FOR A MOMENT I just stood there in the doorway of the dining hall, watching Rafe’s very fine ass disappear into the kitchen. My fingertips found their way onto my cheekbone, to the place where Rafe had put the sneaky kiss that short-circuited my brain.
Rafe was the most confusing boy I’d ever met. A month had gone by since we’d hooked up — it was ancient history. But I still felt too aware of him, and I didn’t know why. On our walk over here, I’d given him a freaking lecture on morality, because I couldn’t figure out how to shut up.
And then he kissed me? Who did that?
“Um, Bella?”
I turned to find Graham and two other friends — Corey and Scarlet — staring up at me from the table just inside the door. “Hi,” I said, dropping my hand from my cheek, and feeling self-conscious.
“Hi yourself,” Corey said with a grin. In fact, they were all smirking at me.
That unstuck me. I walked over to the empty seat beside Graham and dropped my backpack onto the floor. Sitting down, I stole one of Graham’s little dining hall glasses of Coke and drank it down.
“Who’s your friend?” Graham asked, turning his head to look pointedly at the kitchen door.
“Neighbor,” I corrected. “We have a class together.”
“Huh,” he said. “Did you notice that your neighbor was smokin’ hot?”
Was I ever going to get used to him saying things like that? Doubtful. “I did notice,” I mumbled, wondering how quickly I could change the subject. “Got any plans for the weekend, guys?” I tried.
“Not really,” Corey said. “Then again, it’s Tuesday.”
Right. “Good point.” I looked over at Graham’s tray and went in for another glass of Coke.
He blocked my hand. “You know, they’ll give you a tray of your own.”
“Where is the love?” I complained. I stood up anyway and went over to the beverage counter. The truth was that I didn’t feel all that well, and I was strangely thirsty. So I put three glasses on my tray and filled them with ice and soda. Food didn’t sound all that appealing, but I made myself a small plate at the salad bar, then went to sit down with my hockey friends again.
While I ate, Scarlet, a goalie on the women’s team, asked Corey questions about their upcoming tournament in Boston. “I haven’t played in that arena before.”
“It’s a dump,” I said at exactly the same time Corey said the same thing.
“Jinx!” Corey cried. “But it’s true. They need a renovation. Badly.” She was the manager of the women’s team, so she traveled all the same places with her team that I did.
My stomach ached, so I pushed my plate away. Hopefully I wasn’t coming down with anything. Strains of “When the Saints Go Marching In” began to rise up from my backpack.
“Whose ringtone is that?” Scarlet asked.
“My mom’s,” I said, reaching down to decline the call.
“That’s hysterical.”
“Yeah, I crack myself up.”
Unfortunately, the darned song played twice more before lunch was over. When I finally stepped into the empty stairwell, I called her back. “What is it, Mom?”
“Bella! I have good news. Your sister just found out that she got the grant she was so excited about. Now she can open her immunization clinic.”
Well at least someone in the family knew what she wanted. “That’s great, Mom. Julie must be psyched.” My big sister was a public health crusader. She was the good daughter, the one who had always done as she was told. And now she spent all her time doing nice, important things for other people from dawn until dusk. Sometimes even on weekends.
“She’s over the moon. Be sure to call her to give her your congratulations.”
I tried to keep the irritation out of my tone. “Of course I will.” Jesus. My mother’s opinion of me could not be any clearer.
“She’ll be delighted to hear from you,” my mother said a little too firmly. “Also, I need you to come into the city on the night of Saturday, November seventh.”
“Why?” I asked, feeling wary. “I’ll have to look at the hockey schedule,” I lied. The regular season did not start until the following weekend. Lucky me.
“There’s an awards banquet. It’s a big deal for her. The whole family should be there together.”
Shit. The whole family included one person I tried always to avoid. “Things get pretty busy here,” I hedged.
“This is nonnegotiable,” my mother said. “You’ll want to wear a dress.”
“To a banquet? You think?” Annnnnd now I was snapping at my mother like a teenager. Awesome.
“I do think.” My mother sighed. “Cocktails at six-thirty. Dancing and dinner at seven-thirty.”
Dancing! Ugh. Well at least I could blow off the cocktail hour without anyone getting tetchy. “Wait. I can bring a date to this thing, right?” A human buffer would make this whole idea far more palatable. My parents were too polite to chew me out in front of strangers.
My mother hesitated. “This will be a family evening.”
That was ridiculous, because there would be four hundred people at a charity banquet. “Mom, those tables always seat ten. And I know you bought a table for this thing.” That was how my mother worked. She loved her charitable causes. “And you can bet that Julie will bring a date.”
“Your sister has a husband, Bella. That’s hardly the same thing.”
