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Chapter 121

The Hope-For-All Cancer Support Group met in Conference Room 5B on the oncology floor of Tampa General Hospital on the second Saturday of every month from 10 to 11 a.m.

At exactly 9:57, Nick peeked his head warily around the doorframe of Conference Room 5B. From behind, he felt the poke of a finger in his back and the hiss of a voice in his ear. “Go on; I don’t wanna walk in late!”

At Claire’s impatient insistence, Nick stepped into the room. He hesitated just inside the doorway, looking around. The conference room housed a large table and a set of matching, comfortable-looking chairs. The table had been pushed back against one wall and spread with a few platters of snacks and drinks. The chairs were arranged in a circle in the center of the room.

There were about ten other people already there when Nick and Claire walked in. Some were already seated in the circle of chairs; others were mingling over coffee at the refreshment table. Not knowing a soul and unsure of what to expect, Nick felt awkward and out of place. But there was no turning back now; even if he tried to walk out, he knew Claire wouldn’t let him. After all, she was the one who had convinced him to come today.

Sitting directly across from the door, a woman with a clipboard balanced on her lap glanced up and spotted Nick and Claire. Her features melted into a warm smile. “Come on in!” she called brightly, beckoning. Claire took the initiative, stepping around Nick and leading the way over to the circle. She paused to introduce herself and Nick to the woman, whom Nick had already pegged to be the psychologist who was leading the group. Her professional dress and cheery attitude gave her away.

“Call me Franzi,” the woman introduced herself, and she spoke more, Nick started to pick up on a slight accent in her voice. German, maybe, he thought, the years of experience talking to foreign fans making him good at picking up on such things. In any case, he guessed she’d been in the States for awhile now; her English was impeccable. “I’m a liaison between the oncology and psychiatry departments here at the hospital, and I facilitate the meetings of our little group here. Let me say, we’re so happy to see new faces. I’m glad you both could attend.”

“Thanks,” they both said, nodding their acknowledgements.

“Just find a seat anywhere, and we’ll get started in the next few minutes,” Franzi offered, and they obliged, Claire staking out a couple of chairs on one side of the circle. Nick let out a breath as he sat down beside her and tried to tuck his portable oxygen tank underneath his chair, hating the fact that he’d had to bring it out in public, even if it was just to the hospital. But as he looked around at the others, who were filling in the rest of the seats, he realized he had no reason to feel self-conscious here.

The Hope-For-All group offered support to people of all ages, with any kind of cancer. It was the only such general support group sponsored by the hospital; the others described in the pamphlet Dr. Kingsbury had given Nick were catered to specific age groups and cancers. There were even special groups for family members of people with cancer, or those who had lost loved ones to it. There was no group for people with bone cancer, but there was one for people in their twenties and thirties that Claire kept suggesting. It sounded like a good idea, but not for Nick. His peers also made up the bulk of his fan base, and he knew he would feel uncomfortable spilling his guts in front of a group of people who might have watched him grow up on MTV. He’d opted for the most general group and hoped the people there would be older and less inclined to already know who he was. He wanted to be anonymous.

Remembering the description in the pamphlet, he shouldn’t have been surprised at the variety within the small group. There was a wide range of ages represented, from a lone teenage girl to an elderly couple that had to be in their eighties. Many of the people were obviously undergoing treatment. The teenage girl looked fairly normal, except for the bright bandana covering her noticeably bald head. The look reminded him of Claire, who had bandanas in seemingly every color and pattern there was. The woman next to her, who looked to be in her thirties, was also wearing a scarf on her head, but the color did nothing to brighten her sallow, sickly complexion. Her face was gaunt, her eyes hollowed by dark circles, yet she managed a weak smile as she talked with the teenager. On her other side sat another young couple, their hands wound around each other’s. The woman looked completely fine, while the man was pale and probably bald beneath his stocking cap, as evidenced by the fact that he had no eyebrows. Next to him was an older man, probably in his early fifties, whose baldness was not well-disguised by the bad toupee perched on his brown skin. In any other setting, Nick might have giggled with Claire over the fake-looking rug, but sensing what the man, like all of these other people, was going through, he could only empathize.

“Excuse me, are you saving this seat?”

At the gentle voice, Nick looked up to see a plump, middle-aged woman standing before him, motioning to the unoccupied seat next to him. “No, go ahead,” he said quickly, waving for the woman to sit down.

