“Nicky?” Leah peered over at Nick, her eyes questioning. “I wanted to come. Now, I let you come to my doctor’s appointment two weeks ago; it’s only fair that I should come with you to yours. What’s the problem?”
Nick shook his head wordlessly. He couldn’t explain what he was feeling; Leah just wouldn’t understand. Sitting in a chair in the all-too-familiar waiting room of the oncology clinic, he couldn’t help but be afraid. The three months since Dr. Kingsbury had told him he was in remission had flown by, and here he was, already back for his three-month follow up. He had been feeling great and looking much better, what with working out and his hair beginning to grow back. But he couldn’t help but worry that the doctor would find something wrong.
The thought of a relapse now, when he had his girlfriend back and a new album and baby on the way, was devastating. And the fear was overwhelming. He’d kept it all bottled up, not wanting to confide in Leah. The last thing he wanted to do was worry her; she had enough on her mind already.
At his silence, Leah heaved an exasperated sigh and picked up a maternity magazine, thumbing quickly through it. Watching her, Nick inadvertently thought of Claire. He had to admit, he wished she was there with him. He remembered all the times they had sat together in this very waiting room and how talking to her had helped to alleviate his nervousness. He had been able to tell her anything, and she had understood. She had known exactly what it felt like to sit there and stress over what kind of news you would hear from your doctor when you got back into that examining room.
But Claire was out of his life now. She hadn’t called him, and he hadn’t called her either, mostly out of spite and anger at what she had said to him. She thought he was an idiot for getting back together with Leah, when really, the past month had been the happiest one in a long time for him.
He and Leah had wiped the slate clean and were starting their relationship anew, and so far, things had worked out wonderfully. Being with Leah made him feel like his old self, made him feel like he was worthy and desirable again, a feeling he had not experienced in many months. Leah represented normalcy to him... while Claire... Claire reminded him of the world he’d been trying to escape, the world of cancer. Maybe it was for the best that they had distanced themselves from each other. Maybe it was a sign... a sign that everything was going to be all right, that he’d never have to go back to that nightmare world ever again.
This was the hopeful thought he chanted over and over again in his mind as a nurse led him and Leah back to one of the examining rooms. Leah’s grip on his hand was tight, but he barely felt it. He had gone numb, it seemed. Numb with fear. He changed his clothes in a fog, letting Leah secure the ties on the back of his hospital gown. Then she sat down in a chair off to one side of the small room, while he sank down onto the examining table, anxiously twisting wads of material from the long gown in his sweaty hands.
A nurse he had met there before, Marianne, came to weigh him and take his temperature and blood pressure. Standard procedure. He went through the drill blindly, hardly paying attention as she made cheerful small talk with him and Leah.
It was funny how much more nervous he was this time, when he had been given a clean bill of health at his last visit, than he had been at the visits during his chemo treatments. He supposed it was because hearing bad news now, after he had gone three months thinking he had beaten cancer, would be much worse than hearing it while he was still sick as a dog from the chemo, back when it had seemed like things couldn’t have gotten much worse anyway.
He was relieved when Dr. Kingsbury arrived to start the examination. If he was in for bad news, might as well get it over with as soon as possible.
“Hi, Nick,” the middle-aged doctor greeted him with a warm smile. “How are you doing today?”
“Fine,” he answered, swallowing hard, for his throat had gone as dry as cotton.
“Oh, who’s your friend?” Dr. Kingsbury asked, noticing Leah.
Leah smiled sweetly and stood, offering the older woman her hand. “I’m Leah Gaylers,” she introduced. “Nick’s girlfriend.” Nick couldn’t help but notice the way she stressed the word “girlfriend” and swelled with a sort of pride.
“It’s a pleasure to meet you. I’m Barbara Kingsbury,” said Dr. Kingsbury, shaking Leah’s hand. “Okay, Nick, ready to get started?”
“Yeah,” Nick mumbled, wishing he could just go home instead. He felt sick to his stomach. Dr. Kingsbury must have noticed this, for she lay a comforting hand on his shoulder and smiled.
“You look nervous,” she said. “How have you been feeling lately? Any complaints, or is there anything you think I should know about?”
Nick thought for a moment, then shook his head. “No,” he answered hoarsely. “I’ve been feeling fine.”
“Great,” the doctor smiled. “Then no reason to be nervous. This check-up is just to be on the safe side, you know.” Her tone was casual and not the least bit concerned, so he relaxed a little. “I’m just going to look you over quickly, and then we’ll get your x-rays and scans done. And then – you’re gonna love this – a bone marrow.”
