Introduction

Footprints. They’re all a little different – different sizes, different shapes, different textures, different length apart – and they lead to different places, even if those places are just a few feet apart. Sometimes they’re imprints in mud or snow or indents in the sand, sometimes they’re dents in the grass, and sometimes they’re just wet or dirty patterns on the pavement. They may fade with time or the elements, or we may try to cover them up, but they’ll always be there, somewhere, the ghosts of the footfalls that got us to where we are today.

Did I just use the word footfalls?

How very writer-ish of me. Which is funny because I’m not a writer at all. No patience for it. It’s weird, ‘cause I can sit and scrapbook for hours, but getting me to write an essay or even a short story for creative writing was like pulling teeth. (I would know; I work for a dentist.) I guess I’m just better with the visual arts than language arts. This is clearly evidenced by the way that I’m totally getting off topic here. That was always a problem for me in grade school – “Stay on topic,” my teachers would write on my essays, in the places where I would ramble off on tangents like I am now, and then mark me down for Focus.

Focus… yeah, focus, Claire.

So as I was saying… or getting to the point of saying, anyway…

Footprints sort of represent life. Or, at least, different stages of life, those milestones we all cross to get to wherever we end up.

I may be starting to sound deep here, but trust me, I’m really not. (Did I just imply that I’m shallow then?) And like I said, I normally have no patience for writing. I’ve never been good at keeping a diary or journal or, these days, a blog. My scrapbook fulfills the same purpose through pictures.

But if I did keep a diary/journal/blog, these would be the days of my life that would stand out.

Days of my life – ha – makes it sound like a soap opera.

Then again, I guess my life has been a little like a soap opera in recent years…

***

The C-Word

It’s a powerful word, the C-word. It can devastate and destroy, but also unite. Its mere utterance can change lives.

It changed mine. And three years later, it would change Nick’s. But let’s get back to me here… haha.

The C-word. I’m not talking about a “bad” word, like cunt or crap or crackwhore. And yet, it is a bad word. It’s a horrible, debilitating word.

I’m talking about cancer.

The first time I heard that word used in reference to me, I had just turned twenty. I was relishing in the realization that I was no longer a teenager and less than eleven months shy of legal drinking age. Almost through my sophomore year of college, and I thought I was ready to be an adult. I’d already signed a lease on an apartment with three friends for the fall and was anxious to move out of the dorm and truly live “on my own.” Cook my own food, pay my own bills, do whatever I wanted to without having to answer to an RA.

I didn’t realize how quickly the change from “kid” to “adult” would come. That, in the time it took to utter a two-syllable word, a mere heartbeat, I would grow up. That, suddenly, I would be faced with problems far scarier than bills and cooking and the wrath of the RA on my dorm floor.

In those last few days of innocence (even though I wasn’t all that innocent), I didn’t realize.

The symptoms had been around for awhile by then. At first, they seemed like nothing. April’s a rough month for college kids, with spring break a mere memory and a week of finals standing in the way of summer vacation. I thought I was just burned out, exhausted from trying to balance my course load with my social life. It seemed a reasonable problem to have; I was a good student, but I also liked to hang out with my friends, and there were many weekends where I barely saw my dorm, only crawling back to it after waking up with a massive hangover in the apartment of some junior I knew only through my roommate. So it was nothing new to me to feel sleep-deprived and stressed, but this kind of fatigue was beyond anything I’d ever felt before. There were days when just walking across the Quad to class felt like wading a mile through taffy.

And then there were the bruises. Mysterious bruises that just sort of popped up in random places all over my body. My roommate teased me about them at first; she’d spot a particularly nasty one on my thigh and ask what I’d bumped into, and when I would tell her that I didn’t know, she would laugh and ask, “Man, how drunk were you??” Like I hinted at earlier, I was no saint when it came to drinking, so I figured she was right – I must have just tripped or knocked into something over the weekend.

But then I stopped going out on the weekends, because I was too tired. I’d go to bed at eight or nine o’clock, in hopes I could sleep off the fatigue, and I’d wake up at seven the next morning feeling like I hadn’t slept at all, and with a crop of new bruises I couldn’t explain. I started to think maybe I’d been sleepwalking, but Jenn, my roommate, said she’d never seen or heard me do any such thing. Then again, Jenn was the deepest sleeper I’d ever met, so I didn’t put too much trust in her word. I could have pole-vaulted from my bed to hers and landed right on top of her, and she still wouldn’t have woken up.

It all came to a head the night Jenn dragged me to a party, insisting that I just needed a night of fun to de-stress myself, and I passed out. I don’t really remember it happening; all I know is that one minute, I was sitting on a bar stool in this guy’s apartment, and the next, I was on the floor with a bunch of concerned faces hovering over me. “How much did she have to drink?” one person asked another, and the scary thing was, I was totally sober.

But totally sober, perfectly healthy college students don’t just randomly pass out at parties, nor do they gush blood from small cuts. Apparently I had clunked my head on the counter pretty good when I’d fallen off my stool. The cut at my temple wasn’t big, nor deep, but it bled. A lot. After it had soaked through the towel someone gave me, Jenn, white and clammy (she never could stand the sight of blood), had suggested someone call an ambulance for me. That didn’t go over well, as the guy who was hosting the party was afraid the cops would come if the paramedics did, and there were way too many drunk minors around. I backed him up there, mostly because I was humiliated and didn’t want to attract any more attention to myself by being taken away in an ambulance. I didn’t need all of that anyway; it was just a little cut.

But the little cut kept bleeding, so finally someone volunteered to drive me to the emergency room, saying I probably needed stitches. “Don’t worry,” the girl told me on the way, “if you haven’t had anything to drink, you’ve got nothing to worry about. We’ll just say you tripped over something and fell.”

I was worried, but not about being busted for underage drinking. The blood didn’t bother me, but the way I felt did. Something wasn’t right. I was sure of that now, even if I didn’t want to admit it.

I got two stitches in my head that night. As the doctor told me my blood wouldn’t clot and that I might be anemic, I also got an IV full of platelets. And that’s where it all began.

That ER resident, though young, had seen all of the warning signs in me and admitted me to the hospital for testing. It was the first time I’d ever had to stay in the hospital overnight, but it definitely wouldn’t be the last. It was probably a good thing I didn’t realize it at the time.

***

April 22, 2000

The whole thing seemed surreal. Me in a hospital bed, looking around a hospital room, waiting with my parents for the doctor whose visit had been promised by one of the nurses. “Dr. Rodrigo is on her way to discuss your test results.”

It sounded serious, and I guess that’s what made it surreal. A part of me was still in denial that anything could be really wrong with me. I’d never been sick a day of my life, with the exception of the usual colds and flus and the chickenpox when I was seven. But here I was in the hospital, having been put through blood tests and scans and horrible procedures where they’d shoved needles into my back. And my parents were here. And this Dr. Rodrigo, who had taken over once I’d been admitted to the hospital, was some kind of specialist, though no one had told me what kind. That pissed me off, come to think of it. I would have to ask her when she came.

But then she came, and I didn’t get the chance because she started talking first, and I knew better than to interrupt.

“Claire, would you like your parents to stay while I talk to you?” asked Dr. Rodrigo in her soft, Spanish-accented voice.

I hadn’t really even considered the fact that I could make them leave – confidentiality and all that jazz – but I nodded my head yes. I wanted them to stay. I didn’t keep secrets from my parents. Well, that wasn’t really true – I’d done tons of things they didn’t know about and I didn’t want them to know about, but this was different. I didn’t keep secrets about important things, and I could tell, by the serious tone of her voice, that this was important.

How important, I didn’t realize. I thought she was going to say I was anemic, which totally made sense, based on my symptoms. I had started to convince myself of that yesterday, during the blood transfusion. My roommate Jenn was anemic, and she was skinny and pale and got nosebleeds a lot, which I took to be the equivalent of my bleeding head wound the night before. It wasn’t a big deal, though; she took an iron supplement everyday, and she was perfectly fine. I would just need to start doing the same thing, and I would be too. And then we’d have something else in common, besides fair skin, which we could now blame on anemia.

In a moment of insanity, while thinking of my pale skin, I studied Dr. Rodrigo and thought about how vastly different she looked from me. She was dark – dark hair, dark eyes, tan skin, obviously from some Spanish-speaking country, though I didn’t know which. And I was light – red hair, blue eyes, and white, freckly skin that never tanned and always burned, thanks to my Irish ancestry. I wished I looked more like her… and that I spoke with a cute accent, the way she did.

I was so lost in this train of thought that, at first, I didn’t realize she had started talking about the test results. Suddenly, I snapped back to reality.

“Dr. Conti, the ER physician who saw you yesterday, had some suspicions when he had you admitted. Unfortunately, the tests confirm his suspicions. They point to a diagnosis of acute lymphocytic leukemia. It’s a type of cancer of the blood and bone marrow.”

In keeping with the trend of surrealism, her words didn’t sink in right away. I’m not sure how many seconds I sat there, frozen, not moving, not blinking, not even breathing. It was my dad’s hand on top of mine that snapped me out of this, and then the reaction came.

Except that I didn’t know how to react.

Cancer… leukemia… I have leukemia?

Somehow, it just didn’t seem possible. When I thought of leukemia, I thought of those bald little kids you saw on the telethons on TV. That couldn’t be me. I was twenty years old. I was in college, getting ready to finish the semester and move into my apartment. I couldn’t have what those poor kids on TV had.

“I thought it was anemia.” The words slipped out of my mouth quite calmly, which surprised me. Had I just said that? I felt weird, almost like I was outside of my body, watching this scene play out.

“You are anemic, but it’s because of the leukemia. It interferes with the production of blood cells, and as a result, your blood counts are abnormal. That was why your cut bled so much.”

She was making too much sense; I didn’t like it. This couldn’t be possible… it just couldn’t be.

Then a little sob escaped my mom’s throat, startling me. Shaken, I leaned forward to look past my dad to her. Her hand was over her mouth, her eyes wide and misted over. Between us, my dad sat very stiffly, his hand still clamped over mine. He didn’t move, just stared straight ahead at Dr. Rodrigo, his eyes narrowed. It was hard to tell what he was thinking, but then he spoke, sounding as calm as I had. Maybe I got that from him.

“You’re absolutely sure about this?” he asked.

Dr. Rodrigo nodded slowly. “Unfortunately, yes. I wouldn’t give you this diagnosis unless I was sure. I know this is very hard news, but there is good news. This is the most common type of leukemia in young people Claire’s age, and when treated aggressively, it can be cured. Now that we’ve diagnosed it, we can progress with treatment.”

“Will she need chemotherapy?”

“Chemo is the standard protocol, yes.”

I wasn’t sure why my dad was asking all the questions I should have been asking, but I was grateful. I must have had all kinds of questions somewhere in the back of my mind, but they seemed to be locked back there for now. I couldn’t think. All I could do was repeat that word in my head. Cancer.

With it came another C-word: change.

I may not have realized it at the time, or maybe I did, also somewhere in the back of my mind, but that was the moment that my entire life changed.

***

Mirror, Mirror

“Mirror, mirror, on the wall, who is the fairest of them all?”

When I was little, I used to stand in front of my dresser and pretend I was the wicked queen from Snow White, addressing my magic mirror. For some reason, I always preferred the villains to the Disney princesses (except Ariel because she’s red-headed and spunky, like me!), and I thought the queen was pretty bad-ass, especially compared to Snow White. The mirror attached to my dresser was even oval-shaped, which made it perfect for a magic mirror. I spent quite a bit of time playing in front of it.

The dresser was part of my mom’s old bedroom set, which became mine once I was old enough for a “big girl bed” and stayed mine until I moved out, at which point my parents bought me new furniture. That old bedroom set is still in their house, in the guest room, and though my old clothes have long since been emptied from it, it still carries the battle scars and “tattoos” acquired throughout its years in my possession. Stickers that I stuck on and couldn’t peel off… bits of spilled nail polish… and several carvings done out of anger and love. In a moment of teenage rage at my mother, I once carved “FUCK YOU” on the back in crude, miniscule writing – I was just angry enough to do it, but not too angry to fear my mother’s reaction if she actually saw it. To this day, I’m not sure she has.

But she surely has seen the carving around the corner, which reads “CAR + JRP.” Decoded, “Claire Aileen Ryan loves Juan Ricardo Perez.” JR Perez was my first “boyfriend,” in seventh grade. We passed love notes to each other in second period, held hands at recess, went to the Spring Fling together, and broke up two weeks later. But in that magical two weeks, I lived and loved enough to last a lifetime.

Just kidding. Actually, we barely spoke to each other. He was shy, and I had a retainer that made me lisp, so we mostly held hands and shared awkward smiles during our half and a month together.

By the time I got my first real boyfriend, I was past the age of feeling the need to carve my emotions into my bedroom furniture, so that dresser holds no lasting remnants of Jamie Turner. But there was a time when its mirror was almost obstructed due to all of the photos I had artfully tucked into its frame. Jamie was in most of them.

I stood in front of that mirror many, many times, giving myself one last once-over before going to meet him, my friend and first true love.

***

May 3, 1997

It was prom night, and, standing in front of my mirror, I really did feel like a princess. I wasn’t big on dressing up, normally, but here I was, squeezed into a gorgeous gown with layers of light yellow and orange chiffon flowing all over the place. My mom had taken me to get my hair done, and the hairdresser had twisted my usual ponytail into an elegant up-do. She’d used so much hairspray, I knew it would be a bitch to try and take down later, but I wasn’t worried about that now.

Leaning forward over the top of my dresser, I put the final touches on my makeup – one last smudge of eye shadow, a thick coating of mascara, another layer of lip gloss, and just a hint of glitter around my eyes and cheeks. The body glitter belonged to my best friend Dianna, who was obsessed with the stuff. “For prom,” she’d said on Friday, as she’d shoved a small pot of it into my hand. “It’ll look awesome.”

I didn’t normally like to look sparkly, but tonight, it did fit. On impulse, I added some glitter to my shoulders too and smiled at my reflection in the mirror. I looked pretty good. Hopefully Jamie would think so too.

I’d been crushing hard on Jamie Turner all year, but until he had asked me to junior prom, I didn’t think he had a clue. I had tried to keep it subtle; after all, he was my best guy friend, probably my second best friend after Dianna, and I wanted to keep it that way. I liked hanging out with him, even if it wasn’t as girlfriend and boyfriend, and I would kill myself if I messed up and ruined what we had.

Even now, I wasn’t sure where we stood. Had he asked me to prom just as friends, because there was no other girl he liked enough to ask? Or was he interested in me too? I didn’t know, and it was driving me crazy, but I had already decided that all I could do was act normal and go with the flow.

Yet when the doorbell rang, my heart jumped into my throat.

“Claire!” I heard my dad call, seconds before he opened the door. “Hey, Jamie, come on in,” his voice drifted up the hall, into my bedroom.

I couldn’t help but smile. My dad adored Jamie; in the three years since he’d moved to Tampa and become my friend, he had become almost like a second son, filling the void my brother Kyle had left when he’d graduated college and moved out for good. Jamie was always welcome for dinner at our house, and, in return, Dad and I went to most of his soccer games. We also had a running rivalry with Jamie during baseball season, as my family loved any Florida team, and he was a die-hard Cubs fan.

“I’m coming!” I shouted, abandoning the mirror and going to my closet. It was a mess, as usual – I was as much of a packrat then as I am now – and I pushed aside my Marlins cab and a couple pairs of flip-flops to get to the box that held my new prom shoes. They were heels, and I groaned as I stepped into them, knowing my feet would be killing me by the end of the night. I hated wearing high heels. But, for prom, even the most practical of us have to make sacrifices.

Grabbing my handbag off my bed, I walked carefully up the hall, trying hard not to trip in my shoes or step on the hem of my dress. I made it successfully and was met with a barrage of gasps and gushes from my mom and compliments and a big hug from my dad. Then they backed away, and I finally found myself face to face with Jamie.

I’d seen Jamie in nice clothes for choir concerts and church, but I’d never seen him in a tux, and the sight literally made my knees weak. He looked amazingly gorgeous, his dark curls gelled, his blue eyes contrasting brightly with his black tuxedo. I grinned when I saw that he was wearing a pale yellow tie beneath his vest; he had actually listened when I’d told him what color my dress was.

“You look like a peach,” was his greeting to me, as he grinned back. I took it as a compliment, knowing Jamie well enough to know that he rarely gave them straightforwardly. “This is for you,” he added, and behind his back, he conjured up a corsage that matched my dress almost perfectly, with its combination of yellow carnations and peach-colored roses. Dianna had to have helped him pick out that, I thought, but I didn’t ask.

Remembering that my boutonni�re for him was still in the fridge, I turned, only to see Mom smile and hold out its box. She thought of everything way before I did. Grinning, I took it and offered it to Jamie. “Your boutonni�re.”

“You’re gonna have to help me get that thing on,” he chuckled.

Laughing, I pinned the coral rose to his lapel, and he slipped my corsage onto my wrist. Nearby, the camera flashed, as my mom took pictures of the whole thing. Then it was outside for more pictures, until Dianna and her date arrived in the limo he’d rented for group shots.

Finally, after my mom had gone through a full roll of film, we piled into the limo and left, ready for dinner and dancing and all the magic of our first prom.

As it turned out, the prom itself wasn’t all that magical. But Jamie and I got our picture taken and danced to Celine Dion and Savage Garden, and as the last strains of “Truly Madly Deeply” faded, the real magic began.

“Let’s get some air,” he whispered, leaning close to my ear, and when I nodded in agreement, he took my hand and walked me out of the hotel’s ballroom and into a courtyard that was twinkling with lots of little white lights amid the landscaping. There were a few other prom couples out here, but they were making out peacefully, so no one paid any attention to us.

“Thanks for coming with me tonight,” said Jamie, turning to me, his face sincere.

I smiled, my heart beating fast. “Thanks for asking me,” I replied, though I wanted to say so much more. I wanted to tell him how much it had really meant to have him ask me, that I’d been hoping for this for a year now, that I’d fallen hard for him and hoped he felt the same. The fear of rejection and awkwardness had kept me from saying it all year, but in that moment, maybe because I felt pretty and desirable in my prom dress, I realized I felt bold enough to do it now, and if I didn’t, I might not work up the courage again for a long time. Swallowing, I cleared my dry throat and then added, “I’m really glad you did. I… I wanted to go with you… and not just as friends.”

The moment I said it, I hoped I wouldn’t regret it, and for a second, I almost did. The way Jamie’s eyes flashed, I thought for sure he was going to flip. He got this deer-in-the-headlights look, but just as soon as it had come, it was gone, and suddenly, his face was moving towards mine. Realizing instinctively what he was about to do, I lifted my chin and tipped my head, and when our lips connected, I swear there were fireworks. I swear. Maybe they were just in my mind, but it really was one of those moments, a moment I’d been yearning for for months.

And it was every bit as good as I’d hoped it would be.

Jamie was a good kisser, which wasn’t totally unexpected, because he’d had several girlfriends in the time I’d known him. He was popular in school, the soccer star who also sang in the choir and starred in the musicals, and I was kissing him. I know you’re supposed to kiss with your eyes closed, but I just had to open mine for a moment to make sure it was all for real.

It was.

When the limo dropped me off at home in the early hours of the morning, I was positively giddy. My mom was waiting up for me when I came in, barefoot (I’d ditched the shoes half an hour into the prom), and flopped down next to her on the sofa. We hadn’t been on the best of terms lately, my mom and me, but that night, all our differences were pushed aside, as I gushed all about dancing at the prom and kissing Jamie.

It was really late by the time I made it back into my room, still soaring on this incredible emotional high, and before I attempted to get out of my dress, I stopped by my mirror once again and peered into it. I didn’t look much like a princess anymore; my up-do had flattened, wispy flyaway hairs sticking out all over the place, and my eye makeup was smeared. But there was a sparkle in my eyes that hadn’t been there this afternoon, a sparkle that only Jamie Turner could put there.

Grinning at my flushed reflection, I relived the moment in my head. Our first kiss…

***

July 22, 1998

Sniffling, I studied my reflection through teary eyes. My blotchy, tearstained face was framed by an oval of photos, stuck in the mirror, photos from graduation, our senior class trip, prom…

He was in all of them, and my eyes were instantly drawn to his grinning face, which just made me cry harder. I wasn’t normally a crier, but just then, I felt like my soul was breaking, like my heart was being ripped right out of my chest cavity.

Dramatic, right? But I was eighteen years old and had just gotten dumped by my first love.

