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Cary


“Two down, only…” Nick looked up at the ceiling as he paused to think. “…sixteen more to go,” he finished morosely, sighing as he slumped down in his bed.

It was after six o’clock, and the nurse had just finished disconnecting his second dose of chemo for the day. “Call if you need anything,” she told Nick on her way out. “I’m off soon, but the night nurse will take care of you.”

It was almost time for shift change, I realized. This nurse was going home, and another one would be coming on, and we were still there. It had been a long day. I was used to long days working in a hospital setting. I wasn’t used to long days of just sitting around one. Being the visitor reminded me of going to see my mom in the hospital and, later, the hospice. Those days had been long and boring, too. My dad had limited my visits as much as he could, for my own good, but towards the end, I’d been allowed to see her as long and as often as I wanted. I cherished every last minute I spent with her before she passed, but I sure didn’t miss those days, and sitting at Nick’s bedside brought them back.

Of course, this was different. Nick wasn’t dying. He was doing this to get better, and even though he wasn’t feeling well, he managed to stay in pretty good spirits, probably for my benefit. I tried to do the same for him. “Well hey, you’re one-ninth of the way there, then,” I said, sticking my thumbs up and smiling, as if that fraction actually sounded encouraging. Really, it sounded terrible. The first four days of this conditioning chemotherapy regimen were intense – he was to get chemo four times a day, every six hours, and each dose took two hours to infuse. That meant he only got four hours to recover in between doses. It was going to be a long night, too.

“One-ninth… yippee,” replied Nick, in a complete monotone. I giggled, and he responded with a half-smile. Then he pulled out his phone from under the covers and said, “I guess I should get this over with, while I still can.”

“Get what over with?”

“Twitter.” He wiggled the phone in the air. “Gotta tweet something, don’t I? Let ‘em all know I ain’t planning on kicking the bucket anytime soon.”

I smiled, feeling the fangirl flare up inside me. “Good idea. That’ll mean a lot to them.”

“Take my picture,” he said, thrusting the phone at me. “I wanna document the fact that, two rounds in, I still have more hair on my head than AJ and Brian combined.”

I laughed as I took his phone, feeling my spirits lift. I knew he didn’t feel well; he hadn’t been able to keep anything down all day. But the fact that he had kept his sense of humor gave me hope. Laughter really is the best medicine, and a positive attitude goes a long way. If he could keep on smiling, he could get through this. “Smile!” I sang out, as I held the phone up.

“Hold on,” Nick said suddenly, tossing the covers back. “Got an idea.”

He got out of bed, digging his boxers out of his butt as he walked across the room, with the open-backed hospital gown flapping around his legs. I aimed the camera phone after him, snickering to myself. It was tempting to take a picture from that angle to post for the fans, but I wasn’t that cruel. I watched him pick up a stainless steel washbasin the nurse had left behind, filled with warm, soapy water for cleaning off the Betadine she’d used to disinfect the skin around his port. He carried it into the bathroom, the water sloshing up the sides, and closed the door partway. I heard him running water and fumbling around, and after a couple of minutes, he came back out, with the metal bowl upside down on his head.

I started laughing. “What are you-?” I started to ask, then ended up just shaking my head. He was so weird sometimes. I just sat back and watched as he stood, tall and proud, next to his IV stand, wearing the basin for a hat, and saluted. “Is that the pose you want for your picture?” I asked, starting to sort of get what he was going for.

“Yessir,” he replied, still saluting. “I mean, ma’am.”

I laughed and shook my head again. “Okay…” I snapped the photo with his phone and handed it back to him.

“Perfect,” he muttered, grinning as he studied the screen. He took the bowl off his head, climbed back into bed, and started texting furiously, his thumbs clicking away on the keypad. After a few minutes, he handed me back his phone and said, “Check it out.”

I looked down at the screen, which showed Nick’s Twitter page. He had tweeted twice. The first one said, Well I guess you’ve all heard the news by now. This SCT shizzz sucks dookie balls already but I’m hangin in there. Thanks for your support! I smiled and read further up the screen. His second tweet said, Kernel Carter reporting from the trenches. I’m fightin the good fight and I’m gonna win this war so never fear, my troops! and had a link to his Twitpic. I clicked and giggled again at the picture I’d taken. It wasn’t exactly attractive, between the hospital gown and the bowl on his head, but I knew the fans would love and appreciate it.

