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Chapter 100

Claire awoke to find herself lying flat on her back on one of the large in the kickboxing room, a cluster of faces hovered over her. They all appeared to be the faces of strangers; then Claire heard a familiar voice say, “Back up; give her some room.” Her eyes turning towards the direction from which the command had come, Claire saw Amber’s worried face.

“I’m alright,” she mumbled quickly, feeling her cheeks grow warm as she realized she had passed out cold in the middle of kickboxing class. She was immediately embarrassed, not to mention a little alarmed. Never, in her entire life, had she fainted like this. The only time she’d come close was during her sophomore year of college, right before she’d been diagnosed with leukemia. The dizzy spells which had plagued her then had been one of the symptoms that had finally sent her to the doctor.

She started to sit up, but immediately felt dizzy again as the blood rushed from her head. “Claire, lie down,” Amber insisted, gently easing her back down. Claire did not protest, desperately wanting the room to stop spinning around her.

Lying on the ground, she swallowed hard, as the terrifying thought occurred to her. What if this is a symptom? What if it’s coming back?

No, she protested against her own worst fear. I just had a checkup, and everything was fine. It can’t be that.

But her logic did not stop her blood from running cold, or her heart from palpitating with panic.

“How are you feeling?” Amber asked, and Claire felt her sister-in-law’s hand rubbing the back of her own.

“Kind of dizzy,” she confessed. But not wanting to worry Amber any more than she already had, she added, “Guess we shoulda gone for the Richard Simmons after all; apparently I’m not in good enough shape for kickboxing yet.” She attempted a wry smile to disguise her own uneasiness, but Amber barely smiled back.

“An ambulance is on its way, Claire,” announced a second voice, and Claire’s eyes shifted to see their Barbie doll instructor, Keeley, kneeling on the other side of her. “Just hang tight; I know you’re going to be just fine.” She sounded as if she were speaking to a small, slightly retarded child. It pissed Claire off. She wished Keeley and the rest of these people would go away; she didn’t want them gawking at her anymore. And she definitely didn’t want to go to the ER in an ambulance.

“I don’t need an ambulance,” she protested, trying to sit up again. She fought the dizziness this time, stubbornly trying to climb to her feet to show them all that she would be fine. But the effort left her light-headed and breathless, her heart pounding hard against her ribcage, and she swayed.

Amber caught her upper arm and held her steady. “Too late; it’s already on its way,” she said, giving Claire a warning look. Don’t fight me on this, her eyes seemed to say.

Claire reluctantly gave in, knowing she had no other choice. With her medical history, there was no taking any chances. Amber knew this just as well as she, and Claire knew she was not going to win this battle against her sister-in-law, especially when she could not even sit upright without feeling woozy.

Thankfully, the paramedics arrived quickly. Claire was relieved when they made the rest of the class get out of the way while they knelt around her, measuring her vital signs and asking her questions. What did she feel like? Did she have any previous medical conditions? Was she on any medication, or had she taken any drugs? What had she had to eat and drink? Caffeine? Alcohol?

The EMTs seemed to pick up the pace when she told them she was in remission from leukemia and started listing as many of her prescriptions as she could remember off the top of her head. They loaded her onto a stretcher and wheeled her out of the rec center, where an ambulance was waiting, its lights flashing. Claire looked around as they lifted her into the back, overcome with déjà vu. Hadn’t she just ridden in one of these a few months ago, after her car accident? Despite her many trips to the hospital in the last six years, she’d only gone by ambulance that one time – it had been her first ambulance ride. And now, not quite three months later, she was about to embark on another. Go figure.

“Claire, I’ll follow you to the hospital in your car!” Amber called in to her before the EMTs shut the ambulance doors.

Claire felt the vehicle jerk as it started to drive away instantly; meanwhile, the paramedics in the back with her kept working. They put an oxygen mask over her mouth and nose, which made breathing much easier, and attached sticky little electrodes to her chest to measure her heartbeat. The incessant, high-pitched beeping coming from the portable heart monitor sitting at the foot of the stretcher made her nervous, for it reminded her of the month-and-a-half she’d spent trapped in the hospital during the bone marrow transplant process. They’d checked her heart carefully then, since some of the drugs they were giving her were toxic and could cause damage to it. Her tests had always come out within the normal range then, but now she was worried.

