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Chapter Thirty


Jaymie

Nick was staring out the window when I went back to the room. His phone was on the rolling tray table, pushed away a couple feet. He had a far-off look on his face as he stared intently. It wasn’t that great of a view - basically just the wall of the adjacent part of the circular hospital building. The sun was casting a shadow on the side of the building - a cloud, maybe - and a pigeon had landed on a little outcropping to the left of Nick’s window and was pecking at something. But I don’t think any of that was what Nick was staring at. He was in his own world. And so deeply that when I walked in, he didn’t even notice.

I’d spent a horribly long amount of time in the restroom trying to psych myself into being okay. I knew I couldn’t act any differently toward Nick because it would only hurt him and confuse him if I pulled away now. For him, nothing had changed yet. For him, he was still in love with me, our feelings on hold only because he didn’t want to hurt me. But the truth was once he got the surgery, he would more than likely come to his senses and realize the last thing he wanted was to be with me, and he’d dump me, or worse he’d ask me if we could pretend the last 24-hours had never happened, ask if we could go back to being just friends with benefits again, and I wasn’t sure if I could anymore. But I had to prepare myself for the moment when he asked, when my world shattered. I stood there staring at him, at the profile of his perfect face, and my heart could hardly take it. I had to remove myself emotionally if I was going to get through this.

And I had to get through this. I had to. Not just because I really loved Nick, which I did I’d realized. And not just to give a dying man his last wish, because if he asked me to remain friends with benefits, that’s really what it would be, wouldn’t it? How do you say no to a guy who has eighteen months to live? Especially when he’s that hot? But also because I realized as I stood there staring at him that apart from him, I had no idea who I was. I’d melted myself so perfectly into his life, into his needs, into being his, that I didn’t know who Jaymie was anymore.

I had eighteen months to figure it out.

“Nick?” I said thickly. He glanced over at me, then took a deep breath and turned back to the window. “How’d it go?” I asked.

He shook his head, and I saw a tear escape his eyes when he blinked. “I don’t wanna talk about it,” he answered. His voice was low and heavy and sad, like a little kid who didn’t get what he wanted for Christmas.

My heart ached for him. “I’m sorry,” I said.

Nick shrugged. “I ain’t good enough for ‘em so even when I’m dying it’s nothin’...” he looked down at his hands as he spoke, “Who gives a shit.”

“Well fuck them,” I said boldly.

He nodded, still looking at his fingers, “Yeah.”

“Your real family cares, Nick - me and the Boys. We give a shit.”

“Yeah,” Nick said. He closed his eyes and leaned his head back against the pillows. “Maybe this all is what I deserve anyways. I was never there for them like I shouldda been. I was a horrible bother, a bad son. They deserved better. And I failed’em.” His lips were puckered into a frown. “I just… I tried so hard…” his voice cracked.

“You… are… amazing,” I told him, and I forgot all my worries and crossed the room to run my fingers over his forehead. He opened his eyes and looked up at me. “If they can’t see that then they’re dead blind.” The tears made his eyes extra blue.

“Thanks,” he said.

“I mean it,” I said. “Do not ever think you deserve the way they treat you. You don’t. You deserve to be loved and cared for and if they aren’t capable of seeing that, of treating you like you deserve, then they are the assholes for it. Not you.” I rubbed my fingers against his cheek. “You just keep on shining.”

He smiled. Just a little smile, but it was still a beautiful one.

The door opened and the doctor came in, followed by a few other doctors and two nurses, one of which was Brenda. I stepped back, letting my fingers fall from Nick’s face and his eyes darkened a little. “Hey,” he muttered as the fleet of medical personnel surrounded his bed and the doctor put up a couple scans of Nick’s brain on the wall.

I stared at those two little x-ray pictures, at something that looked like nothing more threatening than a dark rain cloud to my eyes that was changing Nick’s life entirely. It seemed like little more than a smudge on a screen. Nick looked up at the screen, then he looked at me and he held out his hand. I stared at his hand for a moment, at the wrinkles and creases and the long fingers and big knuckles and the weird way his thumb bent from so many hours playing on various game consoles… I took his hand and held it.

And we listened for the next forty minutes as the doctor described Nick’s tumor and the areas of the brain it was effecting. He branched into the passing of time, the way the tumor had grown and matured in the last several months since Nick’s initial diagnosis and the concerns that rose. He spoke about treatment options, including the operation and the radiation and follow-up chemotherapy and the long term side effects that could occur as a result of the treatment plan and the statistics that accompanied the tumor’s prognosis. And when he’d covered every last base, including a step-by-step description of the actual process of the removal of the cancerous cells, he turned to Nick and he said, “Ultimately, it’s up to you. But if you’re ready to treat this thing… we’re ready to start prepping you. I’ve cleared the OR.”

