While Cary was home in Illinois, I was back in my own hometown of Tampa, Florida, celebrating Easter with the Carter clan.
I hadn’t spent a holiday with my family in so long, it was ironic that Easter would be the last one, seeing as how none of us were religious. But we did all the traditional stuff, anyway, mostly to take our minds off the real reason we were together. We dyed eggs. My mom cooked a big ham dinner. We even went to church.
At first the whole thing felt like an act, like we were just playing pretend, dressing up to go to church, but once we were sitting in the sanctuary, and I was listening to the sermon, I started really thinking about Jesus. I thought he’d been around the same age I was when he got crucified. Had he felt the same way I did, knowing he was going to die? At least he had something to look forward to, being resurrected and rising into Heaven and all of that. I didn’t really believe in all that stuff, but sitting in a pew, surrounded by people who did, made it easier to imagine there was a God and a Heaven, or somewhere for me to go once I died, so I wouldn’t just be… gone.
After church, we went back to my mom’s house for Easter dinner, which went off without a hitch, none of the usual dysfunctional drama. It was weird to see everyone on their best behavior, getting along. Mom didn’t ask anyone for money, although I wondered if the nice family dinner was her way of making sure I remembered her in my will. BJ stayed relatively sober. Leslie didn’t scream at anyone. Aaron kept his shirt on. And no one threw food. House of Carters would have been a lot different show if we’d come together because I was dying. “If E! could see us now,” I joked during dinner, earning a round of weak laughter.
I guess it was all an act.
Later, while the others were cleaning up, Leslie snuck off to feed baby Alyssa, and after awhile, I followed her. I found her alone in one of the bedrooms with Alyssa on her shoulder, thumping her back. “Almost done,” Leslie said, flashing me a smile. “Just waiting on a burp.”
I smiled back. “You’re gonna have to teach her how to burp on command, like Uncle Nick.”
Leslie sighed, turning away from me. “I wish you’d be around to teach her yourself,” she said, facing the wall. I heard her sniff and knew the waterworks were starting up again. Of them all, Leslie had cried the most when I’d told them my prognosis, which surprised me, since we’d never been close. I figured it was just the hormones making her emotional, but then, she always had been the family drama queen.
“Aww, c’mon, don’t do that, Les,” I begged her. “You know I wish I could, too, but let’s not go there right now.”
“I’m sorry,” Leslie sobbed, turning back around to face me. Tears were streaming down her face. “But why can’t they do something? Why can’t they give you my stem cells or bone marrow or whatever I was a match for? I can donate now!”
It was my turn to sigh. We had been through this before. I’d thought everyone was past the denial. They’d all had suggestions at first: Mom wanted me to see doctors in other countries where they had experimental drugs that hadn’t been approved in the States yet, while BJ kept going on about holistic therapy and hippie crap like that. Angel thought I should have tried the chemo and radiation, and Aaron just wanted to know when I was going to get a prescription for medical marijuana. And now Leslie was bringing up the transplant thing again.
“‘Cause that’s not what I want, Leslie,” I said firmly. “You have no idea what I went through with the first transplant. It was torture. I lost all my hair; I lost a ton of weight; I was sick to my stomach, throwing up; I almost died from an infection! It wasn’t worth it, a whole month in the hospital, feeling like shit, just to buy me a few more months of feeling semi-normal. I’m not going through that again. I’m not gonna spend the time I have left lying in a hospital bed, hooked up to tubes that are pumping me full of poison.”
Leslie sniffled again, holding Alyssa with one hand, wiping her tears with the other. “I’m sorry I wasn’t there for you.”
“Don’t apologize. You were in Canada; you were pregnant. You had your own life to worry about. I wouldn’t have wanted you to see me like that anyway.”
She nodded, but the tears kept on pouring out. “I just… I just wish we’d been closer…”
I’d been getting that a lot the last few days. It made me feel guilty, because it was just as much my fault we weren’t closer as any of theirs. I was the one who had distanced myself from the rest of them in the first place. “Hey… no regrets,” I said softly, reaching out to put my arm around her. “I’m glad we’re spending time together now. I’m glad I got to meet my niece.”
Leslie managed a smile back. “You wanna hold her?” she asked, offering me the baby.
