Brian slid his shoes off and propped his sock clad feet ontop of the back of the couch, placing the remote control for the television across his chest. Kevin was laying down in a guestroom, taking a well deserved nap. He had spent most of the night up with Nick. Everything was quiet for now, the monitor only signaling a soft snoring noise coming from Nick’s room indicating that he was fast asleep.
Sleepily, Brian laid an arm across his eyes. Although Kevin spent the night up with Nick, he didn’t sleep well either, too worried about his young friend and also worried about Leighanne at home. She had stayed back for an extra week and his thoughts were constantly back home. The doctors assured that everything was fine with his wife but he still worried about her. The only concern they voiced was her blood pressure was borderline and with the excess amount of amniotic fluid in her uterus, it could lead to complications, but they were confident that things would level off.
Leighanne’s only complaint was that she looked like she was nine months pregnant with triplets and Brian tried his best to tell her that she was beautiful. As soon as her doctor gave her the green flag, she would return to Tampa and Brian was anxious to have her with him.
His thoughts were interrupted when the front door banged open. He raised himself up on his elbows to look and see who was rudely entering the house.
“Is anyone home?”
Groaning, Brian laid back down on the couch when he saw AJ tossing his black carryon bag onto the floor.
“Nice to see you too pal,” AJ quipped, voice dripping with sarcasim.
Brian rubbed his face. “Sorry J, I’m just a little tired I guess. How was your flight?”
“Flight? What flight, mister freakin cheapass insisted we drive back,” he mumbled as he nodded towards Howie walking into the room.
Brian shifted his body to a sitting position on the couch, laying the remote onto the glass coffee table. “Why would you two drive back to Tampa?”
“I needed some of the peacefulness to get my head on,” Howie sighed. He cast a look at AJ as the tattooed man threw himself onto a leather recliner. “Someone choose to sleep the whole drive though.”
Turning the bill of his base ball cap to the front of his face, AJ lowered it over his face. “You have your methods, I have mine.”
Howie grimaced as he looked at AJ slouched in the chair. “I did discover one thing during the trip back.”
Brian looked at the Latino expectantly. “What was that?”
“He has some nasty habits, I swear I didn’t realize how gross Bone can be.”
“And you’re mister perfect, god, Howie, no one could be more anal than you!” AJ mumbled gruffly under the ballcap.
”Anal? Howie snapped. ”At least I don’t go to my mommy when something doesn’t go my way!”
”GUYS! Stop bickering!” Brian shouted, running his hands through his hair. “We’re all tired here, let’s just all lay back and keep to ourselves before a huge fight breaks out.”
The clicking of the clock on the wall making a rhymthic ticking was the only indicator that life was exisiting in the living room as Howie and Brian searched their minds for something positive to talk about. Pretty soon, loud snores were coming from AJ’s side of the room leading Howie to make a remark.
“God he sleeps more than a fricken baby!”
As Brian opened his mouth to reply, the door bell chimed loudly, startling them. AJ snorted as he was snatched from his dreams and sat up stiffly in the chair, pushing the ball cap up.
“God, you sleep with your shades on?” Howie questioned, his voice filled with disgust.
“Guys, please,” Brian growled as he trudged toward the front door.
Picking up a pillow, AJ threw it as hard as he could towards Howie. Brian shook his head as he heard the Latino yelp and then swear when the pillow made contact.
Smiling, he opened the front door to greet whoever was on the other side. His smile quickly faded when he came face to face with Jane Carter.
“H-hi, Jane, t-this is unexpected,” Brian stammered, quickly turning his attention to Aaron standing next to his mother. “Hey Aaron.”
Shocked, Brian tried to search for words to say but his mind drew a blank. Jane promptly broke the silence.
“We’re here to see Nick, is he home?”
Before Brian could answer, Jane pushed him aside and entered the open door, Aaron walking behind her, carrying their luggage.
“Nick? Are you around?” Jane sang out as she headed for the kitchen.
