Girlfriends (Patrick Sanchez) (31 page)

The only way to get any peace of mind was to go to the doctor, but this wasn’t exactly the kind of thing she wanted to see her regular physician about. Gina knew the clinic where Linda volunteered had health programs for women. She could have easily asked Linda for the phone number, but that might lead to questions, so she got out the yellow pages, found the number for the Women’s Reproductive Health Center, and copied it onto a slip of paper. Liz was out to lunch, so Gina went into her office to make the call. As she reached for the phone, she felt very alone and desperate. She never had a clear picture of what her life would be like by the time she was nearly thirty years old, but whatever picture she did have, it certainly didn’t involve calling a public health clinic to get tested for a host of sexually transmitted diseases.

Rock Bottom

T
ime after time, Gina thought she must’ve hit rock bottom—joining a church singles group, overflowing a toilet at a party, sleeping with a porn star—but this had to be it—this had to be rock bottom. She was about to walk into the Women’s Reproductive Health Center in Fairfax. Of course, there were clinics in D.C., but Gina figured a place in the suburbs might be cleaner and attract a more upscale clientele—a more upscale clientele of women getting testing for venereal diseases or waiting to have abortions, that is.

“May I help you?” the receptionist at the front desk asked her as Gina closed the door behind her.

“I have a six o’clock appointment. Gina Perry.”

“Sure. Let me give you a few forms to fill out,” the woman said, handing Gina a clipboard and a pen. “Fill these out—front and back, and bring them back when you’re done.”

“Thanks,” Gina said, taking a seat and starting to complete the paperwork. Just as she was finishing it up, a middle-aged woman with a deep voice called her back to be examined.

“I’m Ellen,” the woman said. “How are you?”

“Good. Thanks,” Gina lied.

After Ellen gestured for Gina to follow her, they made their way down the hall and entered a small examining room.

The woman looked over Gina’s forms before asking, “You have some concerns about sexually transmitted diseases?”

“Um . . . yes . . . some,” Gina said nervously, embarrassed even to be talking about it.

“It’s okay, Gina. We see this all the time here. Try to relax,” Ellen said, noticing Gina’s obvious unease. “Are you having any symptoms you’re concerned about?”

“No, not at the moment, but I thought I’d better get checked out just to be sure.”

“Is there a particular incident that you’re concerned about?”

“Yes.”

“You’ve had unprotected sex with someone?”

“Um . . . yes,” Gina said, hating herself—hating herself for having to say yes to such a question. Her real answer should have been “I can’t remember,” but Gina figured it was easier to just say yes.

“Well, we’ll check you out for everything. We can do most of the tests today, but if you like, you can come back for the HIV test and do that anonymously. We do anonymous HIV testing twice a month.”

“HIV?” Gina said, startled. “The guy . . . the guy I’m concerned about wasn’t gay.”

“Well, that’s good to know,” Ellen said. “But AIDS isn’t just a gay disease. We should still run the test, particularly if you’re not sure of his history.”

His history? Gina thought. His history includes sex with hundreds of women . . . all caught on film. “I don’t think he was into drugs either. Do you really think I need the HIV test?” Gina said, hoping Ellen would say no.

“There’s no reason to be alarmed, Gina. But just to be safe, yes, I definitely think you should have the test. We’re doing testing on Wednesday. Why don’t we draw some blood and run a few other tests today, and you can come back next week for the HIV test.”

“Okay,” Gina said, suddenly becoming overwhelmed with fear. HIV had crossed her mind, but it seemed so impossible until the nurse actually said it out loud. HIV couldn’t happen to her. She was a straight white girl. It was unthinkable.

But what if it’s not unthinkable? Gina thought to herself as she only faintly heard Ellen tell her to get undressed and slip into one of the gowns behind the door.

“I’ll be back in a few minutes,” Ellen said, and closed the door behind her.

As the door shut, Gina felt an impending sense of doom come over her. She was scared, and not the kind of scared she got from watching
Scream
or
The X-Files
. This was a different kind of frightened. It was the way she had felt when she was a little girl and had gotten separated from Shirley at King’s Dominion and thought she would never find her again.

