I stared at Nancy uncertainly, not knowing what to expect. She noticed my discomfort and decided to elaborate.
“You look just like Nick Carter!” she exclaimed. I groaned and covered my face in embarrassment from that recognition. “Oh, silly! I mean it in the best way possible! Besides him being missing, I can’t see that as an insult.” That statement only insulted me farther, because she thought I looked good before. To me that meant I looked UGLY now.
In the midst of my excitement and low self-esteem, I didn’t realize that my head was spinning. I toppled backwards from my sitting position and laid flat on my back on the soft sheets.
Nancy crawled to where my head was positioned and held a mirror above me. I looked unwillingly at my reflection and wrinkled my nose in disgust. Little did she know, but I looked like myself again. Except for multiple scars and bruises, I looked a lot like Nick Carter all because of my hair. I was only being sarcastic when I wrinkled my nose, because I didn’t want Nancy to figure out who I was. If she did I would probably die because I had lied to Louie. Charlie was already suspicious because I’d screamed in my sleep.
Nancy put the mirror away and brushed the hair out of my eyes. “It must be terrible to be so sick. But don’t worry, my dad will fix you up in no time.” I wondered if her dad was Louie and she answered my question like she had read my thoughts. “My dad is Charlie.” That was odd because Charlie didn’t look like the married type.
A wave of nausea passed over me and vomited instinctively into the silver pan that was placed beside my bed. I groaned as another wave of nausea hit me and I leaned towards the pan again.
Nancy didn’t seem disgusted by my vomit at all. She replaced the pan with a new one and went to the bathroom to clean the old one. I didn’t feel the need to do that again because I felt bad that I had done it in the first place. She didn’t seem to mind cleaning up after me, but I didn’t like it one bit.
“It’s about time you did something exciting!” she exclaimed. I couldn’t believe what she just said, so I sat there with my mouth gaping open.
Nancy saw my expression and laughed. “ I ama licensed nurse after all.”
For the next hour or so, she tried as hard as she could to make a conversation with me. She would ask me questions and I would answer by nodding my head “yes” or “no.” Most of the time I had to lie to her, like about what I did and where I came from.
Charlie returned just as Nancy was asking me about my sex life. She blushed instantaneously when she spotted her dad in the doorway. Then she crawled off of the bed and approached him.
“Did I disturb you at the wrong time?” he asked sternly.
Nancy giggled nervously and fought to keep her composition. “Oh he wasn’t going to answer that one anyway.”
“I have to run a CBC on Nick now, so you can run along.”
“Well I’ll leave my magazines here just in case you need me again. And Nick, feel free to read them whenever you get bored!” She waved to me and I waved back as best I could. In a way I was relieved that she had left because her questions were getting a little too personal.
Charlie began to work by injecting me with a needle and drawing out some blood. By now I knew what all of the tests were about because Charlie made it a point to explain to me what he was doing. I appreciated it a lot, but the only way that I could express that was by giving him my full attention.
This time the tests he took counted towards what kind of treatment would be used on me in the future. It was inevitable that I would get chemotherapy, but if my platelets weren’t restored they couldn’t risk an operation. If I didn’t have enough platelets, I would bleed to death during the operation. Wounds don’t heal if you don’t have a certain amount of platelets in your blood.
As you can imagine, I was quite nervous about the result of the tests. I had avoided chemotherapy for quite some time and even if it helped me to survive, I didn’t want to go through with it. It wasn’t because I was afraid of losing my hair or anything like that; it was because I was still afraid of being lonely. Hospitals are the meaning of being lonely.
It took about three days for the results to come in, until then I just had to wait it out. In hospitals those tests take about two weeks to come back, but I guessed that Louie had his own private lab facility.
Charlie checked my temperature and all the while he was trying to make a conversation with me. Now I could see how he and Nancy were related: they both liked to talk. Then the conversation switched to Nancy.
“So what do you think of Nancy?” he asked. He always started off with a broad question, then he would elaborate on it so that I could shake my head yes or no. “Is she too pushy?”
I shook my head no, because I really didn’t think of that when I thought of her.
“Oh come on, you don’t have to lie just because she’s my daughter!” Charlie chuckled as I shook my head no. “Alright, I believe you.”
“You have enough dignity not to answer that kind of question anyway. It kind of helps if you can’t talk! But soon your hands will function properly and you’ll being dragging a pencil and a piece of paper wherever you go so that you can talk to us.” I tried to nod my head enthusiastically, but I wasn’t really looked forward to it. If they asked a question now I’d be forced to answer it properly.
The next few days before the test results came back were rather uneventful. Nancy came back only once during that time, but she only stayed for a couple of minutes. She looked nervous and she didn’t say anything to me the whole time that she was there. What upset me even more was the fact that she had a large bruise just under her eye. That could have meant one of two things: she had problems opening outhouse doors (like me) or somebody in the “clinic” was abusive.
