The night Nick told the guys, I stayed inside with Hambelina, waiting for it to be over. I was glad he had called them over, but I couldn’t stand to sit out there and hear him tell them he was dying. It had been hard enough for me to hear the news in the first place. I couldn’t imagine how they would take it.
The four of them sat out on the balcony for a long time. When they finally came back in, Kevin’s eyes were red-rimmed, and AJ’s were hidden behind a pair of sunglasses, even though it was dark outside. Only Howie seemed to have held it together, and he stopped to thank me for the dinner I’d made before the three of them left.
Nick hadn’t come back inside with them, and I waited a few minutes to see if he would, thinking maybe he just needed the time alone to collect himself. When he didn’t come in, I grabbed a couple of cold beers from the fridge and walked out onto the balcony. Nick was sitting in a deck chair, staring out at the dark ocean. “Thanks,” he said, when I placed one of the bottles in his hand. As he took a swig, I remembered the deal I’d made with him the previous summer, that I wouldn’t tell the guys he was sick as long as he laid off the alcohol and caffeine. But it didn’t matter now. Booze wasn’t going to kill him, not when he was dying of cancer already.
I sat down next to him and took a sip from my own bottle. “How did it go?”
He shrugged. “’Bout like you’d expect. AJ didn’t take it well. Howie was in denial. Kevin got on my ass about getting a second opinion-”
“-Which we still could,” I interjected, still hoping he’d reconsider.
Nick shook his head and said simultaneously, “-but they came around. They’re on my side.”
I smiled tightly, the muscles around my mouth straining to do so. “Sure they are. And what about Brian? Are you going to call him, or…?”
“Kev’s going to. I… I know I probably should, but he offered, and…” Nick put a hand on his forehead and dragged it slowly down his face, rubbing at his eyes. “…I just don’t know how many more times I can do this. Hearing it myself was bad enough. But telling everyone else?”
“I understand,” I said quickly, because hadn’t I thought the same thing? “I think it’s fine. Brian will understand. Maybe it’s better he hears it from Kevin. Then he can react however he’s going to react without worrying about upsetting you.”
Nick let out a humorless laugh and took another swig of his beer. “Funny thing is, he’ll probably take it better than any of them.”
I frowned at that. “Nick, he’s your best friend…”
“No, I know. I don’t mean ‘cause he cares about me any less. It’s just, he’s so… religious, you know? I just think that might make it easier for him. To him, I won’t really be ‘gone’ gone. I’ll just have… gone on. Gone up, I guess. If I’m lucky.”
I understood, then, what he was getting at. I decided not to tell him that believing in Heaven hadn’t made my mother’s death any easier for me to accept. The reality was that losing Nick was going to be just as hard on Brian as it would be on the other guys, or on anyone, myself included, who loved him the way we did.
But it was time we all started facing that reality.
“What’s it gonna be like?”
His question caught me by surprise, as it cut through the silence. “What do you mean?” I asked. “Dying?”
“Yeah… not, like, the actual moment, but leading up to it. What’s gonna happen to me?”
We had left Dr. Subramanian’s office that night without her explaining all the gory details to him, and I had a feeling he wouldn’t want to go back. But he needed to know what to expect in the coming months, and I supposed it was up to me to tell him.
I set down my drink and took a deep breath, holding it in my lungs as I gathered my thoughts. “Well… you’ll probably be in more pain, the longer the cancer cells circulate in your spinal fluid, because they’ll start affecting the nerves. You’ll get headaches… and pain in your neck and back… but that’s why Dr. Subramanien prescribed the painkiller, so you can control it, and if that’s not strong enough, you can get something stronger.” I paused, taking another breath. “You might lose some sensation in parts of your body, depending on what nerves are affected. Your muscles will feel weaker… and you won’t have as much control over your body.”
“So I’ll be paralyzed?” he asked, in that some tone of disgust he’d used in Dr. Subramanian’s office. He pushed what was left of his beer aside, too.
I swallowed hard and tried to summon the strength I needed to answer. “Possibly… at some point. It might be something that comes and goes at first. You could lose feeling on one side of your body, like someone who’s had a stroke… or lose the use of your legs, like a paraplegic. You’ll probably have good days and bad… but as it progresses, you’ll lose the ability to walk… and to control other… functions…”
I trailed off, because even without looking at him, I could sense how much I must be horrifying him, embarrassing him. In the dark, I could almost pretend I was talking to another patient of mine, some poor elderly stroke victim being shipped off to a nursing home, perhaps. I could pretend, as long as I didn’t look at him, as long as I blocked his face and name from my mind and forced myself to forget it was him.
It didn’t really work, though. Try as I might to forget, I knew this wasn’t just some old guy at the clinic. This was Nick, my Nick, who was too young to have to hear this information, to have to deal with these problems… but had to, because they were his reality, an almost certain part of his immediate future. He had to know what he was facing; I couldn’t let him walk this road blind and alone.
“So what then? What happens when I can’t get out of bed anymore, when I can’t even go to the fucking bathroom on my own or… Christ,” he groaned, burying his face in his hands. “I might as well just put a fucking bullet in my brain, while I still can.”
“Don’t say that!” I said sharply. “That’s why we’re having this conversation, so we can figure it out. You have some decisions to make. When… when my mom was dying, she went into a hospice. I think she and my dad thought it’d be easier on me than having our house start looking like a hospital. But home care would probably be a better option for you. Money’s not an issue; you could hire a full-time nurse to be here…”
“What about you?” he blurted.
“I… Well, of course I’ll be here, too, if you want me to.”
“It’s not like I want anyone else.”
There was a pause, while I considered what he meant by that. Did he want me to be with him because I was a nurse, who had taken care of him before, or did he want me because I was his girlfriend? Then I asked myself, Does it matter?
Nurse, friend, girlfriend… When it came to our relationship, those titles had never been clearly defined. Always, the lines had been blurred. Why should it be any different now? I’d been acting like a wife to him for the last nine months – living with him, sleeping with him, cooking, cleaning, and caring for him – and if he were my husband, I would be there to take care of him without hesitation. So what if we weren’t committed to each other that way? No matter how he saw me, I was in love with him, and I knew I could never turn my back on him, unless he forced me to walk away.
“Then I’ll be here,” I repeated, offering him a watery smile.
“I love you, Cary,” he murmured in reply, and the words stabbed at my heart. They were the words I’d been waiting and hoping to hear for months, yet I couldn’t even be happy to hear him say them.
Why didn’t you say that a month ago, when I said it to you? I thought. Why did you wait until now, when you’re dying, when we only have a little time left?
And, though I hated myself for doubting him, I couldn’t help but wonder what it was he really felt: love… or gratitude? Were these the honest words of a man who was really in love and meant every one of them, or were they the desperate words of a man who was afraid of dying alone?
I couldn’t blame him for being afraid, though, or for wanting a familiar face to watch over him. I had been a stranger when I’d first come into his life, but he had opened his home and his heart to me. It could have backfired on him; a different stranger might have tried to take advantage of his vulnerability and exploited him. But I didn’t. He’d trusted me to take care of him, to keep his secret, and I had. He knew he could count on me, he was comfortable with me, and I could understand why he wouldn’t want to put his trust in someone else at this stage.
Really, there was no point. I had the background to know what he needed and the skills to take care of him. The only thing I questioned was, did I have the strength? Could I really shoulder the double burden of watching the man I loved deteriorate, while managing the symptoms of his decline?
But then, did I really have much of a choice?
“I love you, too, Nick.”
My heart had already made up my mind for me.
***
