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Chapter Twenty-Nine


Nick

Since I’d found out about the tumor, I’d talked to a member of my family only three times. That member was Aaron and two out of the three times he’d been asking me for large sums of money. The third time, he’d cussed me out and told me to fuck myself because I had refused to give him yet another massive amount of money. I’d tried calling my mother the night I found out about it and had been informed by her current boyfriend-slash-husband-slash-whatever-the-hell-they-were that she was unavailable, which meant she was standing there next to him, refusing to speak to me.

“The odds of any of them answering, even if I do call ‘em, is like zippo,” I said. Jaymie was holding up my cell phone, waiting for me to take it. I was refusing. I didn’t want to call them. It served them right if I died without giving them a chance to say goodbye. Although, I thought bitterly, fat lotta good that lesson did them when Leslie died.

They were still assholes.

“They don’t even deserve to know,” I said, folding my arms over my chest.

“It isn’t for them that you’re telling them,” Jaymie argued, “It’s for you.”

“How is it for me?” I demanded. “I don’t want to tell them, so obviously it’s not for me.”

“Because,” she answered. But she didn’t seem to have an answer other than because. She stared at me, “Nick.”

I took a deep breath, “They’re really not going to care. Not sincerely. And -- and besides, what’re they gonna do, even if they do care, or pretend to care? Get on a plane and fly here and what? Sit in the waiting room and play Boggle with you?” I raised my eyebrows, “You know what kinda hell they’d put you through if they came out? They’d judge the shit out of you. And my mother’s theatrics? She’ll call every fucking tabloid from here to Japan and back with the exclusive.”

The words burned in my throat as I said them.

“Whatever makes the extra buck,” I finished.

Jaymie steeled herself, her eyes closed, “I know she’s evil. And I know how hard it’d be for me to call my father, or Pilates, if it was me, but…” She opened her eyes and squeezed my hand. “Nick, at least call your siblings.”

I stared up at her.

“At least call them because you know the hell it is to lose one of them, and how much you have to say that you never… realized.”

I took a deep breath. I couldn’t argue that. There were a lot of things that I wanted to tell Leslie, things I never would get the chance to say now. And I could see it in her eyes that there was stuff that she wanted to tell Daniel that she’d never get to say, either. I pictured that haunted expression in Aaron, Angel and BJ’s eyes and it made my stomach twist.

“Okay.” I said.

Jaymie looked surprised, and handed me the phone.

“I’m gonna regret this,” I muttered, pulling up my contacts menu on the screen.

“Don’t go into it expecting the negative,” Jaymie said. “They’re gonna care, Nick. If they don’t, then they’re less than human.”

I raised my eyebrow. “Like I said. You’re overestimating the character of my family.”

“It’s called optimism,” Jaymie said, “And if you had more of it, then maybe you wouldn’t be laying here right now.” Her voice was pointed.

I frowned and stared at the phone, at Aaron’s info staring back up at me. “It’s hard to stay positive when you have a cancer cell taking over your brain,” I said hotly.

Jaymie closed her eyes in frustration, counted to ten (I could tell ‘cos her lips moved around the words), and said, “I know, Nick. I’m sorry.”

Cancer wins fights, I thought. There’s a silver lining to this shit after all. I wondered what other perks there might be in this for someone of my age.

We both were silent. Jaymie took a deep breath. “Well. Here. I’ll leave you to it then.” She put the cell phone down on my chest. “I’m gonna go for a walk so you can talk to them in privacy.” She turned and started toward the door.

“Wait a sec, I thought -- but I -- you said -- I thought I didn’t have to call?” I stammered.

“Of course you have to call,” Jaymie answered.

“But…”

“Nick. Call them.” And with that, she stepped out of the room and brought the door to a semi-close.

So much for silver linings.

I sat there in rebellious, stubborn opposition to the idea of calling any members of my family for several long minutes. Jaymie had left, she’d never know the difference if I didn’t bother. I stared at the whiteboard across the room where the nurse had written her name and the doctor’s name and my current vital records in big loopy marker writing. They hadn’t cared when it was cardiomyopathy. They hadn’t called when it was all over the news that I’d had a heart attack on stage. I didn’t get so much as a text message from them over that. Unless they wanted money or to get some free publicity from being near me or selling off stories about me to the tabloids, then they didn’t bother with me.

Well fuck them, it’d serve them right if I did die and they didn’t get to talk to me one last time. They’d have terrible memories of me and the way they’d treated me and that was what they deserved.

I sighed and rubbed my forehead.

“Bitter ain’t your color,” I muttered to myself, realizing what an asshole I sounded like. I closed my eyes. Maybe Jaymie was right. Maybe it was kind of for me if I called them. At least I’d be able to rest knowing that I’d tried. Whether they stepped up and came to see me and acted like the family they claimed to be or not, that was their prerogative. But at the end of everything, no matter how it turned out with them, I’d still tried and I’d be able to die knowing that I’d at least done everything I could.

So… I started with BJ.





Jaymie


I wandered through the hallway of the hospital, trying not to smell it. I hated the ammonia-soaked sick smell that permeated the hospital. It reminded me of every horrible memory. I had no good memories from hospitals, no births or miracles or anything of that sort. Just death. Daniel had died in this hospital, too, I thought as I walked. In fact, he’d died on this very floor, in the ICU… and as I thought it, I realized that’s where my walk had brought me, like my subconscious had delivered me outside the very door I was thinking of as I thought of it.

