My Life After Now (11 page)

“So, I guess I’ll see you tomorrow then,” I said.

“Awesome! See you tomorrow!”

“Fill these out,” the lady behind the desk said, handing me a clipboard with about twenty double-sided pages attached to it.

My dads and I divided the forms up—they took the insurance and past medical history ones and I was left with the ones that only I could answer, like the social behaviors checklist and the description of present condition. I took the clipboard over to a far corner of the waiting room so I could write my answers down without worrying about anyone reading over my shoulder.

When all the forms were completed, the copay had been paid, and the formalities were over, the wait began. There sure were a lot of people here for a Saturday morning on a holiday weekend. I didn’t know whether to take that as a good sign or not—on one hand, it seemed this doctor was in high demand. On the other, a lot of the patients were in really bad shape. They were run-down and tired-looking, some were coughing, some were incredibly thin. Many looked utterly miserable. If this doctor was so great, why did his patients look so sick?

This was all getting way too real.

And still the wait continued. As patients were called into exam rooms, more patients came to sign in. The flow was endless. I focused on breathing and tried to ignore the queasiness in my stomach.
I’m not sick like these people,
I tried to comfort myself.
It’s just nerves.

My dads and I didn’t talk much. Like magnets, our gazes kept drifting over to the muted television hanging from the ceiling, but it was nothing more than an automatic reaction to the presence of the flickering screen. I don’t think any of us were really in the mood to learn about all the terrible things that were going on in the world from the CNN ticker.

Over an hour after we checked in, my name was called. My dads got up to follow me in the room, but the nurse stopped them.

“Patients only beyond this point, please.”

I gave them the most reassuring smile I could, letting them know I’d be fine, even though I wasn’t sure if I really would, and followed the nurse into the room. She took my blood pressure, pulse, and temperature, and then handed me a faded cotton gown. “Put this on, open to the back. You can leave your underwear on, but take off everything else, including your bra.” She dropped my chart in the little plastic holder stuck to the outside of the door, and closed the door behind her.

I was all alone.

I surveyed the tiny exam room. It looked like any other doctor’s office I’d ever been in. But though it was familiar, I was anything but comfortable. Shivering, I stripped down and hurriedly put the gown on, fumbling with the ties. I left my socks on. I was freezing.

I sat up on the bed, the thin paper rumpling beneath me, and covered my legs with my hoodie.

Fifteen minutes later, there was a brief knock at the door and before I could even say, “Come in,” the knob turned and the doctor entered the room.

“And you are…Lucy Moore,” he said, not looking up from the chart.

“Yes,” I said.

He went over to the sink and washed his hands with lots of soap. “I’m Dr. Jackson.” He sat down and took his time reading through all my forms. I felt entirely invisible and uncomfortably obvious all at the same time, sitting there in practically nothing in front of this stranger who was ignoring me.

Finally, he looked up. As soon as he laid eyes on my face, he frowned and flipped back through his notes, looking for something. “How old are you?”

“Seventeen,” I replied.

He sighed and shook his head in clear disapproval. I’d thought doctors were supposed to be nonjudgmental.

“And how do you know you’re HIV-positive, Lucy?” Dr. Jackson asked. Suddenly, his voice had taken on an entirely different tone, doing a complete one-eighty from the all-business, detached manner from when he’d first entered the room to sugary-sweet condescension.

“I was tested,” I said, goose bumps erupting all over my skin, and not because of the cold.

“By whom?”

“Harlem Free Health Services.”

“Where is your copy of your test results?”

“I don’t have it. I got my results over the phone.”

A corner of his mouth turned up in amusement. “Of course you did,” he said.

What the hell was this guy’s problem? He was treating me like I was a five-year-old playing dress-up.

“What grade are you in at school, Lucy?”

“Eleventh. Why?”

“Have you had sex education classes at your school?”

“Um, yeah…”

“So they’ve taught you all about the importance of safe sex?”

“I guess…”

“I see here that you believe you contracted HIV from engaging in unprotected sexual intercourse,” he said, gesturing to the file. “That was very irresponsible behavior, Lucy.”

Was he for real? He was actually
reprimanding
me?