She did, keeping her arms crossed over her chest. For a moment, she looked silently around the room. Then she turned to him. “Is this your first time coming to group?” she asked politely. “I haven’t been coming long, but I don’t think I’ve seen you here before.”

Nick shook his head. “No, this is my first time. I’m Nick,” he said and offered his hand.

“Nice to meet you, Nick. I’m Carol,” the woman replied, shaking it. He noticed that even as she shook with her right hand, she kept her left arm across her chest, her hand resting lightly at her bosom. Her smile was kind, but her eyes, cautious. That was the only word Nick could think of to describe the emotion in them. She seemed wary, uncertain. Was it him?

He tried to study her without staring. He immediately recognized the signs of someone who hadn’t been on chemo long. Her short, colorless hair was thinning; it was flat and stringy, with noticeable patches of bald scalp showing through, but she hadn’t yet started trying to cover it up. Yet she seemed to be trying to cover herself up, the way she kept gently tugging at her blouse, before moving her arms back into position over her chest.

The last one to come over from the refreshment table, his napkin piled with several cookies, was a man in his sixties or seventies. He walked with a noticeable limp and was wearing a baseball cap, but Nick could see that he still had a full head of thick, silver hair beneath it – it was poking out of the back. He sank down into the chair on the other side of Claire with a gusty sigh and turned to grin at her. “Didja get any of these cookies?” he asked, holding up his napkin. “Better git ‘em while the gittin’s good, cause this is the only place I can get my hands on sweets these days. My wife won’t let me have ‘em no more. And anyone here can tell ya, ol’ Grandpa Jack likes his cookies.”

A light chorus of laughter went around the circle, and Claire smiled at the old man. “Well, who doesn’t? You should tell your wife, life’s too short to go without a cookie now and then.”

The man let out a loud guffaw at what she’d said and grinned even wider, showing several gold-capped teeth on the sides. “There you go! Now here’s a gal who knows how to live life. I should have you call up my wife and tell her just that!” Still smiling in amusement, he held out his gnarled hand. “The name’s Jack Wallace, but everyone just calls me Grandpa Jack. You’d think I was old or something.” He shrugged and then winked, his brown eye sparkling.

“I’m Claire Ryan,” Claire introduced herself, shaking his hand, “and this is my friend Nick.”

“Good to meet ya, son,” Grandpa Jack said as he and Nick shook hands across Claire’s lap. His hand was big and rough, from years of working, no doubt.

“Same to you,” Nick echoed with a nod, glad that at least some of these people seemed good-natured and friendly. Maybe this wouldn’t be so bad after all.

The clock on the wall read 10:01 when Franzi cleared her throat, ready to begin. The light chatter died down as the circle fell quiet, but just when the counselor opened her mouth to speak, the door to Conference Room 5B opened again with a click, and every head turned, including Nick’s. A woman had come in and was walking towards the circle, her pace brisk. She was probably in her forties, but in great shape, her sleeveless Nike athletic top and shorts revealing a body that was long, lean, tan, and toned, her leathery skin stretching over visible muscles. Her face was lined, her features angular and severe, especially with her brown hair slicked straight back into a tight knot at the back of her head.

These were all things Nick noticed about her appearance after doing a double-take at the most obvious feature at all – the fact that her muscular right leg ended just below her knee, morphing into a sleek prosthesis that hardly looked like a leg at all. It looked more like a tube that ended in a springy, J-shaped bar where there should have been a foot. Nick had learned enough to recognize this as a high-tech running prosthesis, but he’d never seen one up close and personal before. He couldn’t help but stare as she crossed the room, the end of the prosthesis bending and rebounding with her weight at each step.

“Sorry I’m late,” the woman announced, her voice appropriately loud and sharp. “I decided to put in an extra mile this morning and nearly lost track of the time.” She sat down in the empty seat on the other side of Carol and exhaled her breath with a “Whew!,” drawing her hand across her forehead.

Nick continued to watch her in amazement, piecing together the realization that she’d been out running. No one else seemed as impressed or said much of anything, except for Franzi, who cleared her throat again and replied, “That’s alright, Deb. We were just about to get started.”

