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Chapter Twenty-Eight


Jaymie

I felt helpless. It seemed to take forever for the EMTs to get to us. Silent tears streamed down his face as he rocked forward and backward, clutching his head, and all I could do was rub his back and tell him it was gonna be okay and I couldn’t even say it with a lot of conviction because I wasn’t even sure that I believed myself. When they got there, they loaded him up onto a stretcher carefully, asking him all kinds of questions that he answered through gritted teeth. I shook as I followed after them, hoisting our carry-on luggage on my shoulders, my heart thumping so hard I could barely breathe.

At the hospital, they rushed him through the ER with me tailing them, through some double doors that prohibited me following them and the last I saw of him was him doubled over crying out because the pain had been especially sharp. I put my hand over my mouth and stood there, watching through little windows on the door until they’d turned a corner and he was gone.

“There’s a waiting area,” a nurse suggested, “Right down the hallway here.” She guided me down the hall to the little room. “Here we are.” She smiled in a half comforting, half apologetic way. “There’s a TV remote right by the chair there, sweetie, and books in this cupboard…” When I didn’t react, she reached for the remote herself and turned the TV on. She smiled, like she’d done something I should be immensely proud of her for. “Can I get you anything? Water? Juice? Coffee?”

I shook my head.

“Well the nurse’s stations just over there.” She pointed out the doors to the left.

“Thanks,” I replied.

When the door was closed I reached for the remote and turned the TV back off.

I used Nick’s phone, which I’d been handed by the paramedics on the ride to the hospital from LAX along with his wallet, and found Brian’s phone number and texted him, telling him what happened. I texted Chris, too, who was expecting us to pick up Rusty, Nacho, and Mulder. Then I leaned back in the chair and waited.

It took hours before anyone came for me in the little waiting room. And even then it was only the nurse that had sent me in there, checking to see if I’d changed my mind about the offer for water/juice/coffee. It was hours more still before a doctor came in. “Are you Jaymie?” he asked, looking up at me from a clipboard.

“Yes,” I answered, sitting up. Nick’s phone was clutched in my hand as I waited for a response from the Boys. Chris had answered almost immediately asking if I needed him to come down. I’d said no. But the Boys hadn’t answered yet. They were probably still on their various planes headed back from Germany, since they’d all taken later flights. I stared up at the doctor now, scared because of the serious look on his face.

“Let me bring you to Nick’s room,” he said.

I got up and grabbed our carry-on bags from around my feet and followed the doctor down the hallway and into an elevator. “Is he okay?” I asked.

The doctor took a deep breath, “I’m not really able to tell you anything, since you aren’t family.”

“Oh.”

He looked down at his clipboard. “He should’ve come in a long time ago,” he mumbled.

“I know,” I agreed.

The doors dinged as we reached Nick’s floor and the doctor led me through some maze-like halls until we reached a room whose door he knocked on gently as we walked through. Inside, Nick was laying in a single bed, blankets pulled up to his chest, a couple plastic-looking wires taped to his temples, machines beeping at his sides. He looked over at me as we walked in.

“Hell of a headache, huh?” I asked.

A slow smile crawled across his face. “It was a bad motherfucker,” he murmured and he held out his hand to me. I took it and he squeezed my fingers lightly, his eyes a little unfocused, lids heavy.

The doctor was standing at the foot of Nick’s bed. “As I was saying…” he said, clearing his throat.

Nick blinked up at me slowly, “I interrupted him before in the middle of talkin’ at me ‘bout all this…” He turned his head to look at the doctor again, “What’s up, Doc?” He laughed, breathy and low.

It killed me how much pain he had to be in, and yet here he was still joking around.

“Your anaplastic astrocycoma is worse than the last time we examined it,” the doctor said. He took a deep breath, “Mr. Carter, I strongly recommend surgery, followed by radiation and chemotherapy treatments.”

Worse. It was worse. My heart thumped against my innards like a bass drum. I looked at him. “Please,” I choked out the word. I felt a tear slip over my eyelids and slide across my cheek.

Nick nodded, “Okay.” He took a deep breath. “What are… what’s my… Am I gonna be okay?”

The doctor shifted his weight uncomfortably and my skin goosebumped. I closed my eyes. No good answer could come from a doctor who hesitated like that. Nick’s fingers tightened on mine. “If we’d done the treatment sooner,” the doctor said slowly, “There’s a pretty… steep… mortality rate.” He hesitated, “This is an aggressive form of tumor. The longer treatment is postponed, the harder it becomes to predict the results of the surgery…”

“Straight up, doc,” Nick said thinly. “How long?”

“Best case scenario…” the doctor paused. It was the longest pause in the world. “Eighteen months.”





Nick

In Israel, the word life is ‘n, pronounced chai, and it has a numerical value of eighteen.

In China, eighteen is a lucky number, making the eighteenth floor of office buildings the most expensive to rent or buy.

In Hindu cultures, there are eighteen chapters in the Bhagavad Gita, which is part of their holy book, the Mahabharata, which, incidentally, has eighteen books.

Eighteen is a retired number in the NFL for Emmitt Thomas, a hall of famer that coaches the Chiefs in Kansas City.

Eighteen is the number of holes on a golf course. I love golf.

And now, this just in, eighteen was the number of months I would, optimally, be breathing on this planet.

I felt like I’d been dunked in ice water. Every muscle in my body forgot how to function properly. I couldn’t even look at Jaymie. I knew if I looked at her that I’d break down and I couldn’t do that. If I did it, I’d never pull myself together. I took a deep breath, staring at the doctor. I didn’t know what to say.

It took all my strength, but finally I managed, “When do we.. do we start the treatment?” I asked, trying to let the words eighteen months wash over me, trying to act like they didn’t effect me like they really word.

Jaymie was shaking, practically vibrating, even.

The doctor stared at his clipboard for a moment. “I’d like to do the surgery today,” he said.

“Today,” I said. “Damn. Wow. That was… fast.”

“The longer we wait, the smaller your chances are.”

“Oh,” I said. My palms were sweating suddenly. “I… haven’t even told my family…” I looked at Jaymie. “I haven’t talked to my family in months,” I said, eyes filling with tears. “How do I call them and tell’em this?”

Jaymie shrugged.

I looked at the doctor. “What’s the chances of me dying during this surgery?”

“We have a 96% success rate at this hospital with this particular operation,” he said slowly. “But that’s better than the national average -- 93%.” He paused. “As bad as the surgery sounds by description, it’s an increasingly routine surgery.”

“High nineties. That’s good.” I nodded and looked to Jaymie. “I… I’ll be okay. I can tell my family… after. Later. Another day. Right?”

She hesitated. “You should probably call them.”

I looked down at my hands.

“Nick, they’re your family,” Jaymie said slowly.

I looked up at her. “You know what they’re like, though,” I said. “What if… what if they don’t care?”

Jaymie’s eyes filled with tears. “They’ll care, Nick.”

“What if they don’t?”

“They will. They have to.” Jaymie whispered.

The doctor tucked his clipboard under his arm. “I’ll come back in about thirty minutes to go over the procedure and begin prepping you,” he said. “That should give you time to… talk things over.” He ducked out of the room.

I looked at Jaymie.

“They’re gonna care, Nick,” Jaymie said thickly.

I stared at my hands. “You overestimate the character of my family.”