During those lonely few days, I tried to figure out how I could get out of that mess without escaping. If I escaped and went home, they would only track me down and kill me. Then, I didn’t really think it mattered if I died or not, but how I died was important. I still had a bit of pride left.
When the test results came back, my platelet count was just about right. I’d been taking in blood for the last few weeks and since then some of my cuts started to heal. There were a lot of cuts from when I fell down the stairs and I hadn’t noticed how badly they were bleeding because Charlie took care of the damage while I was sleeping.
Some days Charlie would lend me his razor and I would try to shave sitting down on my wheelchair. If I cut myself, it wouldn’t stop bleeding for ages.
The day I got the test results back was the day the placed the Groshong catheter into my chest. At first I was a bit intimidated by the idea but afterwards it didn’t seem that bad. I thought that I would feel like a robot, but it wasn’t like that at all.
There were complications with it though. After the sleeping stuff wore off, I woke up back in my bed and noticed that I was bleeding – a lot. At first I thought that it was normal, then the sight of all that blood caused me to call a nurse.
Nancy came bounding into the room to see what was wrong. It was the first time that I had used the button so she figured that it could be an emergency. I smiled to reassure her, but when she saw the blood coming from the Groshong catheter, she called Charlie.
The next thing I remembered was being wheeled back into the ER. They were wheeling me so fast that when I looked at the walls I got dizzy. Charlie was trying to tell me what was going on, but he had a hard time breathing because he was running so fast. I remember him saying that they were going to do some exploratory surgery to see where I was bleeding.
With the help of anesthetics, I was out cold for the operation. It seemed like only seconds after when I woke up. I was not in my room, and there was a bunch of people peering down at me. The first thing I noticed was that I was still bleeding. It wasn’t gushing like before, but I was still bleeding.
To get their attention, I pushed my arm off of the table and tried to lightly hit the man standing beside me with it. It didn’t make much of an impact, but he felt it anyway.
He turned and smiled down at me. “We’re just wondering what to do with you little guy,” he said. Usually that kind of comment would have angered me, since I was almost twenty. But I felt like a child so I suppose that comment suited me.
The man put my arm back to my side and turned his attention to what the other doctors and nurses were saying. I could make out bits of their conversation and heard words like: “didn’t find it” and “sandbags.” At first I didn’t understand, but that was only natural. Later I would get to experience those words.
They brought me back to my room and laid me down on my bed. Charlie leaned over until he was in my face and spoke calmly to me. He smelled like anesthetics and peanut butter.
“Now listen carefully,” he told me slowly. He was talking slower because he wanted me to read his lips. I didn’t need to, but he didn’t know that. “We couldn’t find the source of the bleeding, so we’re going to use sandbags to put continuous pressure on the area.”
Sleeping after that was a nightmare. Luckily, the 5-7 pound sandbags were removed on the second day because the bleeding had stopped. I must have been cursed somehow, but then again I’d let my body run down to its lowest.
Nancy came by for short visits during my down time. Her eyes looked sympathetic, sympathetic for me and for the fact that she could only stay for minutes at a time. She had changed from the confident girl I first knew to a shy, awkward person who was always looking over her shoulder. For all I knew, she could have always acted like that in the past and just changed because of the benefit of some program.
Because she was the visitor that had the most impact on me, I missed her while I laid pinned to my bed. She came in with no make-up on and the most animated smile I had seen in a long time. My experience with people at an early age taught me many ways to a person’s true emotions. One of my favorite ways to do that is to look into a person’s eyes. They are the windows to the soul. And Nancy’s were shrouded in misery. The familiarity of that look made me have sympathy for her.
I started to feel attracted to her after her second short visit. She wasn’t wearing any make-up that time either and she looked so much better without it. I knew that something was terribly wrong, so I forced myself to ignore all of my feelings. I’d been hurt too many times lately and I couldn’t bear to have my soul ripped again.
Nancy may have visited me more after that, but my medication kept me from seeing her. It made me weary and I slept through most days. Charlie offered many times to take me around the facility, but I was just too damn tired.
My Groshong catheter supplied most of my medicine and I took hydration and Zofran for the nausea. When I wasn’t getting my medication, I was sleeping.
Although there were usually a bunch of doctors and nurses swarming in and out of my room, I still felt lonely. This time I was lonely for people I knew. I missed my family, my friends and my own bed. It was difficult to hide this from so many people, but somehow I was able to.
A few days later, to my knowledge, I began to explore the facility. One morning I just felt energized enough to get up and walk around on my own. To my surprise, Louie praised me for it. A part of me thought for sure that he wouldn’t want me to snoop around for his secret plans or something.
The same day doctors told me that they wanted to operate my tumor away. I agreed to it happily because even so I was getting used to it, it got on my nerves more than anything else. Even worse, it was right under my armpit and it felt odd against my bony arms. Only after the operation I would find out why Louie was so pleased with my progress. The thought of it still sends chills down my spine.
Chapter 28
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