Lauren Holmes: Barbara the Slut and Other People

“You told me on the phone you didn’t have symptoms,” I said.

“No,” he said.

“Okay fine,” I said, “what are your symptoms?”

He showed me a dot on his hand that looked like a freckle but was black.

“Are you sure that’s not ink?” I said.

“What?” he said.

“Ink,” I said, “like pen?”

Mike Anonymous shook his head and waved his hand in my face so that I could get a better look at the symptom.

“Okay,” I said. “Anything else?”

Something something penis, he said.

“Something is wrong with your penis?” I said.

Something something penis, he said again, louder. I told him to hold on and went out to the hall. A med student had arrived with Dr. Wagner, and they were talking to the clinicians about what patient to take.

“I have a really good patient for you,” I said.

The med student looked excited, like he thought it was going to be a woman with a double vagina or something. He was new to the clinic and he was technically a resident, which allowed him to see patients under Dr. Wagner’s guidance. He was too tall and he walked like it was hard for him to balance on such long legs. I wondered if that was why Dr. Wagner didn’t seem to take him seriously.

“This guy is sure he’s HIV positive but he had a negative rapid test, and when I told him it was negative, he decided that something was wrong with his penis,” I told them.

The med student still looked excited but Dr. Wagner rolled her eyes.

“Why does he think he’s HIV positive?” she said.

“I don’t know,” I said.

“Don’t you think you should find out?” she said.

“Um,” I said.

I went back to the counseling room and told Mike that a doctor would see him, but first I needed to know why he thought he was HIV positive. He just looked at me, rasping now, and I made a mental note to offer him some water later. I sat down and wondered what to ask him and why I hadn’t been trained to do this.

“Have you ever used needles to take drugs?” I said.

“No.”

“Have you ever had sex with another man?”

“No!”

I tried to think of the other HIV risk factors.

“Have you ever exchanged sex for money?”

Mike Anonymous started to shake. He shook harder and harder and then he started to sob and talk. I had no idea what words he was saying, but at the end I made out the words “my kids.” I didn’t know what to do. I took a box of tissues from the file cabinet and put it on the table.

“I’m sorry,” I said.

He looked at me and hiccupped.

“Did you have sex with a prostitute?”

“Yes,” he said.

“Did you use protection? A condom?”

“It has broken.”

He suddenly seemed very calm and I wondered if this was when he was going to pass out. I watched him for a minute. I wondered if he was a researcher at the university or something. I couldn’t think of another explanation for a man with nice shoes and a nice bag and a wife and kids, who could barely speak English, and who either could or could not understand it.

“Okay,” I said. “I’m going to go get the doctor.”

He nodded.

“Will you be okay here if I leave for a second?”

He nodded again.

I still didn’t want to leave him so I stuck my foot in the door and called down the hall, hoping that Dr. Wagner was down there.

“What?” she called back.

“Can you come up here?” I said.

“What?” she said.

“Can you please come to counseling room one?”

When she and the resident got there I looked at Mike and he seemed okay, so I closed the door and told Dr. Wagner about the hooker. She asked what exam room they could use and I told her room two. I gave her his chart.

“He can’t be anonymous if we’re going to examine him,” she said.

“You’re going to have to find out his name,” said the resident. I decided he wasn’t speaking to me since he was so tall. I opened the door to the counseling room and Mike Anonymous looked at us.

“Mike, this is Dr. Wagner,” I said. “She’s going to take care of you.”

Mike nodded.

“Hi, I’m Dr. Phillips.” The resident smiled and I wanted to kick his spider legs out from under him.

I brought Mike a cup of water and moved him to the exam room. They were in there for forty minutes, or the amount of time that it took Judy and Eunice, the other clinicians, to see six patients. When Dr. Wagner came out she ordered a herpes 2 test and a hepatitis C test.

“What was wrong with his penis?” I said.

“Nothing,” said Dr. Wagner. “He doesn’t have a single symptom.”

The resident handed me Mike’s chart and a requisition form for the tests, and then he repeated the names of the tests, like he thought of them himself. He had filled out the requisition form wrong and ordered a herpes culture instead of a herpes blood test, so I pointed that out to him.

I brought Mike Anonymous back into the lab and drew blood to send out. He wanted me to order a second HIV test from the lab, so I asked Dr. Wagner if I could. She said yes because it was the only way to get him to shut up about how he was HIV positive and the first test couldn’t tell because it couldn’t pick up the antibodies in Asian blood.

“What?” I said. “That’s crazy.”

“Is it?” said Dr. Wagner to the resident. “What do you know about that?”

“I can find out more,” said the resident. “I’ll make a call.”

“Are you retarded?” said Dr. Wagner. “Did you even go to med school?”

“I know,” said the resident. “I was just joking.”

• • •

Davey called at three to make sure I was getting off of work at four and could help him cut the dog’s nails. He said they were clicking on the floor and if we didn’t cut them at four he wouldn’t be able to get any work done for the whole rest of the day. I swore on the book of skin diseases that if he called me on the private line one more time I was going to break up with him. When I hung up, my coworker Pregnant Patricia asked me if I could stay late for her, because she had to go to an emergency doctor’s appointment that she had been waiting a month to get. I told her I could. I called Davey back and left a message so that he wouldn’t come to the clinic right at four with the dog and the nail clippers. I said the baby inside of Patricia had a life-or-death situation and I had no choice but to stay until eight.

After Patricia, Boss Donna, and Louisa left at four, Louisa called to tell me that Patricia had lied and was really going to a job interview. Before Pregnant Patricia was Pregnant Patricia she was Fat Patricia, because she was fatter than anyone else, even me. Fat Patricia and the women who had been working at the clinic for four years or six years or eleven years sent out their resumes from the fax machine whenever Boss Donna was out of the office, but no one had gotten a new job in the ten months I had worked there. Even though I was going to leave the job and hopefully the city and the state when my lease was up in two months, I imagined myself doing STD screenings when I was seventy. If I gained five pounds a year eating the donuts that the drug reps brought, I would be enormous by then.

• • •

A little before seven, Mike Anonymous came back with a woman. She was tall and black and didn’t look like I would have expected her to look, if I had expected to see her. She had perfect teeth and perfect skin, and she had purplish-blue contacts.

Mike said he had an appointment. I was starting to understand his accent well enough. I looked at Melissa, who was working the front desk with me.

“You were already here,” I said to Mike.

Mike said he wanted to give the woman his appointment, and when I said we canceled it, he said she would wait for a same-day appointment.