“Aww, man,” he groaned, his stomach rolling with nausea at the thought of that monstrous needle crunching through his bone again.
“Sorry. But it’s only every three months now. You’ll live.” She patted his shoulder again and then started in with the examination, listening to his heart and lungs, feeling his glands, and prodding at his left leg, the one that had started this whole mess. When she was finished, she had climb off the table and ushered him into a wheelchair for the short ride to radiology.
Leah started to follow, but Dr. Kingsbury held her back. “You might as well just wait here, hon. They won’t let you go into the room with him while they’re taking the x-rays because of the radiation.”
“Oh.” Leah looked pouty. “Okay.”
“I’ll see you in awhile, babe,” Nick promised, forcing himself to smile at her over his shoulder as the doctor escorted him out of the room.
***
With the bone scans out of the way, all that was left was the dreaded bone marrow aspiration. Nick was taken back to the examining room, where Leah sat waiting for him.
“How’d it go?” she asked anxiously, as he clambered out of the wheelchair and back onto the table.
“Fine,” he said. “It’s this next test that sucks the big one... I dunno if you’ll even wanna be in here for it.” He eyed her skeptically.
Leah bit her lip, but insisted, “I want to stay with you.”
He shrugged. “Whatever you want. But I warn you, you might wanna sit down. I don’t want you passing out and hurting our baby.” He smiled to let her know he was kidding.
“Oh, Nicky,” she said fondly, coming to his side and wrapping her hand in his. “I’ll be fine. Whatever you have to go through, I want to be right there with you. We’re a couple now, right? We have to stick together.”
Looking up into her shining brown eyes, he smiled and squeezed her hand. “Right,” he said huskily.
Dr. Kingsbury came bursting back in just in time to break up the Kodak moment, followed by Marianne, who was apparently there to hold him down again. Fun, fun. With a sigh, Nick lay down and rolled onto his right side, his back to Leah. She came around to the other side so she could face him and took his hand as the doctor and nurse got into place.
His heart began to race as he heard Dr. Kingsbury moving around behind him, getting ready to do the procedure. He only hoped he could keep it together. Crying when he was alone was fine. Having his eyes well up on him when Claire was there, okay. But he’d be damned if he was going to let a tear escape in front of Leah. He was a man; he had to act tough for her and not let on to how painful it was.
He winced as Dr. Kingsbury injected him with a shot of anesthetic to numb his hip. Then, a few minutes later, she whispered, “Okay, Nick, here it comes.” He felt Leah’s grip on his hand tighten, and he stared at a spot on the wall and gritted his teeth, refusing to clutch her hand, refusing to close his eyes, refusing to make a sound. He felt the large needle slide into his skin, and as it worked its way down into his pelvic bone, it was all he could do not to let out a whimper. He held his breath and kept perfectly still, using all of his inner strength to be brave. His eyes burned, but he refused to blink, somehow knowing that as soon as he did, the tears would come, and he could not allow that to happen.
“Um, Barb, hold him, I think I need to get her a chair,” he vaguely heard the nurse say, and a moment later, he felt her hands ease off his body. He let his eyes flit from the wall to Leah, who was suddenly white as a sheet and breathing rapidly, a sheen of sweat covering her forehead.
“Leah,” he choked out and heard Dr. Kingsbury say, “Shh, Nick, hold still, it’s almost over.”
Marianne quickly dragged a chair over and eased Leah down into it, whispering soothingly, “There, sit down, sweets, and bend over, put your head down. That’s the way. Take deep breaths. There you go.”
The needle was retracted, and Nick let out the breath he was holding. He closed his eyes briefly and immediately felt them begin to water. Blinking furiously, he opened them again and stared at the wall until he had regained his composure. Then he looked to Leah, who was hunched over in the chair, her head in her hands, her back trembling.
“Leah?” he rasped. “Babe, you okay?”
“Y-yeah,” was Leah’s shaky reply. “A-are you?”
“Yeah, I’m fine,” Nick replied, trying to hide the tremor in his own voice as his hip throbbed with constant waves of pain.
He felt Dr. Kingsbury’s hand rub across his back. “You did great, Nick,” she said quietly. “And Leah will be fine; she just got a little faint. It happens all the time, nothing to worry about.”
Nick nodded, feeling a little better. Dr. Kingsbury and Marianne left the room to give him some time to recover. After a few minutes of lying still, the pain slowly began to fade, and Leah eventually sat up in her chair, some of her color returning.
“God,” she laughed shakily. “I guess you were right. That was horrible, Nick.”
He smiled knowingly. “Yeah,” he said, hoping he sounded casual. “But it’s over. Now we just have to wait and see what Dr. K has to tell me.”