Listen,
I wanted to say.
I
don’t need your judgment, okay? I have enough to deal with without you contributing. So can we just get on with this so I can get out of here?

But I couldn’t form the words. Dr. Jackson viewed me as a child, and somehow, under his contemptuous gaze, I had regressed to one. I was frightened and shy, and it was all I could do to answer his questions and count the seconds until the end of the visit.

Dr. Jackson waited for me to respond, but when I didn’t he just shrugged, as if he decided I wasn’t worth his little lecture. He had a whole office full of people to treat; I was just another number to him.

He stuck his head out the door and called for the nurse to join us. I felt incrementally better that I didn’t have to be alone in the room with him while he was doing the physical, but I hated every second of that exam nonetheless.

He poked and prodded me all over, not even bothering to apologize for his cold hands or icy stethoscope. He had no grace whatsoever as he jammed the little light into my ears, felt for swollen glands in my neck, and pressed under my ribs to check the size of my liver and spleen.

And it got even worse, when he did the breast exam and felt for lymph nodes in my pelvic area. I did not want this man touching me in those places. It wasn’t that he was being inappropriate; it was more that he obviously didn’t view me as a person—let alone a scared person with actual feelings. He saw me as just another scientific specimen, there for his own experimenting. I squeezed my eyes shut, cringing the entire time.

“You can get dressed now,” I heard him say. I opened my eyes to find the nurse exiting the room and Dr. Jackson back at his stool, scribbling away.

I hesitated. Wasn’t he going to leave so I could dress in privacy?

Apparently not.

So I put my clothes on as quickly and discreetly as I could, facing away from him and keeping the gown on until my clothes were safely back on my body.

“All right, I’m going to send you down to the lab,” Dr. Jackson said. “They will draw blood and run the CBC, T-cell subset, and RNA viral load tests. I’ll need to see you back here in one week. You can make the appointment on your way out.” He crossed to the door. “Any questions?”

Um, yes. What’s a CBC, T-cell subset, and RNA viral load test? What did you find when you examined me? Why are you such a dick?

“No, no questions,” I said.

• • •

My dads were right where I had left them. They jumped out of their seats as soon as they saw me. But I didn’t go over to them.

As my physical proximity to Dr. Jackson distanced, the more my courage and anger returned. I marched straight over to the front desk, jaw clenched. My dads followed wordlessly, sensing something was up.

The lady looked up. “The doctor would like to see you back here in one week. How does next Saturday at eleven a.m. sound?”

“Horrible,” I said.

Papa put a hand on my shoulder. “Lucy, I know this is hard for you—”

I spun around and glared at him. “You don’t know what it was like in there. I’m never going back to that doctor again.” I didn’t bother to whisper; the whole waiting room was watching and listening. This must have been far more interesting than whatever was on CNN right now. I turned back to the lady behind the desk. “Do you have any other doctors here?”

She swallowed. “Yes, we have one other physician specializing in…your particular department.” She whispered that last part, though I didn’t really see the point. It was clear from Dr. Jackson’s air of absolute boredom that people came here for one reason only.

“Who is that?” I asked.

“Dr. Vandoren.”

“Yes, I’d like an appointment with him, please,” I stated firmly.

“Her,” the lady corrected.

“Even better,” I said.

Before I could leave that god-awful medical building, I had to get my blood drawn. I watched in a trance as it was siphoned from the tiny vein in my arm, through the clear tube, into the vials. The technician repeated the process again and again, collecting eight vials in all.

When he was finally done, I moved to stand up. But the whole room went dark and spun around me like a tornado, and the next thing I knew, I was on the floor, vaguely aware of cold hands on my forehead, my eyes working to focus on the face hovering over me.

“Oh, wonderful,” I said as I attempted to push myself up to sitting. “I passed out, didn’t I?”

Dad nodded. “Are you okay?”

“Who even knows anymore?” I grumbled.

As the background became clearer, I realized that Papa was arguing with someone. His voice was raised, and he was gesturing wildly.

“What’s going on?” I asked Dad.

“Seth is…expressing his dissatisfaction with the amount of blood they took from you.”

Oh yeah, now I heard it.

