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Chapter Fourteen


Jaymie

He was sitting up and drinking a bottle of water by the time the ambulance got to the hospital entrance. I sat in the corner of the vehicle, a ball of nerves weighing heavily on my stomach, watching the life return to his face gradually, color coming back into his face, which had been so pale in the moonlight when I’d entered his room twenty minutes before. But as much as I wanted to feel better, I was relieved in the immediate sense only. I mean, if this had happened once, then surely it could happen again. At any given moment. I stared at him, trying to figure out what could've caused him to have a seizure like that.

The EMTs pushed the doors of the ambulance open and rolled his gurney forward, lowering him out. He looked at me with pleading eyes, and I knew that look was his way of asking me to forgive him. And I did. I really did. I climbed out after him as they rolled the bed inside. I trotted to keep up through the maze of the trauma ward.

"Nick, hello. My name is Dr. Abdi. Do you have a history of seizures?" a doctor with a bushel of afro-like hair asked, looking at the clipboard the EMTs had provided..

"No," Nick answered.

"Anything in the family? Epilepsy, anything?" the doctor asked, pumping a blood pressure cuff, which he’d slipped onto Nick’s arm. I followed a couple paces behind as the EMTs guided the gurney into a corner and pulled a curtain around the bed to create a makeshift room. "Any drugs?" The doctor raised his eyes pointedly.

"Not recently," Nick answered. He glanced at me, standing in the corner, then took a deep breath, "I uh, I have a -” He paused. Like he didn’t wanna say it, whatever it was. Then he closed his eyes for a moment. “I have a grade three, um, anaplastic astrocycoma," he said. He looked away from me quickly when he opened his eyes again, focused on the end of the clipboard in the doctor's hands. "In my um, my brain." He looked up at the doctor. "A tumor."

I felt gutted.

I'm sure my jaw dropped. The EMTs gathered their stuff and left. I couldn't hear anything except the ringing in my ears, although I could see the doctor's mouth moving, Nick shaking his head, actively avoiding eye contact with me. I couldn't tear my eyes off of him.

Brain tumor. I remembered seeing that on the Google search results list when I'd searched the symptoms Nick was displaying the other day. But it had seemed so fucking ridiculous of a thought that I hadn't even paused to consider it. No way could Nick Carter have a fucking brain tumor. He was Nick Carter, he was above shit like that, wasn’t he?

Evidently not.

Suddenly the contents of my stomach wanted out. My skin ran clammy and I got dizzy and I spun out of the room, rushing down the hallway to the women's restroom we'd passed on the way in. If he called my name, I didn’t hear it. I slammed through the door and into a stall and only just made it to the bowl. My hands shook as I clutched the seat to keep myself from falling down. When I'd finished, I dropped to the floor and sat with my back against the tiled wall, letting my cheek rest on the ceramic, the coolness feeling sooo good on the heat of my cheeks. I closed my eyes, tears sneaking across my face.

I don’t know how long I stayed in there, hiding, hugging my knees and crying against the cold tile. Long enough that the motion-triggered lights turned off. I probably would’ve stayed even longer if Nick hadn’t texted me.

I’m sorry

I stared at the screen. Somehow, I felt guilty that he was apologizing, like I shouldn’t have run away from the room like that. I swallowed and swiped my arm across my eyes to blot away the tears.

why didnt you tell me? I texted back after a couple moments of weighing out how to respond to him.

The pause was equally long in him coming up with a response. And when it came through, I knew he’d chosen his words carefully.

it was nothing personal




Nick

When the curtain moved at the edge of my little corner of the ER, I looked up. Jaymie slipped in, her hair in a messy ponytail, eyes blurry. She tucked the curtains closed behind her, standing there, staring at me, hands behind her back. “Hey,” I said.

She took a deep breath, “Hey.”

I swallowed and glanced down at my phone, my text the last one on the screen in our conversation. I put the phone on the table by my elbow. “I’m sorry,” I said.

Jaymie’s lips tightened and smoothed, and she looked up at the ceiling, then back at me. “New rules,” she said. She took another deep breath and stepped towards me. “One. We tell each other everything.”

I nodded.

“Two. You don’t ever fucking do this to me again.” She waved at the hospital around us.

I shook my head, “I can’t promise that.”

Jaymie reached for my hand. “You scared the mother-fucking shit out of me,” she said.

“I’m sorry,” I repeated.

“Nick… How long?” she asked.

I rubbed my nose with my freehand. I looked down at the chipped nail polish on her hand, coiled around my long, nail-bitten fingers. “...a while,” I said tentatively.

“How long is awhile?” she asked, “And don’t forget our new rule.”

I looked up at her. “Six months.”

“Jesus,” she whispered, shaking her head and looking away.

“We were on tour,” I said, trying to explain myself. “And I didn’t wanna interrupt the tour. I didn’t wanna make everything complicated.” I pulled my hand out of hers, rubbed my face. Behind my eyes, my head was aching, a dull throbbing that I’d been experiencing pretty much nonstop for like a year. “I just… I thought it could wait.”

“A brain tumor,” Jaymie said, incredulously, “You thought a brain tumor could wait until after tour?”

I shrugged.

“Jesus,” she said again. Brian would be cringing at all the time she’d broken the third commandment. “This is serious shit, Nick, you can’t just ignore it,” Jaymie said, her scolding voice coming out. “You need to get like radiation or chemo or something to fix it, so you can beat this and -- and -- and why? Why are you shaking your head?”

“Because,” I said, “Six months is why.”

Jaymie stared at me.

“I’ve made it this long without any problems.”

“You call this ‘without any problems’?” she demanded. “You having a seizure and being rushed to the hospital is ‘without any problems’?!”

“Jaymie… six months before having a problem is a long time in tumor time,” I said. “Some people don’t even get six months to live period after finding out. Because they let it get to them. They stop fighting. They stop doing. I don’t want radiation or chemo or surgery or laser whatever. Jaymie, I don’t want it. I just want to fucking live.”

She closed her eyes, like she was collecting patience or something from some unseen source. “Nick,” she said, “It’s not going to just go away spontaneously. You have to fight it, or you’ll lose by forfeit!”

“It might go, you don’t know, weirder shit has happened,” I argued.

“You need treatment!”

“After the tour.”

“You know, you always bitch about Brian and all he went through in ‘98,” Jaymie snapped, “But you’re sure quick to draw the same call.”

I shook my head, “This is not at all the same thing.”

“How?” she asked. “How is this not the same thing?”

“Because,” I said, “It just isn’t.”

“Except that it is,” she said, her voice sour.