Out of nowhere.

How could he have done this to me?

I thought back to the conversation we’d had on his porch, amazed I could remember any of it because it had seemed like such a blur at the time, such a surreal nightmare. Bits and pieces of his words made it back to my memory.

“… I just think we need to start college with clear heads and nothing to tie us down.”

“You mean no ball and chain girlfriend to spoil your weekends of partying?” I spat. “Are you saying I’m no fun?”

“That’s not what I’m saying at all. I just think it would be easier if we came in with no ties back to home, so that we can meet new people and not constantly be thinking about each other,” Jamie said calmly. His calmness was pissing me off. When I fought with someone, I wanted them to get mad, as mad as I was.

“We could still meet new people! Good god, Jamie, it’s not like my entire existence revolves around YOU.”

But maybe it does, I thought now, staring miserably into the mirror. My eyes scanned the pictures again; he really was in virtually every one, except a couple of Dianna and me being goofy on our girls’ nights out. The last year had been the best of my life because I’d been dating him. For once, everything seemed in place, all my plans made for me. Jamie and I would enjoy our senior year, go to senior prom, graduate, spend an amazing summer together, and then start college in the fall. He was going to Florida State up in Tallahassee for a degree in actuarial science (whatever the hell that was), while I was staying in Tampa to go to UT and try to figure out what I wanted to do with my life. We would be far away from each other, but in my mind, it didn’t matter. We would make it work. We’d visit each other on weekends, whenever we could get away, and we’d still have Thanksgiving and Christmas and spring break and the whole next summer. We’d get through it, and after four years, we’d graduate and get married.

I knew it was a little soon to be thinking of marriage – my dad, even though he liked Jamie, would flip if he knew I was – but I just couldn’t help but feel that Jamie was “the one.” He was my best friend… and that’s the way I wanted it to be. I wanted to marry my best friend. Even though we’d only been dating just over a year, we’d been friends for four, and I felt like I knew him better than anyone.

That’s why the break-up came as such a shock.

“I thought we loved each other!” I screamed at him, as the angry tears started.

“I do love you, Claire, you have to understand that.”

“Well then, what’s the problem?? As long as we love each other and stay true to each other, distance can’t hurt us! What are you so afraid of, Jamie?”

What he was afraid of, I never found out. I thought he should be afraid of losing me, the way I was afraid of losing him and the relationship we had. But he didn’t seem to care at all. He was pushing me away; he wanted to get rid of me and go off to college a free man, able to fool around with any girl he wanted to.

Never mind the fact that he’d lost his virginity to me, and I to him.

I sniffed loudly. What a waste. I’d gone against everything the Catholic Church had taught me about premarital sex… for him? And now the asshole I thought I was going to marry (which made the whole thing okay in my mind) was dumping me.

I wanted to throw something and make the mirror shatter, the way I was shattering inside, but that seemed a little melodramatic, and I knew my mom would kill me for breaking her vanity, so I didn’t. I settled for slamming things around in my room instead, throwing the kind of tantrum I’d used to get what I wanted when I was little. Only this time, all I wanted was Jamie, and he wasn’t even here to cave to my tirade.

So eventually, I gave up and flopped down onto my bed, where I cried hard, cursing his name into my pillow.

***

February 14, 2001

I’ve never been a big sap about Valentine’s Day. I mean, I’m not one of those bitter girls who wears all black on February fourteenth and insists on a Girls’ Night Out with her friends just so they can spend the evening bitching about men and going “Yeah! Who needs ‘em?”

I’m not like that. Really. I like men. Don’t get me wrong, some of them are huge pricks. But some of them are pretty damn amazing too. I’ve been in love before, twice, and most of the time, it’s a pretty incredible feeling. So I try not to resent happy couples who go all out on Valentine’s Day, cause hey, it’s a nice holiday if you’ve got a good man in your life.

That said, I’m not the kind of girl who wears a bunch of red, lacy shit and demands flowers and mushy cards and teddy bears and chocolate on Valentine’s Day either. Well, maybe the chocolate. But usually I just raid Dianna’s boxes of it, cause she always buys herself some if she doesn’t get any from a guy, and she hates the coconut kind. I’ll eat ‘em, no problem; I’ll pretty much eat anything, even if it’s half bitten into.

See, I’m a pretty easygoing person. I don’t get all into Valentine’s Day, but I don’t loathe it either. It’s just a holiday that comes and goes every year, and I go along with it, and if I happen to have someone special in my life at the time, I get my own box of chocolates out of the deal. I think I have a pretty good attitude about it most years.

But not every year. Some years, when you’ve just gotten out of a serious relationship or when your life just sucks, Valentine’s Day is kind of a downer. It sure was the year after I broke up with Nick… partly cause I had broken up with Nick and partly because I wrecked my car and ended up with a broken arm that night. It also was in 2001. Not because I’d just gotten out of a relationship… hell, I hadn’t had a relationship since high school. That year, it was just because my life sucked.

As I sat alone in my room, I pictured all of my friends in theirs, getting ready for whatever they would be doing that night. Some would be getting all cute for their nice dates with their nice boyfriends. Others would be dancing around to loud music, getting pumped up for a crazy night with their girlfriends. And I would still be here, alone in my room, without the energy to dance or the ability to look cute, separated from it all.

That was how I had felt all year: separated.

It was a big change from last year. Last year, on Valentine’s Day, I’d hung out with my roommate Jenn and some other girls from our dorm floor. We had popped popcorn, ordered pizza, paid a junior to buy us a few six-packs of Smirnoff Ice, and sat around in some girl’s room watching bad movies all night. It was like a junior high sleepover, and it was fun. A lot of college was like that.

But now, things were different. And everywhere I looked, I saw the change.

My bedroom didn’t quite feel like home anymore. My true ‘home’ was my old dorm at school. But I hadn’t seen the inside of that place in months. All of the stuff from my dorm room was crammed in a corner of my bedroom, where it had been collecting dust since last May, except for the pictures and stuffed animals and other stuff I’d put back into place.

The mirror on my vanity, once laden with pictures of my friends from high school, then with my friends from college, now had a mishmash of photos tucked into its frame. All of my closest friends from all years of school were featured there, as well as my family. My parents, my brother, grandparents, cousins, pets… I had gotten nostalgic when I’d first come home from the hospital last summer and put them up, and there they remained. The people who really mattered.

In the middle, I could see my own face, my reflection staring back at me from across the room. And that was where the change was most obvious. My red hair was just starting to grow back; it formed a fine fuzz all over my otherwise bald scalp, like that of an infant. My head looked weird without my hair, and my whole face shape had changed. It was gaunt now. My cheekbones, which had never been that prominent, now showed, and below them, my cheeks were sunken in. I looked anorexic, although I wasn’t. I ate as much as I could, but it was hard sometimes. Chemo had been rough, and I was pretty sure I’d puked more times in the last year than I had in my entire life prior to getting leukemia. I wasn’t throwing up so much anymore, now that I was in remission, but my appetite still hadn’t returned to normal, and neither had my taste buds. Some foods, especially foods with a strong taste (a.k.a. the foods I liked), tasted different, weird, and I couldn’t stomach them anymore. If Dianna had come by and offered me a coconut-filled chocolate then, I probably would have gagged in her face. Without chocolate, I stayed skinny.

Dianna acted like it was a good thing, to have lost so much weight without trying, but I didn’t think so. My old clothes, now a couple of sizes too big, hung on me, and the figure I’d had before was gone. Now I was straight and boney and boyish, and the lack of hair didn’t help me any. I wasn’t as revolting looking as I had been a few months ago, but I sure wouldn’t qualify as “the fairest of them all” either, and the thought of anyone asking me out on a date for Valentine’s Day was laughable. Well, unless it was a pity date. But I hadn’t even gotten an offer for one of those. I hadn’t gotten an offer to do anything with anyone.

Most of my friends had been pretty great right after I got sick. They were really shaken, of course, and a few of them got weird, but my closest friends came around and were there for me. The ones I went to college with would come by the hospital and visit me just about every day, even though they were busy with term papers and finals. And when they went their separate ways for the summer, Dianna came home and hung out with me.

But after summer, when Dianna went back to school and my college friends came back to UT, everything was different. I didn’t go back. I’d agonized over the decision for weeks, but when it came down to it, there was just no way. I was still doing treatments, and the thought of adding a full course load to the mix was just too much. Besides, my parents wanted me at home, where they could smother me. I mean that in the best way possible, but seriously, my mom had never been so overprotective. And she’s a mother hen by nature.

So my closest friends settled into the apartment I’d signed a lease on without me, though they were nice enough to find me a sub-leaser. I went over to hang out with them a few times in the fall, but it was just weird. Awkward. Uncomfortable. You’d think it would be more weird to be lying around in a hospital gown with your friends all around you, but I think the aftermath was even harder. By then, they’d gotten back into the swing of school and crazy apartment life, which I was not a part of, and I got the impression that my presence was kind of a downer for them. I wasn’t supposed to drink, and I didn’t have the stamina to stay up late or do much of anything but sit on the couch, so I guess I was pretty much an official party pooper, though of course they were all too kind to say it.

But as the months went by, we started seeing each other less and less, and by February, with midterms approaching for them and a whole lot of nothing going on with me, they were pretty much non-existent to me. It was nothing personal, and I tried not to have any hard feelings about it; I understood. But at the same time, it was depressing. And so I moped.

I was moping then, that night, on Valentine’s Day, just imagining what they, with their normal lives, were doing. I wished my life could be normal again. It was getting there, but I had a feeling it would never be quite like it was. Cancer had changed me. I knew that even then.

So I was moping on my bed, staring at the reflection of my suffocating bedroom in the mirror, when I heard the doorbell ring. I didn’t bother moving. Years ago, I would have run to the door, expecting a friend or a neighbor, but most of my friends from back then weren’t around to drop by my house anymore, so I doubted it was for me. Through the closed bedroom door, I heard my dad’s heavy footsteps in the hall, as he went to answer it. The front door was pulled open, and my dad’s deep voice, slightly muffled, boomed, “Well, hey there! Haven’t seen you in awhile!”

I didn’t hear the reply, but a moment later, my dad added, “Come on in,” and another set of footsteps joined his. I listened nosily, wondering who it was he hadn’t seen in awhile, and heard them coming up the hall towards my room.

I should have guessed, by the friendly tone of my dad’s voice, who it was, but when he knocked and opened my door a crack, I really wasn’t expecting to see the person he had with him. But a second later, there he was, standing in my doorway, somehow taller and broader then I remembered him, even if it had only been a few months since he’d last visited.

“Claire? You’ve got a visitor,” my dad said, not bothering to ask me if I wanted a visitor, particularly this visitor, and I forced a smile.

“Hey, Jamie.”

Jamie Turner had been in my room once since he’d dumped me. That was last summer, a few days after I’d come home from the hospital, the one and only time he had visited.

I had been glad to see him then. Before the leukemia thing happened, he and I had just started being friends again – you know, talking without a whole lot of awkwardness and bitterness, hanging out without all the sexual tension, just being pals, the way we had been before we’d ever dated. It was nice. I guess a part of me still had feelings for him and missed the deeper relationship we’d once had, but I liked having him as a guy friend too, and I had been happy to patch things up with him. Our relationship finally felt normal again.

But then I had to go and get cancer, and that changed it, just as it had changed every other aspect of my life. Jamie didn’t visit me once while I was in the hospital doing chemo. I think he sent a card… and called me once or twice… a couple of brief, awkward conversations with a lot of pauses and ragged breathing, during which he’d told me how he wanted to come see me but couldn’t – school, intramural soccer practices, and his job were among the excuses he fed me. I bought them at first; after all, he was going to school way up in Tallahassee; it wasn’t as easy for him to get downstate for a weekend visit. But then the semester ended, and he still didn’t come – he’d decided to stay in Tallahassee for the summer and work, he told me; he needed the money. I realized then he was avoiding me, and although Dianna reasoned with me that he was probably just scared by what was happening to me, it stung. It really stung. If it had been him in my place, I would have been up to see him in a heartbeat. I know I would have been.

Of course, maybe I just have a warped perspective because it didn’t happen to him; it happened to me. And like I’ve said, it changes your perspective on everything.

So anyway… after avoiding me for weeks, once I got through the worst and was able to come home, he finally turned up. I thought maybe it was just the hospital that had scared him away, but nope. That one visit proved me wrong. It wasn’t just the hospital; it was me. Me and the disease that was now a part of me. Although he’d never admitted it – because I hadn’t really talked to him since – the visit had freaked him out. I guess it would be kind of upsetting, to see your friend, your one-time girlfriend, bald and gaunt and pale and completely lethargic from leukemia, but seriously, be a man and get over it!! That’s what I had wanted to scream at him for the last few months.

It was what I wanted to scream at him right then, as I sat on my bed staring up at him, not sure how to feel. A part of me really did want to get angry at him, and yet, the pathetic little nostalgic part of me was glad to see him. Isn’t that messed up? Yeah… that’s a problem with Jamie and me. He always does that to me, damn him.

“Hey,” he said back to me, short and quiet. He seemed hesitant. I didn’t blame him. He knew even then how bitchy I can get when I’m mad, and I guess he also sensed that I was mad at him. He had every right to be afraid. Ha.

But I kept my bitchiness in check. I was nice. Maybe I shouldn’t have been, but I guess that’s what you do with your close friends. You forgive them, even when they piss you off.

“C’mere. Sit,” I invited him in, scooting over and patting a spot for him on my bed. He came, and he sat, and my dad left us alone to talk. I’m sure my dad was hoping we would make up – my dad always liked Jamie, at least until he turned into an asshole.

I liked Jamie until he turned into an asshole. Ugh, but let’s not go there – that one’s for another time.

He wasn’t an asshole then. Even though he had hurt me, I knew that he hadn’t meant to, even before he apologized. And he did apologize.

The thing about Jamie is that he’s very capped off, emotionally. He’s like a two-liter that hasn’t been opened yet, all pent up inside, and he acts real laidback and calm, like he doesn’t care, but as soon as he gets shaken up, the pressure builds, and when you finally get him to open up, he explodes all over the place. Sometimes those explosions involve yelling, but in all honesty, he usually just cries. I know, it’s either really endearing or really pathetic; I’m not sure which. I guess back then I thought it was endearing. Now I’d lean more towards pathetic. Heh.

He cried that night, sitting with me on my bed. He’d brought me flowers, you see, for Valentine’s Day, but also as an apology, and with the apology came the honesty and the tears.

“I know I haven’t been here for you like I should’ve been,” he said, looking at me, his brow all furrowed and tears in his big blue eyes. God, I loved those eyes. They were really blue already, but the tears made them even more so – I hate to say it, but he was gorgeous when he was emotional. “I wouldn’t blame you if you never forgave me, but I just have to say I’m sorry. It wasn’t personal; you have to know that. I just… I didn’t know how to handle what was going on with you. I didn’t know what to say, how to act… I know it’s not a good excuse, but I… I was just…”

“Scared?” I offered as he fumbled, using Dianna’s word.

“… Yeah…” he confessed slowly, looking away like he was ashamed. “I guess that’s it. I was scared.”

“So was I,” I replied, and I guess that could be taken as sarcastic and bitchy, but I really didn’t mean it that way. I was trying to be empathetic – of course I knew how he felt, cause I had been scared too. Too bad we couldn’t have shared that then, though. “It’s okay to be scared. It’s totally understandable. I guess I just… I wish we could have been scared together,” I finished, voicing that thought.

“I’m really sorry…” He couldn’t look at me now. “I know I made it seem like I was too busy for you, but really, I thought about you all the time. I couldn’t stop thinking about you. And I prayed… I prayed that you would get through this…” He looked up then, hopefully, as if the fact that he’d prayed for me in Tallahassee would make it all okay.

Well, I guess it was a start. “Thanks,” I said. Then, smiling as another thought came to me, I added, “You should have known I would get through it though. If I can get through… I dunno, dinner with your mom… or pre-calc with Ms. Grant… then cancer shouldn’t be that tough to beat.”

I was trying to lighten the mood – it’s an ability I pride myself on – and even though he blanched at the word “cancer,” it seemed to work. He cracked a smile, anyway.

“I dunno, you weren’t so tough watching Scream that time.” He laughed, and I rolled my eyes, remembering the time he’d freaked me out with that stupid movie. Slasher movies freak me out for some reason; I can’t help it.

“Yeah, well, chemo is nothing compared to that movie,” I said sarcastically. He totally went pale. I guess that’s about the point in time when I realized that I had no problem talking about this stuff, but it made everyone else, especially people like Jamie, uncomfortable. I would milk that to mess with people in later years. I was glad to see him squirm; he deserved it.

In the end, I guess I let him off pretty easy. I forgave him. I didn’t trust him completely, as I once had, and it would take several more years before I did again, but he had my friendship, and he let me know that I had his too. He promised me that I could call him anytime I wanted and that he would be there if I ever needed him, and before he left, he kissed me. It wasn’t a romantic kiss, just a friendly one, a sweet and soft one, but it left my lips tingling. I felt like Drew Barrymore in Never Been Kissed – I hadn’t been kissed in so long. But after he left, I wiped my lips and vowed I would never let myself fall for him and be hurt by him again.

Ha.

I felt better though, about everything, after his visit. At least someone had thought of me on Valentine’s Day. And it was Jamie. And he’d brought me flowers.

I looked to my vanity, where I’d put the vase. A beautiful bouquet of red roses, not just a dozen, but fifteen of them! Apparently, fifteen was the proper number to give when saying you’re sorry. At least that’s what Jamie said. I didn’t know this, and he could have totally been making it up, but I liked thinking he had actually been thoughtful enough to ask a florist. In any case, he had to have spent a fortune on them. (I didn’t feel too bad about that though – after all of his time “working,” he should have had plenty of money to spend on me.)

The mirror reflected the bouquet, making it appear even fuller than its fifteen roses, their petals as red as blood. My face soon joined the reflection, not the fairest of them all, but, sadly, white as snow.

Then again, I guess that does make me the fairest of them all. :)

***

Freeze

December 25, 2002

It was Christmas Day, but no one was merry.

A curtain of dread hung over us, much like the chill that permeated the air outside. It wasn’t an icy chill – come on, we live in Florida; did you think there’d be ice? – but it was cold. And by cold, I mean upper-forties cold. Which is practically subzero for a Florida girl.

Christmas is pretty much the only day I don’t hate cold weather; it’s an excuse to bust out the one scarf I own and drink hot cocoa by the light of the… TV. Pathetic, I know. That’s one of the things I missed, growing up in Florida – white Christmases. But then, I’d gladly give up a white Christmas for a warm winter.

That Christmas, though, it wouldn’t have mattered if it was forty or eight outside. I still felt cold on the inside. As cold as I had two days earlier, when I’d gotten the news.

“Claire, your lab results came back, and I’m afraid they don’t look good. Your bloodwork shows twenty-five percent blasts.”

Dr. Rodrigo’s words made my heart come to a crashing halt, or at least that’s what it had felt like. For a long few seconds, I couldn’t breathe.

“Blasts” were the oncology nickname for cancer cells. You expected to find a few of them even during a remission. At one point, mine had been under five percent and dropping, or so it seemed. But now that figure was back up. Way up. The higher percentage of blasts, the worse it was, and this was the worst it had been since around the time I started treatment after my original diagnosis. That was bad news. It meant a relapse. After over two years in remission, my cancer was back.

I should have seen the relapse coming, but it still came as a nasty shock. Maybe I was just in denial. But it was the holidays, and I figured the exhaustion I’d been experiencing was due to all the usual hustle and bustle.

I’d been working extra hours at the dentist’s office, where I’d been a hygienist for the last year or so, ever since finishing my associate’s degree the summer before. Dental hygiene wasn’t exactly my field of choice when I’d started college, but in all honestly, I hadn’t really known what I wanted to do, and when leukemia had screwed up my college plans, it had seemed a suitable Plan B. My dad was a dentist, so I saw myself as following in his footsteps, and I went out into the field thinking that if I liked it, maybe I’d go on to dental school and get a degree in general dentistry later on. I’d been working for Dr. Somers, an old friend of Dad’s who worked out of an office in Tampa, ever since, and I really enjoyed it. I liked working with people and wearing scrubs, the pay was pretty good, and the hours were flexible – some hygienists only worked part-time, but I’d been doing it full-time. I was happy to take on even more hours over the holiday season, when the kids were out of school and my older coworkers had travel plans with their families. I needed the money for my rent, bills, and, of course, Christmas presents. But between working and participating in all the Christmas festivities, I had worn myself out – and apparently ignored the other symptoms.