I paused outside the door, so innocuous from this side, so uncommanding of fear. Yet it scared the hell out of me to imagine ever having to walk through it, through the maze of hallways and rooms that made up the ICU and my stomach turned and I quickly headed back to the ward Nick was in.

Nick will not need the ICU, I told myself. He’ll go from here to the OR to recovery and then back here. He will be fine. There will be no complications. He will be fine.

Back in Nick’s ward, I walked by his room and I could hear his voice inside. He’d really called, I thought with relief. I did a lap around the center nurse’s station, unsure what else to do with myself until he’d had enough time to call all three of the remaining Carter siblings. Maybe he’d have good luck with them and end up calling his parents, too, I thought hopefully. I just prayed they were kind to him. He didn’t deserve anything less than kindness.

I was on my third lap when I nearly walked into a nurse, just coming out of Nick’s room, pulling a blood pressure monitor and bringing the door to the near-close behind her as I’d done. “Sorry,” I said. I paused, “Was he still on the phone?”

“He was,” the nurse replied. She stared at me for a moment then asked, “Are you the Jaymie he was asking for?”

I nodded.

She was young, with perfectly white tennis shoes. She was an LNA, not an RN, I noticed by the nametag on her chest. Her name was Brenda. She smiled shakily. “I hope everything turns out okay for you,” she said, and she started to pull the monitor away.

“I’m fine, it’s Nick I’m worried about,” I said with a shrug. “He didn’t want to get treatment for this at all. I don’t understand it because he’s always been such a fighter, especially when it comes to medical stuff. You know he was diagnosed with cardiomyopathy a few years ago and he worked the hell out of himself until he’d practically healed himself of it?” I said, “That’s the Nick I know. Balls-to-the-wall, kick the shit out of anything that stands in your way… But this time, it’s like he gave up before he even tried. He didn’t tell anyone about this. With the cardiomyopathy, he told the world the second he found out practically.”

Brenda nodded, “It’s a side effect of the tumor.”

I blinked in surprise, “Come again?”

“Personality changes,” Brenda explained, “It’s a side effect. Emotions become super strong. The area that the tumor is in controls a lot of the emotion-based decision making he’s been doing. So it doesn’t really surprise me that he’s taking a different attitude toward the treatment cycle with this. He feels fear - super fear, magnified by the tumor. There’s probably a lot of things about his personality that’s changed since the tumor started growing. Changes in diet preferences. Feelings that he didn’t have before.”

My heart rate picked up a little bit.

“Feelings? Like what feelings?”

Brenda shrugged, “I don’t know, it’s different for every patient. Some of them get angrier, they tend to yell at people and get more aggressive. You’ll see them get road rage when they never used to, or become impatient. Some of them cry a lot. Big tough guys that don’t cry hardly ever will sob like a baby over a TV commercial if it catches them right.” She chuckled, “And good God I can’t even tell you how many of them have come in here talking on and on about the love of their life, men and women both. I’ve had patients fall in love with me while they’ve been undergoing treatment. But it’s not because they really feel any of that stuff, or that they would really feel it normally, it’s because the tumor’s pinching that part of their brain, manipulating it, making them feel that way. It’s just the tumor talking.” She squeezed her fingers together to indicate the pressure being made on the brain. “But no worries, once we get in there and cut out the tumor…” she separated her fingers, “They usually revert back to their old selves again.”

The blood in my veins was cold.

Brenda smiled, “So soon, you’ll have your old Nick back.”

I nodded.

“Okay, I’ve got to finish this round,” she said.

“Okay,” I said.

“I’ll come back to check on y’all soon.” She smiled again and pulled the cart away.

I looked at Nick’s door, my stomach turning, my mind reeling, trying to piece together when things had started being different. It’d been when he’d gotten home from the tour, after the heart attack. From that point onward, he’d gotten progressively more clingy, more open, more loving. Our relationship had been near to the same when he’d left for the tour, and when he came back things changed quickly. They’d escalated from the point of us being strictly friends with benefits to him saying that he loved me sitting on the end of that bed in Germany.

I shook my head and leaned against the wall as my knees got a little weak.

”It’s just the tumor talking,” Brenda’s voice echoed in my head. ”You’ll have your old Nick back.”

“Oh Jesus,” I whispered. I felt like I couldn’t get enough air in my lungs and I slid down the wall until I was crouching on the floor. I balanced myself with my palm on the tile. Could it really be that I’d allowed myself to fall for him, allowed myself to believe that he could fall for me back, when it’d been just the tumor talking? When he had the surgery, would he come back out the bachelor that he’d always been? I was shaking, I could feel my palm trembling against the tile floor.

It’s not like that, my heart was begging my brain, Nick’s not like that. He meant it when he said he loves you. He meant it. He did.

But it’s just the tumor talking, my brain replied. He meant it because the tumor was talking for him. Like being possessed. He can’t control it. The tumor made him feel things that he doesn’t really feel.

No, my heart cried out.

I felt tears rushing my face. “Oh God,” I whispered and I got up and rushed to the ladies room down the hallway, across from the elevator. I turned on the faucet and splashed water into my face, washing away the tears, trying to collect myself.

This shouldn’t be surprising. This shouldn’t even be happening. You should’ve known there was something like this coming from the very start, I thought. How could you ever believe that he loved you? After all these years? Of course he doesn’t love you. How could he love you? It literally takes a tumor in the brain for him to even think about loving you.