The beeping sounded rapid and irregular, not slow and steady the way she thought it should. “Is there something wrong?” she asked worriedly, her voice coming out high-pitched and muffled behind the oxygen mask. She still felt light-headed, even though she was lying down, and there was an odd fluttering sensation in her chest, as if her heart was about to beat itself right out of her body. The feeling, coupled with her anxiety, made her nauseous.

“Your heartbeat is irregular,” one of the paramedics told her, leaning over the stretcher so that she could see his eyes. His voice calm and soothing, he continued, “It’s fairly common, usually not something to worry about. We’re on our way to the emergency room at Tampa General, and they’ll get you all sorted out there. Are you having trouble breathing, or is the oxygen helping?”

“It’s helping,” she murmured, sucking in a big gulp of the pure oxygen and trying to keep herself calm. She knew it wouldn’t do any good to start freaking about what could possibly be wrong with her now, though it was hard not to.

She was relieved when they pulled into the ambulance bay and came to a stop just outside the ER doors. She was lifted out of the ambulance on her stretcher and whisked through the doors and into a room with two beds divided by a curtain. A nurse pulled the curtain shut as several sets of strong arms helped her slide from the stretcher onto the bed.

“Claire? My name’s Dr. Kotter,” said a woman in a white lab coat and scrubs; she had apparently followed the stretcher into the room. When she came up alongside Claire, Claire saw that she was young, probably not much older than her. “Can you describe how you’re feeling for me?” the resident doctor asked.

Claire went through the same spiel she’d told the paramedics earlier, talking as quickly as she could so that the doctor could do something and make her feel right again. While she talked, Dr. Kotter listened to her heart and lungs with her stethoscope and made notes on her chart.

“Alright,” the doctor said at last. “We’re going to get an ECG – electrocardiogram – to track your heartbeat and take some blood for lab work. Jen here is going to get you all set up and do a blood draw.”

Claire doubted that the short, young nurse who appeared with a tray of supplies recognized her, but she remembered the nurse. She had seen her working here in the ER before; she had taken care of Nick when Claire had dragged him here to get what had turned out to be a stump ulcer looked at. How sad that I’m starting to know the whole ER staff too, thought Claire, who was already friendly with many of the nurses on the oncology floor.

She couldn’t help but feel dejected as she lay back and watched Jen cut the t-shirt she’d been working out in straight up the middle and attach more electrodes to various places on her chest, arms, and legs. What was wrong with her now? She was so sick of all of these problems, one after another. She’d been in remission for two and a half years, but she was beginning to think she would really never wake up from her medical nightmare. Even when things seemed to be going well, complications kept popping up, from the various infections which had knocked her off her feet after the bone marrow transplant, to the more recent things – the hormone problems, the weak bones, the cataracts… and now, possibly something with her heart?

That was the scariest of all, for it seemed the most serious, and she wasn’t sure if she could take one more thing. But she would have to because what was her other option? Give up and die? Not a chance. Sick as she was of battling with the neverending series of side effects from her leukemia, she wasn’t about to give up the fight. She just wished the stupid disease would go away for good and take all of this extra shit along with it so that she could go on living her life without the burden of it forever hanging over her. But she was only halfway to the cure point, and even after that, she knew she might never be rid of the side effects of the grueling treatments.

“I’ve got a good vein here on my right arm,” said Claire when Jen started assembling the supplies for the blood draw. “Used to have one on the left, which was better, but it’s shot now.”

The brunette nurse looked up and studied Claire carefully for a few seconds before asking, with some hesitance, “Um, excuse me, I hope you don’t mind me asking, but… you’re Nick’s girlfriend aren’t you?” Lowering her voice to a whisper, she clarified, “Nick Carter’s.”

Claire felt herself blush. “I was,” she replied, looking away. Her already palpitating heart skipped a beat at the thought of Nick. She remembered sitting here in this ER with him not quite a year ago, holding his hand while this very same nurse drew his blood. She sort of wished he were here with her now. Not even for the blood draw, because she was so used to needle pricks by now that they hardly bothered her anymore. She just wanted him there because his presence comforted her, and because he was the one person she was not afraid to break down in front of. Right now, she was scared, and she wouldn’t have been afraid to tell him so. But when Amber got here, and whenever she saw Kyle or her parents or Jamie or Dianna or any of her other friends, she would suck it up and be nonchalant, play it cool and calm, for their sakes. Especially if there was really something wrong. They all tried to be there for her, and she appreciated it, but she knew they worried about her, and she often felt like she had to be the strong one for them, not the other way around. With Nick, it was different. She knew he worried about her too, as she did him, but they also understood what the other was going through the way no one else could, and that helped. He could be her rock, her shoulder to cry on when she needed one, because she’d been the same for him. They’d seen each other at their weakest, as well as their strongest.

