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Author's Chapter Notes:
Back to Cary's POV now. Thanks for reading and reviewing! :)
Cary


I stared at Nick, my mouth opening and closing with the silent question I couldn’t bring myself to ask. Sick with what? Deep down, I suppose I already knew.

Nick cleared his throat awkwardly, his bare chest expanding as he sucked in a deep breath. “I have cancer,” he admitted in a low voice. “Lymphoblastic lymphoma. Stage IV.”

After he said it, he looked back at me like he knew I’d know what that meant. In that moment, I wished I didn’t, but I did. Stage IV was the worst stage a cancer could be in. It was terminal cancer - not always, but usually. People with Stage IV cancer made bucket lists and checked into hospices to die, like my mother had. But Nick had just been singing and dancing to Lady Gaga in the back of a taxi, without a care in the world. Nick was talking about going out on tour. How could Nick be one of those people?

I was still staring at him, in shock and in wonder. He didn’t look sick. He didn’t look like a cancer patient. He still had all of his hair, his buff new body, and a pretty good tan. He looked... healthy. Only the bump from the portacath showed that he was not.

“I... I’m so sorry, Nick,” I finally managed to say. When he didn’t say anything back, I added hopefully, “But you’re being treated, aren’t you?”

He nodded. “Chemo.”

That was what I’d figured, judging from the catheter. I nodded, too. “That’s good. I mean, Stage IV is... pretty serious... but chemo regimens are getting better and better, right?”

He shrugged. “You’re the nurse. You tell me.”

I shook my head. It had been a rhetorical question. “I’m not an oncologist. I don’t know that many specifics; I’m sorry. Um... how long have you been doing the chemo?” How long have you known? That was what I was really wondering.

“Six weeks.”

Six weeks... I counted back in my head, struggling to get my buzzed brain to focus. He’d been diagnosed in March. That meant he had known when he’d called me in April. He had known when he was making plans for the tour. I tipped my head to the side, narrowing my eyes at him. “Will you be done with it before the tour starts?”

A flush crept up his neck, coloring his cheeks. “No,” he answered, looking sheepish. “I’m supposed to do eight cycles. I’ve only finished two so far.”

I raised my eyebrows at him. “Does that mean you’re planning to go on tour while you’re on chemo?”

He nodded.

“How’s that gonna work out?” As I asked the question, I realized with a jolt that I already knew the answer. Or, at least, I was beginning to think I did. “Wait...” I stared at him, feeling my heart start to race, my face start to heat up. “Is that... please don’t tell me that’s why you brought me out here. Why you offered me a spot on the tour.”

He pushed his lips together and turned them into a crooked smile.

My heart sank.

All this time, I had been thinking it was too good to be true, wondering what the catch was. Well, this was it. Nick was sick, and he wanted me on the tour, not to sing, but to be his traveling nurse. “You told me there was no catch!” I protested, feeling cheated. Maybe it was just the alcohol making me emotional, but I was suddenly on the verge of tears.

“I never said that,” he replied quietly. “Everything I told you was the truth. I just... didn’t tell you everything.”

Looking away, my eyes burning, I realized he was right. I had asked him about the catch, but he hadn’t answered my question, not directly, anyway. He had just dodged it instead. And I’d been so afraid he was going to withdraw his offer, I hadn’t called him on it. I looked back at him. He was still watching me, and his expression was unreadable. I sighed and shook my head. “I’m not a home nurse, Nick. I work in a nursing home. There’s a difference.”

“Well, I don’t need a home nurse. I need a tour nurse, and since I don’t think those exist, I thought you’d make a good one. You’re a performer; you’re a nurse; it’s perfect.”

He made it sound so simple, but it didn’t feel that way at all. I felt overwhelmed, like I’d gotten myself in way over my head. “And is that my payment for being your nurse, that I get to open up for you guys every night?”

“I’ll pay you money, too, if that’s what you want. How much do you make at the nursing home? I’ll match it.”

I gaped at him for a moment before shaking my head. “No, it’s not about the money.”

“Then what’s it about? Don’t you want to help me?”

I had to look away from his puppy eyes. He was guilt-tripping me now, and it wasn’t fair. “Help you how, exactly? What do you want me to do?” I already had a pretty good idea of where this was going, but I wanted to hear it from him. He’d been so vague about everything else, he owed me a clear, detailed explanation.

“Well, I need you to be in charge of my chemo. Set it up for me, make sure I get the right stuff on the right days. My doctor said I’d need weekly blood tests to check my blood counts, so you’d have to do that too.”

I wiped my eyes and gave him a skeptical look. “Your doctor knows about this and is okay with it?” I asked, eyebrows raised. I knew all too well the effects chemotherapy could have on a person’s body and immune system, and I couldn’t imagine a medical professional would really endorse him going on tour while he was still in treatment, let alone trying to continue that treatment on the road.

