The clinic wasn’t far from my condo in Santa Monica, but on the day of my first appointment there, all that meant was that before I knew it, I was parked on the top level of a parking deck, staring out my windshield at the large, white building that held a diagnosis inside.
I was afraid to go in.
I stalled as long as I could, finishing out the song on the radio, playing with my phone for a few minutes before putting it on vibrate, checking my reflection in the rearview mirror. My eyes were hidden behind a pair of dark sunglasses, so I couldn’t see the look of panic in them. I could only feel it. I left the glasses and my baseball cap on when I finally got out of the car and trudged up to a pair of doors that led into the building. Even once I got inside, I didn’t take them off.
I compared the card Dr. Polakoff had given me with a directory inside the doors. There were lots of different medical practices housed in the same large building, so it took me a while to find the right one. By then, I was late for my appointment, but I didn’t care. Doctors were always running behind, and the less time I had to spend in a waiting room, the better.
When I finally found the right office, I thought I was in the wrong place at first. Everyone in the waiting room was old. Like, seriously, white-haired and wrinkly old. Was I in some geriatric clinic instead? I double-checked the name on the door. Suite 550, Hematology and Oncology. Nope, I was right. I slouched to the front desk, hoping that if I avoided eye contact with everyone in the room, none of them would look at me either.
The girl behind the desk looked up at me through the clear partition that separated us and smiled. “Do you have an appointment?”
“Um, yeah,” I said in a low voice, just loud enough for her to hear me. I glanced down at the card in my hand, but my new doctor’s name was some long, foreign thing I had no clue how to pronounce: Chanda Subramanien, MD. I’d been calling her “Dr. Submarine” in my head, but I felt stupid saying that out loud, so I just gave the receptionist my own name and hoped she’d have the scheduling information in front of her. “Last name’s Carter.”
I don’t know why I was trying to keep it on the down-low. The only other person under sixty in the room was the receptionist herself, and if she recognized me, she was at least being professional about it. “Do you have your insurance card?” she asked, and I dug that out of my wallet. She typed the information into her computer and then said, “Okay, Mr. Carter, you’re all set. I just have some forms we need you to fill out, and someone will call you back shortly.” She handed me back my insurance card and pushed a clipboard towards me.
“Thanks,” I muttered. I took the clipboard and found a seat in an empty corner of the waiting room. It was too hard to read the forms I’d been given with my dark glasses on, so I reluctantly took them off and tucked them into the front of my shirt. As I started filling out the basic personal information - name, address, place of employment - I found myself glancing up after every line, to see if anyone was watching me. No one was. Some of the people were reading or staring at the TV. Others looked half asleep - or half dead. I looked away from a particularly frail old man who was totally bald, the skin stretched over his bony skull so freakishly pale, it was almost translucent. He was the scariest, but just about everyone else in the room looked sick and old.
I don’t belong here, I thought. This is wrong. I was only thirty years old and in the best shape of my life - or had been, until all this shit had come up. There was no way I could have the same thing as these people. Dr. Polakoff was a good cardiologist, but what did he know about cancer? He was probably just guessing, and he was wrong. He had to be wrong. It was something else - not heart problems, not cancer, but something else that wasn’t as bad as either of those things.
I felt more confident as I started working my way through the questions about my medical history. I had to check a few things - yes, I had a few of the symptoms listed, I’d travelled recently to Asia, and with some reluctance, I marked a YES for heart disease and jotted “cardiomyopathy” in the space for comments - but for the most part, I was a clean slate. I’d never had surgery before. I didn’t have any allergies. I didn’t have asthma or digestive problems or mental illness or any of the other medical conditions listed. I even got to check off NO for recreational drugs, alcohol, and smoking - okay, so I still had the occasional drink or cigarette, but for the most part, I’d kicked my habits. Seeing the long line of checkmarks in the NO column, I thought, See, I’m healthy! How could anything be seriously wrong with me?
When I finished filling out the paperwork, I brought it back up to the receptionist and gave her the envelope with my test results from Dr. Polakoff as well. She promised to pass them on to my doctor, and no sooner had I sat down again than a door next to the front desk opened, and a nurse stepped into the waiting room. “Nick?” she asked, smiling in my direction.