And right that moment, she missed him terribly.

***

“When the one that you want doesn’t want you…” Nick’s voice rang above the others in the recording booth, filled with an emotion that was raw and real.

As soon as he and the guys had started recording the demo of this new song, “Siberia,” he’d discovered that there was no need for him to try to work up the emotion of the song before he started singing – it just came naturally. He couldn’t sing the words without seeing Claire’s face, remembering the words of her letter, feeling the pain that had been festering in his soul since she’d walked out on him.

In a sense, it hurt him to sing the words, so reflective of how he had felt, but in another way, it was therapeutic and liberating. It was a great emotional release, belting out his very heart and soul and all the things he’d been feeling for the last five months. This song was nothing but honesty, and because of that, it was going to be great; he could tell already. He was going to fight for this one to be on the album, of that he was sure. There was a side of him, the vengeful side, that wanted Claire to hear it. He wanted her to hear the pain in the words and in his voice and realize that she had been the one to put it there. He wanted her to feel bad for it. Maybe her heart would “do time in Siberia” too, and she would know how she had hurt him.

“My heart did time in Siberia… I’m waiting, I’m waiting… ‘cause it’s all so dark and mysterious… when the one that you want doesn’t want you too…”

And yet, he couldn’t deny that despite the letter, despite Jamie, despite Veronica, despite everything… he did still want her. And he wished that, one day, she would want him again too.


This Romeo is bleeding
But you can’t see his blood
There’s nothing but some feelings
That this old dog kicked up

Since you left me it’s been raining
Now I’m drowning in the flood
See, I’ve always been a fighter
But without you, I give up

I can’t sing a love song
Like the way it’s meant to be
Well I guess I’m not that good anymore
But baby, that’s just me

And I will love you, baby
Always…


***

By that evening, Claire felt much better – physically, at least.

“Your ECG shows atrial fibrillation… which is a scary-sounding name for a type of rapid, irregular heartbeat, which we doctors call an arrhythmia,” Dr. Kotter had explained in the ER, with a smile that Claire had supposed was meant to be comforting, though she wasn’t all consoled by it. Claire had only heard the term “arrhythmia” used on those stupid medical dramas her college roommate had liked to watch, and hearing it in reference to herself scared the crap out of her. It sounded serious, although the ER resident tried to assure her that it wasn’t as bad as it sounded.

“This is fairly common and doesn’t do any harm in itself. I’m going to order you put on beta-blockers to slow your heart rate, and then we’ll go from there. Because of your history of leukemia, I’d like to admit you for some more tests. I pulled your medical records, and they show that you received a drug called doxorubicin as part of your chemo regime. Doxorubicin is one of a group of drugs known as anthracyclines, which work well against leukemia and some other cancers. But… one of the negative side effects is that they can cause damage to the heart.”

Claire swallowed hard, remembering the annoying, beeping heart monitor that had been her constant companion throughout her transplant ordeal for the second time that day. That was what it had been there for, though, to alert her doctors to any sign of damage from the chemotherapy drugs they were pumping through her veins.

“Is that what’s causing this then, do you think?” she asked, swallowing hard. “There’s never been a problem before; my bone marrow transplant was two-and-a-half years ago, and all my tests since then have come out fine…” A part of her was in denial; though she knew it was a possibility, it was hard to believe that after that long, the problem was just flaring up now.

“We won’t know until your test results come back, but it could be. You may want to talk to your oncologist about this, but from what I know, it can take months or years to detect any damage from these drugs, and an ECG won’t always pick it up. That’s what I’m ordering more tests, so we can check for specific damage.”

Claire nodded, feeling a strange sense of… betrayal, almost. She felt as if she had been cheated somehow, for the very medicines that had sent her cancer into remission, probably saving her life, might have messed up her heart, which she needed to live. How could that be? How could something so helpful also be so harmful? But that was how all chemotherapy worked – it killed the good cells along with the bad and made the person taking it completely miserable… but if it worked, it cured the cancer and saved the patient.