“Very nice, Kernel Carter,” I said. “Though if you wanted to be a kernel, you should have just put popcorn on your head.”

He looked at me blankly. “Huh?”

“You spelled ‘Colonel’ wrong. Like a kernel of popcorn.”

“What? Oh.” He held out his hand for his phone, and I gave it back to him. “How’s it s’posed to be spelled?”

I spelled it out for him. He didn’t believe me at first, that C-O-L-O-N-E-L could spell “kernel,” but when he showed me the phone again a few minutes later, another tweet had appeared on his page: Sorry my bad, I meant colonel.

Smiling, I said, “I’m sure most of your fans aren’t really grammar Nazis.”

“No, they are,” he replied, without missing a beat. “I get called on that kind of shit all the time.”

I laughed. As I started to pass the phone back again, it vibrated in my hand and started playing what I quickly recognized as the theme from Psycho. Startled, I looked down and saw that it was an incoming call. For just an instant, I forgot it was Nick’s phone in my hand, and my heart skipped a beat when I saw the name “Mom” flashing. But of course, it was Nick’s mom calling.

“Who is it?” he asked, reaching for the phone. Somehow, I already knew he wouldn’t want to answer once he found out. That was why I made the split-second decision to answer for him.

“Hello?” I said timidly. At first, there was no response, and I thought I must not have been quick enough; the call had gone to voicemail.

But then a woman’s voice asked sharply, “Who is this? Is Nick with you?”

“He’s right here,” I replied and passed the phone quickly to Nick, who was shooting daggers at me with his eyes. He flipped me off as he reluctantly took the phone back, but I knew he didn’t mean it. Or, at least, I hoped he didn’t. He couldn’t be too mad at me; he had to have known he’d have to talk to his parents sooner or later. Knowing how he tended to procrastinate, I was just helping him make it sooner, rather than later.

Nick sighed heavily, then raised the phone to his ear. “Hey, Mom,” he said. Even without speaker phone on, I could hear her voice coming out of his phone, rapid and shrill. I couldn’t make out exactly what she was saying, but the tone was enough for me to make a pretty good guess. Nick sighed again. “I know, Mom… I’m sorry,” he added, raking a hand through his hair.

I felt like an eavesdropper, listening in on his end of what was sure to be an awkward conversation. Standing up, I waited until I’d caught his eye to mouth, I’ll be back. Then I walked out, leaving him to talk to his mom in private. I couldn’t imagine how that was going to go; obviously, she had seen the Ellen interview or found out the news from someone who had. Either way, she’d just heard it for the first time, because as far as I knew, Nick still hadn’t told her anything. No matter what kind of reputation Jane Carter had, I couldn’t blame her for being upset. No mother should have to find out about her son’s cancer on national television.

As I walked the halls of Nick’s unit, I tried to remember how my parents had first told me about my mom’s illness. I was only three when she was diagnosed, so I know they didn’t tell me much, just that Mommy was “sick” and would be spending time in the hospital and taking medicine to make her feel better. It wasn’t until I was older that I understood that cancer was different from the flu or the chickenpox.

I do remember being told about her relapse. I was nine and came home from school to find both my parents already home, which was weird. Usually my dad worked later at the factory. But he hadn’t been to work at all that day; he’d been at the doctor’s office with my mom, going over her test results. They sat me down and explained that the cancer had come back, but that Mom would be doing chemo again to make it go away. It had worked the first time around, so I don’t think I was really that scared, at first. I was more disappointed than anything, remembering how her hair had fallen out before, and how she’d spent a lot of time in bed, too tired to play with me. Even though I was old enough to know how serious cancer was, at that point, it didn’t even cross my mind that the chemo might not work the second time. I held onto that naïve notion for as long as possible, something my parents encouraged, until my mother made the decision to stop treatment and enter the hospice to die.

I wasn’t naïve anymore. Now I knew too much. I knew that even though things had been looking up for Nick, there were no guarantees that the chemo would keep on working, or that this stem cell transplant would lead to a cure. He could still relapse. He could die. It terrified me, to think of that happening. I cared about him so much, and I’d gotten closer to him than I had ever expected to. Our relationship had crossed the lines of nurse-patient and fan-celebrity a long time ago, a fact which made it that much harder to consider the possibility of losing him.