The meeting began with Franzi welcoming everyone and asking how their week had been. Nick sat back and listened as several people shared stories from the week. Some volunteered information about how their treatment was going; the young wife of the man in the stocking cap patted her husband’s thigh and smiled broadly as she announced he only had five more radiation treatments to go and would hopefully be done by their next meeting. Others talked about things totally unrelated to their cancer, things from their personal lives. The sickly woman with the scarf, whose name was Nadine, shared a couple of cute things her children, apparently young ones, had done, which prompted the oldest couple there, Ike and Evelynn, to tell a story about one of their grandchildren.

As he listened to the conversation flow across the circle, Nick could pick up on the camaraderie between the group members. They obviously had come to know each other well and were willing to share intimate details of their lives with one another. Nick supposed this shouldn’t be a foreign concept to him; after all, his life was basically an open book to the public. But he’d never quite experienced anything like this before.

After a few more minutes had passed, Franzi announced, “Well, as you might have noticed, we have two new faces in the circle tonight.” She looked to Nick and Claire, as did everyone else. “Would either of you like to introduce yourselves and share your story?”

Nick exchanged glances with Claire. He didn’t feel much like talking yet, though he wasn’t sure why. The other people seemed nice enough, and he was used to talking about himself in interviews and speaking in front of massive groups of people when he was onstage. Yet that morning, even in the midst of this small circle, he felt shy and uncomfortable. A part of him always had been shy, but as a Backstreet Boy, his more outgoing stage persona usually took over. Today, he felt so removed from his Backstreet Boy image that he couldn’t conjure up that confidence he displayed for the media. “Go read People,” he wanted to tell the group, remembering the in-depth interview he’d given the magazine a few months after his leg was amputated. But instead, he found his mind racing, trying to mentally prepare what he was going to say so he wouldn’t come off sounding stupid.

But as he paused, Claire scooted forward on her seat and started talking. “Hey, everyone. My name’s Claire,” she introduced herself, and, surprised, Nick turned to watch her. “I’m twenty-seven; I’m a Florida girl, born and raised; I work as a dental hygienist; and I’m a four-year survivor of acute lymphocytic leukemia.” Every set of eyes in the room, Nick’s included, was upon her as she told her story. “I was diagnosed when I was twenty, second semester of my sophomore year of college. I did a course of chemo that lasted through the rest of the semester and into the summer, and then I was declared in remission. I took a semester off to recuperate and then took some courses to get my associate’s degree at community college. I started working as a hygienist and did that for about a year-and-a-half, until I started feeling bad again. I found out I’d relapsed just before Christmas in 2002. I started back on chemo in early 2003, and when that didn’t help, I got a bone marrow transplant from my brother in August of that year. I’ve been in remission ever since… it’ll be four years this August.”

Four years, thought Nick, almost surprised to hear it had been that long. He remembered Claire’s bone marrow transplant like it had happened yesterday, the fear it had evoked in him permanently etched in his memory. Yet, looking at her now, one would never know what she had gone through. The only physical traces her ordeal had left on her body were the tiny scars hidden beneath her clothes, marks left from central lines, spinal taps, and bone marrow aspirations, and they were hardly noticeable now. She looked unscathed and completely normal, her hair kept short because that was the way she liked it, her pale skin just a part of her natural complexion. Had she not just shared her story, Nick figured the others would have assumed she was just there as a support for him, the one who obviously had the medical problems, not as a survivor herself.

“Wow, four years… that means you’re almost to the five-year mark! Congratulations!” exclaimed the wide-eyed teenager, whose name was Jessie. “I’m just trying to get through my first course of chemo.”

Claire smiled knowingly. “You’ll get there,” she encouraged the younger girl. “It’s rough, but eventually it’ll be behind you, and you’ll look back and go, ‘How did I ever get through all of that??’”

Jessie smiled back and nodded, the back of her bandana fluttering against her balding scalp.

“Have you ever taken part in a support group like this before?” Franzi wanted to know.

Claire shook her head. “No… actually, I was kind of against the idea when I was younger. I thought I’d be a martyr and just get through it on my own, you know. My friend Nick’s the one who talked me into coming today.” She smiled over at Nick, giving him a secret wink. He smirked and knew it was now his turn to talk.