Modern medicine was bizarre sometimes.

Apparently noticing her expression, Dr. Kotter added, in a more upbeat tone, “I know this is scary to think about, but try not to worry about it for now. Even if there is some damage, it may not be a problem for you at all. You said you haven’t had any symptoms up till now; I’m sure the only reason you did today was because your heart was having to work so hard while you were exercising. It could be that you would just have to avoid strenuous exercise.”

“A doctor telling a person not to exercise… that would be a new one,” Claire quipped, managing a smile.

Emotionally, she still wasn’t sure how to feel, even now, hours later. Mostly, she was nervous, although she was trying not to be, remembering what Dr. Kotter had told her last.

She hadn’t seen the ER physician since early that afternoon, when they’d officially admitted her to the hospital and moved her to a room upstairs – in the cardiology wing, she couldn’t help but notice. She hoped she wouldn’t be back to that wing once she was discharged; the oncology floor was bad enough.

Amber had been at the hospital with her since that morning, and she had called Kyle, who came up with the baby to meet them. They’d all kept Claire company for awhile; then Amber had taken Kamden home for a nap, while her brother stayed with her.

“Did you call Mom and Dad?” she’d asked first thing, hoping that he hadn’t. Her mother had a tendency to freak out about anything concerning her health, and after her father’s heart attack in November, she had a feeling the freak-out would be bigger than normal if she thought there was something heart-related going on. Of course, if there was, she would have to know eventually… but Claire preferred not to worry her for no reason.

“Not yet,” Kyle had answered. “I thought I’d wait and find out what was going on first, cause you know Mom would wanna hop in the car right away, and there’s no use in her driving two hours when it could be nothing…” He’d trailed off, watching her cautiously, clearing clinging to the hope that it was “nothing.” It was the same hope she herself was clinging to.

She’d smiled. “Exactly,” she’d said; it was as if he’d read her mind. Maybe it was the bone marrow they now shared.

Now that evening had fallen, half of her tests were out of the way, and she and Kyle had made the decision not to let her parents know she was even in the hospital until she’d finished the rest of them tomorrow and gotten the results, whenever that would be. The beta-blockers they’d given her in the ER had worked like a charm, and she felt perfectly normal again by now, so it was hard to think she was in any immediate danger. Yet the thought of getting those test results scared her more than she was willing to let on, even to her own brother. He probably knew she was scared, but he was so protective and scared for her (though he, too, tried not to show it) that she wanted to be nonchalant.

She hadn’t even bothered calling Jamie yet because she knew even her nonchalant act wouldn’t help him any. He’d be as twitchy as a ferret waiting here at the hospital, while she went through tests marked by varying degrees of unpleasantness. She knew he was going to wonder where she was, seeing as how it was a Saturday night; she’d probably have a hundred voicemail messages on her cell phone by tomorrow.

Realizing that, she asked Kyle, “Hey, will you grab my purse?” She pointed to the tiny closet where her personal belongings were stored, and her brother got up and fetched her purse. She dug her cell phone out of it and turned it on just long enough to check her voicemail; sure enough, there were already three messages from him.

I’ll text him, she decided, and fired off a simple text message. Hey, can’t do anything tonight. Not feeling well. Don’t come by. Call you tomorrow. She’d almost ended it with “Love ya,” then backspaced at the last minute and put “XOXO” instead. She was not ready to tell Jamie that she loved him yet, even though it wasn’t as if she hadn’t said it to him before. But that was years and years ago. It would take some time for her to be ready to say it again, for right now, she wasn’t at all sure. She definitely still had feelings for him though, and she didn’t like lying to him, but for now, she decided it was for his own good. Besides, what she had said was pretty much true anyway… only a “white lie,” if a lie at all. She just wondered how Jamie would react tomorrow.

Oh well, she thought, shutting her cell phone off again and feeling rather like Scarlet O’Hara. Tomorrow is another day.

Too bad she couldn’t keep herself from dreading it.

***

The next evening, after a full day of testing, Claire lay alone in her hospital room, thinking, wondering. It had been a day and a half since she’d been brought into the ER, and she still didn’t know exactly what had made her heart go crazy yesterday morning. She’d met with a cardiologist, a Nigerian woman named Dr. Nnachetta, who had promised her they would get to the bottom of it. But no answers yet. She wasn’t even sure if she’d have to stay in the hospital another night or not. Tomorrow was Monday – she was supposed to work.

