Positive (3 page)

David sat against the wall, the bowl balanced
on his lap. He looked like microwaved zombie.

"You okay?" she asked.

He looked up at her, his normally spray-tanned
face the color of plain oatmeal. He shook his head.
"You?"

She touched her face, but it felt dry. "Yeah,
why?"

"Sounded like you were throwing up, too." He
stood, his arms and legs shaking, and walked slowly into the
bathroom. A line of sweat beaded across his forehead.

She followed him
into the bathroom. "Can I get you something? Are you running a
fever?" He shook his head.
Oh
look, my maternal instincts are already kicking
in
, she thought as she ran a face cloth
under cold water. She pressed it to the back of his neck as he
leaned over the toilet bowl.

"Thank you," he gasped as a fresh stream of
vomit poured from his mouth. This time, he noted, it was mostly
bile. When he finished, he used the cloth to clean up. "Probably a
stomach virus. You too, huh?" He looked up at her.

She touched her still flat stomach and nodded.
"Maybe." She glanced at the clock again. Only ten minutes remained
until she was supposed to be at the OB office. "I have to go,
though... Are you gonna be okay?"

He nodded, waved her away. "Don't worry about
me."

He watched her back out of the bathroom as
though she could see the disease radiating off of him. A pang of
guilt seized his stomach like an angry cat seizes her kitten's
neck, and he vomited again.

* * * * *

Victor closed the front door behind him, then
froze, his hand halfway to the pocket of his blazer, his fingers
clutching his keys. He heard a chair scuff across the kitchen
floor, and took two steps further into the living room. His
eyebrows furrowed; Tuesdays were always Ingrid's late days.
"Hello?" he called. "I'm armed," he added. "And I'm calling the
police." He glanced around for glass on the floor, any sign of
someone having broken in, but everything was just the way he and
Ingrid always left it.

Footsteps thudded toward him. He grabbed the
lamp on the table. The cord yanked out of the wall and he stumbled
back a step from its force. He glanced up as the footsteps came
closer. Ingrid stood several feet away from him, mascara smeared in
a river from her eyes.

"Babe?" He started walking toward her, then
stopped. "Is someone in the house?" he whispered.

She shook her head. He held his arms out to her
and she ran to him, bare feet pounding on the hardwood. She erupted
into sobs, her tears soaking his dress shirt. "You weren't supposed
to be home this early!" she cried into his shoulder.

He held her away from him, glanced around the
empty room, then looked at the stairs. "Is there somebody
upstairs?!" he demanded. He stepped back from her.

"No," she gasped.
Her hand flew to her throat. "Oh, God,
no
." She sank to the floor. Tears
splattered the wood.

He kneeled down next to her. "Then what? What's
going on?" His throat tightened. Guilt sent a hot flash through his
body, and he pulled her into his arms. Her sobs echoed off the
walls. "What's wrong?"

"I'm so sorry," she cried. She wrapped her arms
around his neck and squeezed him to her. Her breath felt hot on his
collarbone, and his slacks suddenly felt tight. "I'm so sorry," she
gasped again.

He ran a hand up and down her back. "Sh.
S'okay." He kissed the top of her head and inhaled the scent of her
shampoo.

When she quieted, he tilted her chin up. "Now
what's going on?" he asked gently. "Why wasn't I supposed to be
home?"

She swallowed hard. "I should've told you. It
happened two weeks ago. I..." She looked down at the drying
teardrops on the hardwood floor. "I lost my job."

* * * * *

David sat in the
waiting room, an issue of
People
open in his lap. A
television screen reminded patients to talk to their doctor about
high cholesterol. The room was air conditioned, but his shirt was
blotchy with sweat. A woman across from him stared with an eyebrow
raised, then pulled out a small bottle of hand sanitizer. She eyed
him as she rubbed it into her hands. The scent of the alcohol
burned his nostrils. He shivered.

"David?" A young woman in scrubs dotted with
bears stood at the door between the waiting room and the exam
rooms.

He nodded and started to get up, then sank back
into his chair.

The nurse rushed over to him with a wheelchair.
He shook his head but she guided him into the chair, then wheeled
him out of the waiting room. He laughed. "What's so funny?" she
asked.

"You're so little," he said.

She smiled and wheeled him to Exam Room 4. She
helped him sit on the papered exam table, then picked up a small
laptop from the counter. "So what brings you here
today?"

Chapter 6

"Is that why you've been acting so weird?"
Victor asked, his hand still on Ingrid's chin. She sniffled and
nodded, and he pulled her into a hug. He kissed the top of her
head, her forehead, her cheeks, and the tip of her nose. "It's
okay," he whispered. "You're gonna be fine, babe."

She pulled away from him and stared up at him,
her blue eyes large, wet, and red. "You're not mad?"

He shook his
head. "Why would I be mad?" He took her hands and led her to the
couch. "I thought maybe you were mad at
me
for something." He laughed, and
brought her hand to his lips, kissing each
finger.

She stared down at her lap. "But this is the
second time in five months," she said, so low that he almost didn't
hear her.

He shrugged. "So we'll turn off the cable if we
have to." He poked her in the ribs. She shifted farther from him on
the couch and wrapped her arms around herself. "Come on, babe,
smile. Economy sucks right now. It's not your fault." He slid
closer to her and wiggled his fingers at her. She shook her head
and rolled her eyes at him, but let him tickle her anyway. She
flopped onto her back and laughed, kicking. He caught her foot just
before it slammed into his crotch, shifted until he lay over her,
and kissed the tip of her nose. "I really missed you," he
whispered.

She stared up at him, her eyes drying but still
red. When he kissed her lips, her body tensed underneath him. She
rolled out from under him.

