“Nick how many times are you going to the bathroom, are you sick?” Brian mumbled when the bathroom light clicked on.

Swallowing several times to hold the nausea off, Nick moaned. “S-sorry.”

Rolling over onto his side, Brian punched the pillow and laid his head back down. For some reason though, this time he couldn’t fall back to sleep. He laid there listening. He wasn’t sure what he was listening for, he just felt the need to lay perfectly still and listen. His efforts were soon rewarded when a sharp cry echoed in the bathroom.

Jumping up, Brian rushed to the door, twisting the locked knob. “Nick? What’s wrong?”

“N-nothing.”

“You’re lying! Open the door!” After waiting a few moments, Brian realized that Nick wasn’t going to unlock the door. Rummaging through a desk drawer, he cursed that he needed AJ at a time like this. AJ had a knack for picking locks. Tossing the hotel brochures, pads of paper and a Bible aside, Brian found a pen. He recalled AJ using the gold ink part of the inside of a barrel to pick a door open once. After a few tries, Brian was successful and the door clicked open.

Nick was laying on the floor, curled up onto his side, sweat glistening on his face.

Brian reached down and placed a hand on his brother’s forehead. “Nick, you’re burning up. The flu finally reached...” he stopped his words when his eye caught the blood colored urine in the toilet bowl. “Oh my god! You are passing blood. Stay right here!”

Too sick to protest and too weak to care, Nick stayed laying on the cool tile floor. Nausea came back suddenly and Nick slowly crawled to his hands and knees and barely made it in time to the toilet before he got sick.

Minutes had passed by but to Nick it seemed like only seconds when he saw Kevin crouching beside him, his fatherly look studying Nick’s face.

“I saw the blood,” Brian explained when Kevin glanced at the crystal clear water in the toilet. “He must have flushed it when I left to get you.”

“I got sick.”

“And you have a fever, this is something more serious than a flu bug, I’m getting someone to take you to the hospital to get checked out,” Kevin advised.

“Noooo,” Nick weakly protested. “I’m okay.”

Kevin didn’t listen, he ran out of the room to get one of the managers.

“Bri, please you gotta tell them I’m fine,” Nick moaned. He struggled for a moment to get into a standing position only to fail and resigned to sitting with his back leaning against the tub.

“You’re not okay Nick, you can’t even stand up right now. Let’s just get you checked out to make sure everything’s all right,” Brian replied softly.

“God, no, please I don’t wanna go to a German hospital.”

Brian shook his head at Nick’s stalling. “Nickolas you need to be seen by a doctor, this isn’t something to be screwing around with. Besides, hospitals in Germany are the same as hospitals in the states, it’s just the insurance stuff is screwed up.”

Nick stared up at Brian for a moment, digesting what he had said. “You swear?”

Brian made a tracing of a cross on his chest. “Cross my heart, scout’s honor.”

“Nick, you’re not feeling good?”

Both Brian and Nick’s attention was drawn towards the tall manager that stood in the doorway of the bathroom. Although he was dressed in blue jeans and a tee shirt, his hair indicated that Kevin had interrupted him from his sleep.

“He flushed any evidence away, but Brian said he saw the blood this time,” Kevin explained as he followed the manager’s eyes toward the toilet.

Extending his arm out as he neared the teen, Clark told him to take it to help him up. “As a manager, I’m also acting guardian of you and I think it’s necessary to take you to the hospital.”

“But I’m eighteen,” Nick protested, stopping in saying anything further when he was met with Kevin’s disapproving look. “Well, um, can Kev come with me?”

“Kevin is too sick to go anyplace except back to bed,” Clark advised as he pulled a blanket off Nick’s bed.

Still hunched over, Nick accepted the yellow blanket and wrapped it around his body. “How about Brian, can he come with us?”

Looking over towards Brian, Clark ran a hand through his hair. “Do you think it’s really necessary?”

“Please, I-I’d just feel better I guess,” Nick stammered.

“Brian?”

“Yeah, I’ll go along, let me go put on some jeans.”

“I told you this wasn’t a good idea,” Nick moaned as he laid on the cot in an examination room in the emergency room. “I feel better, let’s go back to the hotel.”

Before Nick could make good on his words, a slender nurse entered the room. She talked to Nick in German. Nick shook his head. “I don’t speak German.” The nurse said something quickly and left the room.

Nick sighed. “See, I told you this is a bad idea.”

A few moments later a very heavyset nurse entered the room. “Good morning,” she bristled, her voice very thick with a German accent. “My name is Hildegard, I’m Dr. Werner Hollstein’s assistant.”

Nick groaned inwardly.

“So what brings you to the emergency room this morning?”

The nurse stood holding onto a clipboard, pen poised over the sheet of paper, waiting for Nick to outline his symptoms. When Nick stalled, she tapped her pen sharply on the board. “We can’t do anything until you tell us what’s wrong.”

“He’s urinating blood,” Brian offered, quickly shutting up when the nurse cast a glare in his direction.

“I’d prefer to hear this from the patient,” the nurse crisply replied.

“I’ve been peeing blood,” Nick finally admitted after squirming on the cot.

The nurse wrote sharply on the paper. “For how long?”

“Um, I think a day or two.”

Nick kept his eyes focused on the clipboard, trying to block out Brian’s open mouth. He knew if the woman pressed for more information he was going to get a lecture, but right now he didn’t care if he did. He only hid his problems because no one wanted to take the time to hear about them.