Watching the woman walk past Brian, AJ lowered his shades. “This is definately not a good sign,” he mumbled. Howie nodded in agreement.
Aaron didn’t follow his mother as she searched the main floor for her oldest son. He remained in the foyer, luggage on the floor next to him.
Looking towards the stairs, Jane commented mainly to herself, “he must be up in his room.”
Before Brian could stop her, Jane was already climbing the steps.
“Jane, hey, why don’t you come back down here, Nick’s probably asleep, I’m sure he’ll be down in a bit.”
Jane stopped halfway up the stairs and turned towards Brian. Her face looked hard. “I think I have the right to see my son when I want to. Aaron, aren’t you coming with me? I’m sure Nick would love to see you.”
Aaron stood quietly, a sullen expression on his face.
Brian’s heart felt heavy as he looked at the young boy standing before him. There was so much Aaron didn’t know that was going on and he knew that in a few moments his world would be crushed. It was too much of a burden for anyone to bare let alone a fourteen year old boy.
“Jane, please, can you just wait for a few minutes?” Brian begged; his mind screaming for Kevin to wake up and help him out of this mess.
Sighing loudly, Jane started down the steps. “Why is this so important for us to wait? I want to see my son.”
The unmistakeable sound of Nick moaning in the monitor cut through the air. Jane’s eyes locked with Brian’s. She immediately turned around and dashed up the stairs, Brian running after her.
Silently, Brian was cursing Nick for letting the situation get to this point. He should have gone to his family when all of this started and he hated the fact that he knew before Nick’s own flesh and blood knew. Now here he was, having to pick up the pieces he was certain that would fall when Jane and Aaron discover that Nick has cancer.
There was something in the way Jane stood facing the closed door to Nick’s room. Brian sensed that she must know something, but he wasn’t sure if she knew how bad this was. Instead of bolting into her son’s bedroom, she stood there staring at the door. Turning to him, Brian was shocked to see that she was crying, the mascara was running under her eyes.
The sudden sound of Nick’s dry heaves set Jane into action and she flung the door open and rushed into the room.
Quickly following her into the room, Brian nearly ran into the woman’s back. Instead of rushing up to his bedside, Jane stood frozen in the center of the room, her mouth agape as she took in the scene that was unfolding.
All it took was Brian’s hand on her shoulder to snap her out of her state of shock and she went to her son and sat on the spot next to his body on the mattress, placing a comforting hand on his shoulder.
“Oh baby, shhhh,” Jane soothed in a voice thick with emotion.
Busy with his stomach betraying his body, Nick didn’t connect at first that the woman’s voice he was hearing was his mother’s instead he was thinking that Leighanne had returned.
As a normal reflex, Jane reached up to stroke her son’s matted hair, but when she was halfway towards his head, she stopped suddenly, seeing the patches of skin that was exposed where there had been thick hair before. Tears welled up in her eyes.
“Oh Nicky,” she sobbed.
This time it was Nick’s turn to cry and his normally stoic manner disappeared when he started whimpering as the heaves were irritating his tender stomach. “God this hurts.”
Jane wept as she tried her best to comfort Nick. He continued to sob in between his gasps from heaving.
“God, please make this stop,” he begged.
“Nick don’t die!” Aaron blurted.
Both Jane and Brian jerked towards the doorway where Aaron stood, cheeks glistening with tears, his face ashen.
“Aaron?” Nick whispered, too weak to turn and look up.
“Go back downstairs, Brian take Aaron downstairs,” Jane ordered in a firm voice.
Aaron only stood in the doorway, staring at the form that was curled into a ball on the bed.
Brian made his way over to the teen, gently grabbing him by the arm. “C’mon, let’s go back downstairs.”
Aaron stood his ground, shaking his head defiantly. He watched as Nick rolled over onto his back, scared as he saw the pale and thin face.
“Aaron, this isn’t a good time right now for Nick, let’s go downstairs,” Brian pleaded, seeing the obvious distress in the young boy’s face.
