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Cary


Unbeknownst to me, there was a heat wave in Southern California the same week the fever was raging in Nick’s body. “I saw on the news it was a hundred and thirteen degrees out there today!” my dad said when he called to check on me. “They said it’s a record for Los Angeles. You staying cool?”

“Yeah, Dad.” I’d hardly felt the heat. For the past five days, I had spent almost all of my time in the air-conditioned hospital, sitting at Nick’s bedside. “What’s it like back home?” I asked automatically, for conversation’s sake. I couldn’t remember the last normal conversation I’d had.

“Beautiful. Sixties and sunny. Perfect fall weather.”

“I’m jealous,” I said, but there was no real feeling behind it. I didn’t care about the weather. I didn’t care about anything, except Nick. I was just jealous that my dad’s biggest concern was the heat, while I was living with the fear that the only other man in my life was going to die.

At that point, I hadn’t shared that fear with my dad or anyone, really. It was a feeling that festered inside me, like the infection that had overtaken Nick. Around the guys, I stayed as upbeat as possible, finding something positive to report each time they came to visit. I avoided talking to anyone else, afraid of leaking information about Nick’s condition to the wrong people. The Backstreet Boys had issued a statement, but no one on the outside really knew how bad it was. I hadn’t wanted to dump it all on my dad, knowing it would just bring back bad memories for him, but when he asked, “How’s Nick?” I couldn’t help it. I broke down into tears.

“He’s really sick,” I said shakily, and little by little, I managed to get the whole story out. I’m not sure how much he was actually able to understand, between my huge, shuddering breaths and constant sniffling, but he listened as I told him everything – how Nick had been fine after the transplant, until he suddenly spiked a fever, how the doctors still weren’t sure of the source of his infection, how they’d been pumping him full of antibiotics that hadn’t seemed to make much of a difference, and how scared I was that he wasn’t going to get better. “And I feel like it’s my fault,” I sobbed. “I pushed him into this… I told him to do the transplant… if he hadn’t, he’d be fine right now.”

“You don’t know that, sweetheart,” said my dad, and if he were in the same room as me, I knew he’d be standing next to me, his arm around my shoulders, shaking some sense into me as he hugged me to his side. I wished he were actually there, wished I wasn’t having this conversation over the phone, wished I wasn’t going through this alone. “If he didn’t have the transplant, the cancer might’ve come back.”

“He was in remission.”

“But we both know remission doesn’t always last,” my dad said quietly. Of course, he was thinking of my mom. I’d been thinking of her, too, when I’d talked Nick into going ahead with the stem cell transplant, when I thought the worst thing that could happen to him was a relapse. “Did he ask your advice?”

“Yes.”

“And did you give him the best advice you could?”

“Yes, but-”

“You knew the transplant had its risks. Did he know about the risks?”

I sniffled. “Yes.”

“And he made the choice to go for it anyway, right?”

“Uh-huh.”

“Then I don’t want you beating yourself up over this, okay, honey? I’m sure Nick wouldn’t want you to feel guilty either. You didn’t force him to do anything against his will, and you can’t change what’s happened to him. All you can do now is stay positive and pray for him to get better.”

He said he would pray for Nick, too, which meant a lot, seeing as how my dad hadn’t set foot inside a church since my mom’s funeral. Close as we were, we didn’t have deep, emotional conversations very often, but it comforted me to hear his voice and his words of reassurance. I knew it wasn’t really my fault that Nick was so sick, but I also still felt that if I hadn’t recommended the transplant, he wouldn’t have gone through with it, and he’d be better off at this point.

After I got done talking to my dad, I set my phone down and turned my attention back to Nick. It was almost hard to look at him. The change in him over the past few days was startling; he hardly looked like himself anymore. It was crazy to think that when I’d first met him, when he was carrying around a tumor in his chest and a chemo pump under his clothes, he had looked completely normal – better than normal, actually – and only now, with his disease in remission, did he look like a cancer patient, bald and swollen. His body had ballooned from fluid retention; his face looked puffy and oddly misshapen. A rash had broken out on his skin, which was pale from the lack of red blood cells, yet darkened in some places from a reaction to the chemo. Just in the last day or so, his complexion had taken on a faint yellowish cast, and I think it was the jaundice that bothered me the most, because it reminded me of my mother.

I would never forget the way my mom looked during her last few weeks of life. Her skin had been so yellow, she reminded me of the characters from the new cartoon I’d been watching, The Simpsons. Her cancer had metastasized to her liver; she died of liver failure.

It scared me to look into Nick’s swollen, slightly jaundiced face. Multi-organ failure. That was what he’d be facing, if his team of doctors didn’t get the sepsis under control. The infection, wherever it had come from, had gotten into his bloodstream, and with no white blood cells to fight it off, it had spread quickly throughout his body. His liver enzymes were testing higher than normal. The doctors were concerned about his kidneys shutting down. Fluid had built up inside his lungs and around his heart; he was on oxygen to help his breathing and a diuretic to get rid of the extra fluid. A crash cart sat in the corner of the room, in case his heart started going haywire again, and if his breathing got any worse, he would need to be intubated.

