Broken (14 page)

"Does Spiderman save princesses?" he yelled.

"He could if he wanted to." I yelled back
and walked towards the freezer.

Sarah shook her head with a tsk-sound. "Just
before dinner ..." she mumbled as I pulled out the chocolate ice cream.

"Told you she was evil," I whispered to
William with a wink and poured us a couple of scoops in a bowl that we shared.
I watched her cook as we ate in silence. Once William was in bed I was going to
tell her about Heather and the next day I had to tell Heather's parents as
well. Telling her parents that their daughter had a deadly illness was going to
be the most difficult conversation of my life and I was petrified. But that
wasn't until the morning. This night - after the transformation had come over
me - I would roam the swamps with
Aiyana
by my side.
This night I would forget about everything and even if it was only for a few
hours, I desperately longed for it.

Chapter 17

A week
or so
later I was called back into Dr. Harris' office
once again. My test results were in and he wanted to discuss them with me. I
immediately left my office and cancelled several patients to go see him. Julie
had gotten pretty used to having to cancel appointments lately so she hardly
blinked.

A lot went through my mind driving through the old
town of St. Augustine that I had come to love so dearly. But mostly I was
afraid for William. I was terrified that I was also infected with the HIV
virus, scared that was the reason why the doctor called me in to his office
instead of telling me the result over the phone. I was anxious at the prospect
that William might be an orphan within a few years.
 
We needed good news. I was already on
the verge of a breakdown. The last week had been tough on me. Heather's parents
hadn't taken it well when I told them about her illness. At first her mother
refused to believe it and implied I was lying to them before the reality
finally sunk in. Dr. Kirk didn’t utter a word but his eyes said it all. While
Mrs. Kirk mentioned possible treatments and hospitals and how they would be
there with anything we needed and they would pay the best doctor in the country
to take care of her, Dr. Kirk stared with empty eyes until he finally got up
from his chair with much trouble and left us leaning heavily on his cane as he
walked. It was hard to watch this once strong and fierce man, walking away
completely broken.

"Where is she now?" Mrs. Kirk asked as soon
as he was gone. I stared in his direction long after he had left their living
room. Three cups of coffee on the table in front of us remained untouched.

"Is she taking her medicine? I know they have
better medicine now. She needs to have that," Mrs. Kirk continued with
anxious eyes.

"She won't even come out of the bedroom or let
anyone come in," I answered with a thick voice. The desperation and pain
in my in-laws' eyes was excruciating.

Mrs. Kirk inhaled deeply. "Is she drinking
again?" she asked with a low voice as if she didn't want her husband to
hear it, or maybe she didn't want to say it out loud since it made it all so
real.

"She never stopped," I said. "It’s like
she has given up on everything. She doesn't want to see anyone let alone talk
to anyone. Not even William."

"But she has to fight this," Mrs. Kirk said.
"We have to fight this. All of us together." Her voice was panicky.

"I know. I keep telling her that. But she says
she feels like she is already dead. Like she has been dead for years. I’m
afraid that she'll drink herself to death."

After that Mrs. Kirk fell silent and after a few
minutes more I came up with a poor excuse to leave in a hurry and then
practically ran out of their house. I cried like a baby in the car and after
that had a hard time looking into the eyes of my mother-in law again. Every day
she came to the house and knocked on our bedroom door but had the same result.
Her daughter telling her mother to leave her alone, she never wanted to see her
again.

"She'll come out eventually," I told Mrs.
Kirk while thinking it wouldn't happen until she ran out of liquor to drink. I
knew it was going to take a while. Sarah brought her food and on the first
night after the doctor's visit while I was hunting in the swamps Heather
sneaked down and emptied the entire bar. I had noticed it was all gone the next
morning and suspected that she had brought it all to our bedroom where she
intended to stay drunk. I knew there was nothing much I could do and I figured
that she probably needed this time of grieving or denial, so I left her alone
and kept William busy hoping he wouldn't miss her too much.

"It appears that you
have not received HIV from your wife," Dr. Harris said as I sat down on a
chair in front of his desk. "The lab didn't find HIV in your blood."

I exhaled deeply and leaned back in the chair with a
relieved moan. I had been so scared driving to his office since I knew that
normally doctors only called you in if the test was positive.

"So why did you call me in?" I asked.

The doctor flipped a couple of pages in my file and
pulled out a piece of paper. He put it on the table in front of me to look at.

"It's your blood work," he said and took off
his glasses. "I don't know if they have screwed it up at the lab or what
but according to this your numbers are very remarkable and something we need to
take a closer look at. If I should believe these numbers you should be very,
very sick. Look at the blood count."

I stared at the paper and found the number. Then I
looked back at him with surprise.

"Unbelievable, right?" he said.
"According to this you have hardly any leukocytes, hardly any white blood
cells left. Normally that would be a strong indicator that you actually have
HIV but according to the test you don't. So now we have to run more tests to
see if something else could be wrong with you."

"Like cancer?" I asked.

"Well let's not get ahead of ourselves here. It
could be anything causing it. Like Hodgkin's lymphoma, tuberculosis, cancer.
You name it."

"A low white cell count may also be due to a
recent infection such as a cold or influenza," I replied. "I think I
had something like that recently. Maybe it’s just that?"

