“Don’t apologize,” said Dr. Kingsbury. “It’s okay to cry. You men seem to think you have to be all ‘macho’ and put up some tough front... but you don’t. Not in front of me anyway. Go ahead and cry; let it all out.”
Nick smiled wanly. “You sound like a psychiatrist.”
“Well, I did originally intend to go into psychiatry,” Dr. Kingsbury said with a laugh.
“Why didn’t you?”
“Eh... once I did my psych rotation in med school, I decided it was too dull,” Dr. Kingsbury replied with a shrug. “You don’t get to operate or do any really hands-on kind of stuff when you’re a psychiatrist.”
Nick nodded. “I can see that.”
Dr. Kingsbury smiled. “Well, enough about me,” she said. “Let’s get back to you.”
“I’d rather not,” said Nick, without expression.
“Have you told anyone about your illness yet, Nick? Family... friends?”
Slowly, Nick shook his head. He hadn’t called anyone, not even his parents... no one knew. He didn’t want them to know... not yet anyway.
Your illness... Those words repulsed Nick. He didn’t consider himself sick; with the exception of his aching shin, he felt perfectly fine. Those kids he had visited in the hospital, the ones who were so pale and gaunt and bald, they were sick. Not him.
But he knew as soon as he told anyone he had cancer (God, how he despised that word... cancer), they would automatically think of him the way he thought of those children. Sick. Ill. Diseased. And they would feel sorry for him, the way he had always sympathized those poor kids. And sympathy was something he did not want. He wanted to be treated normally, to be teased by the guys, wrestled with by Aaron, even scolded by his mother, for that was what was normal for him. He had a feeling none of that would happen anymore once people knew what was wrong with him.
“Nick,” Dr. Kingsbury said, disrupting his thoughts. “How long do you plan on waiting? You need to tell someone.” Her voice was calm, yet firm. “You can’t keep something like this to yourself. You need support from the people you love. Trust me, that will make it easier.”
Somehow, Nick didn’t think so. But he had always been like this, keeping things to himself, hiding his emotions, bottling up his feelings. Being the youngest member of the Backstreet Boys, he had often been picked on by the older guys. And sometimes, though he would never admit it to them, even today, they had hurt his feelings. But, in trying to prove his maturity, he had hidden this from the others, laughed it off, pretended he didn’t mind.
During tours, he, like them all, occasionally came down with something... a cold, the flu, once even pneumonia... but there was no calling off shows, not for a little thing like sickness... and so he had learned to adapt, to make due, to perform anyway, despite feeling under the weather.
Though he was a singer, he had also become an actor... and a pretty damn good one, he thought. And this, his... cancer, would soon become his toughest role. He wanted to keep it from them – his parents, his siblings, his friends – for as long as he could, for the longer he kept it from them, the longer he could feel normal.
“Nick? Did you hear me?”
Nick glanced up, realizing he had been spacing out. “Yeah,” he said quickly. “Yeah, I heard.”
“So you’ll call someone tonight? Your parents... or a friend, maybe?”
“Yes,” Nick lied. “I will.”
“Good,” Dr. Kingsbury said with a smile, and Nick couldn’t help but feel a bit guilty for lying to her.
But, then again, that was just part of the charade. In the next few weeks, he was going to have to do a lot more than lie to a doctor. He was going to have to lie to the people he loved.
***
In the end, Nick settled on the catheter/portable chemo pump option, and Dr. Kingsbury scheduled him for minor surgery to put in the catheter at the end of the week. After that, she said, he would probably be able to go home. In the meantime, he would be starting chemo in the hospital so that he get used to it, and Dr. Kingsbury could figure out the proper dose to give him.
The first chemo treatment started the day after these decisions were made, and Nick was terrified. He was not completely naïve; he had heard plenty of horror stories about chemo and its side effects, and he was afraid of what it would do to him.
That morning, right after breakfast (which Nick barely touched, despite less-than-comforting advice from a nurse who came to take his vital signs – “You better eat up while you can because you might not be able to keep anything down later today”), Nick was taken to the “chemo room,” as it was designated.
Just by that term, Nick was expecting something of a dungeon or horror movie morgue, with metal beds and chains, dingy gray walls, cold cement floors... but he was surprised to find himself in a happy-looking pale yellow room with a row of light gray, padded chairs that looked like dentist chairs in the middle. All of these were empty, except for one, which a girl lay back in, an IV line feeding into her arm.
“Your doctor tried to arrange it so you could be in here alone for your treatments because of your celebrity status,” said the nurse who had brought Nick up to the room, “but there was a bit of a conflict today. Don’t worry though, Claire won’t spill the beans about you.” She motioned to the girl in the chair, who looked curiously over at Nick and offered him a slight smile. Too nervous to manage a smile in return, he simply nodded in her direction.
The nurse pushed Nick’s wheelchair up to one of the chairs, two down from the girl, and helped him into it. “Okay, Nick, my name’s Flora, and I’m going to get you started on your chemo. Sit tight, and I’ll be right back.” She walked away, and Nick rested his head against the back of the chair and closed his eyes, feeling slightly sick already.