Right after I’d gone into remission, I had been so diligent about keeping tabs on my own health. I checked my body for unexplainable bruises and worried whenever I found one. I kept track of my temperature if I had even the slightest fever, and lost sleep over feeling fatigued (which only made me more tired). My greatest fear was that the leukemia would come back. But eventually, after clean bills of health at all of my regular check-ups, I began to realize that I was going to make myself completely neurotic by constantly worrying about a relapse, and so I made myself relax. It was normal to feel tired sometimes, I told myself, and perfectly healthy people bruised too.

For awhile, my life returned back to normal. I had moved on to the next phase of my life – the adult phase. I’d finished college, at least for now, gotten a good job, and moved out to my own apartment in Tampa. My parents had sold our old house after my dad’s retirement and moved to a smaller home in Gainesville, so for the first time in my life, I felt like I was truly “out of the nest.” I was building my own nest now, preparing for the future.

And then I went for my check-up, and all of my future plans were shoved into a giant question mark. In the span of a couple seconds, my entire life had changed again.

I felt like I was having a recurring nightmare. And really, I was, except for that it was no nightmare. This was my life.

I had wanted to wait until after Christmas to tell anyone. I’d let my family enjoy the holiday and not dampen the Christmas spirit with bad, frightening news.

The problem was, I knew I couldn’t hide it. My parents could read me like a book, and they would have known something was up if I wasn’t happy and excited over Christmas. And my faking happiness act could only go so far. I simply wasn’t a good enough actress to pull it off, not during Christmas. Besides, it was horrible carrying the burden of my relapse around, even for a few hours, and not having anyone to talk to me, hug me, pray with me, and reassure me that this news wasn’t the end of my world.

I’d called my parents late that afternoon, and they had called my brother Kyle, and now it was Christmas and we were all together, trying to make the best of it. It was hard, nearly impossible, to get into the Christmas spirit, though, not with the news of a relapse hanging over our heads. It was the scenario we’d feared ever since I had gone into remission, come true.

The worst part for me was that I wouldn’t begin treatment until after New Year’s, at the earliest. I hated waiting. It wasn’t that I wanted to go back on chemo, which had been a horrible experience the first time around, but just sitting around, I couldn’t help but imagine my bone marrow popping out blast after mutated blast, the leukemia cells making their way into my bloodstream and choking out all the good blood cells around them, slowly killing me from the inside. I wanted those fuckers gone, and if chemo was the only way to do it, so be it.

We tried not to talk about it over Christmas dinner; I guess everyone else figured it was too depressing.

A part of me wanted to talk, though. I had a lot to think about, and it was hard keeping it inside. I’ve always been one of those people who blurts out whatever I’m thinking. It’s a curse – diarrhea of the mouth, my dad calls it. He’s the same way about some things, louder and more opinionated than even I am, but in typical guy fashion, he didn’t seem to want to talk about this either. I knew it was just because he was scared and didn’t know how to express how he felt. But he didn’t really have to; I knew. I’ve always been a Daddy’s girl, closer to him than to my mom, and I knew how hard it must have been for him to watch me, his “little girl,” go through the kind of pain he was helpless to fix. Wasn’t like when I was little and would skin a knee roller skating in the driveway or an elbow falling out of a tree. A kiss and a band-aid worked just fine then.

I wished a kiss could save me now.

During dinner, I sat across the table from Kyle and his wife, Amber. They were so cute together sometimes, it made me sick. (Well, sicker.) Amber taught kindergarten, so she was all sweetness and spunk, and together, she and my brother still acted like newlyweds, even though they’d been married a few years. But really, I was happy for him; he’d done well. My sister-in-law was a great person, and I knew she would make one of those picture perfect mothers someday. There had been a few hints that she and Kyle were thinking about trying for kids, though they didn’t seem to talk about it too much around the whole family. I gave Amber a good once-over every time I saw her, though, secretly watching for signs of pregnancy – a certain glow, uncharacteristic moodiness, a slight pooch that hadn’t been there before…

I couldn’t wait to have a little niece or nephew.

As I watched them, thinking of romance and family and babies, something other than hunger gnawed at my stomach. I wasn’t hungry anyway, not even for the Christmas feast my mom had cooked. I hadn’t been hungry in two days. I was too filled up with worry. Worry and confusion.

Chemo wasn’t the only treatment option Dr. Rodrigo had offered me this time around, after she’d told me I had relapsed. She had also mentioned a bone marrow transplant, though she reserved this as a very last resort. “There’s a great deal more risk involved,” she’d said, her dark eyes looking very serious, “and it can take six months to a year to recover from. It’s much more intense than chemo, but if another course of chemo doesn’t lower your blast count significantly, it’s an option to be considered.”

That sounded reasonable to me, but there was a catch. (Don’t you know? There’s always a catch.)

In order to work, Dr. Rodrigo had explained to me, a bone marrow transplant required that my immune system be wiped out with massive doses of radiation. Radiation, from what I had heard, wasn’t like chemo in terms of side effects – it didn’t make you puke or lose all of your hair or get canker sores and weird tastes in your mouth. In normal doses, it mostly just made you tired. But in the quantity I would receive it before a transplant, it would do worse than that.

It would make me sterile.

When she first used the word “sterile,” I pictured the examining room I’d just been in – all stainless steel and disposable gloves and reeking of antiseptic. Clean… pure. Sterile. But, quickly, I realized, with a sinking feeling, that she was using it in the other context, the biological sense. Sterile was a synonym for infertile. It meant I’d never be able to conceive a baby.

That possibility hit me harder than I’d expected it to. I was only twenty-two and hadn’t had a serious relationship since high school, so marriage and children weren’t really on my radar. But they were both things I wanted, someday, when the time was right.

I just hadn’t counted on the fact that when the right time came, it might already be too late for me.

“I wanna avoid the transplant if I can,” I had told Dr. Rodrigo up-front. “I mean, I really do want to have a baby someday…” But then I trailed off, feeling silly. This was my life I was talking about. If it turned out that I needed the transplant, I would be stupid to not have it because I wanted to have a baby… right? There were always other options… adoption, for example.

But still, it bothered me more than I wanted to admit, the whole fertility thing. I had always seen myself as a mother someday. Like most little girls, I’d envisioned my ideal family: the perfect husband, three kids… a boy first and then two girls because, well, I wanted my daughters to have a big brother, the way I’d had growing up, and I had always wanted a sister myself. Hell, at one point in time, I’d even owned one of those baby name books. Bought it in the checkout line at the Kash n’ Karry while stocking up on junk food for a sleepover with Dianna. I think we were about thirteen at the time. We’d made long lists of the names we liked for boys and girls, both first and middle, and drafted up imaginary families with our top picks for kids and husbands. I probably still had my list somewhere, written in my bubbly, teenage girl handwriting and shoved in a memory box with the crumpled up notes Dianna had folded up into little triangles and passed to me in class. I saved all kinds of stuff like that, never knowing what I would want to put in a scrapbook someday.

It made me sad to think of my teenage innocence and wonder if those fantasies had any remote chance of coming true. Far from getting married and starting a family, I was faced with the very real chance that I wouldn’t live long enough to fall in love again.

For someone who had just reached the age when people get married and start building their futures, the thought was incredibly depressing. All of the plans I did have had come screeching to a sudden halt, my life instantly frozen in place, like a movie put on pause.

And there was more. More bad news, along with the good, for me to process.

“That’s what I wanted to talk to you about,” Dr. Rodrigo replied to my comment about having babies. “If you do see yourself having children someday, then there are some things you need to consider. You can start back on chemo first and hope that it works, but it may not. At that point, a bone marrow transplant would be your only chance for survival. There are measures you can take to preserve some aspect of your fertility before having the treatment: you can have your eggs harvested and frozen, then re-implanted into your womb in the future, through in-vitro fertilization. Have you heard of that?”

I nodded; I knew it was what women who had trouble conceiving had done. I didn’t know much about it, though, and I’d never really thought I would need to. No woman in my family, even in my extended family, had ever had trouble getting pregnant – that I knew of, anyway. I guess I had just taken it for granted that it wouldn’t be an issue for me.

“I’ll do that then,” I said, thinking that, if the time came, it would be better than just letting the radiation fry my ovaries and not doing a damn thing about it.

But that’s where the real catch came.

“Then your best option would be to do it sooner, rather than later. As you know, chemo itself can interfere with your menstrual cycle and make you temporarily infertile. If you wait too long, it might make harvesting the eggs very difficult or even impossible.”

A sick feeling churned in my stomach as I realized the logic of what she was saying. The last time I’d done chemo, my period had stopped altogether. At the time, it had been kind of nice – the last thing I’d wanted to do was deal with cramps and bleeding on top of all the other physical crap I was going through. I really hadn’t missed it, and it came back after I went into remission, irregular at first, but I was back to a fairly normal cycle by now.

And chemo was going to screw it up all over again. Maybe forever.

I sighed, and she put her hand lightly on my shoulder, offering the kind of guarded sympathy doctors usually give, which is pretty sterile in itself. She didn’t really make me feel better, but I left her office that day with a handful of pamphlets about fertility, egg harvesting, and in-vitro fertilization and the name of a specialist I could call for a consultation.

I had plenty to think about, and, two days later, I hadn’t made much headway.

But I needed to. I couldn’t afford to wait too long – I wanted to start chemo as soon as possible, yet I had to wait until I figured out what I wanted to do about the egg harvesting.

So much for a happy holiday.

***

January 2, 2003

The start of the new year found me sitting with my mom in a consultation room at the Hillsborough Fertility and Gynecology Clinic with Dr. Gwen Nevin.

Dr. Nevin was an embryologist, the kind of doctor who specialized in fertility treatments. She had given me a quick exam, which, weirdly enough, had been my first of the gynecological variety – not that it was a memory I would treasure. Oh, no. Then she had brought me to this consultation room, where she’d sat Mom and me down to talk about the options.

As it turned out, there weren’t as many as I’d thought.

I had come in with the notion that they could take out some of my eggs, freeze them, and thaw them out to fertilize later, once I had a husband and was ready to have a baby. But, to my disappointment, it wasn’t that easy.

“At this clinic, we don’t freeze eggs. We freeze embryos,” Dr. Nevin explained, stressing the difference. “In-vitro fertilization using eggs that have been frozen is still in the experimental stages, and unfortunately, the success rate is very low. One day, I’m sure we’ll have the technology and know-how to do it well, but at this point in time, we just aren’t quite there yet. We’ve had much higher levels of success using eggs which are fertilized through IVF while they’re ‘fresh,’ so to say, and then cryogenically frozen as embryos. But, of course, to make an embryo, you need sperm.”

Sperm. So basically, I needed a man.

“Are you in a serious relationship?” was the doctor’s next question.

I don’t blush a whole lot because I don’t let myself get easily embarrassed, but I blushed then. “No, not at all,” I answered truthfully.

“Then, if you’re serious about going through with the procedure, you can use an anonymous sperm donor.” Dr. Nevin talked about the process of getting a sperm donor for awhile, handing me more leaflets with information. I would be able to read profiles of the donors from their sperm bank, she explained, without names or other identifying information, of course, and pick the one I wanted to use.

It sounded interesting, but… quite frankly, weird. In essence, I would be picking my babies’ father from a pile of papers, without ever meeting him. I knew he wouldn’t be thought of as their father, per se, because I didn’t plan to have a baby until I was married. My husband would be their father. But even so, this would be their father in the biological sense, and that was weird.

My mom must have thought so, too, because she asked a lot of questions. I think it bothered her that I was having to go through this. She and my dad are both pretty hardcore Catholics, and I was raised this way, and IVF isn’t exactly smiled upon by the Church. But we’d had a long talk right after Christmas, and when I had told her that I was pretty positive I wanted to do this, she had been very supportive.

I knew deep down she just wanted to have grandchildren someday. Biological grandchildren. And she wanted me to experience pregnancy and childbirth, the way she had twice. I didn’t blame her; I wanted that too. I knew I would adopt, if it came down to that, but this seemed an option worth trying. At this point, I had nothing to lose.

The first step was to settle on a sperm donor. After that, Dr. Nevin said, they would track my cycle and then start me on regimen of hormones that would prepare my body for the egg harvesting. All in all, it could take up to two months or more for the entire process.

Two months before I could start my cancer treatment.

It was a scary thought, waiting that long, but the more I thought about it, the more I decided it was a risk worth taking. I knew that if I didn’t do it and ended up living through cancer, but losing my fertility, I would regret having not tried. I had always been a risk-taker, a daredevil, willing to bet against the odds.

It didn’t take me long to make up my mind: I was going to go ahead with this.

I just needed some sperm.

***

January 6, 2003

Four days later, I’d made some headway with the sperm donor profiles, but hadn’t decided on anything. I was still wrapping my mind around the whole idea of it, and, in the meantime, I’d faced the heavy task of telling my friends and coworkers about what was going on with me.

The other hygienists at my work had been very sympathetic, and my boss, Dr. Somers, had been great. He’d given me a leave of absence from work, telling me that I needed to take the time off to concentrate on getting healthy again and assuring me that when I did, there would always be a place for me in his office.

My friends had taken the news harder. I went over to Dianna’s apartment to tell her in person, as it seemed the only right way to do it – after all, she’d been my best friend since middle school. She cried, almost reducing me to tears myself, and clung to me as she hugged me, sobbing about how I was her best friend in the entire world and she couldn’t believe this was happening to me again. It was nice to have her to vent to about how unfair the whole thing was because she was right there with me. When she’d calmed down enough, I told her about the IVF dilemma too.

“So… you get to pick your own baby daddy?” she asked when I finished. The innocent way she said “baby daddy” cracked me up, and suddenly, I felt a lot better. Guess that’s the point of having friends, right?

“Yeah,” I laughed.

“Hm… that’s pretty cool! How fun! Do those profiles you have to look at include pictures by chance?” A playful light entered Dianna’s eyes, and I knew just what she was thinking.

“Yes…” I said, and she beamed.

“Be sure to pick a hot one then! You wanna have cute babies!”

I laughed. She was right, but there were a lot of factors to consider. The profiles listed basic bits of information like the guys’ height and weight, but also more personal things, such as their educational background, hobbies, and interests. Even though they were anonymous – no names were included, just tracking numbers – there was a lot more to look at than I’d realized, and I wasn’t sure what the “perfect” combination would look like to me. I just hoped I would know it when I saw it. I wanted to take my time with it, figuring if I was going to pick some random guy to father my children, I at least wanted a good one – someone smart, athletic, and… well, cute wouldn’t hurt.

But I felt rushed. The clock was ticking, and I was still picturing those cancer cells pouring out of my bone marrow with each passing second. I couldn’t afford to waste too much time making up my mind.

Dianna happily agreed to pore over the donor registry with me; we made it our weekend project, looking through the profiles all afternoon on Saturday.

By Monday afternoon, I hadn’t settled on anyone yet, but I was feeling a little better about the whole thing. I could do this. I had to.

And then Jamie called.

I admit, his call threw me for a loop, maybe more than it should have. My stomach clenched when I saw his name flashing on my cell phone, and I knew that he knew. See, I hadn’t exactly called him myself to tell him that I had relapsed. The first time around, I had worked up the guts to call all of my close friends, who were scattered across the state of Florida at different colleges, thinking I had no other choice. But for some reason, the thought of doing that was even harder this time around, maybe because it was somehow more devastating to relapse than to be diagnosed in the first place.

You wouldn’t think that would be the case, but it was. I think it’s because the first time, once I’d gotten over the shock and slowly started to accept it, I took on the attitude of “I can beat this” and “Die, leukemia bitch, die.” Once I went into remission, even though my greatest fear was still relapsing, I really had thought, deep down, that I had succeeded, that I had beaten it and would be considered “cured” in five years. The thought of going through chemo and all of that shit a second time was worse than it had been the first time because I knew what it was like. I knew that it was every bit as awful as I’d feared it would be the first time, and that I’d have to do it all over again. And for what? There was no promise of remission this time. The chances of remission and survival are pretty high the first time, but they plunge after a relapse. I knew the statistics.

That’s what made it so much harder to tell people this time. So I counted on others to do it for me. I told Dianna, my best friend from high school, counting on her love of gossip and drama to spread the word for me. The only other friend I called was Jenn, my best friend from college, who I expected to do the same for the different circle of friends we shared.

I knew Dianna had called Jamie, but in nearly a week since, I hadn’t heard from him. He was living in Des Moines, Iowa now; he’d gotten a job up there right out of college. So it wasn’t like I expected him to just show up at my doorstep with a hug for me or anything, but a call would have been nice. I remembered his reaction the first time around, though, and it made me almost nervous to talk to him now. But it wasn’t like I was going to avoid him, so I punched the button to answer his call and put the phone up to my ear.

“Hey, Jamie.”

I could always count on Jamie to reply with a completely monotone “Hey.” Even when we were dating, that was always how he had answered the phone – it was something I had teased him about a lot, which was maybe why he always did it - just to annoy me. We were just like that with each other; I think people could tell that we had been friends before we’d been a couple.

But he didn’t say “hey” this time. All he said was, “Claire.”

I could hear his voice waver on my name, and I knew for sure then that he definitely knew. Probably he was upset, though he’d try to hide it. Not very well though – I could read him like a book, even over the phone.

“So I’m guessing you’ve talked to Dianna?” For some reason, I smiled as I asked the question, even though there was really no reason to smile.

I could hear Jamie release his breath into the receiver. “Yeah…” He paused. “I can’t believe this is happening to you again.”

“Yeah, I know, me neither. I was praying it would never come back, but…” I trailed off, then quickly changed my tune, trying to stay positive for him. “But… there are still plenty of options; I’m still gonna beat this thing. I’ll be okay.”

A few seconds of silence passed, as I waited for Jamie to say something. I wasn’t about to do all the talking – he was supposed to do some reassuring or something of his own. That was why he had called, wasn’t it?

As it turned out, it wasn’t. Not the only reason, anyway.

“Di said you were waiting to start your treatment because you want to freeze your eggs,” Jamie spoke again finally.

“Embryos,” I corrected him automatically. “But yeah… I’m going to freeze some embryos, ‘cause there’s a good chance I might end up sterile when this is all said and done. I mean, it’s not a sure thing, but… I want to do it, just in case. So I can still have babies of my own someday.”

“And you need a sperm donor for that, right?” asked Jamie, and I realized he was more informed than I had thought. He and Dianna must have really talked.

“Right...” I chuckled. “I’ve been shopping for one of those – it’s totally weird, like, picking out my future baby daddy.”

Jamie let out a stiff chuckle too. “I bet. Actually, uh… I’ve been thinking, and… I’d like to help you out with that.”

I blinked as his words sunk in, caught off-guard. What a weird thing to say. “What do you mean, help me out with that?”

“Like…” Jamie hesitated before finally spitting it out. “Being your donor.”

“My sperm donor?!” I choked, before I could hold it back. “You mean you wanna give me your sperm??”

Great, now I’ve got him all embarrassed, was my next thought, as Jamie went completely quiet. Good going, Claire. I hadn’t even given myself time to react, to actually think about it, before I’d responded. It was kind of a bad habit with me – remember that whole diarrhea of the mouth thing I was talking about? Yeah, prime example right there.

I tried to correct myself. “Sorry… I mean, are you serious, Jamie? You want to… donate?”

“Yeah,” he answered hoarsely, very quiet. “I do.”

My mind reeled. My thoughts were going a million miles an hour, but in the midst of them, I couldn’t help but think that this had to be the weirdest phone conversation I’d had in my life – and I’d had quite a lot of weird conversations. Here I was, talking to my best guy friend, my ex-boyfriend, about donating his sperm to artificially fertilize my eggs so that they could be frozen.

Any way you sliced it, that was just weird.

“Um, not to sound rude,” I said, hoping to excuse any more oral spewage ahead of time, “but… can I ask why? I mean, you realize what that would mean, right? If I used those embryos to have children, you… you would be their father. Biologically. But still… Is… is that what you want??”

“I wanna help you,” replied Jamie, his voice firmer now. “That’s all I really want. I owe you, for how I acted the last time. I want it to be different this time, and I figured, this is something I can do to make it different.”

I frowned. “Well, sure, but I don’t want your sperm as a charity gift, ‘cause you feel sorry for me… or guilty… or whatever you’re feeling. Honestly, I think I’m better off just going with an anonymous donor… less weirdness for all of us that way.”