“She’s all of a hundred pounds!” he was shouting. “What makes you think that it’s okay to take that much blood out of her?! Of
course
she’s going to pass out. What kind of operation are you people running here, anyway? Don’t you know how to do your jobs? I’ll have you know that I am an attorney, and if there is even one bump on that child’s head resulting from your negligence, I’ll sue you so fast you won’t even know what hit you!”

The technician’s face was flushed, and he was pointing an unsteady finger toward a computer screen. “Sir, please, look. The doctor ordered eight vials. I don’t make the decisions.”

“Papa,” I called out. “Calm down, I’m fine.” I slowly stood up to prove it.

Papa exhaled when he saw me supporting myself on my own two feet, and I saw the fight leave his body. He took my hand and led us toward the elevators. “Let’s get out of here,” he said.

“Best idea you’ve had all day,” I agreed.

It was two-thirty in the afternoon when we finally felt the sunshine on our faces again. We’d been in that building for over four hours.

“Why don’t we go get some lunch and you can tell us what exactly happened in there,” Dad said.

“I can’t,” I said. “I have to go to that audition.”

“Lucy, please, it’s been a long day, and you know how much pressure you put on yourself at auditions. Is that really what you need right now?” Papa said.

“Yes, Papa, that’s exactly what I need right now.” He didn’t understand that performing, in any capacity, was far more therapeutic than any lame group meeting could ever be.

My dads exchanged a glance.

“Well…if you’re
sure
…” Dad said.

“I am sure.” I gave them each a big hug. “You guys go home. I promise I’ll tell you everything later.”

Five minutes later, I was on the subway, zooming downtown. The car was packed, and I had to stand near the doors. Surrounding me on three sides was a high school tourist group, all wide eyes and eager smiles, wearing matching bright orange sweatshirts that read, “I marched in the Thanksgiving Day Parade!” A guy weaved through the crowd selling self-published copies of his book of poetry. A mariachi band serenaded us all with their version of “La Cucaracha.” I closed my eyes and absorbed the organized chaos of it all, letting the sounds fill up my head, so that soon there was no room left for any lingering doctor’s office jitters.

I found the address Roxie had texted me easily enough.

There was only an hour left of auditions but the line was still out the door. I’d been to a few auditions in the city before, and they were always like this. Hundreds of similar-looking, similarly-dressed, non-union girls neatly lined up, shooting each other dirty looks while their own heads were filled to the brim with delusions of grandeur. I knew better. I wasn’t going to get this job, just like I hadn’t gotten any of the other professional roles I’d tried for in the past. It had nothing to do with talent—the competition was high and the odds were slim. The sight of so many hopeful faces was a reminder that this was a city filled with dreamers, most of whom would simply never see their dream realized.

It would have been discouraging if I was actually thinking about the job. But for the first time in my life, I wasn’t focused on the end goal. All I cared about was this exact moment in time and standing in front of those casting directors, becoming a character, and leaving my own body—and everything it meant to be me—behind.

I squeezed through the crowd and made my way to the front of the line, where Roxie was sitting behind a folding table, piling up headshots and resumes and handing out numbers.

“Hey,” I said.

Her face lit up. “Oh my god, yay! You made it!”

“Yeah. So, um, should I sign in or something?”

“No, that list is only for people with appointments. But don’t worry, I’ll get you in. Can you hang out for a while?” she asked.

“Sure.”
It’s not like I have any other friends to hang out with
, I thought.

“Great, just go have a seat and I’ll come and get you when there’s an opening.”

As I maneuvered back through the crowd in search of a place to sit down, something occurred to me. My exact thought had been that I didn’t have any
other
friends to hang out with. So that must have meant that somewhere, deep in my subconscious maybe, I considered Roxie to be a friend. When had that happened? I barely even knew the girl.

I found an empty patch of carpet and sat there, on the floor, for an hour. Occasionally I caught a few looks from the other girls as they eyed my outfit. I was the only one in jeans, and I barely had any makeup on. Whatever. Let them stare.

At four o’clock exactly, Roxie stood up on her chair and loudly addressed the remaining girls. “The casting team is not going to be able to see anyone else today. Sorry for any inconvenience and thanks for coming!”