“Is there anything that led up to this?”

Nick groaned. Here was the question he didn’t want to answer. “Um, yeah.” His mind was swimming with little white lies he could tell the nurse but he quickly decided against doing that because it could lead to having some tests done that he didn’t want to have or need. “I uh, I did a back flip during a show and I landed wrong and I landed on my back.”

“A show?” the nurse questioned, narrowing her eyes at him. “I didn’t know there was a circus in town.”

Clearing his throat Nick continued. “The the next morning when we arrived at the hotel, I was caught up in a crowd and pushed against the tour bus. I think I was peeing blood before that though, but I guess that’s about it.”

The nurse scribbled notes on the clipboard. “Any nausea, vomiting, fever, pain while urinating?” She looked up from the clipboard, staring at him with steel gray eyes.

“Um, yes.”

The woman narrowed her eyes. “Yes? Yes to what?”

Nick sighed and hung his head. “Yes to all of what you said.”

The nurse placed the clipboard down sharply ontop of the counter, both Brian and Nick winced and jumped when it loudly made contact. After the nurse took all of Nick’s vital signs, she grabbed the clipboard and mumbled something in German before leaving the room.

“Can we just go now?” Nick begged again.

“Nope,” Brian drawled; his southern accent more pronouced because he was tired. “Clark would have my ass if we walked out of here. Just sit tight and get this overwith. Maybe it’s something simple like a bladder infection.”

Nick nodded in agreement. “I hope so. Yeah, it has to be that. Maybe I’m not drinking enough water or something.”

Both boys sat up straighter when the doctor entered the room. Although he was slight in stature, there was something about his presence that seemed commanding. His assistant nurse was behind him, a sour look on her full face.

“So you’ve been having back aches and passing blood when you urinate?” he questioned as he looked down at the notes on the slip of white paper.

“Yes sir,” Nick quietly replied.

Placing the chart on the cot next to Nick, the doctor placed a hand on Nick’s shoulders and sharply tapped the left side of the young man’s kidney area. Nick quickly cried out in pain and hunched over. After going over all his assessments, he barked something in German to the nurse and she quickly picked up the phone and repeated what the doctor had told her.

“We’ll take good care of you,” the doctor smiled.

Laying in the bed, Nick stared at the drops of clear fluid that dripped from an IV bad into the tubing that snaked it’s way down towards a needle that had been inserted into a vein on his hand.

“I told you this wasn’t a good idea.”

Brian shook his head and cocked a grin. “Nick, like it or not, you have to do what the doctor says. It’s a good thing I heard you tonight. I bet you weren’t planning on telling anyone about this, were you?”

Nick shrugged his shoulders in reply.

“Ah ha, see I knew that.”

“I’m just worried about what Johnny’s gonna say,” Nick sighed, laying his free arm across his eyes.

“There’s nothing for Johnny to say. You’ve got a badly bruised kidney, plain and simple and you have to do what the doctor said or you could do more damage.”

“But he’s so anal about schedules and stuff, he’s not gonna give me a red card.”

“When Kevin finds out about this, there won’t be a question about red cards, okay? Trust me on this.”

“Well he said I had to be on complete bed rest for the next three weeks, you know as well as me that Johnny’s not gonna buy that one.”

“Nick, stop worrying, everything’s gonna be alright.”

”THREE WEEKS!? WHAT KIND OF A QUACK DID YOU TAKE THAT KID TO?” Johnny boomed when Clark and Brian returned from the hospital without Nick.

“He saw a qualified physician,” Clark defended.

Johnny drew a hand through his thick hair, coughing as he paced the floor. He turned to face the two men that brought the bad news. Shaking his head he closed his eyes. “There’s just no way....”

“No way what?” Brian challenged.

“No way we can delay the tour for three weeks,” Johnny sighed. “We’ve got concerts, scheduled events, lunches with sponsors. God, there’s just no way.”

“Hey, we’re talking about Nick’s health here. I would think that some of the fans and sponsors would understand why he’s not in attendance,” Brian stated.

“No you dumb kid, people are expecting five not four Backstreet Boys,” Johnny hissed.

Clark glared at his co-manager. “There’s no need for name calling.”

“Well you heard him, he doesn’t realize that we signed contracts for five boys not four and they’re gonna....” Johnny’s voice trailed off as he flung his hands into the air.

“Well life goes on, they’ll learn to live with it,” Clark snapped.

“We have to be moving on day after tomorrow, I guess there’s nothing I can do about the show tomorrow night since Carter is in the hospital, but by god, his ass is going to be on that friggen bus day after tomorrow, bruised kidneys or not.”

“It’s one kidney that’s bruised,” Brian corrected, “and the doctor said complete bed rest for three weeks.”

“Too bad for Carter,” Johnny hissed. “Day after tomorrow he’s going to be discharged and on this goddamned bus. He can bed rest his ass in his bunk.”

“Bet his parents wouldn’t agree with you,” Brian challenged.

“Littrell, you do so much as dial one number to that boys parents and I’ll personally make sure that’s the last phone call you’ll ever make.

“Don’t be threatening him!” Clark spat.

Johnny threw a nasty glare at both men. “Either one of you meddle with my operation I’ll slap a lawsuit on you so fast your heads will spin. This is my job, my responsiblities and I’ll do what I see fit. The Carters seemed to trust my judgement and I think that you should do the same.”

Turning sharply, he called over his shoulder. “Better get some sleep, busy schedule ahead in about three hours.”