“No, don’t think of it like that,” Jamie interjected quickly. “Think of it as… well, a gift… but not charity. Just… a gift. With no strings attached. Just because I-… because you’re my friend.”

I guess it made sense that he would want to do something meaningful to make up for how he had treated me before, and this was definitely something meaningful, but… it was still weird, and I couldn’t help but think how it could get complicated down the road. There was a reason for such a thing as an anonymous sperm donor…

But I didn’t want to just blow him off either, so I said, “Okay… well, can I think about it? I… I appreciate the gesture and all, but… I really need some time to think on it.”

“Oh yeah, sure,” agreed Jamie. “Take all the time you need. Just… call me, whenever, and let me know what you decide.”

“I will…”

Saying awkward goodbyes, we hung up. But I didn’t put down the phone right away. I sat with it in my hand, staring through it, for what must have been close to twenty minutes, not moving, just spacing out… thinking…

***

February 24, 2003

A month later, I was doing the same thing, this time in the waiting room of the Hillsborough fertility clinic, with a magazine on my lap and a lot on my mind. This was it, the day I’d been waiting for after a month of constant testing, hormone therapy, and a medication regimen that was supposed to kick my ovaries into overdrive, urging them to make as many eggs as possible. My body was as ready as it was ever going to be, and today was the day they would “harvest” the eggs from me, fertilize them with sperm, and freeze them as embryos.

I’d spent the last few weeks on the internet, reading the blogs of women who had gone through fertility treatments like this. Their mere words gushed with the worries, the hopes, the fears, and the excitement of this moment, this day, when the waiting was over and they could finally begin. But for me, there was no excitement.

Worry? Fear? Of course. Let me tell you, having cancer does not make you immune to the anxiety that goes along with having a medical procedure done. I may have built up more of a tolerance to needles and pain than I used to have, but trust me, it never gets pleasant. At best, it’s only what I said – tolerable.

But excitement? No. I knew I was doing the right thing for myself, for my future, but everything about it felt wrong. Babies aren’t supposed to be created in a lab; they’re supposed to be conceived out of love. That’s what I had been taught, and that’s what I believed, yet there I was, waiting to have my eggs sucked out of me and infused with the sperm of a man I had once loved, but no longer trusted. Jamie Turner had broken my heart… and I was about to let him father my children?

But no one at the fertility clinic referred to them as “children” there, or even “babies.” They were embryos. Not even fetuses, but embryos, tiny clusters of cells too small to be seen without a microscope. They seemed insignificant when described that way, and it was weird to think that a little blob of cells could be frozen and stored away, like a fudgesicle forgotten in the back of the freezer, only to be thawed out later and grown into living, breathing human babies. My babies. And that made them not insignificant at all.

It was a huge decision I had made, and in the emotional cyclone of the last two months, even I didn’t fully comprehend the impact it would have on my life. It was like a whole part of me had gone numb, as numb as I’d be when they knocked me out and stuck a needle up me to suck out the eggs. (Lovely image, right?)

I was so numb already that, at first, I didn’t feel Jamie’s hand on my leg. When I glanced down and noticed it there, I looked over and found him smiling at me. A crooked, nervous smile. “Are you scared?” he asked.

“I wasn’t until you asked,” I retorted, poking my tongue between my teeth. Truth be told, I wasn’t really scared about the procedure… I’d be asleep for it, so it would be painless. I was more afraid of whether or not I was doing the right thing, making the best decision. But I wasn’t going to tell Jamie that. He was doing me this huge favor, something I’d never expected him to do; I didn’t want him to know how many doubts I had about the part he was playing in all of this.

He smiled more genuinely and patted my hand, which I realized was cold once I felt how warm his hand was in comparison. “Don’t worry. Everything will be fine,” he said, in his lame way of trying to reassure me. I hated when people told me that, as if they were psychic and just knew it.

“Psh, yeah, easy for you to say,” I scoffed. “All you have to do is jack off into a cup. Same thing you do every day, minus the cup. What do you have to worry about?”

Jamie’s face got red, and he looked around to see if any of the other people in the waiting room had heard me. It was the same thing my mother would do; I guess I have a habit of embarrassing people in public. I have no filter.

At least my mom wasn’t there with us that day. She had wanted to come, but for whatever reason, I’d decided this was something I needed to do alone. Well, with the exception of Jamie. I’d let him come because, well, he had to give his sperm sample at some point anyway… why not today? At least it’d be good and fresh when it swam into my eggs.

And that was the image swimming in my mind when the nurse came and called us both back. Jamie was escorted off to do his business, and I was taken to a different room, to change into a thin gown and lie my bare ass down on a freezing cold table while I waited to be knocked out and raped by a syringe.

There should have been a million thoughts and feelings racing through me at that point, but instead, I continued to feel numb, like it was I who was frozen. And I wished I was. I wished I could shout “Freeze!” and everything would be frozen, just stand still so that I could catch my breath. But it was no use. I was in a race against time, against death, and there was no chance to pause. That day, I would freeze the only thing I could: a few microscopic blobs of hope for my future.

***

The Day I Met the Rest of My Life

I wish I could remember what day it was. The exact date, I mean. But I don’t. I don’t think he does either – we’ve debated over this before. All we know is that it was sometime in April, and for me, it was just another day where I was glad to wake up and even happier to fall back to sleep.

I had been in the hospital for a few weeks. I know that much because I spent my twenty-third birthday there, and my birthday is in March. There’s an exact date I do remember: March 15, 2003, the day I got a new set of bandanas for a gift and puked up my birthday cake and ice cream. Ahh, the memories.

Anyway, by April, I’d spent a few weeks enduring chemo hell. My new bandanas went to good use covering up my bald head, and the thought of chocolate cake was enough to make me vomit on command. I’d done so much vomiting that I was skinnier than I’d been in years, at least since the last time, and while some would look at the weight loss as an added benefit (namely, Dianna), I couldn’t even show off my new figure. While Dianna was out prancing around in her new spring clothes, I was stuck schlepping around the hospital in a robe and slippers. And that was on a good day. On the bad days, I barely left my bed.

Those were the chemo days. Even though I woke up every morning glad to be alive, I dreaded those days because I knew exactly what they had in store. I’d be taken down to the chemo room in the morning, get shot full of potent chemicals, and be wheeled back to my room to vomit and sleep the rest of the day away. If I was lucky, I’d sleep. If I was unlucky, the constant urge to throw up would keep me awake, even through every fiber of my weakened body was telling me to zonk out so that it could rest. It was a miserable way of living, but I supposed it was better than dying.

On the non-chemo days, I battled boredom instead of nausea. There’s just not a whole lot to do in the hospital. I had a private room, which was nice when I was puking every twenty minutes (really, who wants to be in a room with that going on?), but kind of lonely the rest of the time. I’m a talker; I like companionship. I had visitors, of course, but with my parents in Gainesville, my brother working, and my friends spread out all over the place, they couldn’t hang out with me all the time, and I couldn’t expect that of them either. It was bad enough that I was cooped up in the hospital; why inflict that monotony on anyone else? They had better things to do, all the things I wished I could be doing. Instead, I watched a lot of daytime TV, took walks up and down the hall, read books to the kids in the pediatric ward, and wore out the brand new Linkin Park CD, Meteora, on my Discman.

That day was a chemo day, and there was nothing special or unusual about it. I don’t remember what I wore or what I ate for breakfast. (Knowing me, I ate a lot, wanting to get something in me, even though I knew most of it would come up again later. As far as the outfit, they were all pretty much the same at that point – pajamas, robe, slippers – probably those furry leopard-print ones I loved.) I do remember that the chemo room was a lot emptier than usual that morning, and that when I asked Flora, my nurse, about it, as she was putting the IV in my arm, she said, “We’ve had to make some scheduling adjustments to accommodate a VIP patient on the floor.”

She lowered her voice to tell me this, as if it were some big, hush-hush secret, and I laughed in response. Well, la-dee-freaking-da, I thought, rolling my eyes when she wasn’t looking. Who was so flipping special that they couldn’t have anyone around while they got chemo? And why did everyone else have to adjust their schedules? If I were in charge, that VIP snob could just get their chemo at midnight, if they insisted on that much privacy.

“Is it gonna be a problem that I’m here?” I asked, with some sarcasm. “If so, I don’t mind waiting till tomorrow to do this… in fact, I’ll be happy to rip this thing out and head back to my room right now,” I added with a smirk, indicating the IV she had just finished setting up.

“Nice try,” replied Flora, with a wink and a smile. She started the drip, patted my shoulder, and walked away, leaving me with no one to talk to and nothing to do but stare at the yellow walls and wonder how long it would take for the nausea to kick in this time. I had it timed at about half an hour.

So, I stared at the walls and watched my IV drip, wishing I’d brought my CD player along, for about twenty minutes, until Flora left with an empty wheelchair and returned with someone in it. I looked over with interest, wondering if this was the VIP diva who had thrown everyone off their chemo schedules. I dunno why, but I was expecting her to look like Cruella De Vil – you know, from 101 Dalmatians? Some old, eccentric heiress with wild hair and an English accent, wearing a fur coat and fine jewelry. Silly, considering I’d never seen anyone this side of Disney World who fit that bill, but that was the image I had in my head. So I was surprised when the person in the wheelchair was the complete opposite of what I had pictured.

First of all, he was a guy, not a woman, and he was young. About my age, I figured; early twenties. He was wearing a hospital gown – not even a robe or anything, just that crappy gown – and he looked like a regular guy. He also looked terrified. Absolutely terrified. And… familiar.

I had just started thinking that, no, this couldn’t possibly be the “VIP” they had made such a big deal over, when I recognized him. I wasn’t sure at first, but there was something about him that was definitely familiar, and after staring at him for a few seconds, while Flora pushed him in, I realized why.

“I Want It That Way.”

I will forever associate that song with finals week, my freshman year of college. It had just exploded onto the radio and MTV, and everywhere you turned, someone was listening to it or singing it. I wasn’t much of a pop fan at all, and my roommate Jenn only listened to indie bands no one else had ever heard of, but when the “I Want It That Way” craze swept the halls of our dorm floor, we had no choice but to get swept up in it too. It was a good stress-reliever, singing along to that song and making fun of its video. Sure, we mocked, but it was such a catchy song, we had no choice but to kinda like it. Everyone liked it, whether they wanted to admit it or not.

I was no Backstreet Boys fan, but I looked into this guy’s pale, scared face, and in my mind, I had a sudden flash of the blonde boy from the video singing “Tell me why-ee…” And it clicked. Nick Carter. This was Nick fucking Carter, the Backstreet Boy, being wheeled into the chemo room of Tampa General. He looked a lot different from the guy in the video, without the floppy hair and the baby face and the cute smile. The hospital gown he wore completely washed him out, and his leg was in a brace, and he had this defeated look about him. But I felt sure it was him.

My suspicions were pretty much confirmed when I heard Flora say to him, “Your doctor tried to arrange it so you could be in here alone for your treatments because of your celebrity status, but there was a bit of a conflict today. Don’t worry though, Claire won’t spill the beans about you.”

She gestured, and he followed her gaze over to me. I offered a smile that I hoped was pretty subdued, which he acknowledged with a nod before avoiding eye-contact. I continued to stare at him, as Flora got him set up two chairs down from me, my mind reeling. At first, I was just floored at the fact that I’d encountered one of the freaking Backstreet Boys at the hospital, of all places. And then it hit me, as I watched Flora thread the IV into his arm. Hospital… chemo room… Nick Carter the Backstreet Boy had cancer? What?!

I stared at him with as much persistence as he avoided looking at me, as if he were some fascinating new species of animal at the zoo. I’ll admit it; I was intrigued. That was my first reaction: not sympathy, but curiosity. What did he have? How long had he had it? Why didn’t I know about this? And why was he here, in this hospital, of all places?

I made a few inferences while Flora finished with the IV. I remembered hearing, from the mouths of the girls on my dorm floor who had gotten the rest of us hooked on that stupid song, that Nick was from this area. A few of them had met him before. Now it made sense that he was in Tampa General; he must live in Tampa, I realized. Odd that I had lived in the same city my whole life, but never crossed paths with him. Then again, Tampa was a big city, and for all I knew, I had and just didn’t know it. Like I said, I was no Backstreet Boys fan.

As far as what kind of cancer… my guess was bone cancer of some sort. The leg brace was my clue there. And when I heard him ask, “How long is this supposed to take?” I knew he couldn’t have had it long.

“So is this your first time?” I called over to him, once Flora had left his side.

He had closed his eyes, but now he opened them again and gave me a look that said clearly, Don’t talk to me. “Yeah,” he muttered, and closed his eyes again.

Prick, I thought, immediately turned off by the attitude he seemed to project. I got that he was newly-diagnosed and about to delve into chemo hell for the first time and most likely scared out of his mind, but he didn’t have to be an ass about it. I didn’t feel sorry for him. I’d been there too, and I hadn’t acted like a bitch. But maybe that’s just how he was. An over-inflated ego to match his overplayed songs. Hence the need to play the celebrity card and insist on total privacy during treatments. I rolled my eyes; I hated people who acted entitled. Did he think he was better than everyone else? Well, the hospital may have been giving him special treatment, but he wasn’t too special to get cancer, and in a way, as horrible as it sounds, that realization was satisfying to me.

Don’t get me wrong; I would never wish the C-word on anyone, not even a big-headed popstar. And sure, I empathized with him. I had been in his place; I remembered how scary it was. But his standoffish attitude irked me. I felt the urge to mess with him a little, see if I could get him riled up. Mean, I know, but hell, I wasn’t going to pander to him either.

“Sorry, didn’t mean to bother you,” I said loudly, letting my voice project across the room, even though he was only a few feet away from me.

He kept his eyes shut, though I could see the look of annoyance flicker across his face. “No problem,” he grunted, barely moving his lips.

I smiled. I was glad he had his eyes closed because I’m sure the smile was more devilish than friendly; behind it, I was trying not to laugh. “I’m Claire Ryan, by the way,” I introduced myself sweetly. I had decided that the more irritated he acted by my talking to him, the more I was going to talk. I guess I’m just an obnoxious person that way – it must come from being the baby of the family.

He sighed, already exasperated, I’m sure, and finally looked over at me again. I guess he realized he had no choice. I forced myself to keep smiling at him as his hard blue eyes gave me the once-over. Finally, he said, “I’m Nick Carter.”

“I know,” I replied, fighting the urge to laugh again. I was a girl, clearly between the ages of thirteen and thirty; did he think I wouldn’t recognize him?

He nodded and didn’t say anything more. But now that I’d gotten him to speak – and in a complete sentence, even! – I was eager to talk more. I was still curious and wondered how much information I could get out of him.

“So, um… I hope you don’t mind me asking this,” I went on, “but what kind of cancer do you have?”

“Ewing’s Sarcoma,” he answered, looking like every cell in his body was against him telling me. Or maybe he just didn’t want to hear himself say the words aloud. I remembered how hard it was to tell people when I’d first been diagnosed, and for the first time, I felt some sympathy for him. “It’s a kind of bone cancer.”

Bingo, I thought, pleased with my deductive skills. “Yeah, that’s what I thought. Sorry.”

I wasn’t sure what kind of reaction I expected from him, but certainly not the one I got. “That’s what you thought?” he repeated, his eyes widening. “Why, did you hear something about me somewhere?” He sounded so paranoid that I started to laugh; I couldn’t hold it back anymore.

“What? No. Your leg brace – that’s what made me think maybe it was bone cancer.” Chill out, dude, I added internally, looking at him in amusement.

“Oh… ohh… okay…” For the first time, he smiled, a doofy, sheepish sort of grin. “I just thought maybe the media had found out.” He seemed to relax a little, but now his face was red. Well, I had succeeded in riling him up, though not in the way I had intended.

“I understand,” I said, smiling genuinely this time, and he smiled back. He had a great smile, just like in that music video.

“So… what kind of cancer do you have?”

I was impressed; I’d gotten him from one word responses to two, to full sentences and, now, questions! We had progressed to an all-out conversation!

“Leukemia.” It wasn’t hard to say it anymore; I was used to it by now. It was a part of me, and I wasn’t self-conscious or in denial about it like I once had been.

“Oh. So, how long have you had it?”

“Almost three years… I just came out of remission though.” That part was harder to say; I wished so much that it wasn’t true. But I’d had since Christmas to get used to the idea that my cancer was back. Now I was just concentrating on getting to the point where I could say I was back in remission.

“Oh. I’m sorry,” he said. I didn’t want his sympathy, but at least he sounded genuine. I smiled… maybe he wasn’t such an ass after all.

“Yeah, it sucks, huh? But…” I trailed off, distracted by the sudden queasy feeling in my stomach. Oh man, this was it. I closed my eyes and lay back against my chair, trying in vain to fight it, but the nausea wasn’t going away. I could feel my breakfast oozing back up my esophagus..

“But what?” Nick asked from far away.

… the burn of stomach acid bubbling in the back of my throat…

“Claire? Are you okay?”

“Uh… just a minute,” I choked out and reached for my basin just in time to catch the contents of my stomach as I puked them up. As I retched over the basin, I couldn’t help but think of how mortifying it was to be vomiting uncontrollably in front of Nick Carter. Or at least, it would have been, if I were anyone else but me, and not too preoccupied with the uncontrollable vomiting. As it was, I was too sick to be humiliated.

Suddenly, Flora was by my side, her hand on my back. “Oh Claire, honey,” she murmured, like my mother would, but there wasn’t much she could do to help. There was such a thing as anti-nausea medication, but it never seemed to work well with me, and that was if I could keep it down. We just had to wait until the urge to vomit passed. I’d already emptied my stomach of all that had been in it; now I was just dry heaving. Finally, that stopped too, and I lay back against the chair, my stomach finally relaxing as the nausea subsided. For now, at least. I knew it would be back in full force before too long, and I was already miserable.

Remembering Nick, I looked over, wondering what his reaction to my impression of Old Faithful would be. But he wasn’t even looking at me. He, too, was leaned back in his chair, his eyes closed, his face white and clammy. I recognized the look of someone who was about to either puke or pass out.

Now that she was done tending to me, Flora noticed too. “Nick? You feeling okay?”

“No,” came his weak reply, and Flora hurried over to adjust his chair, so that he was lying flat on his back, with his legs slightly raised. She told him to lie still while she got a cold compress, which she slid underneath his neck to cool him off. As I watched, I found that my empathy for him was increasing. He had a rough road ahead, and unlike me, he didn’t yet know the full extent of the misery that awaited him.

“Does that feel better?” Flora asked, and Nick responded with a yes. Some of the color came back to his cheeks, and when he opened his eyes, he looked over at me. I figured we were about even now, me puking and him almost passing out.

“You doing okay, Nick?” I asked.

“Yeah… you?”

I shrugged. “I’m fine. I always get sick from the chemo.” I paused, then figured I might as well warn him, in case no one else had. “Hate to say it, but you probably will too.”

He groaned. But sure enough, by the time my IV ran dry, he, too, had his head in a basin, puking his guts out. That was my last image of him, as I was wheeled out of the room, struggling with my own nausea, and if you’d told me then that this was the man I would fall in love with, I think I would have laughed.

But there he was. My love, my soulmate. My future.

***

Windows

I moved into my first apartment when I was twenty-two. It was a one-bedroom on the second floor of a small, three-story building. It wasn’t part of a swanky complex with a pool and a rec center; it didn’t overlook Tampa Bay. Its parking lot was full of potholes, and weeds grew up through the cracks in the pavement. The building itself was okay, although I heard complaints from the third-floor residents that the tile roof leaked. When you walked inside, you were greeted with this smell that will never quite leave my nostrils. It wasn’t a bad smell, per se, just a distinct one. It was an old smell, the same sort of musty, mildewy odor of an old woman’s attic. Treading across the threadbare carpet in the halls for the first time, looking around at the grubby walls, inhaling that stale air, my father looked at me like I was crazy for leasing such a place and told me his daughter could do better.

And had my father, the retired dentist, been paying my rent, I could have done better. Much better. I’d have lived in one of those swanky complexes near the bay, with a pool and a rec center and an ocean view. But I was just a kid with an associate’s degree and a hygienist’s job and never-ending medical bills. I didn’t have the luxury of choosing a place for its amenities or location. And I was too proud, too stubborn, to accept charity from my dad. This place was affordable… and besides, I happened to love it.

It was a far cry from the house in which I’d lived with my parents, but if you looked past the weeds and potholes in the parking lot, the worn spots on the carpet, and the smudges on the walls… if you just bypassed all of that and looked straight into my windows (which, okay, was kind of impossible without a ladder - second floor, remember?), you would see that the apartment itself was me.