An uproar of groans and complaints emerged from the crowd, and I had to stop myself from joining in. What had I waited for, then? I knew I didn’t have an appointment, so I didn’t have much of a right to be annoyed, but still. Roxie shouldn’t have told me she could get me in if she actually couldn’t.

I went back up to the sign-in table. “Well, thanks anyway,” I said. “I guess I’ll see you next week.”

“Wait, where are you going?” she asked.

“Um, home?”

“No, silly. I told them I had a friend coming. They’re expecting you.”

“Oh. Really?”

“Yes!” she said. At that moment the door opened and a girl came out. “You’re up!” Roxie said to me.

The room was empty, except for the two men and a woman sitting behind a desk, and a camcorder set up on a tripod. I was immediately thrust into audition mode.

“Hi,” I said, a smile on my face for the first time all day. “I’m Lucy Moore.” I approached the desk and forked over my headshot.

“Hello, Lucy,” one of the men said, handing me a sheet of paper. “Please stand on the mark and, when you’re ready, read these sides directly into the camera.”

I quickly skimmed the lines. It was some boring copy about NYU being an exciting place to learn. But there was nothing exciting about the words at all. In a flash, I realized that I hadn’t actually known anything about this audition. I should have asked Roxie for specifics. But I understood now that they weren’t looking for an actor, they were looking for a spokesperson. A pretty face to entice people to invest four years of their lives and hundreds of thousands of dollars into an overrated education.

The smile fled from my face. I didn’t want to read this. I didn’t even want this job. I just wanted to get to
perform
for three lousy minutes. Was that too much to ask?

I don’t remember making the decision to do it, but before I knew what I was doing, I’d tossed the paper to the floor, cleared my mind, and begun doing April’s butterfly monologue from
Company
.

There may have been some murmurs of protest from the casting people, but I shut them out and continued with the little story about the cocoon and the butterfly and the cat and the boyfriend, embodying this character whose biggest problem in life is that she’s a little dumb. Maybe I was losing my mind; maybe all the pressure and distress from the last two months had finally made me snap. I didn’t care.

When I was finished, I refocused my attention back on the befuddled casting team.

“Well…that was…” the woman began.

Best to cut her off now, while I was still riding high. “Thank you all so much for your time,” I said, and escaped from the room.

Roxie had finished packing up and was waiting for me with an eager grin. “How’d it go?”

I let out a chuckle. “Let’s just say that I think they’ll remember me.”

“Awesome!”

I hitched my bag further up onto my shoulder. “So…thanks for this. It was really nice of you.”

“No problem. We have to stick together, right?” She gave me a meaningful look.

“Oh, um, yeah, I guess.”

“Wanna go grab some coffee? I don’t have to be home until six.”

I looked at this girl who seemed to have her life so perfectly together, who seemed so happy all the time, and I suddenly needed to know how she did it. “Okay, sure,” I said.

We found a table at a little hole-in-the-wall coffee shop around the corner, and I bought us two large coffees—mine black, Roxie’s filled with cream and sugar.

“I’m so glad this all worked out,” she said. “I usually don’t work on Saturdays but I needed the extra money.”

The audition buzz was fading now, and I was starting to feel bad about what I’d done. “I kind of went off the rails in there,” I confessed. “I’m so sorry—I know they only saw me as a favor to you. I hope it doesn’t affect your job or anything.”

“Nah, don’t worry about it. I don’t even work with those people. They work for the casting agency that NYU hired. I’d never even met any of them before today.”

I smiled. That made me feel a lot better.

“So what did you do?” Roxie asked, a curious glint in her eye.

“I decided I’d rather do a monologue than read their dumb copy. It was actually really out-of-character for me, but after the day I’ve had…”

“Oh yeah, you had a doctor appointment today, right? How did it go?”

I grimaced and told her what had happened.

“Ugh! I know exactly what that’s like! Some of these doctors are so arrogant, like they think that just because they’re super smart they get to treat us like garbage. I’ve been to more of them than I can count. There was this one guy, when I was ten—”

“Wait,” I cut her off. “
Ten?
How long have you had…?” It was probably too personal of a question, but I couldn’t help myself.

Roxie just looked back at me, unaffected. “Since I was born.”

My mouth fell open.