“What is it that you do?” Dr. Nnachetta had asked her earlier that day during one of the tests, a heart catheterization, making conversation as she guided a long, narrow tube through an artery in Claire’s arm, all the way to her heart.

Claire had scarcely felt like answering. She’d been given a sedative to relax her, but it still freaked her out to realize that there was a foreign object snaking through one of her blood vessels to her heart, while she was awake and able to watch it happen on a TV screen. It would have been cool, had it been happening to someone she didn’t know, but as it was happening to her, it was more just scary. Hoping to keep herself from thinking about it too much – which was probably the cardiologist’s goal as well – she finally replied, “I’m a dental hygienist.”

“Ahh… and what made you choose that?” asked the doctor. Claire liked listening to her speak; her melodic accent was oddly calming.

“Well, my dad’s a dentist, so it kinda runs in the family, I guess.”

“Ah, I understand that. In Nigeria, all fathers want their children to become doctors or lawyers or engineers.”

“Your dad must be proud of you then,” said Claire, marveling over how this woman could talk and do such a delicate procedure so smoothly at the same time, without batting an eye. In a way, it made her feel better, knowing that even though the procedure was freakish and frightening to her, it must be commonplace to this doctor; she probably did them all the time.

“Yes, he is. He was so happy on the day I graduated from medical school in the United Kingdom. He and all of my relatives came from Nigeria to England for the ceremony.”

Claire had listened to her chatter on as she continued through the procedure, pausing to ask Claire to breathe deeply, hold her breath, or cough at certain times.

Claire had been incredibly relieved once it was all over, but now that it was several hours behind her, she was wondering when she’d find out the results. She wished Dr. Nnachetta would come to her room to talk to her soon; she hated this waiting around and not knowing. It was always the worst.

She was starting to regret telling Kyle to go home for dinner with his family. He’d been hanging around the hospital all day, probably bored out of his mind because he hadn’t been able to follow her to any of the tests, and she felt guilty about it. It was a Sunday, and he deserved to be spending his day off at home with his five-month-old son, not stuck at the hospital with his fully-grown sister.

But now that she was bored and anxious, she wished she had someone to keep her company, someone to help take her mind off of everything that was going on. Once again, she missed Nick. She wished that he was still in Florida, and that she hadn’t walked away from him. If they were still together, he would have been at her side in a heartbeat, keeping her smiling with his stupid jokes and banter while they waited together for word from the doctor, as they had so many times before.

Why had she given up on him, let someone as sweet and wonderful as him walk out of her life, because she had left him first? She was stupid for doing that. Stupid, stupid.

When there came a soft knock at her door, just moments after this thought had crossed her mind, she sat bolt upright. For just a split second, the possibility occurred to her: Could it be? Could it be…

The door swung open before she had a chance to realize it could not be Nick, and her question was answered in the form of Jamie, standing awkwardly in the doorway.

“Hey!” she squeaked in surprise, almost as shocked to see him as she would have been to see Nick. She hadn’t talked to Jamie all day, and her cell phone had remained shut off in her purse. “How did you know I was here??”

“You wouldn’t answer your phone, and I was getting worried, so I drove over to your place, but you weren’t there. I called Di, and she said she hadn’t talked to you either, so then I tried Kyle – I thought maybe you had gone over there for dinner or something. He told me what was going on,” Jamie explained, and then his eyes narrowed as he looked upon her. “Why didn’t you call me?” he asked, looking hurt that she hadn’t. “I thought you were mad at me or something. I had no idea…”

“I’m sorry,” she apologized, and she meant it. She knew she should have called him sooner; he was her boyfriend now, wasn’t he? He didn’t deserve to be ignored and kept in the dark just because she was afraid he couldn’t handle the reality of what she was going through. If he couldn’t, she might as well find out now. But the fact that he had come to the hospital on his own was a promising sign. “I should have called you,” she admitted, “and I was meaning to today, but I just didn’t give the chance. They’ve put me through all kinds of tests today.”

Jamie grimaced and shifted his weight in the doorway, looking uncomfortable. She was glad when he didn’t ask what kind of tests. “Come on in,” she said, beckoning him forward. “Take a load off.” She reached forward and patted a space at the foot of her bed, and he walked in and sat down, perching on the very edge of the mattress and looking up at her with a timid expression.