It was so me. Within two weeks of moving in, I’d converted that six hundred square feet into my own personal sanctuary. I’d painted the walls with my favorite colors - dark purple for the living room, light green for the kitchen, pale blue in the bedroom - and complimented my parents’ old furniture with my own accents. It was more cluttered and eclectic than feng shui, but I adored every nook and cranny of it for what it was: my own place.

I think people are like buildings in a way. When you first encounter them, you judge them by what you see on the outside. You have no idea what they’re really like until you get past the walls and see what’s on the inside. And, of course, it’s the inside that really matters.

I’ll admit, it was the outside that first attracted me to Nick. I don’t consider myself a particularly shallow person, but I am a woman, and Nick… Nick is a chick magnet. Or at least he was then. He had the looks, the presence, the charisma that just naturally attracts women. I didn’t usually go for blondes, but I do have a weakness for blue eyes. It was his eyes that got me… and his sexy eyebrows (why can’t my eyebrows look like that??)… and that sort of smirky, half-smile thing he does.

The first time I met him, I thought he was an asshole, but by the second or third time, I had sort of a crush forming. Not a serious crush, just… I dunno, the sort of crush you get on the hot guy who works at the gas station you fill up at on the way home from work. You don’t talk to him, beyond “Fine, and you?” and “Thanks,” and you can’t remember his name without checking his name badge, but you know his face, and a silly little part of you looks forward to seeing it when you go in to pay for your gas (and you always go in, even though you could just pay outside with your card). That was the kind of girly infatuation I had with Nick in the beginning. He was easy on the eyes, and after it had happened a couple of times, I looked forward to seeing him in the waiting room when I went in to the cancer clinic for my appointments.

Of course, I knew his name; every girl my age knew who Nick Carter was. I’d seen him on MTV with his boyband, baring his soul to the world as he revealed his cancer diagnosis. That was the first glimpse I got at his inside, at the Nick Carter who lived beneath the sculpted blonde hair and perfectly pruned brows. He was braver than I’d thought; the guy who’d sought total privacy for his chemo, who’d hidden behind pregnancy magazines in the waiting room to avoid being recognized, telling the whole world he had a deadly disease in person on live television. It gave me a new respect for him, and that made the crush feel a little stronger and a little less silly.

I’m not sure when exactly it turned serious. It was a gradual thing. At first, it was just a frivolous, secret crush, if you could even call it that. That was one-sided, I know. But then there was a friendship, a camaraderie between us, and that was mutual. There wasn’t, like, this one magical moment where the two merged and blossomed and I all of a sudden sat up and thought, “I’m in love with him.” It wasn’t like that. I don’t remember the instant I first realized it; it just sort of… happened.

I think the turning point was when we started seeing each other outside of the hospital. Up until then, all of our interactions had taken place on the fifth floor of Tampa General, and they’d all been initiated by me. I was the one who spoke first to him in the chemo room on the day we met. I was the one who came up to say hi to him in the waiting room of the outpatient clinic as we both sat waiting for our appointments. I was the one who offered to stay and hold his hand through one of his bone marrows. I was the one who visited him when he was admitted to ICU with pneumonia. I was attracted to him, on an emotional level as well as a physical one, but although he’d started to warm up to me, he hadn’t shown any signs of reciprocating my feelings… until the night he called and asked me out.

It was a Thursday night, and I had no plans. My life was pretty boring back then; I worked part-time, in between chemo cycles, and I used my time off to relax and rest up for the next round of work/chemo, both of which kicked my ass. I was just lying around my apartment in pajamas when the phone rang. The caller ID came up as “private caller,” and normally, I wouldn’t have answered, but something made me pick up that night. Maybe it was boredom. Maybe it was fate.

In either case, when I answered the phone, I heard this guy’s voice go, “Hey… is this Claire?” I recognized it right away. Nick has a distinct voice, and it was pretty familiar to me by that point, although I’d never heard it over the phone before. It was hard to believe he was actually calling me, but I knew it was him.

I decided to play it cool. “Hey, yeah, this is Claire,” I answered and waited for him to identify himself.

“Hey, Claire… It’s Nick. Nick Carter.”

I smiled, pressing the phone closer to my ear as my heart did a cartwheel inside my chest. “Hi, Nick! What’s up?”

“Not much… you know… just hangin’ out at home… bored… you know.”

I was surprised by both the honesty and the normalcy in his answer. It was nice to know that even celebrities spent boring nights at home, that he didn’t live this total rockstar lifestyle, that I could relate to him outside of the hospital. “I do know. I’m doing that very same thing at this very moment,” I replied.

He laughed. “Yeah? Well, I dunno about you, but I gotta get out of this house. You wanna go out? Not, like, ‘out’ out - just out to dinner or something.”

I knew he wasn’t asking me “out” out, like on a date, but I was still thrilled that he had called to ask me to do anything at all. “Yeah, sure! What did you have in mind?”

“Someplace small… sorta secluded, you know? I don’t feel like being surrounded by a bunch of people.”

I immediately pictured my old high-school hangout, Leonardi’s. It was sort of a dive, only known by the locals, but it had the best pizza and milkshakes in the city. “How do you feel about pizza?” I asked.

“I was thinking pizza,” he said, and I smiled.

“Then I know the perfect place. Leonardi’s - ever been there?”

“I don’t think so.”

“You’ll love it! It’s my favorite restaurant in Tampa; I always end up going there when I don’t feel like cooking.” Like tonight, I thought, deciding his timing was impeccable. “It’s not too classy or anything, but the food is great, and it’s cheap. Not to mention, it’s never too crowded. It’ll be perfect.”

Nick agreed to try it out. I told him where to find the place, and we agreed on a time to meet there. Normally, I would have had to scramble to get ready, but being bald has its perks - without hair to style, I was dressed and out my door in a matter of minutes.

He still beat me there, which surprised me - I’d expected him to be the kind of guy who keeps a girl waiting. Instead, he was waiting for me in the parking lot, behind the wheel of his silver Jaguar. I noticed the car before I noticed him, and it was love at first sight. That’s right - I fell in love with Nick’s Jag before I fell in love with Nick. But that part’s coming up.

He got out of the car when he saw me pull in and walked over to meet me. I had to suppress the urge to laugh when I got a good look at him. He was wearing a polo shirt with the collar popped like some frat boy and a baseball cap with the brim pulled down low, and even though it was getting dark, he had sunglasses on under that.

I got that he was trying to fly under the radar, but I couldn’t resist teasing him. “I think you’re attracting even more attention to yourself in that get-up,” I said, reaching up to pull the ridiculous sunglasses off his face.

Nick smirked, but even under the light of the parking lot, I could tell he was blushing. “Don’t hate,” he said.

“Not hating,” I replied, as we walked into the restaurant. “Just offering some friendly advice.”

But I really did understand why he didn’t want to be recognized, so when we got inside, I requested the wraparound booth in the far back corner, usually reserved for big groups or couples wanting to cuddle. Luckily, it wasn’t crowded that night, so no one was sitting there.

“Hey, thanks for meeting me here tonight,” Nick said, as we slid into opposite sides of the booth. The smirk was gone from his face now, and he sounded genuine, like he thought I was doing him a favor.

“No problem.” I smiled at him. “I’m always in the mood for pizza - well, almost always - and I could never pass up coming to Leonardi’s.”

He nodded, looking around. “Yeah, this place is perfect.” But as he said it, I saw him run his hand over the top of his baseball cap, like he was checking to make sure it was still covering his head. I knew he was bald underneath it, but I’d already seen his bald head and couldn’t understand why he was acting so self-conscious about it now.

“Quit it, would ya?” I said teasingly.

He smiled sheepishly and lowered his hands to his lap. “Sorry.”

“You should just leave it off. People would think you shaved your head on purpose. I know guys who’ve done that.” Guys with cancer had it easier than us girls, I thought. It wasn’t unusual for a guy to be bald. But for a girl - especially a pale, Irish girl - it just looked weird. (Okay, so maybe Sinead O’Conner was an exception, but then again, she was pretty weird anyway.) Maybe I was being hypocritical in judging Nick, because it wasn’t like I ever went out in public with my own head uncovered, but I didn’t try so hard to hide it, either. I had a wig, but it was itchy and I hated it, so I wore scarves instead - the brighter, the better. The tiger-striped scarf I’d tied on that night probably attracted just as much attention as my bald head would have.

“You’re forgetting one thing - I’m famous,” Nick pointed out. “The whole world knows what’s wrong with me; no one will think I did it on purpose.”

“True, but if everyone knows what’s wrong with you anyway, why do you care if they see your head? I mean, they would probably expect you to be bald, right?” I countered.

He shrugged. “I dunno. I just don’t feel comfortable with it yet, I guess.”

It was strange to see someone who was used to being the center of attention get so self-conscious, but I reminded myself that he was a newcomer to the cancer community, still a newbie, whereas I’d been a part of this world for three years. Realizing I was probably making him feel even more uncomfortable by giving him the third degree, I decided to let the issue drop. I smiled and said, “That’s okay. Neither do I, really. I was just giving you a hard time.”

I did that a lot, gave him a hard time, and he gave it back to me just as bad. That night, we bantered back and forth about a little of everything. I called him out on checking out the chick who waited on us, while he teased me about having a huge appetite. For once, cancer wasn’t the center of our conversation, until I started babbling about how the steroids I was taking had turned me into a bloated bottomless pit. “I used to be able to eat whatever I wanted though without it showing, but the chemotherapy I’m on now has totally been screwing with my system. The appetite thing plus the water weight just makes me-”

“Hey, you think we can change the subject?” Nick interrupted, and I realized I was over-sharing. Remind me never to write a book about first date etiquette, unless it’s one of those “what NOT to do” kinds. Not that this was a date, but a part of me - the part that was crushing on Nick Carter - wanted to pretend it was.

I laughed to cover up my embarrassment and quickly apologized. “Sure! Sorry. Yeah, let’s talk about happy things now.”

“Okay… happy things like what?”

“I dunno… like flowers and kittens and shit?” I joked. I may not have realized it at the time, but this was the first true test of our relationship: could we come out from under the shadow of cancer and sustain a conversation about something else, something light and fun?

“Kittens?” Nick wrinkled his nose. “Nah, I’m more of a puppy person.”

I laughed. “Me too. Cats are too damn temperamental.”

“Yeah,” agreed Nick.

I struggled to think of something to add to that. I wanted to talk about happy things, I really did, but I had no idea what those things might be. I realized I still knew almost nothing about him, other than that he was a famous singer from Florida who had cancer, which we’d already covered. Did we have anything else in common?

“So… what else makes you happy, Nick Carter? What are you into besides the music thing?”

A faraway look came into his eyes as he thought about the question. He seemed to be taking it far more seriously than I’d intended. So much for light and fun. “The ocean,” he said finally. “I’ve always loved the ocean. It’s like my… my sanctuary… the one place I can go to take my mind off of all the crap I have to think about and just chill, you know. It’s my escape.”

It was nice to hear him open up for once. He was usually so closed-off. I suppose he had been carefully groomed to say just the right things in interviews and such. For the first time since I’d met him, I finally felt like I was getting to know the real Nick Carter.

But just as quickly, he shut down again. “Sorry,” he said, blushing. “Didn’t mean to go all fruity on you.”

For the third time that night, I wondered how someone who acted so cocky sometimes could be so self-conscious. His sudden shyness was sort of endearing, though, and he was even cuter when he blushed. The red in his cheeks brought out the blue of his eyes, the windows to his soul. I looked inside them and saw someone who was struggling to hold on to himself in the midst of everything that had happened to him - or, maybe, to find himself in the first place.

“Why are you sorry?” I asked, frowning. “And I don’t think you’re fruity. That’s cool. So I bet you’ve probably spent a lot of time by the ocean recently then.”

“Actually, no, I haven’t. My poor boat hasn’t been taken out in months.”

“Oh. Well, you should take it out. Clear your mind and all that.” Clearly, he needed some kind of release. He was wound up way too tight.

“Yeah…” Nick said slowly. “Yeah, I should…”

And he did, the very next day. I saw him at the grocery store that evening, looking extremely sunburnt. Under the knit cap he wore, his eyes looked extra blue. He gave me a guilty look when I caught him holding four cartons of ice cream, but I wasn’t about to judge him for that. I knew from the previous night that it was all he could eat. Besides, he’d caught me with a frozen pizza, one night after our pizza “date,” which meant that I’d already plowed through the leftover pizza I’d taken him from Leonardi’s and wanted more, so I had no room to judge.

Instead, I decided it was my turn to make a move, so I did something I didn’t usually do: I invited him (and his ice cream) to come home with me.

And even more surprising? He came.

I felt sort of silly showing him around my one-bedroom apartment, knowing his house was probably huge, but he didn’t seem put off by its smallness. After he’d opened up to me the previous night, it was nice to let him into my world, the world outside of the hospital. It was a world of mundane things, of televised movies and mint chocolate chip ice cream, frozen pizza and Bisquik pancakes, but those were exactly the kinds of things we wanted. When cancer takes over your life, you miss the mundane. You crave normalcy.

I think that was why he stayed that night. Even if he wasn’t comfortable in his own skin, he was comfortable being in my place, just hanging out and watching TV and pigging out on ice cream. I represented both the normal he needed and the sickie he’d started to see himself as, or maybe more of a bridge between the two. I understood what he was going through because I’d been there myself, and because of it, I didn’t let him feel too sorry for himself. I kept him balanced. Whether he realized it or not, I think that was why he liked hanging out with me back then.

That night was definitely a pivotal point in our friendship. Not only was it the first of many nights we spent curled up on the couch, watching TV together, but it was the first time he really opened up to me. I had seen him vulnerable before, but until that night, he’d never willingly let his guard down in front of me. Oddly enough, all it took was a little aloe. He started by taking off his hat to let me put the stuff on his sunburnt scalp, and ended up removing his shirt so I could rub his back. But, looking back, this physical exposure represented so much more. Little by little, I’d started to peel back Nick’s layers and see the person he was underneath the walls he’d built up around himself. He had bared his body, but it wasn’t until he bared his soul that I fell in love with him.

Until then, I just liked looking into his blue eyes, sneaking a peek at the enigmatic soul inside.

***

Rejection

Everyone’s afraid of rejection to some extent, but when you’re a transplant patient, it’s your absolute biggest fear. “Graph versus host disease” is the official name for it, the reaction you experience when your body decides to turn on the transplanted tissue that’s supposed to be saving its life. It can cause all kinds of nasty side effects. If left unchecked, it can kill you. If treated, an infection can come along and kill you just as easily.

That’s why a bone marrow transplant is kind of a big deal. I knew when I agreed to it that I might be signing my own death warrant, but I also knew if I didn’t, I was dead anyway. A transplant was the last resort, the last line of defense against the leukemic cells that were taking over my body. The atomic bomb of cancer treatments. I had always known it might be in the cards for me, especially after I relapsed, as it’s a common protocol when standard chemotherapy fails. Still, it came as a shock to hear that my treatment wasn’t working and that a bone marrow transplant was my only chance for survival.

I’ll never forget the appointment where Dr. Rodrigo told me. It was supposed to have been a regular check-up, a quick blood draw to make sure the chemo was killing the cancer cells and not wreaking too much havoc on the healthy ones. But when my bloodwork came back bad, she ordered a bone marrow biopsy, then called me into her office to go over the results. I can still remember her saying, “The bone marrow sample we took contained thirty-five percent blasts.” At my relapse, that number had been twenty-five percent, which was bad enough. Thirty-five percent meant that over a third of the blood cells being produced by my body were cancerous. I felt sick to my stomach imagining my bone marrow as a factory, churning out billions upon billions of sickly little leukemia cells. “I think, at this point,” Dr. Rodrigo added, “we need to proceed with a high-dose chemotherapy protocol, followed by a bone marrow transplant.”

So the last resort treatment I’d been hoping to avoid had become a reality. I’m not normally a crier, but I cried the whole way home from the hospital that day. I was scared… not so much of the treatment itself, but of what would happen if it didn’t work. I didn’t want to die. Life had been cruel to me the past three years, but I wasn’t ready to give up on it yet. I was only twenty-three; I had a lot of living left to do.

I couldn’t bring myself to call my parents until I had calmed down some, but I had to talk to someone, so I called Nick. It was the first time I’d really leaned on him, and it definitely wouldn’t be the last. He came right over and held me as I cried, and even though he was sick himself, he stayed with me until I was calm. Nick always knew how to make me feel better. I think it was then that I realized how special he was. Not many guys would do what he did. Jamie would have run screaming from the room. But Nick stayed.

When I checked back into the hospital, he came to visit me. I can only imagine how hard it must have been for him to see me like that and know it might be a preview of what was to come for him, if his own cancer relapsed. But he came anyway and never complained.

In the hospital, they put me through a bunch of tests to make sure my body could handle the high-dose chemo and its side effects. Luckily, I passed. The night before my treatment was supposed to begin, I was allowed to check out for a few hours and go out to dinner with my family. “The Last Supper,” I called it. Morbid, I know, but that was my mindset at the time. I knew it very well might be the last time I got to go out and do anything normal. The next day, my whole body would be irradiated, which would kill the cancer and take out my immune system, too. Until the transplant took, I would be like the Bubble Boy, locked up in an isolated room to hopefully prevent me from getting an infection. If it worked, I’d be out in a month. If it didn’t, I’d probably die in that room.

I invited Nick out to dinner with us. He wasn’t a part of the family, but I wanted him there with me, and I’d apparently talked so much about him lately that my parents wanted to meet him, too. They treated me to a fancy French restaurant, one of Tampa’s finest, and Nick agreed to meet us there. He showed up wearing a suit with a black skull cap, and I hoped my dad would have the good sense not to comment on it, knowing he must be bald underneath. Thankfully, Dad kept his comments to himself. I had dressed up, too, in a red halter dress with white polka dots, which would have clashed with my natural hair color. Luckily, I had a black bob wig that complimented the dress perfectly. Like I’ve said before, being bald has its perks.

Nick hardly recognized me, looking like a puffy-faced ‘fifties pin-up. “Claire!” he gasped, when the hostess brought him over. “Your hair!”

I smiled. “You like?” I asked, patting the side of my wig.

He smiled back. “Yeah, it looks awesome!” He would confess much later, when we were married, that he had lied through his teeth that night about liking the wig. I took it as a compliment that he preferred my natural hair color.

Once he sat down, I introduced him to my family. “So you’re going to be Claire’s donor?” he asked my brother as he shook his hand.

Before Kyle could get a word out, I jumped in. “Yes, but we’re not going to talk about that tonight,” I said and reached for my menu. That night, I wanted to focus on French food and family and forget all about the misery that awaited me in the coming weeks at the hospital. My brother didn’t say so, but I’m sure he appreciated me changing the subject. I knew he must be nervous about going under the knife to donate his bone marrow to me, even though he’d never in a million years admit it. I’d had a similar operation a few days previously, to extract some of my bone marrow to save in case his didn’t take, and I’d been trying to hide how much it hurt so he wouldn’t get too freaked out. He could still back out, although, of course, I knew he wouldn’t.

After a fancy, four-course steak dinner, I was feeling uncomfortably full and stiff from sitting in a straight-backed chair for too long. My back was still really sore from the bone marrow harvest, and I needed to either lie down or stand up. Since curling up on the floor of a classy restaurant didn’t seem like a good choice, I leaned over to Nick and whispered, “You wanna walk outside?”

“Sure,” he agreed.

He had to help me up like I was an old lady, and I felt like one as I hobbled out of the restaurant. I felt better once we were outside, away from the scrutiny of my overprotective parents and the stares of the other restaurant patrons. “Phew, that’s better,” I said, as we wandered down the sidewalk. It was a nice night, warm, but not overly hot, now that the sun was setting. I looked to the west, where the sun sat on the horizon, casting streaks of pink and gold across the evening sky. It was gorgeous. “Look at the sky,” I pointed out.

“It’s pretty,” Nick agreed softly. “Sometimes I take my boat out at night… you can really see the stars when you’re out on the ocean, away from the city and the lights and everything… they’re beautiful.”

“I’d love to see that,” I sighed. It sounded so much better than the view from my hospital room.

“I’ll take you sometime,” he promised.