“My mother had it and passed it on to me,” she explained.

“How old are you?”

“Nineteen.”

Whoa. Nineteen years with this virus in her system. “And you’re…okay?”

She shrugged. “For now. I’m on the wonder pill, and, for the most part, it’s keeping the bad stuff at bay.”

“For the most part?”

“I was in the hospital last year for a few weeks. Nasty bout of pneumonia.”

“Do you have AIDS?” I whispered.

“Nope.” She crossed her fingers. “As far as they can figure, I have at least a few more years before getting a visit from the Big Bad.” She laughed.

I really didn’t see what was so funny. “How can you be so cavalier about it all? Aren’t you scared?”

“Of course. But I’ve had forever to get used to the idea. I’m not going to let it stop me from living my life.”

I thought about that for a minute. “How’s your mom doing?”

“Not so good. She died,” Roxie said.

“Oh god, I’m so sorry.”

“It’s okay, it was a long time ago.” She took a sip of her coffee. “It’s just been my brother and me for a while now.”

I felt a heart-wrenching pang. “Your brother has it too?”

She smiled and shook her head.

“But…how?”

“By the time my mom was pregnant with him, she was more educated about the whole thing. Once you’re on meds, it’s a lot harder to pass it on to your baby.”

“Oh,” was all I could say. It was beginning to dawn on me that I still had a lot to learn.

Roxie told me about growing up in foster care and being shuffled around from home to home and having to constantly fight to not be separated from her brother. The day she turned eighteen she’d filed for custody and had been working to support the two of them ever since. She’d spent most of her life in overcrowded free clinics and getting her medical care from not-for-profit organizations. It made me appreciate my own family so much more.

“Alex is the reason I work so hard at keeping myself healthy,” she explained. “I don’t really have the luxury of moping around feeling sorry for myself. He’s only eleven—if I kick the bucket, he goes right back into the system.” She paused to take a sip of coffee. “So what’s
your
story?” Roxie asked.

“Me?”

“Yeah.”

Crap. I
had
to tell her now, after she’d been so honest with me. So, staring into my coffee mug, I told her everything. It was easier than telling Evan and my dads—at least Roxie already knew that I had HIV.

“You’ve only been positive for a
month
?” Roxie said when I was finished.

“Yeah. And my dads have only known for a week.”

“Oh, Lucy. How are you doing?”

“I don’t know. I’m a little all over the place,” I admitted.

“Well, listen, you
have
to keep coming to the meetings. Trust me, they help. I started going to them in middle school. It was nice to have a place to go where there were other people like me, you know?”

“I guess.”

“Plus, I like having you there. We don’t get a lot of people our age.” She shrugged. “I don’t really know why.”

“Probably because most people our age aren’t stupid enough to do what I did,” I said bitterly.

“Lucy, come on. You’re not stupid, you just made a mistake. It happens.”

I crossed my arms and slumped down in my chair. “Some mistake.”

“Well, what would
you
call it?”

“Off the top of my head? How about ‘perfectly karmic punishment for the most ungrateful, spoiled brat the world has ever seen’?”

“Punishment?”

“Yes. Punishment.”

“So what, you’re just going to keep blaming yourself?”

“Who else do I have to blame?”

She pursed her lips. “You know, being stuck in this mindset is seriously not helping your—”
Brriiiiiinnnnggg
. Roxie’s phone. “Sorry, I have to get this,” she said, and flipped the phone open. “Hey, buddy…Yup, I’m on my way home right now. Tell Mrs. Wu I’ll be home soon…love you too…okay, bye.” She hung up and turned her attention back to me. “I have to go. I didn’t realize how late it was. My brother stays with our neighbor when I’m at work, but she gets cranky when he’s there all day.”

“No problem,” I said. I wasn’t in the mood to talk anymore, anyway.

“See you Tuesday, right?” she asked.

I exhaled. “Yeah, see you Tuesday.”

Roxie gathered up her stuff, took one last swig of her coffee, and dashed out the door.

It was dark out now, and I should have started making my way home too. But I couldn’t stop thinking about my “mistake.” My own words echoed in my head:
Who
else
do
I
have
to
blame?

I would go home soon.

But there was something I had to do first.