by Maggie Siska

He sauntered into the office. He wanted his ear checked.
Possible infection – swimmer's ear perhaps?
He had just started learning how to swim.

How slick was the clinician to mention other services offered at our clinic?
Would you like to get tested? We do that here.
He couldn't at that time, but promised to return that afternoon.
Perhaps now he thinks he should have turned and ran.
But he didn't.

He came back.

It was simple. He had good veins.
One try. One needle. Two teaspoons of blood.
He was a jovial fellow.
He wanted to transfer to the University.
He, too, wanted to be a doctor.
He was nineteen.
He only did the one test. No others.
No urine sample today. Just blood.

* * *

The phone rang in the back office.
Slow day – we were all in crammed in there.
Quick – pull the pink folder #00024:
the anonymous tag
Who was "Lange"?
The publisher pseudonym grappled off the spine of a book.
Just a tag. A way of verifying the lab slip to the tube.
But my initials were on it.
I did it.
I took those two teaspoons.

It was still unconfirmed. But…
it was positive.
My first positive HIV.

I remembered who it was.
I knew his face.
I knew his real name.

I was to be the one to tell him.
How could I?
He was only nineteen.

***
He came back to have his ear rechecked.
That infection was cleared up.
He pulled out the pink slip.
I clipped it to the pink folder and handed it over.
I ducked into the next room and took a new patient.

The cell phone rang.
I heard it through the wall.
Someone was coming. The partner.

He was almost twice his age.
He stood there, refusing to hear,
Refusing to believe it could have been him.

Who else could it be?

***

He came in the see me.
He was concerned about his mom.
She had Hep C.
What about you, Tre?
No medicine. He wasn't sick.
HIV didn't cause AIDS. That was a myth.
A myth to hold men like him down.

But my mom; she's sick.
She needs medicine.

***
A sore throat and swelling under his arms
brought him back to me.
It's just a cold. It's only a cold.
I'm not sick.

But what should I do?