Take me now, I thought. How tempting it was just to say “Screw it all” and sail off into the sunset with him, live off the sea until I died. At least my last days would be worth living. But I knew I couldn’t do that, if only because I’d be letting down everyone who loved me, so all I said was, “Okay.” There was so much more I wanted to tell him, though, and time was running out. Spotting a stone bench a ways down the sidewalk, I pointed and added, “Hey, mind if we sit down up here?”

“No, sounds good to me.” He put his arm around me, supporting my back as I gingerly sat down. “Here,” he said after a moment, slinging one leg over the backless bench so that he was straddling it. “Turn this way and put your feet up.” I smiled at him gratefully as I stretched out across the bench, reclining against his chest. “Is that better?” he whispered, his breath fluttering on the back of my neck.

“Much.” I tipped my head back to look up at him. “You’re good to me, you know that?”

“Well, you’re good to me too. That’s what friends are for, right? Cheesy, you know, but true…”

I laughed. “Sure.” But in my head, I was thinking, I don’t want to just be friends anymore. At some point over the past few weeks, I had fallen in love with him. And even though the timing couldn’t have been worse, I wanted him to know. If I didn’t take advantage of the romantic evening and the glass of champagne I’d had before dinner, I worried I’d never have another opportunity to tell him. So I sucked in a deep breath and said, “Nick?”

“Yeah?”

“I’ve been thinking…” I started and then trailed off. My mouth was dry, and my heart was hammering in my throat. It was like junior prom all over again.

“About?” He sounded amused.

Tell him, I urged myself. Tell him before you lose your nerve! Sighing, I sat up and slowly turned around so I could see his face. “I don’t know if it’s the right time to say this,” I admitted, biting down on my bottom lip as I tried to smile. “But I just feel like… if I don’t say it tonight, I might not have another chance.”

He was staring at me with one brow cocked in confusion. “So say it.”

I swallowed hard and stammered, “Nick, I… I think I’m falling in love with you.”

It was the wrong time. I knew it as soon as I saw the look on his face. It was that deer-in-the-headlights look, same as Jamie, only Nick didn’t recover from it by kissing me. Instead, he just went on looking mortified, and in his stunned silence, I knew. I knew he didn’t feel the same way. “That’s what I thought,” I whispered and looked away, so he wouldn’t see my crestfallen face.

“Claire-” I heard him say, but I shook my head.

“No, don’t. It’s okay, Nick, really. I… I probably shouldn’t have even said it, but I just… had to. Just… just in case. I’m sorry.” It was starting to sink in just how badly I’d messed things up, and I felt mortified myself. We’d had such a good thing going. Why had I gone and made things awkward? I wished I could relive the last minute of my life so I could take back what I’d said.

“Claire,” he said again, then sighed. I could tell he was struggling to find the right words. “Claire, I don’t know what to say. I do love you, Claire… but not in that way… I… I…”

“You love me like a friend,” I finished flatly.

“Um…” He sighed again. “Yeah.”

“It’s okay.” I knew that if I didn’t make it “okay,” I would lose him, so I forced myself to look at him again, hoping it was dark enough to disguise the tears in my eyes. “Friends are good. I love you like a friend, too, Nick. I always will. And I hope we can stay friends. Don’t let this make things weird between us, okay? I’m so sorry…”

It was pathetic, my pleading with him, but Nick played along. “Claire, don’t be sorry. I’m sorry.”

“Don’t apologize. You can’t fake your feelings. It’s okay.” It was better than if he’d faked it because he felt sorry for me, anyway. At least he was being honest. I respected that.

“I… I still want to be friends,” he offered. “I really do care about you, Claire. I don’t know what I would do without you… I mean, how could I have gone through all this without you there with me? I just… I’m not ready for anything more than a friendship right now.”

I took a deep breath, trying to calm my racing heart. “I know, Nick. And I’m sorry if I freaked you out. I just had to get this off my chest. And I did. So we’re cool now, right?”

“Yeah. We’re cool.”

“Good.” I forced a smile, then looked back at the restaurant, eager to get away from him. “Well, we should probably head back. I bet they’re about ready to leave now. Back to the hospital I go.”

I got up as quickly as I could, ignoring the helping hand he offered me. As we walked back in silence, he reached for me again, but I pulled away, embarrassed by his attempts to comfort me. His rejection stung far worse than the pain of a needle in my back.

***

The next morning, I woke up in the hospital, still mortified over what I had done. The start of high-dose chemo wasn’t much of a distraction, since it just gave me more time to sit and stew over how badly I’d screwed up. To make matters worse, I’d been moved into an isolation room, which meant I couldn’t leave and only a limited number of visitors could come in. Even if Nick was allowed to visit, I didn’t expect him to, not after how awkward I’d made him feel. So you can imagine my surprise when I looked up and saw him standing outside my window, all gowned up in sterile garb and holding a big bouquet of flowers.

I had to hand it to him - he did a great job acting like nothing had changed between us, like the previous night had never even happened. It would be months before he ever acknowledged that it had. But still, things were changing.

At first, I thought it would be okay, that any awkwardness left over from my pathetic declaration of love had passed. Nick came to see me every day that week, but as I got sicker, his visits got shorter and less frequent. This wasn’t entirely his fault; after the transplant, he wasn’t allowed to come into my room anymore and could only call or wave at me through the window, which wasn’t the same. The real turning point was the day he turned up outside my window, mouthing “I’m in remission!” I knew then that things were going to change.

I can’t blame him for not calling or coming to visit as often after that. For the time being, he was free and clear of cancer. Why would he want to stay in that world if he didn’t have to? While I was stuck in isolation limbo, he had the rest of his life to live. Places to go. Other people to see. I was happy for him, but I have to admit, a little part of me was jealous, too. Typical, I thought, as I watched him on TV from my hospital bed. He’s just like any other celebrity cancer whiz kid. One little bout with cancer, and he gets all this attention and adulation over how inspirational he is. Other than starting the inevitable charity, he’ll probably never have to deal with this again. Meanwhile, I can’t seem to get rid of it.

Horrible, I know. If I’d had any idea what he would be facing in a matter of months, I would have taken it back. But I was in a dark place, depressed and irritable. The constant fatigue had me feeling sorry for myself; I was sick of being sick. Then, as if things weren’t bad enough already, I spiked a fever. The infection was bad enough that it brought Nick rushing back from New York to be with me.

I only have vague memories of my days in a fever-induced fog. The clearest is of Nick singing to me. I think I may have fallen asleep in the middle, but I remember some of it, anyway. That serenade was one of the sweetest thing anyone’s ever done for me. Still, it wasn’t enough to salvage our friendship. Even as I recovered, we continued to drift apart.

While I was in the hospital, Nick had a one-night stand with an ex-girlfriend, who ended up getting pregnant. When I found out he was letting her live with him, I was livid. “You did what?!” I shouted at him over the phone. “You’re letting that ho come live with you? Nick! I thought you had more common sense than that! If you’re so sold on helping her out, why don’t you just give her some money, not offer up your home to her!”

“Jeez, forget I told you anything.” Nick sounded annoyed. “I can’t just pay her off and send her on her merry way; that’s not right. That’s my baby she’s carrying!”

I rolled my eyes. “So you’re gonna be Daddy Nick, now are you? What are you going to do when the kid’s born, marry her?”

“I don’t know.” Now he sounded defensive. “Maybe.”

“Nick! That’s probably exactly what she wants!” I wondered why he couldn’t see this himself. She had to be really hot, the type that could blind a guy with her big boobs and blonde hair. “The little succubus… she’s already screwed you over once-”

“Twice,” corrected Nick in a dull voice.

“Twice?! Nickolas Gene Carter, are you a moron?!” I didn’t mean to insult him, but I couldn’t help it. He was acting like an impulsive idiot! “She’s probably just after your money or something! What if she’s not even pregnant?!”

“Well, gee, I think I’ll figure that one out soon enough then, Claire.” I could tell I had pissed him off, but I just didn’t know when to quit.

“Well, I would hope so, but after what I’ve just heard from you, maybe you would be stupid enough to-”

“Shut up!” Nick snapped, and I was temporarily stunned into silence. “Jesus, I didn’t call you so you could tell me how fucking stupid I am for trying to be a good person! You’re probably just jealous anyway, aren’t you?”

That struck a nerve, but I scoffed, “Jealous of what?”

“I dunno, jealous of the fact that I knocked up Leah and not you? Jealous that Leah’s coming to live with me and not you? Well, you know what, Claire, get over it! Leah needs me right now, and I’m going to be there for her and my baby, whether you like it or not!”

Ouch. That one really stung. But I wouldn’t feel the pain until later. In that instant, I just felt enraged. I sat in bed seething, so angry I was actually shaking. I had to take a few breaths before I replied, “I cannot believe you just said that to me. Are you that arrogant and stuck on yourself? Are you really so blind that you can’t see this for what it really is? Well then fine. You have a great time playing the part of the good boyfriend to your whore, and don’t you dare come crawling to me when it backfires on you.”

I expected him to apologize, but he didn’t. All he said was, “Yeah whatever, Claire. I’m not gonna go crawling anywhere. I don’t need you in my life if you’re gonna act like such a jealous bitch. It’ll be just me, Leah, and our baby. The perfect fucking little family.”

“Yeah, I’m sure,” I snorted, and then a sudden thought occurred to me. “Hey, wait a second… Nick, when did you say you slept with-?” But before I could get the rest of the question out, I heard a click and knew he’d hung up on me. Asshole, I thought. If you’re too stupid to stop and think how unlikely it is that you could have gotten a girl pregnant while on chemo, then you deserve to get played.

My own stubborn pride kept me from calling him back, and Nick was just as bad. He went about his business, and I went on with my life without him. After being discharged from the hospital, I spent a few weeks recuperating at my parents’ house, then moved back home. I didn’t talk to Nick all fall and most of the winter, though I thought of him often and wondered how he was doing. Every time I went to the cancer clinic for a checkup, I looked around expectantly, hoping I might see him, but I never did. I took this as a good sign that he was still in remission and tried not to worry about him. The thin thread of cancer that tied us together had been cut, and our lives were drifting in two different directions.

In January, the Backstreet Boys released a new album. I had never been a fan before, but I tuned in to watch all of their televised appearances, wanting to see how Nick was doing. He looked good. His hair had grown back, his face had filled out, and he’d gotten some color back in his cheeks. He seemed happy enough, though I noticed that he never once mentioned his pregnant girlfriend. I wondered what was going on with that. I had my suspicions, but they weren’t confirmed until he called me on Valentine’s Day.

“Um, look, Claire… I just wanna say… I’m sorry,” he apologized awkwardly over the phone. “You were right. Leah was just after my money. It was her rich, preppy boyfriend who got her pregnant, not me, but she told me the baby was mine to get me to take her in and marry her so she could inherit all my money when I die, which she apparently thinks will be not too far down the road. So you were right all along. Happy now?”

I was happy to hear from him, but not happy that he’d had his heart broken. I knew what that felt like. It hurt. So I didn’t say, “I told you so.” I just said, “Sorry, Nick.”

“Yeah… me too.”

Knowing what day it was, I should have realized why he was calling me. He was obviously lonely and looking for some companionship. Here was a guy who had no trouble getting laid even when he was sick and bald from chemo. He definitely wasn’t used to being alone on Valentine’s Day. Still, it came as a nice surprise when he asked if I had plans that night. Of course, I didn’t. Cancer had completely screwed up my love life; I hadn’t dated anyone in years. I was finally starting to look normal again, but with my immune system still recovering from the transplant, I didn’t leave my apartment unless I absolutely had to.

Correction: Cancer had completely screwed up my entire life.

Determined to get some semblance of it back that night, I met Nick at Leonardi’s. He hardly recognized me when I walked in with a full head of red hair. The look on his face when I slid into the booth beside him was priceless. Before I knew it, he was full-on checking me out. I couldn’t resist calling him out on it.

“Were you just staring at my boobs?”

He blushed and dropped his eyes down to his menu. “We have a lot to talk about,” was all he said. Way to avoid the question, Nick.

“You were! Nick Carter, you perv!” I teased him. “Don’t you get enough little fourteen-year-olds flashing you their boobies?”

“Could you say that any louder, Claire?” Nick asked, without looking up from his menu.

“Oh, probably. Anyway, looks like we need to hook you up with another stripper whore cause you’ve obviously been deprived if you’ve resorted to undressing me with your eyes.”

“Claire!” he hissed, his cheeks darkening to burgundy. “Jesus!”

Laughing, I realized how much I had missed messing with him like this. “You’re right, though; we do have a lot to talk about. Since you’ve ignored me for the past four months.”

“Hey, you didn’t call me either!” he retorted.

“No, but I also didn’t hang up on you,” I pointed out. “This one’s on you, buddy; I can tell when I’m not wanted.”

His mouth fell open, and for a few seconds, he just stared at me with this weird look on his face. I couldn’t tell if he was going to keep arguing with me or apologize, or if he was having some sort of “spell.”

“Nick?” I asked with mild concern.

He blinked. “Huh?”

“Are you okay? You just got this weird look.”

“Yeah… yeah, I’m fine.” He paused, then said, “Claire… there’s something I need to tell you.”

I was instantly worried, fearing the worst. “What is it? Oh, Nick, you haven’t relap-?”

“No, no, it’s nothing bad!” he interrupted. “It’s a good thing.” Smiling, he scooted closer to me in the corner booth we’d claimed as our own.

“What are you doing?”

“Just listen, Claire.” He paused to take a breath. I didn’t have a clue what he was about to say next. “Um… you know how we went out to eat that time, with your family, right before your transplant?”

Inwardly, I cringed. “Yeah…”

“And how you told me that… that you were falling in love with me?”

I should have known he would bring up that night eventually. Blushing, I looked away. “Yeah…”

“Well… Claire, when you came in tonight, and I saw you for the first time in, what, four months? I… Claire, look at me.” Suddenly, his fingers were on my face. Cupping my chin, he forced me to look at him, like I was a small child. That annoyed me, but I didn’t pull away, waiting for him to continue. “Anyway, um… when you came in tonight, I hardly recognized you. You’re… you’re beautiful, Claire. And I… well, I realized that… that I feel the same way as you do.”

Bullshit, was my initial reaction. I didn’t believe him. Seriously, what a crock of shit, I thought. He didn’t love me. Either he felt bad and was trying to make it up to me, or he was letting his dick do all the talking. I was definitely a lot better-looking with hair and without all the steroid bloat, but I didn’t want to be liked only for my looks. If I wasn’t enough for him six months ago, I wasn’t right for him now. Rolling my eyes, I muttered, “I cannot believe you.”

“What?” Nick looked bewildered. “Can’t believe what? I’m serious, Claire!”

“No, you’re not. You’re full of crap, Nick, and I don’t appreciate you messing with me like that. If you really think you’ve all of a sudden fallen in love with me, then you’re thinking with your dick, not with your head. Or with your heart.” I shook my head. “I’m not stupid, Nick. I can see exactly where this is coming from. It’s been five months since I got out of the hospital, and in those five months, the side effects of the chemo drugs I was on have finally gone away. And now that I’m normal-looking and not all bloated and bald, you think you love me. Well, I’ll tell you, if you didn’t love me then, you don’t love me now. Love isn’t based on looks, Nick. You were sick and bald too when I thought I’d fallen in love with you.”

“You… you thought?”

“Yeah, I thought. But now I see that I was wrong. Must have just been the chemo fucking with my emotions, on top of everything else. I mean, honestly, how could I fall for such a shallow, arrogant asshole?” The truth was, my hormones were still pretty out of whack. Maybe that was why I reacted the way I did, or maybe I just felt like being a bitch that night.

“Claire!”

“You think the world revolves around you, Nick, and that just because you suddenly call me beautiful and say that you like me, I’ll fall at your feet and replace that stripper whore as your newest sex toy. Well, I don’t think so. I have more respect for myself than that.”

Yeah, I’m pretty sure I was just being a self-righteous bitch. We all have our moments.

“Claire…” He tried to put his arm around me, but I pushed him away. Now he could feel what it was like to be rejected. I wanted to hurt him as badly as he’d hurt me. Without another word, I got up and walked out, walked out of his life the same way he’d walked out of mine.

I should have known it would take another tragedy to bring me back into it.

***

Bygones

Overcoming a serious illness makes you appreciate life more, but it doesn’t make you perfect. Even though you should know better, you still take some things for granted. You get so used to life going on around you while you’re wrapped up in your own little cancer bubble that you don’t worry about it anymore. You just assume everything - and everyone - is fine on the outside.

Six months after my bone marrow transplant, I was ready to re-enter the real world. It had taken that long for my immune system to recover to the point where I wasn’t risking an infection every time I walked out my door without a mask on. For the first time since I’d left the hospital, I was finally feeling like myself again. I had gone back to work and was getting out more, doing things with my friends and coworkers. Life was looking up.

After my six-month check-up, I walked out of the cancer clinic feeling less like a patient and more like a survivor. The appointment had gone well; my blood work and bone marrow sample looked good, with no evidence of cancer. Of course, I knew better than to jump for joy just yet; I’d been down remission road before, and the cancer had come back. I still had a long ways to go before I could be considered cured, but so far, so good. I preferred to focus on the positive.

Even though my hip was sore from the bone marrow biopsy, I was in such a good mood after my appointment that I decided to make a detour through the oncology wing of the hospital for a quick visit with whoever was working that day. When you spend a month in a small room, you tend to get chummy with whoever comes to see you, even when they’re the ones responsible for sticking needles in you and cleaning up your vomit and other bodily fluids. Those nurses put up with so much shit - sometimes literally - dealing with sick people that it had to make their day when the healthy ones came back to say hi and thank them. It was the least I could do, seeing as how they’d saved my life.

Walking toward the nurses station on the fifth floor, I recognized Samantha, one of the nurses assigned to my care team. She had her back turned to me and was talking to nurse I didn’t know. As I approached, I couldn’t help but overhear their conversation.

“I feel just awful for him,” Samantha was saying. “It’d be hard for anybody, losing a leg, but when you make a living by singin’ and dancin’…”

“Yeah, I can’t imagine a one-legged guy in a boyband,” the other nurse replied. I think it was then that my stomach dropped, as I put two and two together and realized what - who - they were talking about. For a few seconds, I just stood there in shock, letting the meaning of their words sink in.

“How’s he taking it?”

Samantha shook her head. “Not too well. ‘Course, it’s only been a couple of days…”

I couldn’t stand it anymore. I had to say something. “Excuse me,” I interrupted, and Samantha jumped. “Are you talking about Nick?”

“Claire!” It had taken Samantha a second to recognize me, but when she did, her face turned beet red. “I’m sorry, I didn’t see you standin’ there. I hardly recognized you; you look great! How are you doin’? Are you here to see Nick?” She said this all very quickly. I only heard “Nick.”

My heart sunk. “So he is here. What happened to him??”

Samantha’s eyes widened. Her face was now redder than her hair - redder than mine, even. “Oh god, you didn’t know? I’m sorry, I thought… never mind. I really shouldn’t say…”

But she’d already said enough.

“They had to amputate his leg, didn’t they?” I asked in a hushed voice. Just saying the words made me feel sick to my stomach. “That means his cancer came back.”

Silently, she nodded.

“When?”

“The surgery was two days ago.”

I couldn’t believe no one had told me. So what if Nick and I weren’t on speaking terms? I still would have wanted to know. I still cared about him.

“Can I see him?”

Samantha hesitated. “He hasn’t been in the mood for visitors.”

My heart broke for Nick. “He’s not here all alone, is he?”

“No… the other Boys have been here with him the whole time.”

“What about his family?”

She shook her head. That made me sad, too. “Please let me see him,” I begged, knowing Samantha could be persuaded to break the rules where Nick was concerned. She had let him in to see me several times during my transplant, even though it was only supposed to be family.

“Well… I guess it might do him some good…” Samantha said slowly, giving me a tiny smile. “We’ll see what he says. Come with me.”

I managed to smile back. “Thank you!”

Following her down one of the hallways, I couldn’t help but peek into the patient rooms we passed. I caught glimpses of people who looked like I had six months earlier, bald and bedridden. It was weird being back on that floor. Other than the required clinic visits, I was hoping I’d never have to come back there again. My stomach bottomed out again as I realized Nick had probably hoped the same thing for himself.

Samantha stopped outside a door at the very end of the hall. It was only open a crack. “Wait here,” Samantha whispered to me. She knocked softly on the door before pushing it open further and popping her head into the room. “Hi, Nick,” I heard her say. “I just wanted to let you know you have a visitor if you feel up to it.”