Clearing his throat, he held up his hand in a half-wave and said, “That would be me… Claire’s friend Nick.” Smiling, he continued nervously, “Um… I’ve never been to one of these things either, but I’ve been through enough by now that I guess it’s probably a good idea.” Light chuckles rang through the circle, as heads bobbed up and down knowingly. Reassured by the feedback, Nick found himself slipping into interview mode as he went on with his story, telling them of how he was diagnosed with bone cancer over four years ago, how he’d lost his leg after a relapse, and how his lungs were currently struggling because of a disease with a funny name. “That’s the explanation for this,” he added with a nervous chuckle, giving his oxygen line a gentle tug.

Before anyone else could say anything, the woman who had walked in late, Deb, asked, “What kind of prosthetic do you use, Nick?” She spoke in the same tone a teacher might use, the kind of voice that made it sound like it was she, not Franzi, who was actually in charge of the group.

Nick was only mildly surprised by the question and willingly pushed up his pant leg to show her his blue and silver titanium leg. Before he could actually answer her question, though, Deb exclaimed, “Oh, a C-Leg! Very nice. I know a lot of people who use those; they’re supposed to be very good. Not great for running, though; they tend to overheat. What do you think of it?”

“Oh, it’s… it’s pretty good, I guess,” Nick shrugged, not sure what else to say. He hadn’t known anything else since the first artificial leg he’d trained on after getting out of the hospital, and while the prosthesis he had now was certainly easier to walk on than that, it would never be the same as his real leg. But he supposed it was better than nothing.

Deb seemed unsatisfied by his lack of a detailed response, but had no chance to press him further, for at that point, Franzi started talking again, and the group moved on.

When the meeting was over, and Deb was off talking to Franzi, the old man known as Grandpa Jack came up to Nick. “Thirteen people here, and three of ‘em gimps – what are the odds, eh, sonny? Even in a cancer group, those is high numbers.”

Nick started to nod at first, but then he stopped, looking around. “Wait – three?” he asked, confused. There was him and that lady Deb, but who-?

He remembered Jack’s limp just as the grizzled older man started hitching up his pant leg. Looking down, Nick saw that he, too, was wearing an artificial leg, and a much more rudimentary one at that. He stared for a moment and then looked up in surprise. “You had bone cancer too?”

Jack threw back his head and laughed, the same hearty guffaw he’d let out earlier. It was the kind of laugh that just made you smile, but Nick was too perplexed to smile at that moment. “Nope,” said Jack. “Prostate cancer. Just diagnosed a couple months ago. No, this here is a souvenir of the war,” he added, patting the metal limb. “You know which war I’m talking about, sonny? How good’s your American history?”

Not very good, thought Nick, licking his lips as he tried to think back to his hotel room tutoring sessions. “Uh… World War II?” he guessed.

Jack guffawed again, his eyes sparkling with amusement. “I was in the fourth grade when the Japs bombed Pearl Harbor. Nope, it was Korea, 1952. Been walkin’ on a metal leg longer’n I walked on a real one.”

Nick’s eyes widened as he did the math. Fifty-five years, this guy had been an amputee. And now he had cancer. He had just about as bad of luck as Nick; they might as well start calling this the Bad Luck Club.

“Now this lady,” Jack added, waggling his thumb over his shoulder to where Deb and Franzi were standing, “she had bone cancer. Osteo-something or the other; I can’t pronounce half of them big mumbo-jumbo medical names. Anyways, she’s somethin’ alright. Had it in her twenties, and she still comes to these meetings. Seems to think she knows everything and can be of service to us all.” Jack snorted, and a smile crept over Nick’s face. The old man apparently wasn’t fond of Deb, and though Nick couldn’t exactly put his finger on it, he could understand why. “She’s a runner… used to compete in the Paralympics – you know, those Olympics they have for gimps like us.” He shot Nick another toothy grin. “Likes to remind us all of it too. I’m surprised she’s not still wearing her bronze medal around her neck.”

Nick chuckled. Being a part of the celebrity crowd, he had met plenty of people like Deb, people who thought they knew it all and were better than everyone else for it. He didn’t like people like that. But he was sure he was going to like Jack. Grinning, he said, “Well, I can tell you I’m not gonna win any medals like this” and kicked at his oxygen tank with his good foot.

Jack smiled and clapped Nick on the shoulder, replying, “Ehh, you’re a young’n. You’ll be fit as a fiddle again, soon enough. Come back and join us again next week, huh, son?”

Nick smiled back and turned to look at Claire, who had been drawn into a conversation with the teenager, Jessie. Turning back to Jack, he nodded. “I think I will.”

***