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Chapter Thirty-One


Nick

….

Jaymie

It had been hours since they’d taken him out of the room and my ass was asleep from sitting in one spot for so long. Outside, the daylight had started disappearing, the shadows on the opposite hospital wall growing longer and darker until finally even the stupid pigeons that clustered around every nook and cranny of the building were unseeable through the darkness. Brenda came back periodically to check on me. She brought food I didn’t ask for one time, a sandwich sitting on a pile of ranch Doritos on a cheap paper plate and a bottle of water, which she set down on the rolling tray table that had hovered over Nick’s bed. “You need to eat,” she said.

“I’ll eat when he gets out,” I answered.

She’d sighed.

About six hours after they’d taken him away, one of the doctors that had been in the room earlier came in, all dressed in scrubs. There was some trace evidence of blood on the front of her clothing and my stomach flipped to think it was more than likely Nick’s. I knew the moment my eyes fell on her face that she wasn’t bearing bad news. She looked too calm. Then again, that’s what these doctors do day in and day out, isn’t it? Take people apart, put them back together, and many of those people were frankensteined together using spare parts from the people who’d been taken apart that just didn’t go back together.

“We’re about halfway through,” she said. “Dr. Stanley’s opened the skull and has accessed the tumor. He wanted me to keep you updated. He promised… Nick.” She’d had to think of what his name was. To her, he was just a patient on a table.

“Halfway?” I said.

She nodded. “We’re making good time.”

I looked at the sandwich. Maybe I could eat after all, I thought, as the doctor left, leaving me alone again in the darkening room. I got up and turned on a light and the TV at one point, mainly because I didn’t know what else to do with myself, and I curled onto the chair and nibbled at the sandwich, pulling it apart with my hands into smaller, more surmountable bits.

“Good to see you’re eating finally,” Brenda said, returning. She smiled and put a cup of orange juice on the tray table, and a chocolate chip cookie wrapped in saran wrap. “I was going to try appealing to your sweet tooth this time.” She smiled and grabbed one of the other chairs in the room, pulling it up to face me. “You know, as his caretaker, it’s just as important for you to stay healthy as it is for him to become healthy.” She nodded matter-of-a-factly.

I nodded back.

Brenda glanced up at the TV. On it, I’d parked myself on reruns of Beverly Hills 90210. “I was named after Brenda Walsh,” she commented.

It unnerved me that there were people that watched Beverly Hills 90210 who were not only old enough to have children, but old enough to have children that were old enough to be a nurse. We both stared in silence at the TV for a few minutes while Brenda whined to her mother about some mother-daughter fashion show.

“So… so how long have you and Nick been going out?” I looked over at Brenda. She was staring at me intently. I suddenly realized why she was being so attentive and helpful. She was a BSB fan. I shrugged. “I’ve never seen you like in pictures with him or anything, that’s why I ask,” she explained. “Well, I mean, you don’t really see any girls in pictures with Nick much, but still.”

I looked down at my lap. “Nick likes keeping his private life… you know, private,” I said. I wasn’t sure what else to tell her. Keeping me out of Nick’s media personality had been a very well calculated obstacle course that we’d competed with over the years. I reached for the remote and turned the TV off, putting the bit of sandwich I hadn’t eaten yet onto the plate on the tray table. “I think I’m gonna take a nap,” I lied. I just wanted Brenda to leave.

“I can get you a cot,” she suggested, “And a blanket. A pillow.”

“I’m okay,” I replied.

“Okay.” She hesitated. “Let me know if you need anything. I’m on duty for another five hours.”

“Thanks,” I answered.

When she left the room I sat in the silence for a long time, just thinking about Nick, wishing that one of the doctors would come back and update me again, tell me that they got the tumor all out and he was healed and had decades to live and that he’d woken up calling my name.

I was watching the moonlight cross the building opposite nearly an hour more after Brenda had left the room when Nick’s phone hummed from the nightstand by his wallet. I jumped up and went over and answered it. “Hello?”