In a remarkable show of restraint, I did not reply in any of the first dozen ways that leapt to mind. I didn’t have any words for Julie’s husband that wouldn’t set my mother’s temper aflame. “I want to bring someone, too,” I argued. “It’s only fair.” Fair being a stupid, meaningless word that I only used because I couldn’t think of anything better.
“Fine,” my mother capitulated. “I’ll put you down as plus one.”
“That would be lovely,” I said as graciously as possible.
“Saturday the seventh.”
“Got it.”
“And call Julie today.”
“Okay.” Jeez.
After we disconnected, I ducked into the women’s bathroom at the bottom of the stairs. All day I’d felt a little… off. My stomach was achy, for starters. But just to make things extra fun, I seemed to be coming down with a yeast infection.
And as long as I was tallying up all the worst things about today, I now owed my sister a phone call — my sister who could not stand me. Furthermore, I needed to find a date to suffer through a few hours of a stuffy banquet in Manhattan in a couple weeks.
Awesome.
In ten minutes I was due to the psych seminar that I took on Tuesday afternoons. But first, a quick pit stop.
After ten seconds in the bathroom stall, I was sorry I’d ever gone in there. “Jesus Fuck!” I shrieked. Because oh my freaking God it hurt when I peed. I was alone in that bathroom, thank goodness. Because… damn. I felt tears spring into my eyes.
After an excruciating thirty seconds, I zipped up, washed up and got the hell out of there.
Two hours later, and feeling no better, I dragged myself through the front door of the Student Health Services building and up to the second floor gynecology department. When I asked at the desk if my favorite nurse practitioner could squeeze me in, the receptionist shook her little freckled nose. “Ms. Ogden is off this week. But if you’re having an emergency, I can get you in to see Dr. Peterson.”
That was a bummer, because Ms. Ogden was amazing. The first time I came in for a pelvic exam, she’d held a hand mirror out to me. “Would you like to see your cervix?” she asked, with the same happy tone as if she were offering to show me a funny cat video. It was hard to feel awkward with Ms. Ogden in the room. Even naked from the waist down, with my feet in the stirrups.
I waited with an outdated copy of Sports Illustrated until my name was called. I followed a nurse down the little hallway and into an exam room. “Please undress from the waist down, then hop up on the table. I’ll leave a sheet right here.”
When she disappeared, I stripped off my jeans and underwear. Out of a misplaced sense of modesty, I folded the panties into a neat square, then tucked them underneath my jeans. It really made no sense to hide my undies when the doctor was about to look at my vag under bright lights. But I did it anyway.
I got onto the table and pulled the sheet across my lap. A double knock sounded on the door.
“Come in,” I said, pointlessly.
The doctor who entered the room was older than I expected, with wispy gray hair and an ornery expression on his wrinkled face. But as he cleared the doorway, someone else followed on his heels. In walked a young man. He was tall — probably six foot two — and so freaking handsome. Under less awkward circumstances, I would have taken a good long look at him.
Instead, I stared at my knees.
“Hello Miss…” The older doctor stared down at my chart in his hands. “Isabelle Hall. This is Mr. Gaines. He’s a medical student following me on rotation today. Is it all right with you if he observes our examination?”
Seriously? What was I supposed to say? Yeah, let’s make a fucking party out of looking at my vag.
“Okay,” I mumbled.
“Now what is your complaint?” the doctor asked, folding his arms.
At that moment, I would have done anything to see Ms. Ogden’s blue-eyed gaze blinking calmly at me from behind her spectacles. “It, uh…” Just spit it out, Bella. “I have pain in the, um, vulva region. I thought it was a yeast infection. But now it hurts when I pee.”
The old doctor nodded. “Let’s have a look, then.” He pulled some latex gloves from a box on the wall. “Scoot down on the table, please. Feet in the stirrups.”
I knew the drill. Still, it was uncomfortable. The little exam room seemed overcrowded. Cold air hit my girly parts when the doctor folded back the sheet.
Both men angled in for a view, and I pretty much wanted to die of embarrassment. The doctor’s gloved hand probed me in a way that was not overly rough. But I had to fight to keep the wince off my face when he touched a sensitive area.
“Mr. Gaines,” the doctor prompted. “What do you see?”
My gaze shot up to see the young man’s face color. He met my eyes for a second before turning to his teacher. “An infection. Probably bacterial.”
“What is the likely pathogen?” the old doctor pressed.
The younger man did not look me in the eye this time. “Gonorrhea or Chlamydia.”
“What?” I gasped, hoping that I’d somehow misheard.
The doctor nodded. “Glove up and prepare a test. Also, check for other signs of infection.”
As the younger man put on a pair of gloves, a trickle of sweat rolled down my back. “What does this mean?”
