"But you don't look sick," Star told me for the approximately one-hundred and twenty-seventh time, scanning me up and down as if looking for Sacroma or leper spots. We found a bench outside the clinic, where we stood at arm's length, smoking our cigarettes. Star hadn't mentioned her special services or outstanding payments even once. I presume she had forgotten about them in the recent turn of events.
I grimaced, "and this is exactly why you need to be careful and look after yourself. Not every health issue is visible. At least not until it's too late."
To the outside world, I would appear like any other guy in his mid-twenties; reasonably fit, reasonably healthy, no additional baggage attached. Looks truly had a habit of being deceiving.
For the first time since I met her Star looked like a young, innocent teenage girl. She pulled her hair, which hung dull and brittle past her shoulders. "Do…you… erm… I mean… I don't… you don't think…I have …" she stammered.
My shoulders dropped. "Star, I don't know," I finally answered truthfully, realising just how much I wanted to assure her and tell her that, 'no, there is zero chance for her to have caught the virus—or any other STD for that matter.' But lying wouldn't be fair to her. I didn't know how frequently she booked her little side hustles, but one occasion without a rubber was all that it took. Just look at me. I'm practically still half a virgin… and I got a spell of really awful luck.
"As you noted, it's not visible. And I can tell you, you don't necessarily feel it either. I mean, in hindsight, there had been a few signs: I got sick more frequently and felt more fragile, but I put it all down to stress at uni. The only way to know for sure is to get tested."
Star warily eyed the clinic behind us but didn't radiate any desire to go back there. In fact, the way her knees wobbled, I expected her to run at any moment. And indeed, she looked at her phone, "gosh, I didn't know it was already that late. I really need to be home for dinner. I suppose I have to come back another time and…"
"Star," I interrupted. I was about to put my hand on her shoulder, but she jerked away. I tried my best not to take it personally but couldn't help feeling hurt at the implication. "Don't you want to know?"
The girl glared at me.
"Look, if you have it, they can help you with medication and ensure you live a normal life. Also…" I looked down at my feet, remembering the day I got the news.
I had been suffering from the same severe cold for three weeks now. It reached a point where I was running a forty-degree fever for a week straight, and I was due to write my exams soon. I wasn't worried, not really. Most likely, this was just a rather unfortunately times spell of the summer flu. But to delay my exam, I needed a doctor's note so I made an appointment.
"You are running a high fever for seven days now?" The doctor had asked with raised eyebrows. This should have been my first indication that something else wrong with me.
But at that moment, I just shrugged. "I guess so."
The doctor shook his head and sighed, "with a a high fever like this, you should have contacted the practice immediately and not only after a whole week has passed. I'm ordering a blood test now to find the potential reason . If you want to return to the waiting room, please."
"Waiting room?" Whenever I had blood drawn in the past, I usually got a new appointment, usually within three or four weeks, had to complete even more paperwork, and then waste another lifetime twiddling my thumbs and glaring at the clock as the minutes ticked away.
"Yes, I need to check with the nurse if they're free for you now. But I rather have these results sooner than later."
"But now? I have classes to attend."
"You're also running a forty-one-degree temperature. I will write you a sick note for today. Now please, take a seat in the waiting area."
The fact that I lacked the energy for further complaints should have been the greatest indicator that having my blood taken right away wasn't the worst doctor's advice I ever received. Already feeling drained and exhausted, I sat back down on the same old plastic chair and reached for the same old magazine to continue staring at the blurry pictures. Although, I guess there wasn't really anything wrong with the pictures but rather with my fever-induced eyesight. One of the receptionists came rushing over to me to hand me a bottle of water. I guess I looked like someone in the dire need of cooling down…literally…or perhaps, the doctor had told her.
Anyway, I'd been waiting for a total of about ten minutes, if not less before a nurse approached to take me to the first floor and started manhandling my left arm. I wasn't good with needles and even worse with seeing blood, so I was rather squeamish in my seat until the procedure was over.
"That's it," the nurse told me with a smile once the session of torture was over. "We're going to call you with the results in the next two working days."
"So, I can finally go home now?"
"You're free to go home," the nurse smiled.
I made my way to my car, but before I even had the energy to turn the ignition, a spell of migraines hit my brain with the speed of a lightning bolt. Perhaps having a nap in the parking lot before I took my vehicle on the road wasn't the worst idea.
I shuffled to the backseat, set my alarm to ring thirty minutes later, then closed my eyes. I must have been more exhausted than I thought, because I didn't even notice the seatbelt, among other nicknacks I was driving around, poking a complex pattern into my bum cheeks.
When I finally got home in the evening, I went straight to bed not feeling hungry whatsoever. My roommate had a couple of friends over, and an army of beer and soju bottles decorated the floor. Fried chicken fragranced the air, and someone was kind enough to have left their empty wrappers on my bed.
