“You won’t get in trouble for this, will you?” Nick asked, feeling a little guilty.
“Probably not, but still...” She shrugged.
“Hey, no problem. If anyone asks, I’ll just say I’m her brother. Her, um... other brother.”
Samantha smiled. She took him down another hall and stopped outside a pair of doors that read ISOLATION. Samantha opened the doors and ushered him through. She took him down a short hallway and stopped outside an unmarked door.
“Wait right here,” she told him, opening the door and stepping inside the room. She returned a moment later with a sealed, clear plastic bag containing some kind of green garment. Stopping to size him up, her eyes traveling up and down his body, she said, “Here, I hope this will fit okay,” and handed him the bag.
On closer inspection, Nick saw that it contained a green surgical gown, like the kind surgeons wore over their scrubs to operate. Looking up at her with questioning eyes, he asked naively, “You want me to disguise myself as a doctor?”
Samantha burst out laughing. “Oh, no! No, sorry, I thought Claire would have told you. You have to gown up to go inside her room. It’s sterile, and we don’t want any germs getting in because of the risk of infection. Just put the gown on over your clothes, and then there’s also a cap, mask, and “booties” to cover your shoes. You’ll need to put all that on too.”
“Oh... okay...” Ducking into the men’s restroom across the hall, Nick opened the plastic bag and removed the large, thin gown. It went on backwards, the opening in the back. Sliding his arms through the sleeves, he pulled it on and couldn’t help but remember art class in elementary school, when he and his classmates had brought old button-down shirts of their fathers and worn them as “paint shirts,” put on backwards to cover their clothes while they worked on messy projects.
Next, he pulled out the green surgical hat. Whipping off his baseball cap, he put it on, smoothing it self-consciously over his bald head. He slipped the thin mask over his head, but left it dangling around his neck, deciding he’d wait and put that on at the last minute. Finally, he pulled out the shapeless “booties” and put them on over his tennis shoes.
He turned to the mirror, feeling extremely strange dressed like that, and smirked at his reflection. Wow, he looked cool. Yeah, take that, Justin Timberlake. He pulled the mask up over his mouth and nose, just for kicks, and almost burst out laughing when he saw himself. The mask completed the look – he actually looked like a real doctor. Now, that was a scary thought...
Pulling the mask back down, Nick emerged from the bathroom. He felt rather stupid, but there was really no reason why he should... he was in a hospital, for crying out loud. He would blend in perfectly. Besides, it beat the embarrassment of one of the flimsy, ugly hospital gowns that he had been forced to wear as a patient. And Samantha seemed to like it, if the slow smile that spread across her face when she caught sight of him was any indication of that.
“Okay, ready to head down to her room now?” Samantha asked.
“Yup,” replied Nick. “Oh, wait, my flowers,” he said, picking up the large bouquet up from the counter where he had left them.
“Oh, um... you won’t be able to bring those in with you,” said Samantha, biting her lip. “Sorry. They’re not sterile.”
“Oh.” Nick’s face fell. Well, there went forty dollars down the drain.
“There’s a window though,” Samantha said brightly. “In the hallway; I’ll show you. You can hold them up for her to see through that.”
“Oh... well, okay.”
“Come on.” Nick followed her down another hall, passing rooms marked “Isolation.” The blinds hanging on most of the large windows looking into the rooms were closed, but in a few rooms, they were open, allowing him to peek curiously in on other patients, most of whom were bald and pale, the effects of cancer apparent on their gaunt bodies.
“Here we go,” said Samantha, stopping outside the door to a room marked 5-I6. The blinds were open in the window next to the door, and Nick peered in to see Claire propped up in bed, looking down at something in her hand, a pair of headphones on her ears, her lips moving slightly as she sang along to whatever she was listening to. He smiled, knowing she had no idea he was out there watching her.
Pulling a surgical mask over her own mouth and nose, Samantha rapped lightly on the door and opened it, sticking her head in the room long enough to say, “Visitor, Claire!”