Dr. Harris looked at me and leaned over his desk.
"Chris. The flu or the cold can cause a low count of white blood cells,
but yours aren't low. They're practically gone. I can't say I have ever seen a
number this low in a living person. Not even one sick with AIDS. You have no
immune system. You should be getting infections from everything and everywhere.
You are the one who should have PCP. It’s a miracle that Heather didn't pass it
on to you yet. I mean look at that number! It's less than ten! It should be
around 7,000 per micro liter blood. Less than one hundred is life-threatening.
Less than ten, well I have never even heard about that. It's ... It's
impossible. You sitting here not even feeling tired is impossible."

I stared at the piece of paper with all the numbers
and then at my doctor. I knew I wasn't sick but how was I going to explain that
to him? He was a man of science and if numbers were wrong then you were sick.
Even if you didn't look like it or feel it.
 

"Do you feel sick at all?" he asked. "I
mean you look better than ever. You look healthy. You even look much younger
than your age. Do you have any symptoms? Have you lost weight? It doesn't look
like it. Do you have skin rashes? Anything?"

"I have trouble sleeping at night, I feel
restless and I do have nightly sweats. But other than that I feel strong and
healthy. I am never tired even though I don't sleep much."

Dr. Harris leaned back in his chair and ran his hand
through his hair. "I don't know what to say to you. I’ll have my nurse
take some more samples and run more tests. Maybe they made a mistake; maybe
they wrote the wrong number, I don't know. But I'll have you checked for
everything I can think of. Okay?"

I nodded reluctantly. I knew my body had changed
drastically and the fact that my blood was also different now didn't surprise
me. I just wasn't sure that I wanted anyone else to find out. But I decided I
did want to examine it a little closer myself so after my visit at the doctor's
I went to see an old friend of mine, Jamie Allen, who work at a blood testing
lab close to downtown. I had known her in med-school just before she dropped
out because her mother became sick and her parents could no longer afford to
pay for her school. It had been hard to see her give up on her dream especially
since she had been the best in our class.

"Fancy seeing you here," she said as I
opened the door to her lab. "It's been a while."

"It sure has. Almost ten years."

"What can I do for you?"

I closed the door to the lab and walked closer to her.
"I need you to do me a favor," I said with a low voice. "I want
you to analyze my blood. But I also want the results to stay between you and
me. It’s urgent. It can't be in any journal or files or be seen anywhere.”

She scrutinized me before giving an answer.
"Okay," she said.

"Okay? Just like that?"

"Yeah. But only because you didn't come here
waving your money around and offering to bribe me. I appreciate that. I will
make you pay for my hours, though."

"Of course."

She smiled. She was still as pretty as she had been
ten years ago. She still had a sparkle in her brown eyes and I liked her
natural looks a lot better than the fake women I was surrounded by in our
social circles. Why people, especially women, were desperate to stay young
forever was a huge mystery to me. But that was probably easy to say since I had
hardly aged since I was in my mid-twenties.

 
"I
normally wouldn't say yes to such a request from you rich spoiled kind, but
lucky for you I know you’re not like that. You're different. You were the only
one who was sincerely sad to see me go back then. I remember you told me that med
school wasn't everything. That becoming a doctor wasn't all it was cracked up
to be." Jamie laughed. "It was really sweet."

I shrugged. "I meant every word of it. Still
do." I picked up a picture frame next to her. Jamie and three beautiful
daughters looked back at me. So was a rather handsome man holding them all in
his arms. "Your family?" I asked.

"Sure. My pride."

"You're lucky," I said. "I hope you're
as happy as you look." I put the picture back on the table.

"We are," she said. "Struggling financially
right now since Tim lost his job, but love will carry us through, right?"

"That's what I've heard," I said with heavy
heart. "That's what I've heard."

She looked at me examining for a few seconds like she
was trying to figure me out. Then she asked me to sit down in a chair.

"I will just take a few samples of your blood and
then I will start analyzing it. Anything specific you want me to look
for?"

"I had it tested recently and the results showed
that I had barely any white blood cells left."

"But that would make you very sick. You don't
look ... You look great. I mean of course you could have ... It hardly shows it
if you ..."

"I don't think I have cancer. I just think that
something is happening to me that science might not be able to explain or maybe
I partly hope it will and partly hope it won't. I'm babbling, I know. I just
need you to take a closer look at my blood and tell me what you think."

"Sure. No problem. I'll take a look at it and let
you know when I’m done."

Chapter 18

I was
devastated and
ferocious as I ran towards the swamps
that night. I was looking for a good hunt. I preferred prey that fought for its
life. I had a fierce anger growing inside of me and I needed to get some of it
out. I had spotted a pack of six coyotes the night before on my way back. They
were hunting in the drier areas of the Twelve Mile Swamps for wild rabbits and
mice. I was determined to find them and hunt them down.

I met with
Aiyana
at our
usual spot and signaled that I wanted her to follow me. She did so a little
reluctantly since she hardly ever hunted outside of a few familiar areas. But I
was tired of the same deer and fish-hunting. I needed some fresh meat. I wanted
to catch a prey that wouldn't go down easily. We ran through the trails of the
swamps for half an hour before we reached the open marshland where I had
spotted the coyotes the night before. Soundlessly we stepped out from the thick
vegetation and into the open areas where only high grass covered our bodies in
the moonlit night. Then we heard the first howl. The howl was like one high
note. The stench of urine was everywhere. They had marked their territory.