Nick’s face turned red and sheepish again. “Oh, she knows, but I wouldn’t say she’s exactly ‘okay’ with it. She thinks I’m a moron.”

So do I, I thought, but I didn’t say it. I think he could tell, from the way I was looking at him, though.

He sighed. “You probably think I am too, huh?”

I chose my words carefully. “I just don’t think it’s... wise... what you’re suggesting. You should be under the care of an oncologist, one that you can see regularly.”

“I hardly ever see Dr. Submarine anyway. The nurses are the ones who take care of me when I go to the hospital for chemo.”

“Dr. Submarine?” I stifled a giggle.

He cracked a boyish smile and ducked his head. “I dunno how to say her real name; that’s just what I started calling her in my head. I guess it kinda stuck.”

“Hm... some doctor-patient relationship that must be, if you don’t even know her name.”

“You know, you’re feistier than I thought you’d be when I met you. Love the sarcasm.” His eyes sparkled with humor. I blushed. “But exactly,” he went on quickly. “I don’t know her name, and she doesn’t know me. She doesn’t understand. But you do, right?” Suddenly serious again, he fixed me with a penetrating stare, and my heart skipped a beat. “You know how important it is to me to keep working, keep making music. I know she thinks I’ll die if I do, but I know I’ll die if I don’t. And if I’m gonna die, I’d rather die doing what I love.”

My heart was pounding. I felt so sorry for him. I wanted to help him, but his plan was crazy. Okay, maybe it wasn’t crazy; maybe it actually even made sense, but it was stupid. It was dangerous. If he was on chemo, he needed to be closely monitored. He needed to rest. He needed to stay away from germs. Touring was the last thing he needed to be doing.

But that was just the nurse in me. The music lover in me, the fan in me, understood it perfectly. Touring was the only thing he wanted to be doing. “I... I do understand,” I said quietly. “I do, Nick, but I...” I trailed off. How could I say I agreed with his doctor, when he’d just told me she didn’t understand him like I did? I decided to try a different tactic. “What about the other guys? I can’t imagine they’d let you risk your life to finish the tour.”

He shook his head. “They don’t know.”

I wasn’t surprised. “Then I don’t even know why you’re asking me, ‘cause when you tell them you want to finish your chemo on the road, they’re gonna tell you no.” I said this with confidence, pretty sure that I was enough of a fan to know. When AJ was at his lowest and needed treatment, they had postponed their tour so he could go to rehab. And they’d always talked about how wrong it was that they hadn’t when Brian found out he needed heart surgery. There was no way they would make that mistake again with Nick.

“No,” he said, with a shake of his head, and his face flushed with guilt yet again. This time, he didn’t look sheepish, like a little boy caught with his hand in the cookie jar. This time, he looked stricken. He looked like he was about to cry. “They really don’t know,” he emphasized, his voice sounding congested. “I haven’t told them anything.”

I stared at him, my heart threatening to race right up through my throat. “They don’t know you’re sick?” I gasped.

He shook his head again, letting it hang so I couldn’t see the tears in his eyes. “I don’t want them to know,” he mumbled thickly.

The sound of his voice broke my heart. I wanted to cry with him. I wanted to cry for him. “What about your family?” I whispered. “Have you told them?”

Still staring at the floor, he shook his head a third time.

“You’ve been dealing with this all on your own for six weeks?”

A nod. A sniff.

I lost it then. Seeing him cry, my own eyes filled with tears, and before I even knew what I was doing, I was walking up to him, wrapping my arms around his lanky frame, pulling him into a tight hug. He stiffened at first, and I almost let go, feeling his bare skin and realizing he was still shirtless. But then I felt his arms come around me, too, and his chin on my shoulder, as he hunched down into my hug. I patted his bare back awkwardly, realizing he needed this as much as I apparently thought he had.

“Why?” I asked quietly in his ear.

“Because...” He sniffed. “...I don’t want them to have to deal with it, too. And I don’t want...” He trailed off and pulled out of the hug, stepping back from me. “I don’t want the sympathy,” he said, steadying his voice. “I don’t want the whispers and the looks, like I’m already at death’s door. If I am, I wanna go out being me, and I want people to think of me as me, not... I dunno, some tragic victim of cancer. You know?”

I nodded, understanding even if I didn’t agree. “I know.”

“So will you help me, Cary?”

In that moment, as he stood there in front of me, red-faced and teary-eyed and completely pitiful-looking, how could I say no?

I closed my eyes and prayed I wasn’t making a huge mistake. “Yeah, Nick,” I agreed. “I’ll help you.”

***