Nick sat still for a second, blinking benignly, like he was contemplating. I squeezed his hand, prompting him to speak and he looked at the doctors slowly. “Sorry,” he said, “I… have a bit of a headache.” They all chuckled quietly. He looked at me. I felt like he was asking me for permission to turn down the treatment. And this crazy little part of me wanted to let him. If he didn’t get it fixed then we’d be able to stay together, I thought selfishly. But instead I nodded ever so slightly and squeezed his fingers reassuringly and Nick took a deep breath and he said, his voice shaky, “Okay. Let’s, uh, do this.”

And just like that, before I could fully comprehend that they meant literally right now, a couple of the doctors stepped forward to start prepping Nick and Brenda rolled her little cart around to take another list of vitals.

I stood back, watching, feeling sick, wondering what would happen, wondering what I wanted to have happen. Part of me wanted it to stop, wanted to call it all off, to live the next eighteen months pretending the tumor didn’t exist. Another part wanted them to do the surgery, take every bloody ounce of tumor out, and maybe a miracle would occur. Maybe Nick would be completely healed. But then he wouldn’t be in love with me anymore.

That’s when I spotted his main doctor slipping out of the room.

I rushed after him. “Doctor,” I called. My eyes strayed to his ID badge. “Dr. Stanley… someone told me that personality changes were a side effect of this kind of brain tumor,” I said.

He nodded. “They are.”

“What about… like, say, romantic interests?”

Dr. Stanley hesitated a moment, then said, “Well, sex drives can certainly be effected by the --”

“No, no, not like the sex. Like -- falling in love, like getting suddenly… romantic. Suddenly noticing somebody that’s been there all along.” I stared up at him, hoping for him to shoot down the concept.

Dr. Stanley nodded slowly, “Yes, that’s possible.”

“Oh,” I said.

He took a deep breath, then said, “Doesn’t mean he doesn’t really feel it.”

“But it’ll go away. After the operation?”

“It could,” he said.

“Okay,” I said. I nodded. “Thanks.” I turned to head back to Nick’s room.

“Miss Jaymie,” he called, and I looked back at him. “We’re going to do everything we can to help fix this.”

“Thanks,” I said, and I stepped back into the room. Only to get pushed aside. They were already wheeling him out. “Hey wait,” I said. “Wait.” I scrambled to his side by his head. “Nick.”

He stared up at me. He smiled nervously. “You meant it about fuckin’ me even if I look like Mulder?” he asked.

I nodded.

“‘Cos they’re gonna shave my head in a second in there.”

I reached my hand up and ran my fingers through that beautiful hair of his. He closed his eyes as I stroked it. Then I laid my palm on his cheek. I stared into his eyes. “Nick, I --”

“I know, baby,” he whispered, and he put his hand on mine. “I do, too,” he whispered, and he brought my fingers to his mouth, kissed the pads of them, and let go of my hand. He stared up at me for a long moment, searching eyes. He took a deep breath, “You look tired. You should get some sleep.”

“No fair quoting the Bourne Supremacy to me,” I whispered. “You know I don’t think they’re as bad ass as you think they are.”

He smiled. “Bye Jaymie.”

I wanted to yell at him, to tell him not to say goodbye. But my voice caught in my throat and I couldn’t speak at all and before I could get anything to come out at all, he closed his eyes and faced forward and the doctors took that as their cue. They wheeled him out and I was left standing there in the middle of an empty room while Brenda rolled up the wires to the blood pressure cuffs and replaced it to her cart with a smile meant to comfort me.

“Can I get you anything?” she asked. “Water? Ginger ale? Popsicle? Coffee?”

“No,” I answered.





Nick

Back when Brian and I were best friends, he once described the clarity of mind he felt on his way to the operating table. He talked about how he could remember every detail of the ceiling lights that flashed by him on the way down the hall, how they seemed to flash to the beat of the wheel on the stretcher clicky-clacketing along and how the doctors had all moved and spoken in slow motion. Like everything was coming to a stop, the earth slowing down to observe the moment when he either lived or died. All of time, he said, felt like it was meeting him right there at that one spot.

That’s what I was expecting when they pushed my bed out into the hallway. But instead, it went so fast. Like what happened next took an hour at least I’m told, but it felt like five or ten minutes to me.

I was brought to a private room, and they parked the gurney and assured me they’d see me soon, once prep was done. An older, grandmotherly type nurse came in with a little tray that she set on a table near by me. She smiled, “I hear somebody’s getting a haircut today,” she sing-songed. She came over and hit the button to elevate the top part of the bed and I was made to sit up and my heart thumped around in my esophegus somewhere.

“I guess so,” I answered.

She stopped the bed from elevating and smiled some more. “Not a fan of the haircut?” she asked, her dark brown eyes only dimmed by age.

I wondered if she legit thought I was here just for the haircut or something. Didn’t she know why she was cutting off all my hair? Didn’t she know this was a somber event? “Not really,” I mumbled.