“So… so how are you feeling now?” he asked awkwardly. “Do you know what’s… what’s up yet?”

“I feel fine, and no, not yet,” answered Claire. “I’m hoping my doctor will come talk to me soon, cause I don’t even know if they’re going to keep me another night yet. I guess they probably are, seeing as it’s already six, and no sign of discharge papers yet.” She sighed. “I’ll have to call in to work again tomorrow. I’m surprised they haven’t fired me yet, for as much work as I miss cause of all this crap.” She wasn’t really surprised; her boss, Dr. Somers, had always been very understanding and promised her she would always have a job in his office. But still, she felt bad about all the days she had missed since her cancer had first relapsed, even though she knew it could not be helped.

“They wouldn’t do that. You’re a good worker,” Jamie said with a shrug, absently patting her shin beneath the bedsheets because it was the closest part of her body he could reach from where he was sitting.

He’d never seen her at work, but she smiled anyway. “Thanks.”

“So, whatcha watching?” he asked, looking up at the TV, trying to make small talk.

She shrugged. “Crap,” she replied with a laugh.

He responded with a forced-sounding chuckle, but kept watching. She supposed it was easier for him than looking at her, lying in bed with an IV and a heart monitor, both of which screamed sickness in his mind.

His presence only made her more anxious, because she felt like he was only there because he felt obligated, not because he really wanted to keep her company or comfort her. Well, maybe he did… probably he did… but if so, he certainly wasn’t doing a very good job at it. She realized he probably just didn’t know what to say; it was more comfortable for him to just not talk.

Nick had always known the right things to say, even when he thought he didn’t.

But that was because Nick had been through it. Nick had been in her position; Nick knew what it was like. Jamie didn’t, and she couldn’t be mad at him for it. He was trying – he was here, wasn’t he?

After about ten more minutes of awkward silence, broken only by the mindless droning of the TV, there was another knock, and the door swung open for a second time. This time, it was Dr. Nnachetta who appeared. Claire’s heart flip-flopped as the doctor came in, carrying her chart.

“Good evening, Claire,” she said. Claire returned the salutation and introduced Jamie, who mumbled a greeting. “Claire, I put a rush on your test results so that we could get you out of here as soon as possible, and I would like to talk to you about those now.”

Nodding, Claire’s eyes drifted to Jamie, who stiffened and started to get up from the edge of the bed. “Should I wait outside?” he asked, already standing up.

“You don’t have to. Come over here,” Claire said, motioning him over to her side. She really didn’t want to be all alone, in case the news was bad; she wanted a hand to hold, a shoulder to lean on, a person who cared about her to hug.

Jamie hesitated, then came closer, perching on the bed right next to her. Sitting up straighter, she scooted closer to him and took hold of his hand. It was surprisingly cold and a little clammy, more than hers was. She tried to hide her smirk – what a big baby.

“Alright. Let’s hear it,” she said to the cardiologist, trying to brace herself for the worst case scenario… which she realized she didn’t even know. How bad could this possibly get? At the moment, she was glad she hadn’t been told.

Dr. Nnachetta lowered her chart and looked her right in the eye as she said, “The tests show that there had been some damage to your left ventricle, which is the part of your heart that is responsible for pumping blood to the rest of your body. It is also the part that is usually affected by anthracyclines – the kind of chemotherapy drugs you received.”

Claire felt her throat constrict, as her heart began to race. She squeezed Jamie’s hand.

Noticing her unease, Dr. Nnachetta continued, “The damage is mild, though, and it shouldn’t be a great problem for you in your everyday life. For right now, I think you will be fine without medication. I would just advise you not to engage in strenuous exercise that puts a strain on the heart – avoid weightlifting and intense cardiovascular workouts, such as the kickboxing you were doing when you collapsed yesterday. Walking, swimming, low-impact aerobics – all would be good options for you. I’d like to schedule a follow-up appointment with you, but unless you start to have symptoms when you’re at rest, I think you will be fine.”

She offered Claire a smile, and Claire nodded, relaxing slightly. It was the best news she could have gotten, other than the news that there was nothing wrong at all (but somehow she had known that wasn’t the case). “So is this something that could get worse?” she asked.