Flora returned a few minutes later with supplies to start an IV. Nick held his breath and looked away as she slid the needle into his inner elbow, and it hurt, but only for a few seconds. One the line was in, the pain faded, and he swallowed back relief. Flora taped down the clamp attached to the needle and then hung a bag of liquid on the IV pole next to the chair and attached the tubing from it to the clamp. Moments later, liquid started dripping from the bag, through the thin tubing, and into Nick’s vein.
“How long is this supposed to take?” he asked, watching it drip.
“A little over an hour,” Flora replied, and Nick groaned, not wanting to spend an entire hour like this. Then again, the only other alternative was lying around his hospital room, and that really wasn’t much better. Flora went off to another part of the room, telling Nick to call her if he started to feel sick or needed anything. Nodding, he closed his eyes and lay back, wishing he would fall asleep, wake up, and discover this was all just one big nightmare.
“So is this your first time?” The voice extinguished his hopes of sleeping through this whole chemo business, and Nick opened his eyes and looked peevishly over at its source, the girl in the other chair.
“Yeah,” he muttered unsociably, looking away and closing his eyes again.
“Sorry, didn’t mean to bother you,” she said, speaking loudly so that her voice carried across the empty chair that separated.
“No problem,” Nick grunted, keeping his eyes shut.
“I’m Claire Ryan, by the way.”
With a sigh, Nick’s eyes flew open, and he looked over at her again. She was the epitome of the typical cancer patient, thin-faced and pale, with a flowered scarf on her head. She was dressed in a t-shirt and baggy sweatpants, with furry leopard-print slippers on her feet. And that’s when Nick realized he had seen her before – in the elevator on the way back from one of his tests. He had been completely ignorant then, pitying her, not knowing he would come to resemble her in a matter of weeks.
“I’m Nick Carter,” he replied, feeling obligated to introduce himself now that she had.
She smiled. “I know.”
He didn’t know what to say to that, so he just nodded.
“So, um... I hope you don’t mind me asking this, but what kind of cancer do you have?”
“Ewing’s sarcoma,” Nick answered, and it pained him to do so, for that meant admitting he did have cancer. “It’s a kind of bone cancer.”
“Yeah, that’s what I thought. Sorry,” Claire said with empathy.
“That’s what you thought? Why, did you hear something about me somewhere?” Nick asked, his heart beginning to race. How could she have known what kind of cancer he had? Had something leaked out of the hospital? Had the media gotten a hold of it?
“What? No,” Claire said, laughing. “Your leg brace – that’s what made me think maybe it was bone cancer.”
“Oh... ohh... okay...” Nick flushed red in embarrassment, feeling like an idiot. “I just thought maybe the media had found out.”
Claire smiled. “I understand,” she said.
Nick managed to return the smile this time. “So,” he said, feeling he should ask her the same question, “what kind of cancer do you have?”
“Leukemia,” Claire replied.
“Oh... so how long have you had it?”
“Almost three years... I just came out remission though.”
“Oh. I’m sorry,” said Nick.
Claire smiled sadly. “Yeah, it sucks, huh? But...”
Nick waited for her to continue, and when she didn’t, he asked, “But what?” It was then that he noticed Claire had closed her eyes, and her already-pale face had gone paper-white. “Claire? Are you okay?” he asked in concern, wondering if she had passed out.
“Uh... just a minute...” Claire’s eyes flew open, and she sat forward quickly, whipping something silver out of the crevasse between the arm of the chair and her body. Then she turned her head away from Nick, leaned over, and threw up.
Nick quickly looked away in disgust, but the retching sounds alone were enough to make his stomach churn. Vaguely, he heard Flora hurry over to Claire. “Oh, Claire, honey,” he heard her say, her voice sounding distant and garbled, like a voice in slow motion. As the gagging and heaving continued from Claire’s side of the room, he began to feel hot and clammy all over. He leaned back against his chair, closed his eyes, and tried to take deep breaths, afraid he was going to pass out.
From faraway, the vomiting sounds finally stopped, and then Nick heard Flora’s voice ask, “Nick? You feeling okay?”
“No,” he mumbled, and even his own voice sounded strangely distorted. He was just barely aware of Flora bustling over, and then suddenly, there was a faint humming sound, and the head of his chair was being lowered all the way down, so that he was lying flat. Then, more whirring, and the part with his feet was raised slightly up, so that his legs were on an incline.
“Lie still, Nick,” Flora said gently. “I’ll be right back.”
Nick opened his eyes, but his vision was dim and fuzzy and bordered by blackness. He squeezed his eyes shut and opened them again, but his sight did not return. Flora came back then, lifted his head up a little, and placed something cold under the back of his neck.
“Does that feel better?” she asked.
“Yeah,” Nick whispered, the ice pack soothing his sweaty skin. Slowly, he began to feel better, and when he opened his eyes, he could see clearly again. He glanced weakly over at Claire, who was sitting up again and looking better.
“You doing okay, Nick?” she asked, glancing over at him.
“Yeah,” he murmured. “You?”
She shrugged. “I’m fine. I just always get sick from the chemo. Hate to say it, but you probably will too.”
Nick groaned, knowing she was probably right. In fact, the first hint of nausea was already coming over him. He could tell already – chemo was going to suck.
***