Now, sitting on an examining table, she felt like that scared little girl all over again. Then, just like she did when she was a six-year-old child lost at an amusement park, she started to cry. What had made her be so stupid as to sleep with Griffin? What was she doing in a women’s clinic? How was all of this happening to her? She was a nice girl . . . wasn’t she? Things like this were not supposed to happen to nice girls.

“Gina, you’ve got to hold it together,” she said to herself, wiping her eyes and getting up from the table. Things are going to be okay, she tried to tell herself as she grabbed the gown from behind the door. If only she believed they actually would.

Up to No Good

P
eter was working on a report for his boss. It wasn’t due for a few weeks, but he had to stay at work late anyway, so he figured he might as well get a head start. It was after eight-thirty, and most of the staff had gone home, but Peter set nine o’clock as the time to head downstairs and see if he could snatch a picture of Cameron from her desk. He had run into her in the elevator a few days earlier. She actually smiled at him and asked how he was doing. Peter couldn’t believe her audacity. He said he was fine and politely smiled back at her. He didn’t want to give her any indication that he was the one behind the movers, and the phone calls, and fourteen “for sale” signs he and Shirley put in front of her house (once Shirley found out about the whole deal with Cameron, she was eager to offer her ideas and assistance).

When it finally hit nine o’clock, Peter shut his computer down, went to the kitchen to down his evening vitamins, and walked downstairs to the seventh floor. He stuck his head out of the elevator to make sure no one was around and stepped out into the hallway. As he walked toward Cameron’s cube, he wished he had asked Gina to get the picture. They couldn’t fire her. Wishing he thought of asking her earlier, he stepped into Cameron’s area and hit the jackpot. She had several photographs thumbtacked to the cube wall and a couple in frames on her desk. There were so many pictures, Peter surmised that he could probably take one of them off the wall and it would be days before Cameron even noticed. Then he remembered that it was Cameron Hartman he was thinking about, and her obsessively organized ass probably took inventory of them every day.

He disregarded the ones in frames on her desk and started reviewing the ones up on the wall. There were at least a dozen. Most of them were of her and what appeared to be her friends from college. In several of the pictures the women were wearing sweatshirts with Greek letters on them.

Gee, who would’ve guessed the little princess was in a sorority, Peter thought as he pulled down a picture of Cameron with one of her friends. The picture was a pretty close shot, so the image of Cameron was quite large and vivid. He figured that particular picture would give Annie the most to work with. As he replaced the thumbtack, he heard someone clearing her throat behind him. It was Plant Lady.

“Plan . . . Doris,” Peter said, startled but trying to act relaxed and casual. “What’s up?”

“You, stealing pictures apparently.”

“What? Stealing? Don’t be silly,” Peter replied, trying to think quickly on his feet. “I’m just borrowing one. Cameron and I are good friends, and I need a picture to make her a birthday present.”

“A birthday present for Cameron? You and Cameron aren’t friends. Cameron doesn’t have any friends here.”

“Of course she does.”

“Peter, what are you up to? A birthday present? Is that the best you could come up with? No one likes the perky little bitch, so don’t try to convince me that you do.”

Peter had never heard Doris use the word “bitch” or anything half as harsh. “Honestly, Doris . . .”

“Whatever, Peter. I’ll just have to ask Cameron about your
friendship
with her myself.”

“No. No. This is supposed to be a surprise,” Peter pleaded, starting to sound desperate.

“So I guess you’re going to surprise her with this sudden friendship,” Doris said, laughing at Peter. “Peter, I was only hoping to get in on the action with you.”

“What action? Why?”

“A few months ago she reported me for spending a few minutes online in my horticulture chat room. Okay, it was more like hours, but one of my peace lilies was dying, and I needed advice.”

“So she got you too?”

“She’s in the doghouse with most of us around here. I’m not sure how she shows her face every day. I’ve worked for this company for eight and a half years and never had any problems, and now, thanks to her, my record is jaded. Mark said he didn’t even want to write me up, but Cameron wouldn’t hear of it.”