Dr. Peterson’s expression was chilly. “We see signs of infection, which are almost certainly caused by a sexually transmitted infection. Have you ever been diagnosed with one before?”
“No,” I gasped, my face prickling with heat. “But I don’t understand. I use condoms.”
“We hear that a lot,” the doctor said, stepping back to give his student some room. “But if you have skin-to-skin contact before the condom is applied, it can happen.”
Oh my God.
Oh my God.
Oh. My. God.
My heart began to beat like a drum, and I tasted bile in the back of my throat. The young medical student loomed over me now. My pulse was racing, and there just wasn’t enough air. My eyes got hot.
Dr. Peterson shoved a tissue box in my direction suddenly.
“What’s that for?” I asked in a voice which was less than polite. My attitude was suddenly the only thing standing between me and a breakdown.
“For when you cry,” he said simply.
I pushed the box back toward him. “Keep it then,” I ground out, determined not to cry.
Above me, the younger man hesitated. I forced myself to look up at him, finding a pair of empathetic hazel eyes waiting for me. “Do you need a minute?” he asked quietly.
Angrily, I shook my head.
He hesitated anyway. “May I touch your stomach? I’d like to know if any of your lymph nodes are swollen.”
I nodded.
He moved around my bent knee to stand next to me. Patient hands pressed gently into my pelvic region. “Please tell me if anything hurts.”
He probed lower, and within seconds I was hissing in a breath.
“Sorry,” he said quickly, reaching to check the other side. “How about here?”
“Yeah,” I said through clenched teeth. I was really sore there.
He patted my hip twice, in a way that should have seemed weird but somehow wasn’t. “Your lymph nodes are swollen because they’re working to fight the infection. Now I only need a quick swab, okay?” the young man said. “Then we’ll be all done.”
Again, I spoke through gritted teeth. “Do your worst.”
The swabbing stung. But not nearly as much as the anguish of hearing the words sexually transmitted disease.
“Now you can get dressed,” the old coot said when it was done. “Meet me in my office in ten minutes, and I’ll give you a prescription and some information.”
At that, he turned and left, followed only slightly more graciously by the med student.
I clamped my thighs together, heart pounding.
With shaking hands, I stumbled into my clothes. STD. The ugly letters sloshed around in my mind. This wasn’t supposed to happen. I practiced safe sex. I’d thought I did, anyway. Why me?
My stomach gave a lurch, which had nothing to do with the infection. This time the pain was from shame.
So much for being a sex-positive feminist in control of her own body. Just then I felt exactly like the slut people had claimed I was. People like Lianne across the hall. And the hockey girlfriends.
And my mother.
Ugh. My mother couldn’t know this. I was never going to tell her.
Still quaking, I wandered down the hallway, wondering which door was Dr. Peterson’s office. I stopped when I saw the med student sitting in a chair, then double-checked that the name plate outside the door said “Peterson.”
I went into the little room, sitting in the obvious patient chair.
“So, Isabelle,” the young man said.
“Bella,” I snapped, keeping up the bitch front.
“Bella,” he said gently. “I just wanted you to know that this happens all the time. Your test results will probably show that it’s easily curable.”
I knew what he was trying to do. He was trying to give me some perspective. Jesus. I probably should have thanked him for trying, but instead I only swallowed hard.
Dr. Peterson breezed into the room, seating himself on his desk chair. “Miss Hall, I have a prescription here.” He slid a little square of paper toward me. “Take the full course of antibiotics. That’s really important.”
Silently, I took the paper.
“Your symptoms should start to disappear immediately, but finish the medicine anyway. Meanwhile, you should have no sexual contact with your boyfriend during this time.”
That was easy, of course, since I didn’t have a boyfriend. But my stomach filled with dread. “I need to ask a question.”
“Of course.”
My eyes went to the wood-grain desktop and stayed there. “What’s the incubation period?”
The doctor cleared his throat. “Do you mean to ask how long ago were you infected?”
I nodded. Shame and silence descended together, like a mushroom cloud. Depending on his answer, there were two or three people who might have infected me.
And, likewise, there were two or three people who I might have infected.
“Within the last two weeks,” the doctor said. “Probably ten days.”
“Okay,” I whispered. I was going to have to go home and scrutinize my calendar to figure out what I’d done when and with whom.
“Naturally, you’re going to have to follow up with your partner,” the doctor said. “He or she will need to know that an infection was transmitted.”
Every time he said the word “infection” I just wanted to die.
“Your test will come back within a few days, and a doctor will call with the results. Then you’ll have something more precise to communicate to your partner.”
He kept talking, but I’d stopped listening. Because I was realizing just how awful this was going to be. I knew a hundred ways to ask a guy to come home with me. But I couldn’t imagine telling someone I may have given him a disease.