* * * * *

Josalee lay in a dark exam room, her feet
pressed against the stirrups, and watched the screen next to her as
her obstetrician moved the ultrasound wand inside of
her.

Dr. Skinner pointed to a tiny, dark shadow on
the screen. "That's your baby."

Josalee squinted at it. To her, it looked like
a wad of gum. She sat up on her elbows and peeked up at the doctor
from under her lashes. "So what now?"

"The morning sickness you complained about
should subside within a few weeks," Dr. Skinner said. She withdrew
the wand and slid back on her stool, brushing a wild red curl out
of her face. "Now we just need to keep an eye on your health." She
grabbed a pad of blood work order sheet and began checking things
off. "I'm going to send you down the hall for some blood work. I
want to get a baseline now before we get too far into your
pregnancy."

Josalee stared at a poster on the wall
outlining the stages of pregnancy. "How far along am I now?" she
asked.

"It looks like you're about three weeks," Dr.
Skinner said, "but we'll know better when you come back in." She
stood. "Do you have any questions for me?"

The question burned on Josalee's tongue, but
she shook her head.

The doctor closed the curtain between the exam
table and the rest of the room. "Go ahead and get dressed," she
called.

As Josalee put her clothes back on, she spotted
a pamphlet on the counter. She grabbed it, stuffed it into her
purse, and joined the OB on the other side of the curtain to
schedule her next appointment.

* * * * *

David took a deep breath, then held out a
folder of the paperwork he'd been collecting. "I got my insurance
card a few days ago," he said. He wiped away sweat from his
forehead. "The clinic told me I'd need insurance." The nurse
nodded. "I called and you guys said you'd take mine, so here I
am."

The nurse skimmed the pages he handed to her,
then smiled at him as though he were taking his last breath. She
handed the folder back. Her face seemed paler. "How are you
feeling?" She poised her fingers above the keyboard.

He swallowed past the lump in his throat and
thought of when he had mono as a teenager. For nearly a month, his
mother took him to the doctor every week because they couldn't
figure out what was wrong. After his pediatrician finally diagnosed
him, David asked how much longer it would be until he felt better;
his throat felt like a lawnmower ran through it, his bones ached
like an old man's during a bitter winter, and he felt exhausted
down to the tiny molecules that made up the blood pulsing through
his veins.

"A couple more weeks, son," Dr. Fischbein said.
His white hair looked even whiter in the fluorescent light. "You'll
have to be careful a little longer, though. The virus will continue
to be contagious for a couple of weeks after your symptoms
disappear to anyone who hasn't had it, and you'll always have the
virus in you."

"What does that mean?" David's mother asked. "I
read something that said once you've had it, you can get sick over
and over."

David rolled his eyes; his mother did a lot of
reading.

Dr. Fischbein nodded. "There is some research,
yes, but none of it is conclusive. David's going to be just
fine."

* * * * *

David stared up at the nurse. "I feel like I
did when I had mono, only worse. So I went to the clinic a few
months ago, and they told me I should get tested. I still feel like
shit." He twisted the silver friendship ring he wore on his right
middle finger. "I read something online..." He almost smiled. He
was his mother's son. "It said there's treatments, that I might get
better."

The nurse smiled that same funereal smile
again. "We've made tons of progress in HIV treatments in the last
few decades," she said, standing. "I'm going to have the doctor
come in and take a look at you." She closed the door behind her,
closing David in with his thoughts.

Chapter 7

Ingrid slammed her fist on her laptop. A list
of resumes she'd sent out in the last two weeks sat in front of
her. Her email sat empty on the screen. She picked up her phone and
called her voicemail. "There are no new messages," the female
computer voice told her. She slammed the phone on the table and
glanced at the time on the coffee machine. She'd barely been awake
four hours, yet she felt as though she spent eight hours chasing
around students without having slept. She crumpled the list into a
ball, then headed into her bedroom.

As she crawled under the covers, her mind
turned to how she'd raced through her college assignments, only
enjoying the field work spent watching the other aides and how they
handled what they called their "differently abled" students. She
hadn't spent a dime on tuition, yet it all felt like a waste. She
covered her face with her hands, pressing her fingertips into her
eyes as though she could hold the tears in. The warm liquid rushed
around the pads of her fingers, anyway, and a sob escaped her lips.
She tossed the covers off and stomped into the bathroom.

She yanked open the medicine cabinet. Several
bottles of prescriptions tumbled into the sink. "Dammit!" she
screamed, scooping them up and pushing them back onto the tiny
shelves. Her blue eyes scanned the labels and, finding Victor's
sleeping pills, she reached for the bottle. She twisted it open,
shook some into the palm of her hand, and dry swallowed
them.

An hour later, the sweat scented comforter
pulled up to her nose, she drifted into a black sleep.

* * * * *

"How are you
feeling?" David's physician, Pam, asked him. The clock on the wall
read 5:30. Its minute hand
tick
-
tick
-
tick
ed toward the office's closing
time. "It looks like the sores on your face are clearing up a
bit."

He nodded and
touched his face. The skin no longer felt as bubbled as it had a
couple weeks before, but still felt raw. "I actually held down my
breakfast and lunch today." He shifted in the too-big sweatshirt he
wore
—
a hoodie that, a few
months ago, had fit him snugly.

Pam smiled. "Good. I'm going to lower your
dosage, because the ARVs have some nasty side effects, and I don't
want you on such a high level for too long. I'm going to order some
blood work, see where your T cells are..." She reached behind her
for the pad of blood work sheets. "And I'm going to have you come
back in two weeks, instead of next week," she said as she checked
off a few things on the list. She glanced up at the clock. "Do you
have any questions for me?"