I got back up and followed her through the door. “My name’s Dora,” she introduced herself on the other side, closing the door behind me. “Can I have you hop up on the scale for me?”
It didn’t matter how old I got (though, from what I’d seen in the waiting room, I was a lot younger than her usual clientele); nurses always talked to me like I was a little kid. I almost wanted to answer, “Only if I get a sucker!” but I resisted the urge and dutifully stepped - stepped, not hopped - onto the big scale.
I’d hated this part of doctor’s visits more than any other - even shots - ever since I was about eighteen and started filling out. It had only gotten worse in my twenties, but now that I had slimmed down to a healthy weight, I didn’t mind it at all. In fact, it made me smile when I saw that the number on the scale was two pounds lower than it had been in Dr. Polakoff’s office, just three days earlier. And I’d done nothing but veg out all weekend!
The nurse, Dora, wrote the weight down on the chart she carried on a clipboard, then said, “Right this way. Second door on your right.”
Inside the exam room, I went through all the same crap I had the previous Friday. Dora took my vital signs, asked some questions about the symptoms I’d checked off on the medical history form, and told me the doctor would be in to see me soon.
It didn’t take long. After just a few minutes, I heard footsteps outside my door, and then it opened, and a petite woman in a white coat came in. “Hi, Nickolas, I’m Dr. Subramanien,” she introduced herself, extending a slender brown hand for me to shake. I tried to pay attention to how she pronounced her last name, but within five seconds, I’d forgotten already and was back to calling her “Dr. Submarine” in my head. “I understand you’re here on a referral from your cardiologist in Florida.”
“Yeah,” I said, my voice cracking. My mouth had suddenly gone dry. I worked up enough spit to swallow, then added, “I thought there was something wrong with my heart again, but he said there’s not. He said it might be cancer.” I said the last part with a tone of skepticism, hoping she would react with the same, laugh and tell me there was no way a young guy like me could have cancer in his lungs.
But she didn’t laugh or even smile. Instead, she slapped a couple of x-rays up on a light board on the wall - my x-rays, I realized, when she switched on the light to make them glow from behind. This time, they didn’t look like blurs; my eyes found the white mass immediately. So, apparently, had Dr. Submarine’s.
“Your chest films do show what appears to be a mediastinal mass, which is a common finding in some cancers. However, x-rays don’t give us the clearest picture, so I’d like you to have a CT scan and then proceed to biopsy. That should give us a diagnosis.”
It wasn’t what I’d wanted to hear. She wasn’t laughing off Dr. Polakoff’s ideas, but telling me they could be right. But then, she wasn’t saying it was cancer for sure, either. I hoped the other tests would prove them both wrong.
“I recommend hospitalization for the diagnostic procedures,” Dr. Submarine was saying. I had zoned out for a minute, but the word “hospitalization” snapped me back to reality. “The symptoms you presented with - shortness of breath, water on the lungs - suggest we need to identify and begin treating your condition as soon as possible, and the diagnostic process will move faster if it’s done on an inpatient basis.”
“You’re putting me in the hospital?” I asked, though I was already pretty sure that’s what she was saying.
The doctor nodded. “Only for a few days, I hope,” she added, as if this made it any better.
I sighed. “When?”
“Today, if possible.”
I stared at her, feeling completely overwhelmed, as if a wave of panic had crashed over my head. I was drowning in information, drowning in fear.
“Are you okay with Ronald Reagan?”
It took me a second to realize she was asking about my hospital preference, not my favorite president. Ronald Reagan Medical Center was the largest UCLA hospital and the best in LA. Lots of famous people had been treated there. That didn’t make me any less apprehensive about going. “Sure,” I mumbled, “that’s fine.”
She nodded and smiled at me for the first time. “I’ll call to let them know you’re coming.”
***
Hours later, as it started getting dark and the lights of Los Angeles grew brighter outside my window, I lay in a hospital bed, alone in my new room at Ronald Reagan.