I didn’t want to think about it. I had to distract myself, stat, or I would lose it. Out there in the hall, away from Nick, it would be all too easy to have a breakdown and let out all the feelings I’d been trying to hide in his presence, for the sake of staying upbeat in front of him. The truth was, it was harder than I’d thought it would be to sit around his hospital room and watch him suffer through this new cycle of chemo. Somehow, it hadn’t been as bad on the tour bus. Maybe it was just the sight and smell of the hospital that made it really hit home for me.

Suddenly anxious to get off the oncology floor, I took the elevator down to the ground level, where the gift shop and cafeteria were located. My stomach growled at the smell of food, but I didn’t get anything. I’d already ordered Nick’s and my dinner; it would probably be delivered to the room by the time I got back. He hadn’t been able to keep much down, but I was starving. I tried to take my mind off that, too, by wandering around the gift shop. There was a whole wall of beautiful floral arrangements, but I didn’t buy any; they would have cheered up Nick’s room, but flowers weren’t allowed in the stem cell transplant unit. Neither were stuffed animals. There was a decent selection of books, but as I browsed through them, I realized I didn’t know what kind of books Nick liked, or if he even liked to read at all. I settled for a People magazine and a book of Sudoku puzzles, figuring those might provide an alternative to TV or the internet to help pass the time.

Down the hall from the gift shop, I found a quiet place to sit. I set my bag down next to me on the bench and pulled out my cell phone. As long as Nick was talking to his mom, I thought I’d call my dad. I hoped he was still awake; it was almost eight-thirty back home, and he always fell asleep early. I chanced it and called anyway.

“Hello?” he answered groggily after the third ring, and I knew I’d woken him up. Of course, when I asked, he lied and told me, “Oh no, no, I’m still up, just watching the Sox.” I smiled, imagining him snoring in his recliner, with the baseball game on in the background, until his phone had startled him awake.

“Oh, good. Well, I just wanted to call and say hi.”

“I’m glad you did, sweetheart. How’s everything going out there? I caught some of Nick’s interview on the Ellen show today.”

I smiled again, knowing my dad would never watch Ellen intentionally. He had tuned in just to watch Nick. “Oh, yeah? We watched it, too. He did a great job. So did Ellen.”

“How’s he doing?” Dad wanted to know.

“Okay, so far. You know…” My dad did know, all too well. “He’s starting to feel a little sick, but he’s in pretty good spirits.” I wondered if the phone call from his mom would change that.

“Good to hear. Tell him to hang in there.”

I smiled at my dad’s encouraging tone of voice. “I will.”

“How are you holding up?”

I wished he hadn’t asked. I should have seen that question coming, but I wasn’t prepared for the flood of emotions it would bring. All of a sudden, there were tears filling my eyes, and my throat felt clogged as I squeaked, “I’m okay.” I knew I sounded anything but, and of course, my dad could tell. He’s not always the most observant guy, but he knows me better than anyone.

“Aw, sweetheart… it doesn’t sound like it,” he said sympathetically.

That was all it took to trigger the breakdown I’d been trying to hold back. “It’s just hard,” I sobbed into the phone, “watching him go through this.”

“Makes you think of Mom, huh?”

“Yes,” I choked out, but of course, that wasn’t all. He didn’t know how close Nick and I had gotten, how much he really meant to me. “But it’s not just that. I… I love him.”

It was the first time I’d said it out loud, and of course, I’d never said it to Nick. But in that moment, I realized it was true. “Like” just wasn’t a strong enough word to describe my feelings for him. Only love, in one form or another, was powerful enough to explain why I was putting myself in this position again. It wasn’t just my job anymore; I wasn’t getting paid or bribed with an opening act gig. I had volunteered to be there, if you could even call it that. It wasn’t that I wanted to be there, but that I had to be, for my own sake as well as Nick’s, because I cared about him deeply. Because I loved him. And it wasn’t just the kind of love that a fan has for her idol; it went beyond that. The bond Nick and I had was much closer; it bound me to him. Hard as it was to see him sick and in pain and remember my mother the same way, it would be even harder to leave him. I would never do that. I couldn’t.