But the waiting was the worst part of all.
***
About half an hour later, Dr. Kingsbury returned, and Nick’s heart began to race again. She was going to give him bad news... he’d relapsed, he just knew it. But surprisingly, she smiled.
“Everything looks good, Nick,” she said. “The scans show the tumor in your leg is dormant, and your bone marrow’s clean.”
He let out a shaky breath, scarcely believing the good news. “Really?” he asked incredulously. “So... so, am I cured yet?”
She smiled. “Not quite yet. Technically, we don’t call anyone ‘cured’ until they’ve been cancer-free for five years. So you have a ways to go. But you’re definitely on the right track. Keep going with your medications, and I’d like to have you in here for another check-up in three months. Sound good?”
“Sounds great,” Nick breathed happily. Then a thought hit him. “Hey, Dr. K? Um, what about my... my catheter? C-can it come out yet?”
Dr. Kingsbury considered this a moment, then nodded. “Sure,” she said. “Hopefully you won’t be needing one again. I’ll pull it out, and you’ll be able to go swimming again in no time. I’m sure that was a bummer this summer, especially living here in Florida, huh?”
“Ohhh yeah,” Nick said, nodding vigorously. “So I’ll be able to swim as soon as it’s out?”
“As soon as the insertion site has healed,” replied Dr. Kingsbury. “Which should take a few days. I would give it a week before you swim, especially if you plan on hitting the beach. But after that... you can do whatever you like.”
He smiled broadly and knew he’d be taking his boat out the following week. Oh, how he longed to swim in the ocean again, to have the powerful waves carry his body up and down. Maybe he’d try his hand at surfing again. He’d only recently gotten good at that, but he hadn’t practiced in months. It didn’t matter though... as long as he was in the water, he’d be happy. He’d often wondered if he’d been a fish in a past life, the way he was so attached to water...
“Okay, Nick, if I could just have you pull down your gown a little for me and lie down on your back...” Dr. Kingsbury was saying. Nick obeyed, undoing the strings in the back of his gown and sliding it off his shoulders until the catheter under his collarbone was exposed. He lay down, while the doctor crossed the room and washed her hands rigorously at the sink. She opened up the cabinets above the sink and removed some supplies. She carried them over and assembled them on a stainless steel tray beside the examining table. Pulling on a pair of surgical gloves, she carefully took off the small gauze dressing covering the spot where the catheter went in and then said, “I’m just going to clean this off with saline.”
The liquid she rubbed over the area surrounding the catheter was cold, and he shivered as it came into contact with his skin. He watched as Dr. Kingsbury then took a tiny pair of scissors and snipped at a few fine sutures that held the catheter in place. Then she piled small gauze pads around the catheter. “I’m going to pull this out now,” she said. “Hold still.”
Blanching, Nick forced himself to lie still while Dr. Kingsbury gripped the catheter and begin to pull. He felt a strange sensation and a little pain, but then it was over, and Dr. Kingsbury was holding a very thin, clear tube. It was stained reddish with his blood, and he immediately felt woozy at the sight of it. That had been in his body, in his vein.
“Here, Nick, put your hand here and press down on the gauze,” said the doctor, guiding his hand to the area on his chest where the catheter had been. It was covered in gauze pads, which were turning red as he bled from the site where the catheter had been ripped out. His queasiness increased as he watched the red circle spread across the pads. “Don’t worry about the blood; it’ll stop,” assured Dr. Kingsbury. “You just need to apply pressure for about five minutes to give it a chance to clot. Press down hard.”
He pushed down with his hand and looked away. Leah was huddled in a chair, not watching, and he was glad, wondering if the sight of his blood would make her almost faint again.
When five minutes had passed, and the bleeding had stopped, Dr. Kingsbury removed the sodden gauze pads and taped a fresh, clean dressing over the small hole in his chest. “Leave the bandage on for two to three days,” she told Nick, “and call if you have any problems.”
“Okay,” he nodded. “Can I go then?”
She smiled. “You can go. Get dressed, and I’ll let Laura at the receptionist’s desk know you’ll need an appointment in three months. Stop by there on your way out to pick a day.”
“Okay. Thanks, Dr. K.”
“You’re welcome. Have a good holiday season,” she said.
“Same to you.” He shook the doctor’s hand, and then she left.
Leah stood up at once. “So that’s it?” she asked. “You’re still in remission?”
“That’s right,” Nick grinned. “Still in remission.”
And as far as he was concerned, that was it. He was done with cancer. He’d made it three months already... what was another four years and nine months? Piece of cake. In his book, he was as good as cured.
***