Panting, Nick laid on his back, eyes closed, too weak to comment on what was happening around him.
“Nick, don’t die, please don’t go,” Aaron begged, breaking from Brian’s grip.
“Aaron!” Brian called after the teen, watching helplessly as he darted from the door and down the hall.
Jane softly laid the blue cloth ontop of Nick’s forehead causing him to jerk and then suddenly shiver. “Shhh, honey,” she cooed. “It’s going to be okay, I’m here now.”
His mother’s voice finally broke into Nick’s fever plagued brain. His eyes shifted rapidly under their lids before they fluttered open and he was looking up at his mother. “Mom?”
“Shhh, quiet, just rest,” Jane softly reprimanded, gently turning the cool cloth over and pressing it back down onto his forehead.
Brian walked further into the room and opened a drawer next to the bed. He produced a package of something wrapped in foil. “Nick, it’s time to give you the Metoclophan, nothing else seems to be helping you stop getting sick today.”
Jane looked puzzled at Brian’s ‘matter-of-fact’ way he talked about medications for Nick. She felt like an outsider looking in.
“I’m sorry, but this will only take a minute, you need to leave,” Brian suggested in a quiet voice.
“I’m sure I can stand to watch Nick take some pills,” Jane replied, smoothing out the washcloth.
“This isn’t a pill and I’m sure this isn’t something a grown man would want to share with his mother, it will only take a minute. I promise,” Brian stated.
At first a bewildered look crossed the woman’s face until she connected that what Brian was holding in his hand was a suppository that had to be inserted.
“I’ve been helping Nick with this for about a week, it’s okay Jane.”
“I’m feeling better,” Nick weakly protested.
Brian rubbed his best friend’s shoulder. “You do want this to stop, right?”
Standing up, Jane bent over and lightly kissed Nick’s cheek. “I’ll be out in the hall sweetheart.”
Out in the hall, Jane nervously wrung her hands. The scene she had just witnessed in the bedroom was all too surreal. This couldn’t be happened, she decided. There had to be some mistake in the diagnosis.
The door quietly opened and Brian stepped out, stopping Jane from entering the bedroom. “He needs a minute, okay?”
Jane sighed as she leaned against the wall.
“I bet you didn’t expect to come here and find Nick sick,” Brian remarked, trying to break the silence that hung like a lead curtain.
“I wasn’t expecting this,” she whispered.
“Well, you know Nick.”
Jane turned to face the young man. “How long have you known about this?”
Brian squirmed, his mind started racing. “Um, known about what?”
“About the cancer.”
“You know?” Brian breathed.
“Bob told us yesterday, well, he told me and Aaron overheard it. How long have you known?”
“Nick told me about two months ago. He didn’t want to tell me, but I think I blindsided him and saw the marks from the pen they use for radiation, so he didn’t really have much of a choice, he’s a bad liar.”
Jane searched Brian’s face as he explained how Nick hadn’t felt good before the Japan tour and kept his symptoms and the diagnosis to himself. Brian hung his head when he explained to her that Nick had assigned him as his patient advocate and swore him to secrecy about the cancer, and it was a promise he had kept.
“So it’s the chemo that’s making him so sick?”
Sighing, Brian nodded. “But today is his last day of being on the constant chemo and he is going off it tomorrow. Nick gets a week off of chemo but during that week the doctor will be having him go into the hospital every other day for radiation.”
Her eyes welled with unshed tears. “There’s so much I don’t know.” The bitter words she had last spoke to her son on their Christmas vacation popped into her head and she quickly clamped a hand over her mouth. “God, I was horrible to him. I told him he was getting fat and out of shape and using drugs. I said some awful things to--”
“Jane, you didn’t know,” Brian interrupted. “I’m sure Nick understands.”
“He’s so thin in his face,” she thought outloud.
“He’s lost a lot of weight,” Brian stated in a somber voice.
“Do you think I can go back in there now?”