“Bella?”
I looked up fast. The medical student was trying to hand me a glossy brochure. I snatched it from his hand.
“There’s a lot of information in there. But if you have any questions, call us here. Or ask whomever calls with your results.”
I swung my gaze over to Dr. Peterson. “Can I make a request?”
He frowned. “Yes?”
“Would you ask Ms. Ogden to call with my results?”
The doctor’s frown deepened. “I’ll make a note of it. But no guarantees,” he said, scribbling on my file.
“Thanks, I’d really appreciate it,” I said. My gaze wandered over to the med student, and he gave me the world’s quickest smile. Apparently I wasn’t Ms. Ogden’s only fan.
“If you have no more questions for now, I’ll see the next patient.”
“I’m good,” I said, lying through my teeth. I was so very far from good.
The doctor rose and strode out, his white coat flapping behind him.
“Gaines,” he grumbled, summoning the med student.
Gaines stood up to follow him, but lingered just for a second in the doorway. “I know it’s a lot to take in,” he whispered. “But once the shock wears off and you do a little reading, it will all seem less awful.”
“Thanks,” I clipped.
He gave me another quick smile. “Call Helena Ogden with your questions.”
“You can bet on it.”
He disappeared then, leaving me alone with a prescription in one hand and a glossy brochure in the other. Taking Your Sexual Health In Hand, it read.
I folded it up into a tiny square and jammed it into my pocket. Then I got the hell out of there.
An hour later, I’d collected a small prescription bottle from the pharmacy as well as a take-out salad from the student center. The walk home was slow going, though, because the riff of irritation I’d felt down there earlier in the day had blossomed into full-on pain. So I walked carefully, wishing I could just beam myself up into my dorm room.
I needed to be completely alone. To regroup. To furtively Google search terms I never thought I’d type into my browser window. To throw darts at Dr. Peterson’s picture. But not to cry.
Fuck that guy.
I’d almost made it to my entryway door when someone jogged into the courtyard from the other direction. When he got to our door, he spread his sculpted legs and bent forward, hands on his knees, stretching before tackling the stairs.
Rafe. Even panting and sweat-coated, he was beautiful.
He was also the last person I wanted to talk to right now.
Shit.
Noticing me, he stood up straighter. “Hi,” he said on the exhale, reaching for the ID he’d clipped to his pocket. He swiped it past the scanner, then opened the door like a perfect gentleman.
Choking on my own discomfort, I gave him a self-conscious little wave.
His expression flickered with uncertainty. “Something wrong?”
Not a thing. And, by the way, do you suppose you gave me a disease? God. How was I ever going to discuss it? How did people do that? Rafe was frowning now, waiting for an answer. Pull it together, Bella. “I’m fine,” I said grumpily. “You?”
His eyes widened at my rude tone. “Never better” he said, pressing his lips together.
I was somehow destined to offend this guy. But that was the least of my problems right now. “Great. Have a good night.” I passed him, heading for the stairs. Unfortunately, climbing them was even less comfortable for me than walking had been. I powered up the first half flight anyway, feeling his eyes on me.
The sting made me want to scream.
Running out of ideas, I set my bag down and knelt down to re-tie my perfectly tied shoe. Slow footsteps moved up the stairs behind me. I felt Rafe pass me carefully on the landing. Then he trudged up ahead of me.
When he disappeared around the next curve, I picked up my bag and began again, slower this time. Gripping the railing, I pulled myself up, stair after painful stair.
On the next landing, Rafe waited, his head cocked to the side. “Are you sure you’re okay?”
“Yes, thank you,” I snapped. “Sore ankle, that’s all.”
“Oh.” His face softened. “You need…?”
“Nope, I’m good.”
His face fell again. “Okay. Later, then.”
This time he turned and jogged up the next flight as if he couldn’t get away fast enough. And I didn’t resume my climb until I heard the door to his suite open and close again.
Finally alone, I finished my agonizing journey home. The first thing I did was to take one of the tablets I’d gotten at the pharmacy. I wasn’t sure where to keep the bottle. Not the bathroom. I could only imagine Lianne’s smugness at finding out what had happened to me. Or anyone’s smugness, for that matter.
I hid the bottle in my desk drawer.
Then I called Trevi, the hockey captain, and told him I had flu symptoms and couldn’t make it to practice. “Could you tell Coach Canning that I’m sorry?” I asked.
“Sure. And feel better,” he said.
If only. “Thanks man. See you tomorrow or Thursday.”
“Ciao.”
Finally, I was alone. I switched on the lamp beside my bed, which cast a homey glow on the slanting ceiling. Flopping down on the bed, I curled into an ornery, achy, frightened little ball.
But I did not cry.