I leaned forward, straining to listen to his response, but I couldn’t hear anything. He must have asked who it was, though, because Samantha added, “It’s Claire.”

That time, I could hear his voice say my name, sounding higher-pitched than usual. I held my breath, waiting to hear if he would turn me away, but he must not have said anything else because, suddenly, Samantha was saying, “Yeah, here she comes,” and stepping back into the hall. She smiled at me and held out her arm to usher me through the door.

I swallowed hard and stepped forward, pushing it open. Nick was propped up in bed, the covers pulled over his lap. The look he gave me stopped me in my tracks, and I paused in the doorway, wanting his permission to enter the room. “Can I come in, Nick?” I asked, feeling more awkward around him than I ever had before. It wasn’t his leg or lack thereof that made me uncomfortable. It was his attitude.

“I dunno, can you?” was his smartass reply. It wasn’t a no, so I took my chances and stepped inside. I tried to smile at him, but I’ll be honest; after how good he had looked the last time I saw him, it was hard to see him in the state he was in. I’d certainly seen him looking much sicker, but still, I could tell he’d had a rough few days. His hair looked greasy and disheveled, like it hadn’t been washed or even brushed in awhile. His face was pale, and his eyes were glazed, either from the pain or medication for the pain; I couldn’t tell which. I focused on his face, trying to avoid looking at his leg, but that was no less awkward with him staring back at me. In that moment, it seemed neither of us knew what to say.

I hadn’t even noticed that Brian was also in the room until he spoke up. “Claire… wow, I can’t believe it’s you. How are you doing?”

Startled, I looked over and saw him sitting in a chair on one side of the room. I forced myself to smile. “I’m fine, thanks. It’s great to see you again; how are you?” I replied automatically, as if we were having a normal conversation.

Brian nodded. “Doin’ okay.” Then he stood up. “Um, if you two will excuse me, I need to use the restroom,” he said and walked out, leaving Nick and me to go back to looking at each other.

Given the circumstances, I knew it was up to me to break the ice. “He sure left fast,” I said, making a face.

Nick didn’t miss a beat. “He’s got the shits.”

I smiled. “TMI.”

Nick didn’t smile back or say anything else. He fumbled with his covers, balling the sheets up in his fists. “Nick,” I whispered, feeling sorry for him. I could tell he was self-conscious, but I couldn’t hold out any longer; I had to look. I let my eyes drop briefly to the lump under the blankets - all that was left of his left leg. I wondered what it looked like under there, then wished I hadn’t. Shaking my head, I forced myself to look back at his face as I confessed, “I don’t know what to say.”

He shrugged his shoulders. “As long as it’s not ‘I’m sorry’ or ‘How are you doing,’ you can say anything you damn well please.”

It wasn’t exactly a friendly response, but it resonated with me. I remembered feeling the same way. “Well, I wasn’t going to say either of those things because I know that’s probably the last thing you want to hear, after already hearing it from everyone else.”

“Yeah. You got that right.”

“’Course I do,” I said boldly, taking another step forward. “Cause I know; I’ve been there.” I sat down on the edge of his bed and turned to look at him. He was looking down at his lap, determinedly avoiding eye contact. “And you know, Nick,” I added, “I’m not going to give you a big pep talk either, unless you want me to. I’m not going to be like, ‘You’re going to sail through this, Nick, and everything’s going to be all right.’ Because I dunno about you, but for me, that got old real fast.”

Nick nodded without looking up. “So what did you come to say?” he muttered.

“I told you, I don’t know. But I was here for a doctor’s appointment - my six month follow-up - and I stopped by the nurses station on the way out to say hey, and I overheard Samantha and another nurse talking… and it was about you.” I shook my head, the horror of that moment of realization still fresh in my mind. “God, Nick, I had no idea! Why didn’t you call me and tell me or something?”

His chin snapped up, and his eyes flashed with anger as they finally met mine. “Why should I have? The way you ran out on me on Valentine’s Day, I thought you never wanted to see or hear from me again.”

I squirmed guiltily, feeling horrible about how I’d treated him that night. I wished I hadn’t reacted so harshly, but of course, hindsight’s twenty/twenty. “That’s not true,” I said. “You’re my friend, Nick. And yeah, I was pretty mad at you that night, but you’re still my friend. And when I heard what had happened to you, I freaked. I just had to come see you, even if I didn’t know what to say, and even if we didn’t part on such good terms last time. I just wish I would have known sooner so I could have been there for you the way you were there for me during my transplant.”

To my surprise, a smile spread slowly across his face. “You can still be here for me,” he said, his voice cracking.

“Only if you want me to be,” I replied, hoping he would say he did. Up until then, I hadn’t realized how much I had missed him in the past few months. Sometimes it takes a tragedy to show how much someone means to you. I wanted to start spending more time with Nick, if there was still a place in his life for me. So much had changed, I wasn’t sure where we stood anymore.

But he didn’t even have to think about it, not for one second. “I want you here with me. I need you here with me,” was his emphatic answer. “We’ve been through so much shit together, Claire… I dunno if I can make it through this without you.”

I heard the pleading in his voice, saw the pain in his eyes, and knew - or at least genuinely thought - that I would never walk out on him again. I smiled, trying to reassure him of this, and said, “Then I’m here.”

Even though I had more room at the end of the bed, I moved up to the head so I could reach more of him than his remaining foot. I wanted to hug him, but I wasn’t sure how much physical pain he was in, so I smoothed his greaseball hair back off his forehead instead. “You know, I like you with hair.”

“Ditto,” Nick said, smiling up at me.

I smiled back, then bent down and kissed his forehead in the spot I’d cleared. The antiseptic smell of hospital clung to his skin, but beneath it, I could still smell him. Nick. I breathed in his scent, remembering the last time I’d been with him like this, a few weeks before my bone marrow transplant, when he’d lain with me on my bed, comforting me as I cried. The memory brought tears to my eyes, as I realized how the tables had turned. Now it was Nick who needed me.

“Hey now,” he warned, as I tried to blink back the tears. “I thought you weren’t going to feel sorry for me.”

“It’s not that,” I said, smiling as my voice cracked. I did feel sorry, but it wasn’t just for him. “It’s just… I missed you, Nick.”

He smiled and laced his fingers through mine, running his thumb over the back of my hand. “I missed you too, Claire.”

It was nice to hear the words, but it felt even better to hold his hand again.

Sometimes, you just have to let bygones be bygones. The past was forgotten. The future was uncertain. I tried not to think about any of it and just focus on the present, on being there for Nick in that moment. We were in our own world, back inside the bubble, and everything on the outside would just have to wait.

***

Yellow Roses

Every year on our anniversary, Nick gives me a bouquet of yellow roses. The bouquets get bigger every year, with one yellow blossom for each year we’ve known each other and, always, a single red rose in the middle, to represent all the love we’ve shared.

The tradition started not with an anniversary, but a birthday. We had only been a couple for about three months when I turned twenty-five. Nick, finally recovered from two major surgeries in the past year and in remission again, had taken me out on the boat ride he’d promised me. We got up early, while it was still dark, so we could see the sun rise, then shared a picnic breakfast on his boat. That was when he gave me my first bouquet of yellow roses - a dozen of them, with one red rose in the middle. “I looked this up,” he explained to me, all proud of himself. “Yellow means friendship, so I got you yellow. And red means… red means ‘I love you.’ So, yeah… a red one too.”

I carried a similar bouquet down the aisle on May 14, 2010, the day I married my best friend.

The fourteenth of May isn’t just our wedding anniversary. It’s also the anniversary of our first kiss, during what could be considered our first date. Not that we considered it a date at the time. No, it actually started as a simple celebratory dinner. It had been six weeks since Nick’s amputation surgery, and we were celebrating a major milestone in his recovery: learning to walk without crutches on a prosthetic leg. I had driven him to physical therapy that day, and for the first time, he’d felt confident enough to let me come in with him. Watching him take those first few wobbly steps, I felt like a proud parent. “We need to celebrate!” I said afterwards. Nick needed some convincing, but I finally talked him into a “quiet night out” - pizza and a movie. We went to Leonardi’s, then to the old Empress Cinema, where he kissed me during the credits of King Kong.

For our twentieth anniversary, I decided to recreate that first date.

Both our first date and our wedding fell on Fridays, but May 14, 2030 was a Tuesday. Nick and I had spent the day working at the camp, getting it ready for the summer sessions. He puttered around outside, overseeing the maintenance of the grounds and facilities, while I sat in my office, making phone calls and poring over paperwork, so we didn’t see much of each other until that afternoon. When it was almost time to leave so we could pick up the kids from school, I popped my head into the lodge’s rec room, where my daughter Caitlin was training the new crop of camp counselors. Cait had been working as a counselor at Camp Lucky Fin every summer since its opening three years prior. Fresh out of her third year in the nursing program at the University of Tampa, she’d agreed to put in one more summer as the head counselor before she started the search for a nursing position the following year.

“Have you seen your dad around anywhere?” I asked.

Cait didn’t bat an eye when I called Nick her dad. Technically, he was her stepfather, but he’d been more of a father to her in the past two decades than Jamie ever would. “Not lately,” she replied, then went back to what she’d been telling the trainees without missing a beat. Cait had always been a people person, blessed with “the gift of gab,” as the Irish say. I couldn’t have been prouder of her.

As I walked out of the lodge, I texted her twin, Delaine, to make sure she was on her way, then Nick to find out where he was. He didn’t text back, so I fired up one of the golf carts we use to get around the camp and went to find him. I was not at all surprised to see his red Bucs cap sitting in the front seat of a cart that was parked outside the aquatic center. I went in to find him swimming laps in the pool, his t-shirt and belongings strewn along the side. I picked up his phone and glanced at it - he hadn’t even read my text yet. “Nick!” I called.

He pulled his face out of the water and looked around, befuddled. Then he spotted me. “Oh, hey, babe!”

“Hey. Did you forget we’re supposed to pick up our children in-” I checked the time on his phone. “-ten minutes?”

Nick swam over to the side of the pool. Propping his elbows on the edge, he looked up at me and gave me his trademark grin. “Oh… whoops!”

I shook my head at him, but I couldn’t help but smile back. He was as irresistible as always, and impossible to stay mad at. I couldn’t blame him for losing track of time; I knew how much he enjoyed being in the water, how freeing it was for him, and besides, it was good exercise. He needed it. As he hoisted himself out of the pool, I noticed that his belly hung over the waistband of his shorts. Wordlessly, I handed him a towel and waited while he dried himself off enough to put on his prosthesis. “Did you have a good swim?”

“Yeah,” he said, breathless. “Sorry, I thought I’d have time to cool off and get a few laps in before it was time to leave.”

“It’s okay.” I checked his phone again before giving it back to him. “It won’t kill the kids to wait a few minutes.”

We walked outside and took his cart back to the lodge, where our car was parked. “I’ll drive,” I said, slipping behind the steering wheel. Nick left a big, wet butt print in the passenger seat on our way to the elementary school, where Adrienne was in fifth grade and Casey, kindergarten. It was the only year they’d be in the same school. They came out together when we pulled up in front of the school. Casey wore a big grin and a little bookbag, strapped neatly to both shoulders, while Adrienne walked with her backpack slung casually over one shoulder, her straight blonde hair blowing in the breeze. Long and lean, with Nick’s angelic looks and devilish smile, she was getting far too pretty for her own good. She was just eleven, but could easily pass for thirteen.

Casey, on the other hand, was small for his age, but agile; after tossing his bookbag into the backseat, he climbed up into his booster seat and buckled himself in with no trouble. “You’re late!” he announced matter-of-factly. “I was the last kid in my class to get picked up.” Then, before either of us could apologize, he launched into a long, rambling story about everything he’d done in kindergarten that day. It lasted almost the whole way home. When he finally stopped to take a breath, I asked Adrienne how her day had been. Her answer was the same as always.

“Fine.”

“What did you learn today?” Nick asked.

“Nothing.”

Adrienne was at that age when most kids stop sharing.

“Go change your clothes,” I told both kids when we got home. “Your dad and I are taking you out for a special dinner tonight.”

Nick looked at me incredulously. “We are?”

I just smiled at him. “Yes, we are.” I waited until Adrienne and Casey had run back to their rooms, then added under my breath, “There’ll be plenty of time for you and me later.”

“Yes, there will be,” Nick smirked back. I raised my eyebrows, wondering what he had up his sleeve. He’d been so nonchalant about it all day that if it hadn’t been for him telling me “Happy Anniversary” upon waking up that morning, I would have guessed he’d forgotten it was our twentieth. “So where are we going for dinner? Should I dress nice, or…?”

“Casual’s fine.” I put on a pair of cropped slacks and a nice, but comfortable blouse made out of a flowy material that was forgiving on my curves. Nick changed into jeans and a button-down shirt that barely buttoned down his middle. “Leave it out,” I said, as he stood in front of the mirror in our bedroom, debating over whether or not to tuck it in. I slid my arm around his waist, looking at the two of us together. We sure looked a lot older than we had on that first “date,” twenty-six years earlier. It was crazy to think we’d more than doubled in age since then. Nick had turned fifty in January, me in March. There were streaks of silver in his blonde hair and lines on his tanned, leathery face. The red in my hair was starting to fade, while the wrinkles in my skin stood out more than ever. Having a five-year-old kept me young, but realizing I could be Casey’s grandma made me feel old, especially when I compared myself to the other mothers who dropped their children off at kindergarten.

“Whatcha thinkin’ ‘bout?” Nick’s arm came around me from behind. I looked up to see him studying my reflection in the mirror.

I sighed. “Oh, nothing.” Then, realizing I sounded just like Adrienne, I added, “Just thinking about what a nice life we’ve made for ourselves. We did good, Stumpy.” I gave him a squeeze, smiling at his reflection. “I love you.”

“Love you, too, Ren.” He bent his head and kissed the top of mine. “Here’s to twenty more years, huh?”

So he definitely knew it was our twentieth…

“At least twenty more,” I emphasized, laying my head on his shoulder. “Come on… the kids will be waiting.”

“I still don’t see why we have to bring our kids along on our date,” he grumbled as we walked out of the bedroom.

I smiled. “You will.”

I knew he didn’t really mind the kids tagging along; he loved spending time with all four of them. It was rare for the whole family to be together these days, with Cait in college and Delaine on tour with her band. Nick didn’t know it, but they’d both be meeting us at the restaurant. “I’ll drive,” I said, signaling for Adrienne and Casey to climb into the backseat of my car. With a shrug, Nick resigned himself to riding shotgun. “Did your dad ever tell you about the car he had when we were first dating?” I asked the kids, looking into the rear view mirror as I backed out of the driveway.

They both shrugged. “No?”

I turned to Nick, who was smiling. “The Jag?” he said, and I nodded.

“It was a silver Jaguar - don’t ask me what model - and it was the coolest car I’d ever ridden in. He let me drive it on our first date.” Stopping at the corner, I flipped on my blinker and glanced at Nick again. I was hoping I had sparked a memory.

He smirked at me and said to the kids, “Only ‘cause your mom didn’t trust me to drive.”

“For good reason!” As I made the turn onto Hillsborough Avenue, I reached out to pat his thigh, my palm curving around the sleek, carbon fiber socket that sheathed his stump. The prosthesis had become such a part of him that it was difficult to remember the days when it felt foreign to me, even harder to recall the period of time when he refused to let me touch it at all. We had come so far since those first, awkward encounters. Twenty years of marriage makes a couple so comfortable around each other that I tended to forget how self-conscious he used to be.

It had taken a lot of coaxing to get him to come out with me that night. Even though I succeeded, he slumped down in his seat on the way to the restaurant, wearing a baseball cap and sunglasses so he wouldn’t be recognized. We sat in our usual booth in the back corner, where he could face the wall and avoid eye contact with the rest of the world.

I wondered if the old wrap-around booth was still there. Leonardi’s had been completely renovated some years back, after the original owner passed away. He left the place to his daughter, who, despite having been raised by a restaurateur, didn’t seem to know much about running a restaurant. After a few failed attempts to turn the shabby pizza parlor into a posh Italian bistro, she shut it down and sold the building to a new owner, who’d opened a French café. I’d paid an exorbitant amount of money to rent the place out for the evening and hire Mr. Leonardi’s daughter to decorate and cater our anniversary dinner. The old brick oven was still there, she’d assured me over the phone, and she had her father’s famous recipes. I hoped the pizza would taste as good as I remembered it.

Nick was again wearing sunglasses, more to keep the sun out of his eyes than for the purpose of disguise that evening. He pushed them down the bridge of his nose and raised his eyebrows, giving me a very AJ-like look, as I pulled into the newly-paved parking lot of the old Leonardi’s. I waggled my own brows back at him, trying to suppress as smile as I slid into a space right up front.

“Where are we?” Casey wondered, looking out the window. He was the only child I’d left out of my plans, not wanting him to spill the beans to Nick.

I smiled at my son in the rearview mirror. “This is where your dad and I had our first date.”

Casey wrinkled his nose. “Couldn’t we go to Chuck E. Cheese?”

I laughed. “Trust me,” I said, unbuckling my seatbelt. “The pizza at this place is way better.”

Nick gave me a quizzical look, which I ignored as I slid out of the car and opened the back door to let Casey out of his booster seat. Nick and Adrienne climbed out on the other side and came around the car to meet us. “You sure this place is open?” Nick asked, frowning as he looked around the empty parking lot. The twins must have parked in back, I surmised, so as not to ruin the surprise.

“Let’s find out.” I took his hand and towed him to the entrance. A sign on the door said, Closed for private event. I opened the door anyway and held it open, ushering Adrienne and Casey in. Nick narrowed his eyes at me as he followed the kids inside. Letting the door close behind me, I stepped in after him. For a few seconds, we both just stopped and stared. A smile of satisfaction spread across my face as I looked around at the décor - red-and-white checked plastic tablecloths, candles burning in old beer bottles, and a big banner stretched across one wall (hiding the Parisian mural beneath it) that proclaimed, Happy 20th Anniversary, Nick and Claire! It looked like Leonardi’s again. It looked like our place.

The corner booth still sat in the back, decorated with bouquets of white balloons. A table for four was set across from it, and already seated there were a pair of lovely young ladies: our twin daughters, Caitlin and Delaine. Lainey jumped up from her seat and ran over to hug Nick, then me. I held her at an arm’s length to admire her new pixie haircut, which suited the punk rock look she’d been sporting for the last few years. She turned around to show me the back - and to show Nick the new tattoo on her left shoulder blade, a music note similar to the notes he had tattooed on his right. She shared his love of music the way Cait shared his love of sports. He slung an arm around each of their shoulders and looked at me, a broad smile on his face. “So you invited the whole family out for our date, huh?”

I pretended to check my watch - not that I was wearing one. “Jamie should be arriving from the airport any minute,” I joked.

The twins exchanged glances as Nick rolled his eyes, still grinning. “The place looks great,” he commented, looking around. “Just like it did back in the day.”

“Only with better upholstery,” I replied as I slid into the corner booth, patting the spot beside me. “Remember how that ripped vinyl would dig into the backs of your legs?”

“Not really. Guess I had good protection against that.” Nick shrugged and gave his prosthesis a pat before he scooted in next to me.

“Kids’ table’s over there,” I told Adrienne and Casey, pointing to the open seats at the table the twins had occupied. I slipped my arm around Nick’s waist and snuggled up close to him, resting my head on his shoulder. “I thought we could use some privacy on our date,” I whispered in his ear.

He snickered. “Not that all six of us could squeeze into this booth anyway.”

“That too,” I laughed.

Mr. Leonardi’s daughter, Andrea, came out of the kitchen to greet us, followed by a small wait staff who brought us piping hot pizzas and thick shakes - strawberry for me, vanilla for Nick, chocolate for the kids. The first time I’d brought Nick here, his mouth had been so full of sores from chemo, he hadn’t even been able to enjoy the pizza, but a milkshake had hit the spot. The combination of the two had been our tradition ever since.

Maybe it was just because I hadn’t had it in so long, but the food tasted even better than I remembered it. Even Casey acknowledged that it was “almost” as good as Chuck E. Cheese. We stuffed ourselves so full, we hardly had room for the anniversary cake they brought out for dessert, a two-tiered affair adorned with mounds of yellow roses and - at my request - a single red rose on top. Nick and I shared the top tier, while the kids went to work on the bottom. Somehow, we managed to make a dent in it.

We talked over dinner, sharing memories with the kids, and afterwards, I looked at Nick and said, “So, where should we go next?”