I shoved them aside without a complaint and crawled underneath my blanket. Despite the noise, I was out within minutes.
I guess it was due to the fever that I didn't worry about my blood test results. Also, I guess it never occurred to me that anything could be seriously wrong. Despite the cold that had been dragging on, I was fit and healthy, followed a reasonably healthy diet, barely ever drank alcohol, and the hardest drugs I'd ever taken were the two pills of aspirin Jin gave me after that stupid party a few weeks ago.
So, when the doctor called the following day and asked me to see him in person, I simply agreed to the suggested time and marked it in my calendar. Only in hindsight did I regard it as slightly odd that he suggested I bring a close friend or family member. At that moment though, I shrugged it off and told him I wasn't a toddler that needed constant babysitting.
The following day, my fever finally decreased. I was running at a solid thirty-eight, still a high temperature but I definitely felt a lot more coherent than in the previous week and went to attend my classes. Perhaps I didn't need the extension for my exams after all. Until last week, my attendance record had been spotless, and it should be easy enough to catch up on what I've missed.
"Hey, Lim!" I poked one of the other students and the kid in question with the unfortunate bowl cut turned around, "What's up, Kim?"
"I was only wondering whether you could lend me your notes for last week? For this class and Professor Jim's."
Lim shrugged. "Sure. I will email them at lunch. Do you maybe want to meet for a study session, too? It would be great to have someone with an actual brain to go over the highlighted paragraphs again."
Lim was definitely the smartest kid in our class, with only the best marks across the board. I would say I came in as a solid second and wasn't far off his level there. We never really hang out, because I wasn't the biggest fan of his attitude, but when it came to catching up on material, he was definitely my best bet.
"Sure, let's do that," I agreed. "Shall we meet on Saturday around noon?"
"I usually start my weekend study sessions early in the mornings," Lim advised, "but sure, you can join me at a more convenient time."
"Great," I replied, already regretting my decision to meet with this uber-nerd. But if I wanted the scholarship to Harvard, I needed to fight for every single point. I didn't feel like pointing out that my doctor's appointment was the reason I couldn't join a Saturday morning study session. In fact, for some reason, I was rather queasy to share this information with anyone. Heck, I hadn't even told my own brother. I halted. I always shared everything with Jin. There was absolutely no reason to hide a simple doctor's appointment right after having suffered from a fever for a week. Something, I noticed I hadn't shared with my brother either. Usually, I phoned him when I was feeling unwell, rather than staying with him and Daeun and being babied and cooked for when I was ill. Hands down, Daeun made the best chicken soup in the world.
This time though, I had kept it a secret. But then, Jin and I had an argument right after the party three weeks ago, and we had not really been on speaking terms since. I huffed. As if he never attended a single college party in his life. And it wasn't like I did anything bad. I simply had a drink or two too many, and it was not something I planned on ever repeating again. Seriously. The hangover had definitely not been worth it.
Once Saturday morning came around, and I arrived at the practice, I was unable to shake off the motion that something was wrong. Severely wrong. I couldn't exactly pinpoint when my brain had started to come to his conclusion, but the more I thought about it, the more bits and pieces started to add up.
In the past, the doctor had always given me a rundown of my blood sample results via phone. Being called into the practice meant there was some sort of bad news. The fact that I had been asked to bring someone underlined that thought. Why the fuck had I only thought of that once I actually entered the place.
The second sign was the receptionist's concerned expression when I told her my name and birth date.
"Kim Taehyung," she repeated, followed by too much scrolling, cursor clicking and frowning. Plastering a smile as fake as a Barbie doll with botox on her face, she told me to take a seat in the upstairs waiting area.
"Upstairs waiting area?" I repeated, not having known that my practice has such a thing. In fact, I never realised it had an upstairs area at all.
"Yes, upstairs waiting area." The receptionist repeated slowly as if my diagnosis was a severe case of stupidity. "The doctor wants to speak to you in his private office."
Now, my stomach really revolted. Doctors never invited patients to private offices, unless something was severely off. Just why didn't I ask my brother to accompany me?
True, Jin and I had not been on the best of terms lately. He was upset with me for having come home drunk and vomiting all over the new living room carpet. And while I understood his anger and offered to pay for the carpet cleaning, I also thought it was a little unfair.
After all, he was the one who suggested I should go out more, enjoy uni life and have some fun in my free time, rather than spending all day every day studying. It hadn't been my attention to getting plastered at my first college party. I simply overestimated the amount of alcohol I was able to handle. Perhaps I shouldn't have measured my limits with someone who was drinking every week.
I took out my phone, contemplating.