Nick grinned at Claire through the window and couldn’t help but notice how she hastily shoved whatever she had been looking at under her covers as she smiled back. Before he went into the room, he paused long enough to hold up the vase of roses for her to see.
“I’ll take them down to the nurses station for you to get later if you want,” Samantha offered.
“Sure, thanks,” Nick replied gratefully, handing off the bouquet and slipping the mask up onto his face. As Samantha walked off with the flowers, he stepped into the room, closing the door quickly behind him.
“Nick, those flowers were beautiful!” Claire exclaimed as soon as he set foot in her room. “Jeez, you must have paid out the ass for them though. There had to be like two dozen roses in that thing!”
He shrugged nonchalantly, secretly pleased that she’d liked them.
“Well, pull up a chair and sit down,” Claire commanded, pointing to a couple of chairs shoved up against one of the walls. “Nice outfit, by the way, Dr. Carter.”
He smirked, then realized she couldn’t see his smirk under the mask and winked instead. “Yeah... you know, green used to be my favorite color, but I think that’s gonna have to be changed, since it’s apparently the medical community’s favorite color too?”
Claire laughed. “True.”
“So,” Nick said, plopping down in the chair. “How ya feeling, kid?”
She wrinkled her nose, probably at being called “kid,” and replied, “Eh...” All it took was one wave of her hand to the emesis basin positioned strategically on her beside table, and he understood exactly what “eh” meant.
“Ohh,” he said with a groan. “Fun stuff.”
“Oh, you bet,” she replied sarcastically, offering him a wan smile.
“So,” he said, motioning to the headphones around her neck. “Whatcha been listening to?”
Almost instantaneously, her face went beet red, a mortified expression crossing her face. The temptation was too much to resist; with a wicked cackle, Nick wrestled the headphones and portable CD player away from her, slapped the headphones over his own ears, and pressed play, expecting to hear strains of “Wake Me Up Before You Go Go” by Wham, or something equally embarrassing.
What greeted his ears instead was the sound of his own voice, belting out “I Stand for You,” one of the songs he had proudly written himself for his solo album. He jerked his head up to look at her, his eyes round with surprise, his flattered grin hidden behind the mask.
“Hey, I didn’t know you had my album, Miss ‘I Don’t Like Pop’,” he said teasingly. He knew she was embarrassed to be caught listening to his album, and he was fully prepared to milk that for all it was worth.
Sighing heavily, she reached under the covers and pulled out the thing she had hidden there earlier, which turned out to be the CD jacket for Now or Never. It was opened to the lyrics page.
“Haha!” Nick roared. “You like it, don’t you? Huh? Don’t you?” he gloated tauntingly.
“It’s so-so,” she said coolly, smirking.
“Oh, whatever, you like it, and you know it,” he teased. “You want me to autograph it for you or anything?”
“Oh, shut up, Mr. Egomaniac! And anyway, I just bought it last week cause I had a gift certificate at Sam Goody that expires next week, so I had to use it, and I didn’t see anything else I felt like getting, so I wasted it on this.”
“Oh suuuure. You didn’t even buy it last week; you’ve probably had it since the day it came out. You’ve been a closet fan of me this whole time, haven’t you?” he accused mockingly, enjoying the agitated expression on her face.
Claire just rolled here eyes, shaking her head back and forth in exasperation. “Celebs,” she muttered under her breath, catching his eye just long enough to wink playfully at him.
Nick chuckled, not noticing the way her face suddenly paled a few shades. He was busy trying to come up with another knock at her when she suddenly grabbed the basin off the bedside table and threw up into it, the horrible sounds of her retching making Nick wince. He thought about rubbing her back to comfort her the way he had during her last round of chemo, but, remembering how she had pulled away from him the night before, he decided against it.
“Ugh,” Claire moaned, wiping her mouth with a Kleenex. “See, that’s just how bad your album is, Carter. Bad enough to make me hurl.”
“Hey!” Nick exclaimed, his jaw dropping in mock offense.
Miserable and nauseous as she was, Claire still managed to crack a smile.
***