“Sure…” I took Alyssa from her and sat down in the chair in the corner of the room, where she’d been breastfeeding. Now that she was full, Alyssa was getting sleepy. She snuggled into my chest as I cradled her in my arms, her little mouth falling open while her eyes drooped shut. I smiled down at her. “How’d you make such a cute kid?” I teased.
Leslie laughed and wiped her eyes again. “I dunno… must be Mike’s genes.”
She was a mess, mascara running everywhere. “Go wash your face,” I told her. “I’ll watch her for awhile. I promise I won’t drop her.”
Laughing again, Leslie nodded and hurried out of the room, leaving me alone with Alyssa. I wasn’t used to being around babies, especially ones that small. Somehow, I couldn’t remember Baylee or James or Mason ever being so small. I wished I would be around to watch her grow up, but if all those people in church were right, and there was a Heaven, maybe I could watch from there.
It was hard leaving Florida and my family the next day. I knew it might be the last time I saw them all together like that. The guys and I were planning a show in Orlando as part of our final tour that summer, but there were no guarantees my siblings would all be able to make it. There were no guarantees I would, either. But I hugged them all and said “See you soon” anyway, because I couldn’t bring myself to say “goodbye.”
Angel flew back to LA with me. I slept most of the flight. When we got off the plane, I was stiff and sore from sitting still so long. My legs tingled, and my back ached. I hobbled like an old man into my condo, while Angel dragged my luggage. “Honey, I’m home!” I called, but the condo was empty; Cary wasn’t back yet. Her flight was supposed to be getting in around the same time as mine, so Angel waited with me until she came home.
I could hear Hambelina oinking out in the hall before I heard the front door open. When Cary came in, carrying her little pig in its pet taxi, I called, “Hey, babe! Welcome back!” A part of me was relieved that, even after our conversation a couple of weeks ago, she really had come back.
Cary put on a smile, but I could tell right away that it was forced. “Hi!” she said, almost too brightly. “You beat me home, huh?”
“Only by half an hour or so. How was your trip?”
“Oh… eventful.” She flashed another tight smile that told me she had more to tell when Angel was gone. “How was yours?”
“I’ll let Nick tell you all about it,” said Angel, taking her cue to leave. She got up from the couch, sweeping her long curtain of hair over her shoulder, and leaned down to give me a quick hug before she headed out.
Once she was gone, I looked at Cary and said, “So… ‘eventful,’ huh? More eventful than a holiday with the Carters?”
She laughed. “I take it yours was ‘eventful,’ too, then?”
“Actually, no… not really. It wasn’t bad. It was actually pretty normal – which isn’t normal for us. Go figure – when most families would be falling apart, the Carters come together.”
Cary smiled, a real smile this time. “That’s really good to hear. I’m glad it went well.”
“Yeah, me too. So what happened in Illinois?”
Cary sighed. “Lemme go drop my stuff off and change my clothes, and then I’ll tell you.”
That didn’t sound good. I wondered if something was going on with her dad or her friend Jessica, who I knew was having a baby soon. It never occurred to me that something might be wrong with her.
I waited while she took her luggage back to the spare bedroom, where she kept her clothes, and returned dressed more comfortably. She dropped down onto the couch beside me and turned to face me, tucking one leg underneath her. “So,” she said, sighing again. “I scheduled a doctor’s appointment while I was home, just a yearly exam with my gynecologist. But she found a mass… on my left ovary…”
My heart sunk into my stomach, and I felt a sick sense of déjà vu as I remembered hearing similar words. “The x-ray shows a mass in your chest.” I stared at Cary, frowning, because this couldn’t possibly be happening to her, after everything she’d gone through with me and her mom. “She had cancer. Ovarian cancer,” I remembered Cary telling me. “She died when I was nine.”
“Is it cancer?” I asked, almost afraid to hear the answer, afraid for her this time.
Cary shrugged. “I don’t know yet. She said it’s probably not. I think it probably is.” She swallowed. “She tested my blood for a protein called CA-125, which is a tumor marker found in ovarian cancer. My level was high. Elevated CA-125, plus an obvious mass… well, I can put two and two together. The fact that my mom died of the same thing just makes it more obvious.”
I was amazed at how calmly she spoke, but I understood, too. She’d had a few days to process this. She’d probably already told other people, her father for sure. She didn’t want to get upset in front of me. But I could tell how much this had rattled her. Her face was totally white, paler than usual, and I could see the fear in her eyes.