“Jaymie?”

“Brian?”

“Jaymie! Is he okay? What happened? I just landed in Atlanta and got your voicemail.” Brian’s voice was panicked.

Before I’d even started speaking I felt my voice shatter in my throat. “Oh God, Brian, it’s been awful. He had a headache on the plane and I thought it was just the air pressure, but then he just got so sick… I made him come to the hospital and they basically told him he has to go in for the surgery now and…”

“Shit,” Brian’s voice was low, “Shit. Let me talk to him.”

“I - I can’t. He’s already in the OR.”

“What?” Brian’s voice was panicked now. “No. Jesus. Lord Jesus. Y’all are in LA?”

“Yeah.”

“I’ll be there. I’m getting on the next plane. I’ll call you when I land.” He hung up.

And over the next couple hours, I got similar calls from the other three Backstreet Boys. First from Howie, who called an hour after Brian had from Florida. And then Kevin three hours later, when they’d landed at LAX. “We’ll be right there. Twenty minutes.” Kevin had said. “AJ’s with me.”

I decided while the guys were on the way that I could take a minute to go to the bathroom and wash my face. I had tear stains all across my cheeks and my hair was a mess, sticking up at the oddest angles. I turned the faucet on and splashed water across my face before pulling a paper towel from the dispenser to wipe the water off my skin. I couldn’t do much else, I decided, and I didn’t want to be away from the room too long incase they came back from the OR with another update on Nick.

I was walking down the hallway, heading back to the room, when the doctor that had come to see me earlier came pelting down the hallway a hundred miles an hour, carrying a bright red cooler. “ExcuseMe,” she yelled the words before she’d even reached me in the hallway and shoved by, running pell-mell through the doors that led to the operating rooms.

I stood there, numb and staring after her for a long moment while the implications of this sunk in.

I covered my mouth with my hands, thankful for the wall against my back. It was the only thing keeping me standing.

The elevator doors opposite me dinged open and there was Kevin and AJ. Kevin’s eyebrows were arched in concern. “We’ll just see if we can find Jaymie --”

“Found her,” AJ said, pointing.

Kevin looked at me and I must’ve looked horrified because his concern instantly turned into a more panicked expression. “Jaymie? What’s the matter? Is he okay?”

“I don’t know,” I stammered. “Oh God.” My knees gave out and if AJ and Kevin hadn’t have been there to catch me I would’ve hit the floor, but as it were the two boys caught me, tugging my arms over their shoulders and they helped me back down the hallway to Nick’s room. I couldn’t form words around what I’d seen, what I was afraid of.

AJ sat in the chair Brenda had sat in and Kevin knelt at my knee. He looked up at me with the concern a father would have for a daughter and I understood why Nick had always considered him a parental figure. “What’s wrong?” Kevin asked gently.

I stammered out my answer. “The - the doctor, one of the doctors working on Nick - I saw her. She was running.” I couldn’t explain what about the running had chilled me so much, other than the determined look on her face. She’d been a woman fetching something that was needed in order to save a life.

Kevin nodded, “Running doctors are -- scary,” he said, not fully getting it.

“What if Nick’s dying?”

“Impossible,” Kevin replied, “Nick can’t die. It’s a physical impossibility.”

I blinked at him. “But what if he is?”

Kevin cleared his throat, “Then we’ll deal with that bridge when we get there.”

I nodded and I tried to calm down. Kevin went and got another chair from the nurse’s station and we all sat in heavy silence. AJ hadn’t said a word since he’d first spotted me and was sitting in his chair with his fingers pressed against his lips like he was smoking an imaginary cigarette. He looked pale and twitchy. So when, nearly an hour after they’d got there, he suddenly said, “Be right back,” and left the room without further explanation, I jumped in surprise and watched him go, having almost forgotten he was there.

“AJ and hospitals don’t mix,” Kevin explained.

I nodded slowly.

“He probably won’t be back for awhile,” he added, “I imagine he’s going to go outside and get some air. Probably call Rochelle.”