It was eight am, the only day of the week my brother had the chance of a lay-in. I felt bad giving him at this hour. Although I didn't know any details of the case he was currently handling, it had some sort of international involvement that had him work at the most batshit crazy hours. I bit my lip, then put the phone away again. Whatever it was the doctor was going to tell me, I was surely going to be able to handle it. I was a fucking adult now, wasn't I? Time to act like one. So, I remained seated in the upstairs waiting area with a churning stomach while twiddling my thumps.
There was no clock, so I had no real estimate of how much time had passed, but it certainly felt like forever.
But if I had thought my stomach was rampant while I was waiting, it was nothing compared to the rollercoaster it went on when I was finally called into the too-serene-looking room.
"Did anyone come with you?" Asked the doctor and knitted his eyebrows together when I said no.
If bodies came with basements, this was where my heart would have sunk. As it was, it only started to pound inside my chest, as if it wanted to break free from the confines of my ribcage.
Was I going to be diagnosed with cancer? Perhaps there was a tumour the size of Jupiter growing inside my brain. I did have a lot of headaches lately, didn't I? The spell of migraines from the other day came to mind. Shit! Should I have taken this more seriously? And was that the reason for my blurry sight, rather than the spell of fever as I had thought?
My knees trembled as I sat down while my thoughts kept on running havoc. Heck, I hadn't even noticed that the doctor started talking to me, and had to ask him to repeat himself numerous times.
"Would you like anything to drink? Tea, juice, water?" He asked with the patience of a rock. I declined them all. My stomach would not have been able to keep anything down. Weirdly enough, I had a craving for a cigarette, although the only time I'd ever smoked was at the party, and my lungs had felt like a chimney for days afterwards. I had vowed to never try this again.
My left knee was shaking and it took all effort to get it under control.
Meanwhile, the doctor kept on eyeing me with a stoic expression, then took a seat behind his big cherrywood desk and started to fiddle with his iPad.
"Take a seat," he said without looking up, although I was already seated. This was getting more uncomfortable by the second. The phone in my pocket seemed to be getting hot. Call Jin, it seemed to try to tell me, and I guess I was close to giving in.
My fever was at least partially to blame for my dizziness, but it surely was not the sole reason why the walls suddenly started to move in. Something was wrong.
Call Jin, a voice inside of me advised.
"Well," the doctor said, looking at a chart of numbers that didn't make any sense to me, then he went on about one sort of cell and then another. Should I interrupt him? Tell him that I changed my mind and wanted my brother here with me?
And why did doctors insist on throwing Latin expressions at you when you were at your most vulnerable?
I was about to open my mouth and ask to reschedule when the doctor concluded, "this means you have tested positive for the human immunodeficiency virus. Do you know what that means?"
I shook my head. My ears were ringing and my brain had become too slow to process long words, such as immunodeficiency.
The doctor pressed a couple of pamphlets into my hands with an unreadable expression. None of these had any ridiculously long words printed on the front. Just a brief acronym that, until this very moment, had only ever existed in American TV dramas, and my world came crashing down.
"This is no longer a death sentence, Taehyung," I thought I heard the doctors say, but his voice was distorted as if we were having this conversation underwater. "There are great treatments to keep the virus at bay and your T4 cell levels steady. You will be able to live an almost normal life…"
But I had stopped listening. My head had turned into a train station with millions of steam engines rushing through at the same time. With shaking hands, I skimmed through the little booklets with titles like 'living with HIV' and 'a positive approach to life,' and felt like I had reached the game over stage.
Thank god I haven't brought Jin after all, I thought. I don't think I could handle seeing the disappointment and disgust in his eyes.
Star held out the empty pack of cigarettes to me, and I realised I must have smoked eight or nine, one after the other, just now.
"I would have bought a new pack, but I didn't bring a fake ID," she said apologetically.
"Is okay…That was way too much anyway…even for me." I squinted my eyes, trying to locate the little path I knew that led to a little kiosk. It was now completely dark outside, and the road wasn't well-lit.
"I'll get you a pack," I told her, "but only if you get that test done."
Star froze, then started to shake uncontrollably. "But…what if I have it?" She asked in a mouse-like voice.
I swallowed. This wasn't a diagnosis one should receive when all alone. In hindsight, I was sure that, had Jin been with me on that fateful day, the last three years would have turned out to be completely different.
But while I didn't have a time machine at hand to change my own experiences, I could ensure that my companion didn't have to experience the same.
"Then, I'll be there for you every step of the way, from doctor's appointments to finding a support group, to being the friend you can call in the middle of the night, while you learn to live with this without making all the mistakes I had made along the way."
I looked up at her. "Star, there is the biggest possible chance nothing happened to you and all results come back fine. You're merely taking a precaution here. But for the teensy little chance that something is not quite right, rest assured that you're not alone on any step of the way."
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