“It’s possible, but not a guarantee,” answered the cardiologist. “Many cancer survivors never even know they have damage, and even those who start to have symptoms during exercise, as you did, often never experience any worse effects. Some do, of course. In some cases, the damage progresses to dilated cardiomyopathy, which is a disorder where the heart muscle becomes weakened and enlarged and cannot adequately pump blood to the body. If it gets bad enough, it can lead to congestive heart failure. But in your case, that would be rare. There are medications I can prescribe to slow the damage if indeed it becomes worse.”

Claire nodded again and finally turned to glance at Jamie, who had been completely silent the entire time. He was sitting stock still, his posture stiff, and looking paler than normal. She squeezed his hand again, this time more to reassure him than to steel herself.

When Dr. Nnachetta left, promising to send a nurse in with the discharge forms for her to sign, Claire said in a cheerful voice, “Well, that’s not so bad. Guess I get to go to work tomorrow after all – lucky me!” She shot Jamie a goofy grin.

He didn’t even crack a smile. “Did you hear her? She said… congestive heart failure…” he said, his voice just above a whisper.

“Only as the worst-case scenario. I mean, that’s only if it keeps getting worse… which she said probably wouldn’t happen,” Claire replied nonchalantly, frowning slightly at his pessimism. Then she twisted her smile into a smirk and poked him hard in the side, jesting, “Jeez, Debbie Downer.”

Jamie still didn’t smile. She was beginning to grow annoyed with him. How come she was the one trying to cheer him up, when he should have been doing the same to her? She was the one in the hospital, for crying out loud. Granted, she was strong; she could take care of herself… but come on. She didn’t think it was asking too much for her boyfriend to put an arm around her and squeeze her hand and let her know he was there for her.

Nick would have done that.

She sighed. “Jamie, I’m gonna be fine. After all of the medical shit I’ve gone through, this is nothing. So I can’t do hardcore Tae-Bo anymore – big deal. Now I’ll have an excuse to sit on my ass and get fat,” she joked, shooting him an impish grin, still trying to get him to smile in return.

He finally did. “You better not do that,” he said. “I like your ass the way it is now.”

“Well, then… guess I’ll have to find other ways to get exercise. You know, they say you can burn over a hundred calories from thirty minutes of vigorous sex…” She waggled her eyebrows suggestively, then promptly ruined her seductress look by laughing.

“Well, well, I know what we can do when I take you home tonight then,” Jamie replied, winking. She was glad to see him finally appearing more relaxed. She couldn’t take much more of this clamming up stuff he did whenever he was in a hospital setting with her. Like it or not, if he wanted to be with her, one day he was going to have to either toughen up to it or hit the road, because like it or not, it was a part of her life now and would be for years to come.

Even though the tension in the room had dissipated by the time the nurse brought in Claire’s discharge papers, she couldn’t help but realize how much easier she’d had it when she was with Nick.


When he holds you close
And he pulls you near
When he says the words
You’ve been needing to hear
I wish I was him
Cause those words are mine
To say to you till the end of time

And I will love you, baby
Always
And I’ll be there forever and a day
Always…


***

On the long plane ride back to Los Angeles, Nick’s thoughts kept returning to Claire. It was hard not to think of her, when he had a CD with the songs the guys had recorded in Stockholm, including “Siberia,” playing in his ears.

“I was drifting in between… like I was on the outside looking in… in my dreams, you are still here… like you’ve always been…” AJ’s forlorn voice sang. But it was Nick whose thoughts and dreams had been haunted by Claire ever since she’d said goodbye on his porch that day in December, placing her engagement ring at his feet. Her memory, the ghost of their relationship, was making it awfully hard for him to move on, even though he was trying.

He’d talked to Veronica a few times while in Sweden; he’d told her about writing out his thoughts about Claire and about the song that had risen out of them. He didn’t mention that it was the very same song that kept making him think of Claire, even when he didn’t want to. Get over her, he kept trying to tell himself. She’s with Jamie, she’s probably happier with Jamie, and you’ll be happier too if you’d just forget her and move on.

But he couldn’t. He couldn’t forget her. Despite his decision to move on, nothing had really changed – there were reminders of her everywhere.

The movie on the plane that day was Peter Jackson’s remake of King Kong. It was three hours long, perfect to be shown on an eleven-hour flight, but Nick’s stomach flip-flopped when they announced it. He hadn’t seen the movie yet; he’d been all set to take Claire to see it when it had been released in theaters back in December… but then she had broken up with him.