Brian acknowledged with a slight nod, following the woman into the room. They found Nick fast asleep, his cheeks stained with a slight blush - the only color on his pasty, pale skin making it look like he had come out from the cold.
“He looks so thin,” Jane murmured, slowly approaching the bed.
Brian didn’t offer any further explanations, just nodded in agreement.
“Jane,” he whispered, “why don’t we go downstairs and get you and Aaron something to eat, I’m sure it’s been a long morning for the both of you.”
Jane Carter shook her head. “No, I need to be with him, what if he wakes up and needs something.”
Brian pointed towards the monitor that sat on the night stand next to Nick’s chemo pump.
“Oh, I forgot that I heard him through that,” she sighed.
Tenderly wrapping an arm around the older woman’s shoulders, Brian led Jane out of the room and down the stairs.
AJ looked at the teen sitting on the couch with worry. Aaron had came racing down the stairs, eyes brimming with tears and threw himself onto the couch, folding his arms across his chest, staring straight ahead. Any attempts made to get the boy to talk were futile.
Howie sat down next to Aaron. “I’m sorry you’re upset, do you want to talk to me about it?”
Aaron set his jaw, folding his arms tighter across his chest. Howie wouldn’t let the walls that the boy was building stop him from getting to him.
“AC? C’mon, just talk to me, okay? You’d be surprised at what a good listener I can be.”
As he blinked his eyes, tears spilled over and splashed onto his lap. Aaron smeared the salty tears away from his cheeks with a rough, jerky movement. He let out a labored sigh, hiccuping after he exhaled.
“It’s not fair,” he sobbed.
AJ started opening his mouth to comment only to quickly close it when Howie shot a look over at him. Howie knew that Aaron had to sort out his feelings and being interrupted would only stop him from talking further.
“Nick doesn’t deserve to be sick. He’s a nice guy. It’s just not fair,” Aaron mumbled, hiccupping between sentences.
Howie continued to listen to Aaron, hoping that the teen would release all of his built up anger over the situation, still not aware of how sick his brother was. He dreaded what would happen when Aaron found out about the cancer.
“This is all my fault,” Aaron sobbed. “This wouldn’t have happened if I hadn’t went and told Brian about Nick getting sick.”
AJ and Howie’s eyes met as Aaron spoke that sentence. Both men waited for the other shoe to drop.
“It’s my fault Nick got cancer.”
“Oh fuck,” AJ mouthed as he looked at Howie.
“Aaron, this isn’t your fault, Nick got sick and it has nothing to do with anything you did,” Howie assured. Aaron only shook his bowed head, tears spilling off his cheeks.
“Stuff like this happens to people,” AJ added. “No one knows why but it just does.”
“Just like Caroline having Lupus, I think her body just couldn’t handle some virus and it went into overdrive trying to protect her, and I’m thinking that’s what’s going on with Nick right now,” Howie pointed out.
“And Caroline died,” Aaron whispered.
Tears welled up in Howie’s eyes as the memory of Caroline traveled through his mind. “Yes, she did,” he replied softly.
Fresh tears started slipping down Aaron’s cheeks. “I don’t want Nick to die.”
Howie placed an arm around Aaron’s shoulders and pulled him into a tight hug. “No one says Nick has to die. He’s stubborn and he’s fighting this. He needs our support and our love right now more than ever before in his life. Are you up to giving that to him?”
Aaron’s response was muffled in Howie’s shoulder. He instinctively placed a hand on the young boy’s head and smoothed his hair as he hugged him.
Aaron pulled away from the Latino after a few moments, wiping his cheeks with the back of his hand. “Do you think Nick’s gonna be mad at us for coming here?”
“Want me to be honest?”
“Yeah.”
“I think Nick will be really happy to see you, he’s worried about you alot and felt bad that he hadn’t been speaking with you guys. Maybe now he can concentrate on getting better. It’s a load off his mind,” Howie explained, a slight smile played on his lips.
Aaron reciprocated Howie’s smile. “I hope so.”