I wanted to say something to reassure her that it couldn’t be cancer, but how could I? I had been there. I knew it could happen to her, because it had happened to me. So all I said was, “How will you find out for sure? A biopsy?” That was what they had done for me, I remembered, among all the other tests.
She nodded. “It’s a little more complicated than that. I have to have an exploratory laparotomy – surgery, where they open me up and check everything. Both ovaries, my fallopian tubes, uterus, abdominal wall, everything, to see if it’s spread. They’ll take out the ovary with the mass at the same time so they can biopsy it, and if it’s cancer and it’s spread other places, they’ll be able to get as much of it as they can.”
I felt sick again at the thought of a surgeon ripping her open and poking around at her insides, and my disgust must have shown on my face, because she added, “I know; it sounds extreme, right? But it’s the only way to be sure. They don’t want to miss anything, and if it turns out to be cancer, I’d rather they just take care of it right then and there.”
“Yeah… true…” I nodded. “So when is this happening?”
“I don’t know yet.” She swallowed again. “It’s major surgery. The recovery takes at least six weeks. I don’t wanna be laid up for six weeks, when you…” She stopped herself suddenly, but I knew what she’d meant to say.
“Don’t you worry about me,” I said fiercely, taking her by the shoulders and looking her right in the eyes. “Don’t delay this ‘cause of me. You know as well as I do this isn’t something to mess around with. I don’t want you to get stuck dealing with the same shit I am. If you need to leave, I’ll understand. You need to take care of you first. I can find someone else to take care of me.”
She smiled sadly. “You sound like my dad.”
“Well, good. Your dad’s a smart guy.”
“He didn’t want me to come back.”
I shifted my weight, feeling guilty that she had anyway. “Maybe you shouldn’t have.”
“I wanted to. I want to have the surgery here. I figure, if the guys and their wives are able to help out, stay with you while I’m in the hospital and all of that, it’ll be okay. I’ll only be in the hospital a few days, and I should be back on my feet in a week or so. We’ll get through it together. I want to stay with you.”
I shook my head. It was crazy, how much she cared about me. She was being ridiculous. But again, I didn’t push her away. I didn’t tell her to go home and have the surgery there, where her dad could take care of her. I just said, “I don’t know why, but okay. You’re right; we’ll make it work. The guys can hang out with me, and when you get out of the hospital, I’ll take care of you. It’ll be my turn to make the meals and change the bed and stuff.”
I grinned at her, and she managed a smile back. “That’s a scary thought.”
What scared me was the possibility that I might not be in any shape to take care of her, the way she had me. It had been over a month since I’d gotten my death notice. Dr. Submarine had said I might live six months, but that was just the average. Either way, my time was running out. “So when do you think this will happen?” I asked, trying to keep my tone casual.
“Ideally, as soon as possible, but… there’s something else I need to think about first.” Her voice got shaky, and for the first time, tears sprung into her eyes. She sniffed and took a swipe at them with her fingers. “If I go in, and they find cancer, they’re gonna wanna take out everything. I won’t be able to have children.”
As the first tear trickled out of her eye, I understood. Cary, who was so nurturing, so made to be a mother, was worried she was going to lose that ability. I couldn’t relate exactly, but I sympathized with her, because I’d been thinking about kids a lot lately. I leaned forward and wrapped my arms around her, pulling her close to me so that she could cry into my chest. “I’m sorry,” I whispered, smoothing her hair, rubbing her shoulder. “Isn’t there any way they can spare something?”
“It just depends on how bad it is,” she said, her voice muffled by my t-shirt. “I have to give my consent ahead of time; they won’t take anything out unless I say they can, but if it’s spread…”
“But hopefully it hasn’t.”
“Hopefully not. But realistically, most cases of ovarian cancer aren’t diagnosed until the later stages. They call it ‘the silent killer’ because it usually doesn’t cause symptoms until then.”
Like my cancer, I thought, remembering Dr. Submarine telling me it was common for my disease to be advanced when it was diagnosed. But something else Cary had said struck me, and I took her by the shoulders again and held her up, forcing her to look at me. “You haven’t been having symptoms from this, have you?” I demanded, stricken by the possibility that she had been sick and hiding it from me so I wouldn’t have one more thing on my mind to worry about.