I wished I could go outside and get some air, too. But if I did, I’d only get anxious and come back in, afraid to miss even the slightest of words from the OR. I looked at the clock three times within five minutes, wondering why I hadn’t heard anything. I leaned forward, putting my head in my hands and staring at my toes. “I wish they’d just tell us something,” I whimpered.

“No new is good news,” Kevin said. He’d been muttering that periodically, like it was a mantra more than it was an opinion.

I wished I felt the same way.

Any news was good news.

AJ still hadn’t come back by the time Brenda came in to check on us one last time. She turned the deepest shade of red I’d ever seen when she saw Kevin sitting there. “Can I get anything for you?” she insisted, “Anything at all?” She’d practically wet herself with excitement when Kevin asked for a cola and she took off like she’d been asked to assist in delivering jewels to the royal palace. She came back with a bottle of Coke, a cup of ice, a straw and a napkin.

“You brought all the accessories, wow,” Kevin said as she laid it all out triumphantly on the tray table.

“Hey.”

We all looked to the door as Brian came in, followed by AJ, who was sucking on a bright red lollipop. I couldn’t believe it’d been long enough that Brian had managed to get in from Georgia already. “How’s everything?” he asked as Kevin stood up and they started with a handshake that merged into a hug.

“It’s quiet,” I replied nervously. And before I knew what was happening, Brian had come over, bent down, and hugged me.

I was stunned. Brian had just hugged me. Nothing could’ve shocked me more. He could’ve walked in clucking like a chicken and I would’ve been less weirded out by that then the hug. He could’ve come in naked as the day he was born and I would’ve been less weirded out. Well, maybe not naked.

And if Brenda had been excited about getting Kevin a Coke, she was so far beyond excited now that three out of five of the Backstreet Boys were in the same room. The guys must’ve either been so used to seeing a fan’s reaction to their collective appearance or else they just really didn’t notice her having a silent heart attack in the corner, clearly torn between professionalism and wanting to freak the fuck out. I almost felt bad for her.

“Has there been any news?” Brian asked.

“A really long time ago they came out and said they were about halfway,” I said. “Nothing since then.”

Kevin repeated his mantra, “No news is good news.”

Brian nodded in agreement and AJ returned to his post on the chair, sucking avidly at the lollipop in his mouth, like it was a lifeline. Brian noticed Brenda. “Are you Nick’s nurse?” he asked.

She nodded.

“How is he?”

“He’s had really stable vitals,” she stammered. Brian must’ve been her favorite, I thought, because she looked at him like she couldn’t believe he was speaking to her. Like he was a god.

Damn crazy chicks.

I wondered if I looked at Nick like that.

Brian was about to ask another question when a doctor appeared in the doorway, eyes wide. He was young with messy reddish hair. He stood there, “Um,” he said, “Are you - are you Mr. Carter’s family?” he stammered.

My heart sped up.

“Yes,” Kevin said without hesitation, standing up with authority. I was glad he was willing to take the helm on this.

The doctor looked queasy, like he’d been hoping we weren’t. “There’s been a… a complication.”

I inhaled sharply and I felt Brian put his hand on my shoulder and squeeze.

“There was some bleeding earlier and Dr. Stanley managed to stop it, but we had to do a blood transfusion.” He paused, “We’re watching closely for any clotting in the artery as we proceed, which is making the process a lot longer, but Dr. Stanley is confident that we’ll be completed soon.”

“Thank you,” Kevin said.

I was shaking as the doctor left the room. “Fuck,” I choked. “I thought -- god damn, he couldn’t have started that off differently? Scared the hell out of me…” I realized how many cusses I’d uttered and I looked up at Brian, “I’m sorry,” I muttered, “Nick would’ve laughed at my potty mouth just now but you… I’m just so…” I couldn’t think of a single word.

“I understand,” Brian said, rubbing my shoulder. “We’re all family in here.” He managed a wobbly smile.

And it really felt true.