“I thought so,” my dad said knowingly, and I smiled through my tears; he really was more observant than I gave him credit for. “Nothing’s harder than seeing someone you love hurting. You wish you could take their place.”

Of course, he was speaking from experience. I nodded, though he couldn’t see me. I sure wouldn’t have wanted to go through what Nick was; I just wished he didn’t have to, either. I’d wished the same thing for my mom. No one should have to go through it. No one should have to die from it.

We talked for a few more minutes, and even though I hung up the phone with tears still streaming down my face, I was glad I had called. My dad had comforted me and calmed me down by the end, and it was a relief to have gotten those emotions out of my system. Now all I had to do was dry my tears before I went back up to check on Nick. I stopped in the ladies’ room to splash water on my face before I took the elevator back upstairs. I’m sure it was still fairly obvious I’d been crying, but I didn’t want to stay away any longer.

When I got back to Nick’s room, he was off the phone. “Are you mad at me?” I asked hesitantly from the doorway. When he looked up, I saw that his eyes were red-rimmed. Apparently, I wasn’t the only one who had been crying.

Nick shook his head. “Nah. I guess I woulda had to talk to her sooner or later,” he muttered.

I offered him a sympathetic smile as I came further into the room. “Do I dare ask how it went?”

He just shrugged. “’Bout as well as you’d expect,” was all he said.

I nodded and didn’t push for more details. “I see dinner came,” I changed the subject, noticing the tray on his bed table. Everything was still covered and, evidently, untouched.

“Yeah… yours is over there.” He pointed to the window seat. “Go ahead… I’m not real hungry.”

I was, especially now that I could smell the food again, but I didn’t want to eat in front him while he was nauseous. I wondered if maybe I should have just gotten something in the cafeteria. “You should try to eat something,” I urged him gently.

“It’ll just come back up.”

“Not necessarily. You’ve been okay the last hour.”

“Just wait till the next batch of chemo,” he argued.

“You have a few hours till then. Just try. If you don’t eat, they’ll have to feed you through a tube, and you don’t want that.” If gentle encouragement wouldn’t work, maybe gentle threats would. It was true, though; his body needed nutrients, one way or the other.

“Alright, alright… I’ll try,” Nick agreed skeptically, peeking under the cover of one of his dishes. I’d ordered dinner for him, after he kept insisting that he wasn’t hungry and nothing sounded good. In fact, the food at this hospital was actually very good. It was gourmet all the way, ordered off a menu and custom-made, more like hotel room service than the standard slop people tended to expect of hospital food. I ate every last bite of my stuffed shells and salad, while Nick just picked at his grilled chicken and veggies.

“So what’s the plan for tonight?” I asked, when he finally insisted he was done and couldn’t eat anymore. “Do you want me to stay?” The hospital allowed for overnight visitors, but we hadn’t discussed yet whether or not I would stay the night.

“You don’t have to,” Nick said. “You should go back to the condo and get a good night’s sleep.”

But I couldn’t fathom the idea of going back to his condo without him and spending the night alone. “I know I don’t have to. Do you want me to?” I wanted to stay, but only if he was comfortable with it. I knew he probably needed some time to himself, too.

“Yeah, I mean, if you want to. It’s up to you; I don’t care.” But he did care. I saw it in his eyes and heard it in his voice, the way he tried too hard to play it casual. He didn’t want to spend the night alone, either.

I smiled. “I want to, as long as you’re okay with it.”

“It could be a long night,” he warned.

“I know. It will be,” I agreed. I knew it, and I was prepared, but that was why I wanted to stay. I couldn’t leave him, knowing what a rough night he was in for. “But you shouldn’t have to go through it alone.”

He opened his mouth and looked like he was about to argue again, but then he shook his head, apparently changing his mind. “Thanks,” was all he said instead, offering me a small, crooked smile.

I smiled back. “Of course.”

In my mind, that said it all. Of course I would stay, even if it meant giving up comfort and sleep. Of course I would stay, if it meant comforting him and helping him get some sleep. Of course. It was a sacrifice, sure, but if I couldn’t trade places with him, if I couldn’t spare him the misery, at least I could keep him company. When you love someone, you’ll do anything, give up anything, for them. And I was pretty sure I loved Nick Carter.

***