “You’re gonna have a baby… that’s awesome! Congratulations.”
I meant it, too. I was happy for Leslie because, despite the tears, she seemed happy. Her husband, Mike, was a good guy, and they’d been married for almost two years, so why shouldn’t they start a family? I just hadn’t seen it coming, hadn’t even considered the possibility. I’d been so wrapped up in myself and my own problems, I honestly hadn’t thought much about Leslie or any of my siblings until I needed them. That made me feel like shit.
“So when are you due?” I asked, wanting to sound interested, so she’d know I didn’t resent her for getting knocked up when I needed her stem cells.
As I said it, I realized I was the only one asking questions. Looking around the table again, I saw that no one else looked surprised. They all knew, I realized, with that same sinking feeling. Aaron, Angel, BJ… Leslie must have already told all of them and then sworn them to secrecy. Suddenly, I felt like the black sheep.
“Not until March,” she answered, looking miserable again. “Can the transplant wait until then? I’ll give you my stem cells as soon as the baby’s born, Nick, I promise.”
I didn’t mind waiting. “Hey, if we wait till March, I could still finish the tour… ow,” I said, as Cary kicked me under the table.
“I don’t think that would be wise,” spoke up Dr. Submarine. “Like I told you before, the whole process has a better chance of working if we do it now, while your disease is still in remission, rather than waiting for it to relapse.”
She acted like it was a given that my cancer would come back. I didn’t like that pessimistic attitude. What did she know? Maybe it wouldn’t come back. The chemo had made my tumor go away, and she said there was no cancer in my blood or bone marrow anymore, so why wasn’t I cured? I looked at her defiantly, about to tell her I wasn’t going to sit by and let her make my sister feel guilty for not being able to donate her stem cells now, but Dr. Schnaz spoke first.
“Vee still have other options to consider,” he said. “Although it’s unlikely they vould match, vee could test other family members. Are your mother and father still living?”
“No,” I said flatly. “I mean, yes, they’re alive, but no, I don’t want them tested. I don’t want them involved in this at all.” I could just imagine how my mother would react, if it turned out she was the only match. She’d milk that for all it was worth. There would be TV appearances, magazine interviews, a Dateline documentary... She’d probably write a book about it, some sappy shit about a selfless mother giving her son the most precious gift, the gift of life. Gag me now. Even if she was a match, there was no way I’d take her stem cells. I’d be paying for them the rest of my life, figuratively and literally.
Dr. Submarine raised her eyebrows, while Dr. Schnaz’s brow furrowed. They both looked surprised and sort of concerned by my response, but neither of them pushed the issue. “There’s also the possibility of finding an unrelated donor,” Dr. Schnaz added. “Vee could do a search of the national database of registered donors to look for a match. It can take time for a suitable one to be found, however. My recommendation is that vee proceed vith an autologous transplant, soon, vile your blood is cancer-free. Vith that option, you vould not need to vait for a donor.”
I remembered them saying that an autologous transplant, where I was my own donor, was less risky anyway, even if it didn’t always pay off. I was willing to try it. If it didn’t work, maybe I could still try the other kind after Leslie had her baby. That sounded a lot better than waiting around to find some random stranger to give me their stem cells.
“Okay,” I said, nodding. “Let’s do that, then.”
As I said it, I took another look around the table, trying to gauge everyone’s reactions. Leslie was wiping her tears. Angel looked worried. Aaron looked disappointed. BJ looked like she needed a drink. The two doctors’ expressions were unreadable; I knew it didn’t really matter to them what I decided. They were only involved on a professional level, not a personal one. But then my eyes came to rest on Cary. She seemed calm and composed, and when I caught her eye, she nodded back at me, offering an encouraging smile.
That was all the approval I needed.
***