I couldn’t complain about the room - I’d visited hospitals before and seen what the rooms looked like, and this one, by comparison, was pretty nice. It was decorated in shades of blue - pale blue walls, dark blue furniture, medium blue floor tiles around the perimeter. Ocean colors. I guess it was supposed to be relaxing, but I couldn’t exactly relax.
The room was private, of course, with a curtain (also blue) that I could pull around my bed if I needed, I dunno, “extra” privacy. That was nice, considering I was still paranoid about TMZ or some other paparazzi fuckbags figuring out I was there. Not like they would really care - it wasn’t like I was Michael Jackson or Britney Spears - but still, a story’s a story, and if word got out that one of the Backstreet Boys was in the hospital, being tested for cancer, I had a feeling it would make the entertainment news.
I was glad for the privacy, but lonely, too. I’ve never really liked being by myself, and it was especially depressing being by myself in that room, the only one who knew what was going on with me. I looked over at the blue couch and footstool under the window, and at the two chairs that could be pulled up to my bedside, and I realized there was enough room for a whole family to come visit. But picturing my crazy family crowding around me all at the same time made me feel slightly panicky again. I loved them and all, but I wouldn’t have wanted them there, anyway.
Some company would have been nice, but every time I thought about picking up the phone in my room and calling one of the guys - my real family, even if not by blood - I chickened out. What would I say? “Hey Frick, it’s me; just letting you know I’m in the hospital to find out if I have cancer. Wanna hang out with me till I know?” Even if I could find a less retarded way of putting it into words, I didn’t want to. Saying the words would make it real. I would rather pretend I was stuck in a nightmare I just hadn’t woken up from yet. If the guys knew about my nightmare, then I would know it wasn’t really a nightmare at all.
Besides, I didn’t think it was fair to freak them out before I had a diagnosis. If I involved them, they would be stuck worrying as much as I was, and I wouldn’t wish that on anyone else. I could tough it out, handle things on my own until I found out what I was dealing with. Then I’d figure out what to tell the guys.
With a sigh, I reached up and turned off the light above my bed, then rolled over onto my side, clutching the pillow tight. I knew it was going to take me a long time to get to sleep that night. My CT scan and biopsy were scheduled for the next morning, and I was nervous, especially for the biopsy. Even though I’d just talked myself out of calling one of the guys, I wished again that there was someone else in the room with me, someone to sit in the chair beside my bed and talk me to sleep, or better yet, someone to curl up in bed with me and just hold me.
I wanted Lauren.
It would have been comforting just to have her there, to listen to her soft breathing and feel her warm, firm body pressed up against mine. I missed her, but I wouldn’t call her either. It wouldn’t be right. We had broken up two months ago, sometime between New Year’s and my birthday, on the break between legs of the world tour.
For the first time in my long line of relationships, I hadn’t seen it coming. I was happier with her than I’d been in a long time, and I’d thought she felt the same way. She had seemed happy enough on tour. But then, Lauren was the type of person who hid her feelings, bottled them up and let them build until she exploded. It had all been too much for her - too much time on the road, away from her family, and too much pressure from the fans who hated her just because I loved her. After spending the holidays at home, she’d told me she wasn’t going back overseas with me. She didn’t want me to go, either. She was ready to settle down, and she wanted a commitment from me.
I wasn’t ready. As much as I loved her, I didn’t want to pull a Kevin and give up the life I loved to stay in one place and raise a family. I wasn’t sure I even wanted a family. I wanted Lauren, but I wanted her with me on the road. To me, that kind of commitment was more important than the kind that’s symbolized by a ring.
Lauren didn’t agree. She wanted to focus on her own career for once, instead of mine. She wanted to have me to herself for once, instead of having to share me with fans. She wanted us to get married and start a new life together in Los Angeles.
I wanted her, but I didn’t want those same things. I loved my life the way it was. In the end, I’d had to give up her to keep the rest of it, and though I would always love her, I resented her for that.
Still, I missed her. I missed the kind of relationship we’d had. I missed having that one person I could tell anything to. Especially then.
I closed my eyes and kept them shut, willing my thoughts to shut down too, willing myself to fall asleep. I might have dozed off after several hours, but when I woke up, it was still dark, and I was still alone.
***