Despite the fact that the movie was a painful reminder of Claire, who had cried at the end of the original on the night of their first kiss, Nick nonetheless stopped the CD and moved his headphones to the jack on his seat as the large TV screens at the front of first class sprung to life. All around him, the other passengers were doing the same. The teenaged girl sitting across the aisle from him caught his attention. She was dressed in a way that made him sure she was not a Backstreet Boys fan – a Slayer t-shirt whose short sleeves allowed her to show off the impressive collection of bracelets and armbands on her wrists, and baggy black pants with pockets and silver chains everywhere, which she’d cut so that the frayed ends hit her legs at mid-shin, exposing rainbow-striped knee socks – so he was not worried about her recognizing him or caring if she did. But it was not her punk wardrobe that caused him do a double take, or even to notice her in the first place. It was her hair that had caught his eye. It was short and red, the exact shade of Claire’s.

Out of the corner of his eye, he watched the girl plug her headphones in and place them carefully over her ears, which were pierced with an eclectic array of hoops and studs all the way up the cartilage. Then he turned his attention back to the movie, which was starting. He didn’t pay the red-haired girl any more attention until the very end, when he glanced over and saw her wiping her eyes with a kleenex. She stiffened as her father, who was sitting next to her, rubbed her shoulder, as if trying to comfort her. For a moment, Nick could not look away, captured by the memory of Claire’s eyes sparkling with tears in the darkness of that movie theater.

All of a sudden, he was overcome with longing for her. More than anything, he wished she could be sitting in the seat next to him, ready to crack some joke about public displays of affection on airplanes as he tried to kiss her tears away again. He sighed to himself, the movie and the memory having left him totally depressed.

He felt a little better by the time the plane landed, though he chalked the lift in his mood up mostly to relief over landing safely in LA. He hated flying, and eleven-hour flights over large bodies of water were the worst. He felt like Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz as he stepped off the plane awkwardly, stiff from sitting for so long. There’s no place like home.

But as he made his way through the gate in the always-crowded LAX, he wished he were home in Florida. And he wished he would look up and find Claire waiting for him, with open arms.

He stopped to wait for Kevin, AJ, and Howie to catch up (Brian had landed in Atlanta to spend a few days at his home there, where Leighanne and Baylee had been living) and looked around at all of the people bustling here and there. Businessmen and women, dressed in crisp suits and laden with leather briefcases and compact rolling suitcases. Families with small children, about to embark on their vacations. College students, fresh off their spring semesters and home for the summer.

Watching a girl in an Ohio State t-shirt drop her bags and practically hurl herself into her waiting boyfriend’s arms, Nick felt a pang of envy, wishing again that he had someone waiting for him, the way he had when he and Claire were together, and he would fly home from LA to see her.

And then, through a cluster of Asian tourists, he saw… her.

Forgetting all about waiting for the other guys, he started towards her, hobbling a little on his stiff leg, pushing through the crowds to get to her. “What are you doing here?” he asked, shaking his head in disbelief as he looked down at her.

She smiled up at him, rising on her tiptoes to give him a proper hug. “I thought I’d come with Mary and pick you up,” she said as she pulled back. “I hope you don’t mind.”

Nick looked around and spotted Mary, already locked in AJ’s arms and kissing him deeply, without caring that they were in the middle of a bustling California airport. Returning his attention to her, he replied, “No, of course not, Veronica. I’m glad you came. It’s great to see you.”

“You too. I missed you,” she said and pulled him into another hug.

He closed his eyes as he wrapped his arms around her in return. He really did appreciate her meeting him at the airport, but…

But…

He felt terrible for doing it, but as he hugged her, he couldn’t help but wish he had a certain redhead in his arms again instead.


Well there ain’t no luck in these loaded dice
But baby, if you give me just one more try
We can pack up our old dreams and our old lives
We’ll find a place where the sun still shines

And I will love you, baby
Always
And I’ll be there forever and a day
Always

I’ll be there till the sun don’t shine
Till the heavens burst and the words don’t rhyme
I know when I die, you’ll be on my mind
And I’ll love you
Always

- “Always” by Bon Jovi


***

Additional lyrics: “Siberia” by the Backstreet Boys