“If it’s looks you’re worried about, you don’t have nothing to fear,” she said, and she brushed her hand through the front part of my hair like she was measuring it with her fingers or something. I thought of the way I’d felt just seconds ago in the bedroom when Jaymie had run her fingers through it for the last time and my bellyached. The nurse bent a little to make eye contact with my downcast eyes. “You’re going to look very handsome.”

“I have a weird bump in my head,” I explained. “I look like a deformed Charlie Brown. Or Lex Luthor.”

“I’m sure that’s not true,” she replied. She turned and picked up an electric razor and switched out attachments, humming as she did. She must’ve recognized me, or else she’d chosen a tune randomly and her subconscious had recognized me, because I’m about 60% sure that the tune she hummed was a slightly off-balance version of Quit Playing Games.

I wanted to cry but I felt too numb to.

The nurse turned the razor on and, thankfully, it’s humming overtook her own, and she said, cheerfully, “Here we go!” and took a step toward me.

I wanted to jump up out of the bed and raise my arms in defense to make her stop.

Instead, I closed my eyes as the razor took out the frontline. I shivered as I felt the hair rain down around me and peeked to see it resting on my lap, strands of blonde and brown that I’d worked so hard on cultivating for the tour so it’d be perfect for all the fans. I stared at the wall as it continued to flutter around me. I felt like I was being unmanned.

Goodbye sexiness, I thought.

The buzzing of the razor and the fluttering hair is the closest to a slow motion moment I had, though. And though the nurse had to go over my head three times with various attachments, it didn’t seem to take longer than a minute or two before she was done. “You wanna see?” she asked, reaching for a hand mirror on the tray she’d carried in.

“No,” I answered quickly.

She looked surprised.

“I don’t wanna see myself like this,” I explained.

The nurse made a sound that was somewhere between disapproving, apologetic, and sympathetic, then picked up a little tube that looked like toothpaste and squeezed some onto her hand and rubbed her palms together. She set herself on the edge of the bed and reached over and gently massaged the lotion into my newly exposed scalp. “You have really nice eyes,” she commented. Not in a creepy hitting-on-me way, just observationally. “I imagine you must have all the ladies chasing after you?”

I shrugged.

If she didn’t already know that about me, then I wasn’t really in the mood to explain it, either.

Dr. Stanley came in the room just as she was finishing massaging in the lotion and screwing the cap back on the bottle. “How’s everything going?” he asked, stepping up to my side. He must see a lot of hairless people because he didn’t even blink twice at my new look.

“Just finishing up,” the nurse sing-songed, and she collected her tray from the table. “It was a pleasure meeting you, Nick,” she said. “Good luck.” She smiled and walked away.

I looked up at Dr. Stanley.

“Do you have any questions for me before we move you over to the OR?” he asked.

I thought for a moment. “Is it gonna hurt?”

“You won’t feel anything at all, I promise,” he answered.

I nodded and licked my teeth behind my lips as I thought of another question. I felt like I should have a hundred of them, but I didn’t have any more than just one other that I was a little afraid of asking. But since I didn’t have any others, I said, “If I die, who’s gonna tell Jaymie and the fellas?”

“I will personally tell them,” Dr. Stanley answered. He looked right in my eyes. “And I hate telling patients bad news, so you know I’ll be doing everything I can for you.” He smiled.

I nodded. “Okay.”

“I’m gonna take good care of you Nick,” he said. And with that, question and answer time was over and I was wheeled out of the room by another swarm of doctors. This time, the room we arrived to I knew was The Room.

It was steel with pristine white tiled floor with drains around the floor and a big scary-looking chair with arms that were stretched out, cuffs hanging off the wrists, and a padded halo looking apparatus at the neck. Over it hung a huge spider-like web of lights and a giant headset with goggles that looked like a cross between virtual reality head gear and something in a Tim Burton movie.

The doctors and nurses all around me helped move me from the bed I was in and onto the chair which reclined and my legs came up and I was laying down. They strapped in my wrists and I had to swallow back the panic that bubbled up inside me from being attached to this thing, like the meat inside a leather-upholstered lobster shell.

This was it. This was where it was gonna happen.

They rolled the bed away and I lay there scared beyond belief.

I felt small. I’d spent most of my life working my ass off to be not small, and here I was, tiny as anything, practically just a child for all my manhood and worldliness was worth here. I was trembling, even.

The anesthesiologist came over with a mask and he smiled at me in a friendly way as he adjusted the mask. I could feel cold IV needles and cloths being draped over me.

“Ready, Nick?” Dr. Stanley asked.

I nodded.

“Here we go then,” he said.

“Fuck,” I whispered, anxious. “Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck…”

The mask was lowered over my nose and mouth. “Deep breath,” the anesthesiologist said, “This will make us all go away for awhile.”

Dr. Stanley leaned in as I inhaled and the world started growing fuzzy. “I’m gonna kick this tumors ass for you, man,” he said.

I felt like I was melting.

If I die, I thought as the room grew dark shadows at the corners and slowly disappeared from my vision, my last words will have been ‘fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck’. How’s that for some famous last words, world…?