She shook her head quickly. “No… honestly, no, I haven’t. I feel fine, totally normal. This was a huge shock to me, too.”
“Oh...” I let out a breath. “Good. I mean, not good, but… you know.”
She smiled through her tears. “I know.”
“So… what are you going to do?”
“I want to freeze some eggs… that way, if they end up having to take out both ovaries, I might still be able to have kids of my own in the future.”
I nodded. Again, I thought back to my own diagnosis, when Dr. Submarine had suggested freezing my sperm, in case the chemo made me infertile. I didn’t know if it had or not; Cary and I still used condoms out of habit. It had only been about a year since I’d gone to the sperm bank, but the experience felt like a lifetime ago. Back then, I’d been in a state of shock and devastation over finding out I had cancer, but at least I’d still had hope of a recovery, hope of a future. That hope was gone now. They’d probably just pitch my poor, frozen little swimmers once I was gone, too.
To Cary, I said, “That’s a good idea. You should do that.”
“Mm-hm. The thing is, there’s a much higher success rate with eggs that are fertilized before they’re frozen. Embryos. So I-”
I smirked. “You need some sperm. Some man seed.”
She blushed. I loved that I could still make her do that. “Well… yeah.”
In all honesty, I don’t think she was asking me. I might have mentioned the sperm bank once; she might have remembered, but maybe not. Either way, I don’t think she would have gone so far as to actually ask. But once the thought occurred to me, it seemed obvious. The natural solution to the problem. Finally, there was something I could do to help her out, something I could give her in return for all that she’d sacrificed for me.
“You can have mine.”
Her eyes widened in between blinks.
“Yeah, I mean, I’ve got some frozen – you know, from last year, before I started chemo.” I shrugged. “They can use that, right?”
“Well, yeah, but… are you sure?”
“Sure, why not?” The more I thought about it, the more sure I was. “It’s not like I’m gonna need it. But you need some, and I got some, and hey, it might be nice to know who your baby daddy is if you ever decide to make some babies with it. And if you don’t, no big deal, but if you did, it’d be kinda cool to know there’d be some little rugrats running around with my DNA, you know?”
A smile spread slowly across her face, and her eyes filled with fresh tears. She nodded and said, “I think that’d be cool, too.”
I grinned at her. “Are you saying you wanna have my babies?”
She giggled, blushing even more. “If that’s what you want.”
“Oh, no. This ain’t about what I want. This is about what you want. Do you want to have my babies, Cary? If so, you better say the words. Say it,” I goaded her.
She was laughing and crying at the same time, her face bright red and her eyes shining. “Alright, fine! Nick, I wanna have your babies!”
“Yes!” I pumped my fist in the air, laughing at her. I had heard girls tell me that before, totally serious, but it meant a lot more coming from Cary. All jokes aside, it meant a lot because I knew that she really loved me, and I knew that if there was anyone I trusted to bring a child of mine into the world without me, it would be her.
Taking her in my arms again, I said, “I haven’t seen you in, like, five days. Why don’t we try to take our minds off all this for awhile, and practice making babies the old-fashioned way, huh?”
She laughed. “I can’t let you knock me up now, Nick; that would just make everything even more complicated.”
“Alright, alright, no worries; I got condoms. Will you please let me fuck your brains out, while I still can?”
“Gosh, you’re such a charmer, Nick. How could I resist such a romantic offer?”
I grinned. “You know I love it when you get sarcastic.”
She smirked. “And you know I love it when you get sexual.”
“Oh yeah?” I cocked my brow and leaned closer to her, until we were nose to nose. “Am I sexual?”
“Yeah…” She drew out the word, then dissolved into giggles.
“If I’m everything you need, you better rock my body now.” Grinning, I stood up, so that she slid off me onto the couch. If I were stronger, I would have swept her off her feet and carried her back to the bedroom, but under the circumstances, it was better just to saunter off there myself and count on her to follow me.
Sure enough… “Only if you fuck my brains out and make me forget everything I just told you,” she replied, scrambling after me.
“Hey, my offer stands,” I called over my shoulder and grinned to myself, thinking, Yeah… I still got it.
I wasn’t gone yet.
***