“Next?” He looked back at me suspiciously, his eyes narrowed, the hint of a smile pulling at the corners of his mouth. He seemed to realize I was testing him. “Well… we could go to a movie…” he answered slowly. “Maybe see what’s playing at the Empress?”

Bingo. I beamed at him and replied, “Why, what a great idea! Come on, kids…”

We stopped to thank Andrea and her catering crew on the way out, and as Cait and Lainey went ahead to their cars, I turned to Nick and held up the keys. “Wanna drive?” I asked, winking at him. He grinned sheepishly and held out his hand. He must have remembered how he’d insisted on driving from the restaurant to the theater that night - his first time behind the wheel since his surgery. I’d been nervous about it then, but tonight I tossed him the keys with no problem, and we all piled into the car.

“What movie are we seeing?” Casey asked from the back seat. “Fast and Furious 15?”

I laughed. “No, sweetheart. This theater doesn’t play those kind of movies.”

“What will it be playing?” Nick wondered, wrinkling his nose as he glanced over at me. “On a Tuesday night? Do you think it will even be open?”

He hadn’t realized it yet, but I already knew The Empress Cinema would be closed - for another “private event.” I played dumb, though, and said, “Oh, I don’t know… I guess we’ll find out when we get there.”

Nick nodded and turned onto the highway. Rush hour was winding down, but traffic was still stop and go. As Nick slowed to a stop behind a line of cars at a long light, he suddenly shifted the car into park and announced, “Chinese fire drill!” He unbuckled his seatbelt, threw open his door, and hoisted himself out of the car. Giggling, I scrambled out of my side.

“What are you doing?” I heard Adrienne squawk in alarm, as the two of us raced around the car. I beat Nick, sliding behind the wheel before he could make it around to the passenger side.

“Hurry up, Stumpy!” I shouted out the open door as he ducked his head and lowered himself into the seat, swinging his prosthetic leg in first, followed by the flesh-and-blood one. As he closed the passenger side door, I turned around and grinned at our two bewildered children. “And that, kids, is what we call a Chinese fire drill.”

“Don’t ever do that,” Nick added, wagging his finger at them. Then he looked back at me and laughed. I leaned over and kissed his cheek, remembering how I’d made him switch me seats halfway to the theater after he’d scared me with his reckless driving on that first date. At the time, I was worried about his mental state, afraid he was trying to hurt himself. Now, while our children might have been questioning our sanity, it just seemed funny.

I drove the rest of the way to the theater, which looked as deserted as the restaurant had been. The vertical sign sticking out from the front of the building was lit, spelling out EMPRESS in shimmering letters, but the parking lot was empty. Nick looked skeptically out the window. “I dunno, babe…”

Smiling to myself, I tapped his shoulder and pointed to the marquee. I never thought I’d see my name in lights, but there it was, surrounded by brightly shining bulbs.


SPECIAL SHOWING, ONE NIGHT ONLY!

KING KONG

HAPPY 20TH ANNIVERSARY, NICK AND CLAIRE CARTER!


I watched Nick’s face as he read the message, wanting to see the moment when he realized it was all for us. I saw his lips stretch slowly into a smile, and then he turned, shaking his head at me. “You’re incredible, you know that?” he said, still smiling in amazement.

I beamed back at him. “Of course I am. Why else would you have fallen in love with me?” I replied, and he laughed.

“Ugh,” Adrienne groaned from the back seat. “You guys are being really mushy tonight. You better not start making out in the middle of the movie!”

“You better not sit near us,” I shot back, snickering as I caught the revolted look she made in the rearview mirror.

“Eww!” chorused both kids.

The twins pulled into the lot in their separate cars just as we parked, and together, we walked up to the entrance of the theater. There was another sign on the door that said, Private screening - special pass required. “Do we have a special pass?” Nick joked.

“Actually…” I dug in my purse and pulled out the custom tickets I’d had printed, which had one of our wedding pictures on it, along with the date and time of the movie. “A little memento for you,” I said, passing them out to each member of our family. The owner of the theater took our tickets from inside the old-fashioned ticket booth. He had been wonderfully accommodating when I’d contacted him about renting out the theater for that night, explaining its significance in Nick’s and my relationship, as the site of our first kiss. He escorted us in to the otherwise empty theater, which looked as it had in the 1930s, with red velvet seats and curtains across the screen.

Casey and Adrienne immediately raced to the front row, while Cait and Lainey sat side by side, a few rows behind them. “Let’s sit in the back,” I whispered to Nick, and he nodded in agreement. We slipped into the very last row, a safe distance away from our kids. He wrapped his arm around my shoulders as we settled into the old theater seats, which felt smaller than I remembered them. The curtains slid open as the lights went down, and the white screen flickered to life.

I hadn’t expected any previews during a private screening of a hundred-year-old movie, so it caught me by surprise when, instead of the opening credits of King Kong, I saw a familiar green background with white text.

THE FOLLOWING CLIP HAS BEEN APPROVED FOR
ALL AUDIENCES
BY THE MAKERS OF THE FILM

THE MARRIAGE CELEBRATED HAS BEEN RATED
PG-13 PARENTS STRONGLY CAUTIONED
Some material may be inappropriate for children under 13.
SOME SEXUALITY, CRUDE HUMOR, AND ADULT LANGUAGE


Just as I started to take a second glance, the words faded, and a wedding picture of Nick and me appeared on the screen. I gasped and heard Nick chuckle beside me. Looking over at him in surprise, I asked, “Is this your doing?”

He looked back at me with wide eyes. “What? No, I thought this was all you.”

I shook my head, glancing back at the screen. “Not this part.”

“Then who…?”

Our question was answered when the voiceover began. “He was a world famous pop star,” narrated a voice that I immediately recognized as my daughter Delaine’s, over a black-and-white still of a young Nick on the stage.

“She was a dental hygienist,” Caitlin’s voice added with theatrical seriousness, and I laughed at the old photo of myself in work scrubs, holding up a dental mirror and grinning for the camera. I shook my head in amazement; where had she dug up that one?

Nick elbowed me in the side and pointed - down front, both of the twins had turned around in their seats and were grinning up at us, watching for our reactions. I gave them a thumbs up, not wanting to talk over their slideshow.

“They were from two different worlds, but fate brought them together,” it continued, showing another photo of the two of us, seated side by side at an elaborately-set dinner table. He was bald; I wore my black wig. A lump rose in my throat as I remembered the occasion - dinner with my parents, the night before my bone marrow transplant. My mother must have taken the picture.

“Theirs was a rollercoaster romance. There were ups… and downs… and times when their lives seemed to turn upside down.” I reached for Nick’s hand as the photos flashed by, noting the drastic changes in our appearances during those early years together. His head sprouted hair, while my natural red grew out. His left leg disappeared and was replaced by its robotic substitute, while my figure slimmed down and then swelled up again with baby weight. “But their relationship survived every twist and turn.”

Nick squeezed my hand, and I smiled tearfully at a picture taken at Christmas, the year before we got married, of the two of us sitting in front of the tree with the twins in our laps. Not quite a year old yet, neither of them were looking at the camera, but Nick and I were both beaming. I was wearing the engagement ring he’d given me back, while he was sporting the striped “stump sock” I’d knitted him, intending it to be a hat. Recently reunited, with Nick recovering from the car accident that had almost cost him his life, we couldn’t have been happier.

“They got married on May 14, 2010, on the anniversary of their first kiss in this very theater.” I leaned in closer to Nick as we looked at the photo of the two of us kissing on our wedding day. “Twenty years later, their family and friends want to wish them a happy anniversary.”

“Happy anniversary, Nick and Claire!” The screen cut to a video of the Littrell family - Brian, Leighanne, and Baylee - waving at us from their couch. Baylee, now close to thirty, was sandwiched in between Brian and Leighanne. They were well-coordinated, as always, with all three of them wearing blue. The look was cheesy, but the message was heartfelt. “Nick, buddy, you’ve been my best friend for thirty-seven years. Just as I’ve always felt that fate brought me to Orlando on the day we met, I believe that God brought you Claire when you needed her the most. And try as she might, Claire just couldn’t stay away from you for long.” I felt a stab of guilt in my gut as I remembered how I’d left him, our lengthy period apart, but another squeeze of my hand reassured me that all was long-forgiven. “It’s that Carter charm, I guess," Brian went on, grinning. “Same thing that made the girls scream for you back in the day.” His blue eyes twinkled with amusement. “But on the real tip, the two of you are a match made in Heaven. Here’s to another twenty happy years together!”

“Hear, hear!” Leighanne added, raising a glass of champagne which with to toast us.

“Any excuse for champagne,” I whispered to Nick and felt him shake with stifled laughter.

He cleared his throat and coughed, “Lush,” under his breath, making me laugh too. Leighanne had always been a sloppy drunk, more so in middle-age, but that hadn’t stopped us from being friends. All of the guys were still close, though it had been years since they’d last toured, so I wasn’t surprised to see Kevin appear onscreen next, followed by Howie and then AJ.

One by one, all of our closest friends and family members shared memories and well-wishes - on my side, there was Dianna, my best friend since junior high, and Laureen, who had worked with me and briefly dated Nick. My brother Kyle, sister-in-law Amber, and nephew Kamden all spoke, as did my mother, looking old but sounding as sharp as ever. I wished I could have seen my father sitting at her side, but I knew he was smiling down on us from Heaven - he had always liked Nick.

At the end, our four children appeared in the same frame and chorused, “Happy anniversary, Mom and Dad!” Nick and I applauded as the screen faded to black, and I furtively wiped the tears from my eyes.

“What did you think?” Cait called from the front of the theater.

“Wow!” was Nick’s response. “How did you guys pull that off?”

Cait stood up and turned around so we could see her face, dragging Delaine to her feet as well. “I called all your friends, and Lainey went around and filmed them while she was touring. We’ve been working on this for weeks, ever since Mom told us what she had planned.”

Nick smiled at me, but I shook my head. “I was just as surprised by this part!” I insisted. “You got me, girls.”

“Are you actually crying, Mom?” Adrienne asked incredulously. Although she was too far away to see my face, she must have heard the emotion in my voice.

“Your mom’s more sentimental than she likes to let on,” said Nick, squeezing my shoulders. “She’s shed a few tears in this theater before.”

I laughed, leaning into him again. As if on cue, the screen sprang back to life with a grandiose overture playing over the opening credits of King Kong. “This is what I thought we were coming to see,” I whispered to Nick, as we hunkered down to watch. We held hands during the movie, like we had the first time, and at the end, when Kong fell to his death from atop the Empire State Building, Nick kissed my tears away all over again. It wasn’t so much the movie that made me cry this time; it was the nostalgia of the moment, sitting there beside the love of my life and remembering the first time he’d reciprocated my feelings for him.

I guess I am more sentimental than I like to let on.

Afterwards, we walked hand-in-hand out to the lobby, where we said goodbye to the twins, hugging and thanking them for their anniversary gift, and took the younger two out to the car. “What did you think?” I asked them on the way home - I let Nick drive the whole way this time.

“That was cool!” was Casey’s enthusiastic review. Anything with giant gorillas fighting dinosaurs was bound to meet with his approval.

You could always count on Adrienne to disagree. “That was dumb,” she said flatly. “It looked so fake!”

“It was made in 1933. For its time, the special effects were groundbreaking,” Nick explained.

Adrienne snorted. “Whatever. People must have been easily impressed back then.” (Adrienne was hard to please back then.)

When we got home, I put the kids to bed - they both had school the next morning - while Nick went to change his clothes. After I’d finished tucking Casey in and telling Adrienne goodnight, I went into our bedroom to find him, but he wasn’t there. On our bed was a single, long-stemmed yellow rose, lying on top of a shoe box. Smiling, I removed the rose and opened the box. Peeling back the pieces of tissue paper, I pulled out a pair of fuzzy, leopard-print slippers. I laughed and held them up, and that was when the note fell out and fluttered to the bedspread. Curious, I set down the slippers and picked up the slip of paper.

It’s been twenty-seven years since I first laid eyes on you, it started, and I can still remember you were wearing a pair of these on your feet.

My mouth dropped open, as I suddenly remembered the pair of ratty, leopard-print slippers I’d once owned. Dianna had given them to me as part of a get-well care package after my leukemia relapsed, and I’d shuffled up and down the halls of the hospital in them - the very hospital in which I’d met Nick. His handwritten words blurred before my eyes as they suddenly prickled with tears. I couldn’t believe he remembered those.

Wiping my eyes, I struggled to read the rest of the note.

I should have known then that I’d be wild about you one day, it went on, and I laughed at his cheesy pun. Happy anniversary, love. Follow the roses for the rest of your gift.

A smile of anticipation spread across my face. A treasure hunt! Nick had done something like this for me once before, and he’d done a good job of it. I was eager to see what awaited me this time. I looked around the room and, finding nothing else, went out into the hallway. There was another yellow rose on the landing, leading me downstairs. I stooped to pick it up and found a folded piece of paper underneath it. Sinking down to sit on the top step, I unfolded the note. A ticket stub fell out onto my lap. In the dim light filtering up the stairway from downstairs, I had to squint to make out the faded words printed on the worn paper.


Empress Cinema
Presenting
KING KONG
8:00 PM Fri 5/14/04


I had to look twice at the date just to make sure it was right. May 14, 2004. It was the ticket stub from our first date, the date I’d tried to recreate that night. I couldn’t believe Nick had saved it all those years. He was more sentimental than he liked to let on, too. Smiling to myself, I read the note.

Twenty-six years ago, I felt sort of like this stub - worn out, worthless, and missing a huge piece of myself. I felt like half a person. Cheesy as it sounds, you made me feel whole again. You’re my other half. Keep going till you’ve got the whole gift!

I couldn’t help but laugh through the tears - sure, the words were cheesy, but they were also true. After the amputation, I had worried about Nick’s emotional state more than his physical condition. While I knew that the incision on his stump would heal and he’d learn to walk again on an artificial leg, I wasn’t sure how long it would take for the emotional scars to fade. Despite our closeness, months passed before he was comfortable being intimate with me, let alone anyone else.

I put the note and the ticket stub in my pocket as, clinging to the banister, I hoisted myself back to my feet. Walking down the stairs, it occurred to me that I could relate more to the physical limitations Nick had experienced these days than I had back then. In my heart, I was still half my true age, but some days, my body felt double its fifty years. The joints in my knees and hips ached as I made my way slowly to the bottom, marveling over the fact that Nick, also fifty, did this several times each day on one good leg. Despite having put on some weight, he was still in relatively good shape, and even after everything he’d been through, I had a feeling he would outlive me. Selfishly, I hoped he would - I couldn’t stand the thought of living without him.

At the bottom of the stairs, I found another flower and another note. This one was wrapped around something small, hard, and roughly square-shaped. I knew what it was even before I unfolded it, and when I saw the piece of braided red and yellow yarn poking out, I started to laugh. I gave the yarn a pull, and the homemade necklace fell out into my hand. It looked like one of Casey’s kindergarten projects, this chain of yarn strung with a piece of cereal that had been coated with Mod Podge to preserve it, but it was much older and meant even more to me. Smiling as I slipped it over my head, I remembered the morning Nick had given it to me, the morning after his spontaneous marriage proposal. It was a makeshift engagement ring, meant to hold the place of the one I wore around my finger, the ring we had yet to pick out. I ran the tip of my finger over its rough surface, then touched the smooth, canary diamond in the center of my real engagement ring, which hadn’t lost its shine. It still sparkled in the light as I held up the note to read it.

Twenty-five years ago, I asked you to marry me, and you said yes. It may have taken you five years to actually follow through on that, but I’ll never regret asking. I knew then that I wanted to spend the rest of my life with you. Now I’m waiting to give you the rest of your gift. Hurry up, slowpoke!

I laughed and followed the trail of roses to the back door, where I found another memento and another note. On and on it went, leading me outside and down to the beach. Here I could follow the path of Nick’s footprints, but every few feet, I would find a yellow rose sticking out of the sand, each accompanied by a heartfelt note and a token of our love, one for each year we’d been together.

Twenty-one years ago, I held your hand as, together, we witnessed a miracle - two of them, actually. It didn’t turn out the way either of us had planned, but I’m so blessed I got to be there when Caitlin and Delaine were born. They may not be mine biologically, but it doesn’t matter - the bond I’ve felt with those two little girls since they were babies is stronger than blood.

This folded around a photo of us on Halloween, 2009. I was dressed up as Ariel, the little mermaid, Nick was Prince Eric, and we were each holding one of the twins: Flounder the fish (Cait) and Sebastian the crab (Lainey). That had been one magical night, in ways you’ll never see in a Disney movie. I smirked, feeling myself heat up at the memory of making love to Nick in his pool.

Twenty years ago, I watched my beautiful bride walk down the aisle - toward me this time, instead of away. We’ve shared so many wonderful memories in the two decades since that it’s impossible to rank them, but our wedding day was definitely one of the best days of my life. Every May 14th, I look forward to celebrating another year of marriage, and tonight is no exception. Keep walking, Claire… keep walking toward me.

That tucked inside our wedding program. In the fading twilight, I took time to look at the program, to read the names of the people who had been a part of our wedding and remember the details of what ranked as one of the best days of my life as well.

Eleven years ago, you gave me the best gift I’ll ever get - our daughter Adrienne. It may sound egotistical, but I can’t explain the unique joy I get out of looking into her face and seeing my own features. I don’t need to, though, because you already know. You knew, and yet you gave up that privilege so that I could have a chance to experience the same pleasure. I’m a lucky man, to have a wife who loves me so selflessly.

Sniffling, I shook my head at that one. Didn’t Nick know that I got the same joy out of seeing him in Adrienne? My husband had blessed me with a beautiful, charismatic child with the looks and voice of an angel. She was as much a gift to me as she was to him. I smiled at the picture he’d put inside the note. Adrienne had to be about eleven months old in it because she was learning to walk, but she looked younger - born several weeks early, she was still small for her age, and her wispy blonde hair was so fine back then that she looked bald until she was almost two. Her big, blue eyes were wide with the effort of trying to keep her balance, but Nick was walking behind her, holding both of her hands. He happened to have been wearing shorts that day, and the sight of his prosthetic leg reminded me of the long hours he’d spent in physical therapy, relearning to walk between a pair of parallel bars. He had helped all four of our children learn to walk, but this picture in particular really brought it back full circle. It had always been one of my favorites.

Five years ago, we flew across the ocean and brought home a baby boy. Casey completed our family. Yours, mine, and ours. He may not have either of our DNA, but he brings out the best in both of us. I’m so glad we made that journey, babe.

I pulled out the Polaroid picture taken by the adoption agency on the day we arrived in Moscow to meet Casey. They’d captured the perfect moment: me cradling Casey for the first time, while Nick stood with his arms around me, looking eagerly over my shoulder. He adored our three daughters just as much as I did, but for a man, there’s just something special about having a son. As Nick had written in his note, Casey made our family feel complete.

My journey down the beach was almost complete, too. I followed the trail of flowers to its end, collecting four more roses for the past four years of our marriage. They took me down to the waterline. And there, with the tide lapping at his heels, stood my husband, holding the last rose, a long-stemmed red one. He held it out to me, and I took it, tucking it into the middle of the bouquet I’d collected: twenty-seven yellow roses, one for each year we’d known each other, and a red rose to represent our love.

“Happy anniversary, Claire,” he said, smiling, and even though my hands were full of flowers and photos and all the other tangible reminders of our relationship, I threw my arms around him and hugged him as hard as I could. I buried my face in his neck, breathing in the scent of the sea on his skin.

“Happy anniversary, Nick.”

He released me slowly and led me to a blanket he’d spread out on the sand, where we could sit down and look through all the keepsakes, sharing in the memories of our life together as the sun set on our anniversary. As its last, dying rays dwindled and the sky grew dark, he stretched out on his back and patted a spot on the blanket next to him. But before I lay down beside him, I glanced back at the trail of footprints we’d left in the sand, each one a part of the journey we’d taken to get to this point. If I had looked closely when it was still light, I might have seen the places where Nick had stumbled along the way, or where I had strayed from the path he’d laid out for me. But in the end, we’d both made it here, and that was what mattered.

With a sigh of contentment, I lay down at his side. It was quite comfortable, lying in the soft sand, looking up at the stars in the sky overhead and listening to the waves washing ashore. I could smell the brine on the sea breeze and taste the salt on my tongue, but the best part was just being there with Nick. I reached for his hand in the darkness and felt his fingers lace through mine. “I love you,” I whispered and waited for his reply.

“I love you, too.”

***