I thought back to the day I’d sat with him in his lawyer’s office in Nashville, when he’d signed the advance directive. He had given Kevin power of attorney, but as Nick had been in and out of consciousness, mostly out, Kevin and the guys had turned to me to make the treatment decisions for him. I was only the second alternate, but even though they knew Nick better, I knew more about medicine, and they seemed to think I was the best person to call the shots. It was a lot of pressure already, but I dreaded having to decide whether or not to put him on a ventilator or resuscitate him if his heart stopped. Nick had initialed the box saying he didn’t want his life prolonged, if there was no chance of a meaningful recovery, but I knew he could recover, if the doctors could just keep his body functioning long enough to stop the infection. I just prayed it wouldn’t come to that.

Eager to distract myself from imagining the worst, I turned on the TV in the room. I kept the volume low – not that it would bother Nick; he was too out of it to notice – and only half-listened to the evening news. When I wasn’t spacing out, I caught snippets of segments on the heat wave, gas prices, and new fall TV shows, and it suddenly occurred to me how much my life had changed in the past year. There was a time when I would have been interested in the fall TV lineup, when I cared about gas prices, when I enjoyed complaining about the weather with my co-workers. Now none of those things seemed remotely newsworthy.

Back home, the nursing home would be decorated with colorful, autumn leaves. Kids would be settling into their new classes at school. In my dad’s world, baseball season would soon be ending, and football season was just getting started. But in my new world out in California, this strange land of endless sun, nothing seemed to change. My days of sitting around the hospital stretched together, long and monotonous, until I could barely tell them apart anymore. I lost track of the countdown. How many days since the transplant? Six? Seven? Could it have been a full week since Nick had gotten back his stem cells, the ones that were supposed to cure him?

I knew he couldn’t linger in this state of limbo forever. Sooner or later, for better or worse, something had to change.

***

The change I’d been waiting for came two days later, Day 9 on the transplant calendar. It was as hot as ever outside, but inside the transplant unit at Ronald Reagan Medical Center, Nick’s fever finally broke.

I was asleep when the night nurse came in for the four a.m. temperature check. Before dozing off, I’d lain awake on the window seat bed, staring at the shadows cast by the eerie glow of the monitors in the dim light, listening to the sound of Nick’s ragged breathing, and wondering how much longer this nightly ritual would continue. I had prayed in my head every night, but that night, I did something different: I spoke to my mother.

I didn’t talk out loud, and of course, she didn’t say anything back. I just squeezed my eyes shut and clasped my hands tight and thought, Mom, if you’re up there somewhere… if you can hear me… I need your help. Nick needs your help. If you could just put in a good word, or something… anything… please…? Eventually, my thoughts trailed off, as I realized how ridiculous they would sound, if anyone could hear them. I wanted to believe there was a God and a Heaven where my mom’s soul had gone, like I’d been told as a child, but did I really think praying to my dead mother was going to make any difference in Nick’s condition? It was a childlike wish, and when I opened my eyes and found tears there, I felt like the same child who had lain awake like this, night after night, before crying herself to sleep.

I didn’t cry myself to sleep this time, but eventually, I did drift off, and when I woke up, the nurse was standing by Nick’s bed, charting his latest set of vitals. “Any change?” I asked, lifting my head from my pillow.

She jumped, startled, and turned around. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to wake you. Good news – his temperature’s down.”

I sat up all the way. “Really?”

She wiggled the thermometer in her hand. “99 on the nose.”

I had to let that sink in for a few seconds. For a whole week, Nick’s temperature had stayed over 101 degrees, even at night. 99 was normal – or close enough! I jumped out of bed and looked carefully at the monitors tracking everything else – his heart rate, blood pressure, oxygen levels. The numbers looked more or less the same as they had last time I’d checked, but his fever had broken, and that was a good sign, the best news I’d heard all week.

Nick wasn’t out of the woods yet, but it was definitely a turning point. When I awoke the next time, it was light outside, and his eyes were open. “Cary?” he croaked, looking over at me.

I scrambled out of bed and was at his side in an instant. “Hey,” I said softly, resting my hand on his forehead. For the first time in a week, it felt cool and dry. I ran my hand up and over the top of his head, so soft and smooth, like an infant’s. “How are you feeling?”

“Tired… What time is it?”

“I dunno… morning.”

“Of what day?” he asked, looking confused. I couldn’t blame him; he’d been so out of it for the last week.

“Day 9. Don’t ask me what day of the week… Wednesday, I think, but I’ve sort of lost track, too.”

He wrinkled his nose, squinting up at me. “Day 9? Was I really out that long?”

For the first time in a week, I laughed. “You’ve been pretty out of it, yeah.”

“Damn…” His eyes darted around, apparently noticing all the new medical equipment that surrounded him for the first time. “What the hell happened to me?”

I let out another nervous laugh. “You really wanna know?”

“Well, yeah…?”

“How much time do you have?”

A faint smile crossed his dry, cracked lips. “All the time in the world, baby.”

Weak and sick as he was, he still managed to be charming. Smiling back, I sat down in the chair next to his bed. I maneuvered my hand through the tangle of tubes and wires to find his and, gripping it tightly, started to tell him just what a hellish week it had been.

***