Karin Slaughter - Faithless

“Around what time?”

She used her teeth to uncap the syringe, saying, “The divorce.”

“Well, that’s good, then,” Jeffrey said, trying not to jump off the table as she slid the needle into his vein. She was being gentle, but Jeffrey hated shots. Sometimes just thinking about them could make him woozy.

“These are baby needles,” she told him, more out of sarcasm than consideration. “Why is it good?”

“Because I only slept with her once,” he said. “You kicked me out the next day.”

“Right.” Sara hooked up the vacuum tube and released the tourniquet.

“So, you were finished with the vaccinations by the time we started seeing each other again. You should be immune.”

“You’ve forgotten that one time.”

“What one-” He stopped, remembering. The night before the divorce was finalized, Sara had shown up on his doorstep drunk as a mop and in a receptive mood. Desperate to have her back, Jeffrey had taken advantage of the situation, only to have her sneak out of the house before the sun came up the next morning. She hadn’t returned his calls the next day and when he had shown up at her house that night, she had slammed the door in his face.

“I was in the middle of the series,” she told him. “I hadn’t had the booster.”

“But you had the first two?”

“It’s still a risk.” She slid out the needle and topped it. “And there’s no vaccination for hepatitis C.” She put a cotton ball on his arm and made him bend his elbow to hold it in place. When she looked up at him, he could tell he was about to get a lecture.

“There are five major types of hepatitis, some with different strains,” she began, dropping the syringe into the red biohazard box. “A is basically like a bad flu. It lasts a couple of weeks, and once you have it, you develop antibodies. You can’t get it again.”

“Right.” That was the one detail he remembered from his visit to Hare’s office. The rest was pretty much a blur. He had tried to listen- really tried- as Sara’s cousin explained the differences, the risk factors, but all he could really focus on was how to get out of the office as fast as he could. After a sleepless night, he had formed several questions, but couldn’t force himself to call Hare to ask them. In the ensuing days, he had found himself swinging back and forth between denial and cold panic. Jeffrey could remember every detail of a case from fifteen years ago, but couldn’t recall a damn thing about what Hare had said.

Sara continued, “Hep B is different. It can come and go, or it can be chronic. About ten percent of the people who are infected with it become carriers. The risk of infecting another person is one in three. AIDS has a risk of about one in three hundred.”

Jeffrey certainly didn’t have Sara’s mathematical abilities, but he could calculate the odds. “You and I have had sex more than three times since Jo.”

She tried to hide it, but he saw her flinch at the name. “It’s hit-or-miss, Jeffrey.”

“I wasn’t saying-”

“Hep C is generally passed through blood contact. You could have it and not even know it. You usually don’t find out until you start showing symptoms, then it can go downhill from there. Liver fibrosis. Cirrhosis. Cancer.”

All he could do was stare at her. He knew where this was going. It was like a train wreck and there was nothing he could do but hang on and wait for the wheels to skid off the rails.

“I’m so angry at you,” she said, the most obvious statement that had ever come from her lips. “I’m angry because it’s bringing all this up again.” She paused as if to calm herself. “I wanted to forget it happened, to start over, and this just throws it back into my face.” She blinked, her eyes watering. “And if you’re sick…”

Jeffrey focused on what he thought he could control. “It’s my fault, Sara. I fucked up. I’m the one who ruined things. I know that.” He had learned a long time ago not to add the “but,” though in his head he went through it. Sara had been distant, spending more time at work and with her family than with Jeffrey. He wasn’t the kind of husband who expected dinner on the table every night, but he had thought she would at least make some time for him out of her busy schedule.

Her voice was barely above a whisper. “Did you do things with her that you do with me?”

“Sara-”

“Were you unsafe?”

“I don’t even know what that means.”

“You know what it means,” she told him. It was her turn to stare, and he had one of those rare moments when he could read her mind.

“Jesus,” he muttered, wishing like hell he was anywhere but here. It wasn’t like they were a couple of perverts, but it was one thing to explore certain acts while you were in bed, quite another to analyze them in the cold light of day.

“If you had a cut in your mouth and she was…” Sara obviously couldn’t finish. “Even with normal intercourse, people can get tears, microscopic injuries.”

“I get what you’re saying,” he told her, his tone sharp enough to stop her.

Sara picked up the tube of his blood and labeled it with a ballpoint pen. “I’m not asking this because I want the gory details.”

He didn’t call her out on the lie. She had drilled him before when it happened, asking him pointed questions about every move he made, every kiss, every act, as if she had some sort of voyeuristic obsession.

She stood, opening a drawer and taking out a bright pink Barbie Band-Aid. He had kept his elbow bent the entire time, and his arm felt numb when she straightened it. Peeling back the edges, she pressed the Band-Aid down over the cotton. She didn’t speak again until she had thrown the strips into the trash.

“Aren’t you going to tell me I need to get over it?” She feigned a dismissive shrug. “It was only once, right? It’s not like it meant anything.”

Jeffrey bit his tongue, recognizing the trap. The good thing about beating this dead horse for the last five years was he knew when to shut up. Still, he struggled not to argue with her. She didn’t want to see his side of things, and maybe she had a point, but that didn’t take away the fact that there were reasons he did what he did, and not all of them had to do with him being a total bastard. He knew his part in this was to play the supplicant. Being whipped was a small price to pay for peace.

Sara prompted, “You usually say that I need to get over it. That it was a long time ago, that you’re different, that you’ve changed. That she didn’t matter to you.”

“If I say that now, will it make any difference?”

“No,” Sara said. “I don’t suppose anything will.”

Jeffrey leaned back against the wall, wishing he could read her mind now. “Where do we go from here?”

“I want to hate you.”

“That’s nothing new,” he said, but she didn’t seem to catch the levity in his voice, because she nodded in agreement.

Jeffrey shifted on the table, feeling like an idiot with his legs dangling two feet above the floor. He heard Sara whisper, “Fuck,” and his head snapped up in surprise. She seldom cursed, and he did not know whether to take the expletive as a good or bad sign.

“You irritate the hell out of me, Jeffrey.”

“I thought you found that endearing.”

She gave him a cutting look. “If you ever…” She let her voice trail off. “What’s the use?” she asked, but he could tell it wasn’t a rhetorical question.

“I’m sorry,” he told her, and he really meant it this time. “I’m sorry I brought this on us. I’m sorry I screwed things up. I’m sorry we had to go through that hell- that you had to go through that hell- to get us here.”

“Where’s here?”