Figuring that making Plant Lady an accomplice might be the best way to keep her quiet, Peter told her about Gina’s idea. She was amused and offered Peter a picture she had of Cameron from an office luncheon, so he wouldn’t have to worry about returning the one he took from Cameron’s cube. After Plant Lady retrieved the picture from her desk, she wished Peter luck, and they walked out of the building together.

Testing Day

G
ina was a basket of nerves as she swung open the door to the Women’s Reproductive Health Center. There was a receptionist standing in the lobby who immediately asked if she was there for testing. Gina nodded, and she directed her into the next room. Gina was about ten minutes early, but the room was already more than half full. She was a little taken aback by being sent into a room full of people. The nurse she had seen earlier said that the HIV testing would be anonymous. She assumed she’d meet one-on-one with a counselor or something, get her blood drawn, and that would be the end of it. Getting tested with thirty or forty other people hardly met her criteria for anonymous.

Gina sat in the very back of the room and took in the scene. As her eyes roamed the room, for a split second she thought she might be in the wrong place. She hadn’t expected to see such a variety of women. The crowd ranged from professional women in business suits to college kids in fraternity sweatshirts. Somehow the diversity in the room was comforting to Gina. It made her feel less alone.

Gina continued to eye the new arrivals, wondering what their stories were. How did they all end up there? They all knew how not to get HIV, and everyone seemed to be reasonably intelligent. One would think that once people knew how to avoid a devastating disease like AIDS, no one would get it anymore. Yeah, right—the way people knew how to avoid getting pregnant, yet countless unwanted pregnancies happened every day.

Gina grabbed the form that had been lying in her chair when she walked in and gave it a quick read. It was an anonymous questionnaire asking for things like sex, age, race, etc. Then it got into more detailed questions about her sexual history and practices. It was odd to see her sexual history on paper, right in front of her in black and white. She was curious to see what the others put on the form and how her history compared with theirs.

As Gina completed the form, the room continued to fill up, and one of the few remaining seats open was next to her. Just as she was finishing up the form, a young black woman hurriedly slid into the seat next to her. Gina lifted her head from the paperwork to check out the latest arrival.

“Gina . . . hi,” the young woman said nervously to Gina.

“Cheryl . . . hey,” Gina replied, uttering the first words she had spoken to Cheryl in years.

“How are you?” Cheryl asked Gina, wondering if she should be saying anything at all.

“I’m okay, I guess. I’ll be better once I’m done with this,” Gina replied. She wasn’t sure what was making her be civil to Cheryl. If she had run into her anywhere else, she would have just ignored her, but somehow it was nice to be able to commiserate with someone.

“Have you been through this before?” Cheryl asked.

“No. It’s a first for me. You?”

“I got tested at my doctor’s office a couple of years ago. This is the first time I’ve been here.”

While Cheryl and Gina were talking, a young woman stepped to the front of the room and introduced herself and a few other clinic volunteers as testing counselors. She welcomed the group and explained the testing procedure. First the participants would listen to a lecture and slide show about HIV, and then they would start the actual testing. Gina was surprised by the graphic sexual references made during the presentation. If the language used in the presentation surprised her, the props were downright astonishing. The young woman leading the presentation slipped condoms onto dildos and even had a plastic vagina to demonstrate safe sex practices.

Gina had geared herself up to be stuck with a needle for a blood test; however, during the presentation the counselor mentioned that they would be tested orally. When the presentation was finished, the volunteers began handing out little plastic packets to everyone in the room. Gina and Cheryl examined them and waited eagerly to rip them open. The counselor told them to go ahead and open the packets and remove the cotton swab. She then instructed them to put the swabs in their mouth, between the lower cheek and gum line. They had to keep the swab in for a minute or two. Everyone in the room looked a little ridiculous. It looked like a room full of overgrown children awkwardly sucking on lollipops. Gina and Cheryl looked at each other with little swabs of cotton sticking out of their mouths. Unable to say anything, they just slightly smiled at each other, further breaking the tension between them.