Lauren Holmes - Barbara the Slut and Other People

“I ain’t waiting,” the woman said.

“Hang on,” I said.

I went to the back and asked Eunice what to do. She looked at the clock. We had to take walk-ins until seven and it was six fifty-four.

“Fuck,” she said.

Back at the front, I gave the woman an intake form and an STD questionnaire, and she filled them out with her back to Mike. Melissa entered her into the computer and I put her chart together and brought her in.

Her name was Marla Jones. Marla Jones looked like she was twenty but the birthday in her chart made her thirty-eight. She wasn’t wearing makeup and she wasn’t wearing a miniskirt. She was wearing jeans and a puffy coat.

Marla had answered all of the questions in loopy handwriting. I asked her the standard counseling questions, like whether she was ready to get a negative or positive result in fifteen minutes, and what she would do either way. The only question that wasn’t standard was whether she felt like she was being forced to get tested, which we asked when patients were with their moms, and which seemed relevant now.

“I ain’t being forced,” she said, “I’m getting paid.”

I started the test and put Marla in a counseling room. I didn’t want to send her back out to wait with Mike Anonymous. When I got back to the lab, Eunice and Melissa were standing over the test. They made room for me and we all waited for the lines to come up. It worked like a pregnancy test: one line was good, two lines were bad.

The control line came up and then the positive line came up. Two lines.

I felt like air was rushing through my head. I sat down in the blood-drawing chair.

“Dear God,” said Eunice.

“I feel sick,” said Melissa. She left the lab.

“I need a minute,” said Eunice. She went back out to the clinician’s station and put her head in her hands.

• • •

Soon I stopped feeling dizzy and felt empty, like this wasn’t real life, which was a relief. When Eunice was ready I followed her into the counseling room. Marla didn’t look up from her magazine.

“Marla? Hi, I’m Eunice.”

“Hi.”

“Hi.” Eunice sat down. “Are you ready for your results?”

“Yeah,” said Marla.

“Your HIV test was positive,” said Eunice.

“Yeah,” said Marla. She didn’t look up.

“Okay,” said Eunice. “Did you already know that you might be HIV positive?”

“Yeah,” said Marla.

“Are you currently under a physician’s care?” said Eunice.

“No,” said Marla. She looked up.

I gave Marla a card for the hospital’s AIDS care program. Eunice asked her how she was going to deal with her results tonight and tomorrow, and asked her about her support network, but Marla kept saying she was fine. Eunice told her that we were going to report the result under our mandated reporting protocol. She wanted to do a confirmation test before Marla left, but Marla said it was already confirmed.

“Okay,” said Eunice. “Will you call the program?”

“Uh-huh,” said Marla. “I got to go.”

“Okay,” said Eunice. “We’ll call you tomorrow to see how you’re doing.”

I walked Marla to the checkout desk. Mike Anonymous was waiting for her on the other side of the door.

“He’s paying,” she said. She opened the door to the waiting room and told Mike Anonymous that he needed to pay and that he owed her fifty bucks. He said he needed the results first.

“Hell no,” she said.

He said he was paying her so she had to give him the results.

“No,” said Marla. She walked past him.

He said that was the agreement.

“Okay,” said Marla. “Give me the money first.”

He handed her some cash and she started walking toward the door.

“Hey!” he said. But instead of following her, Mike Anonymous stormed our window, yelling that he needed the results.

“I think you should shut that,” I said to Melissa.

She closed the window, and we watched Mike yelling on the other side. He was yelling that we had to give him the results because he paid for the test and it was his money, so they were his results.

“We can’t give you the results,” I said through the glass. “It’s against the law.” I didn’t tell him that he hadn’t paid yet.

He was sweating again and he was crying. He yelled that he knew it was positive. Then he really started screaming, not words but just screaming. He ran into a row of chairs, knocking them over and falling on top of them.

I picked up the phone and pressed page. “I think we need help up here.”

By the time Eunice got to the front, Mike Anonymous had taken a couple of pictures off the wall and pulled down a set of track lights.

“Do you want me to call the police?” I said. We watched him through the window. He looked weaker. He knocked over the pamphlet display in slow motion and then sat down on a chair and put his head between his knees.

“Call them if I wave at you,” said Eunice. “I’m going to take him outside.”

She went out to the waiting room and took his elbow and helped him stand up. We watched her escort him outside. She looked older, like his red face set off her gray hair.

They left the building and walked across the parking lot. The streetlights lit them up and made shadows under their eyes and noses and chins. We could see Mike Anonymous shaking and shouting and then calming down again. Eunice tightened her grip on him and then loosened it. It made me want to cry that this old lady was showing him what was what.

She led him to a bench and activated the safety light on the side of the building. She had on her calmest face, but she was shivering. I wondered if I should bring her her coat but I didn’t want to interrupt. Mike put his head down again and Eunice talked to him, and I could hear her voice in my head. Her voice was very soothing and she had been the only clinician I wasn’t afraid of when I started working at the clinic.

Mike didn’t get worked up again, so Melissa and I closed the exam rooms and Melissa did the deposit and I put the pamphlet display back together and left a message for maintenance about the pictures and the track lights. When we were almost ready to go Eunice came back in alone and said that Mike Anonymous would be back in three months for a follow-up test.

• • •

When I got home Davey was mad about me working late and he made me help him clip the dog’s nails right away, before I had a chance to pee or open a bottle of wine.

“How was work?” he said, but it sounded like he meant, I hate you for fucking up my day .

“It was fine,” I said, hoping it sounded like, I hate you for fucking up my life .

I made cereal for dinner and Davey played Call of Duty. When I told him I was going to bed he waved at me, and then later he tried to wake me up to have sex with him. I was pretty asleep but I figured if we did it then, we wouldn’t have to do it while I was awake, and he would leave me alone for at least a week.

When he got on top of me the dog went under the covers. Davey was taking a long time to come and while he was working on it, I decided to tell him.

“I don’t want to live here anymore,” I said.

“Fuck,” he said. “That fucking dog is licking my feet. What did you say?”

“Nothing,” I said.

“Vivian, what?” he said.

I pushed him out of me and closed my legs. “We had an HIV positive today.”

He tried to separate my legs again. “Don’t you have HIV positives all the time?”

“No. We never have HIV positives.”

I moved over and put my underwear back on.

My mom and I were going to stop to break up with my boyfriend on our way to Emerald Isle, but the muffler fell off of my car right before we got to the exit we needed to take to Raleigh, and my mom said we couldn’t stop anymore. I was driving, and I had been waiting for this exit for three hours, since we left home. I started crying and for a while I was crying so hard I could barely see. The car was so loud that I could barely hear either, and my mom was trying to talk to me but I didn’t care because I was mad at her for not letting us stop. Finally she got in my face and yelled, “PULL! OVER!” so I did and we switched seats. I cried for at least ten more minutes, which was more tears than it sounds like. My mom shouted over the noise that it was okay because we would get the car fixed when we got to Emerald Isle and I could stop in Raleigh to break up with James on the way back. I yelled that my vacation was ruined.