August 29, 2013 at 8 PM, Montreal, Quebec: Rob

Jake: Hey Rob, we need to talk.

My lack of movement freaks Toby out and I stash my phone back in my pocket and hoist him up, scratching behind his ears to try to get him to stop thrashing to get down. I sit back down in the computer chair and unzip my hoodie to try to coax him inside. He pouts up at me and settles down, his head resting against my chest after his feet are satisfied that he won't fall to his doom. For the umpteenth time today, I wonder how big he's going to get; he has tripled in size already and I don't know how much longer this trick is going to work. His eyes blink up at me when I reach down to grab my phone out of the front pocket of the hoodie, but he doesn't flip out or try to persuade me to let him go. To think that a month ago I was Googling if I could cut down my tranquilizers to give to him.

Me: What's going on? Can you talk?

Within seconds, my phone is silently rumbling with his overly photogenic Facebook picture lighting up the screen.

'Why do I feel like I failed at something? This wasn't meant to be permanent, right?' I press the green button to accept my fate.

"Hello?" I can hear the echoes of people talking around him, wherever he is. Did something horrible happen in B.C.? Was there a bombing or something? I want to check the news, but I can't use two hands with the new and improved fluff ball crammed down my shirt or he'll fall.

"Hey, Rob? Do you have a few minutes? We really need to talk."

"Uh... sure? To be honest, you're kind of freaking me out here."

"I know, I'm sorry, it's just... I'm sorry. I can't believe I'm even having this conversation. I'm so sorry. You really don't know how sorry I am," he says, his voice getting faster and his words more indistinguishable with every syllable. Less than thirty seconds into the call, he breaks into sniffles in public. I've never seen him lose his composure before and this really isn't like him. He's scaring the living hell out of me now.

"Hey, it's going to be okay, I promise. Are you okay? Are you safe?"

'Are you trying to talk him down from a ledge? You, of all people? What right do you have to try to change someone else's mind? You tried to slice your own fucking throat open in front of Mitch.' I take a breath and hope Jake does the same; I don't think I can understand him like this. The screensaver starts on my computer and I suddenly realize who and where I am, and I really don't need an audience for this meltdown. I unplug the boom mic and my webcam and put my computer on stand-by, recordings be damned. The world will keep turning if I miss a day of videos.

"Jake? Bro, are you okay? You need to answer me." There's a moment of complete silence before I hear him sniffle and I realize he must have been walking away from where all of the people were.

"That's the whole problem - I don't know. I fucked up so bad, but how was I supposed to know? Oh, god, I'm so sorry."

"Stop being sorry for a second and tell me why you're sorry. You need to calm down."

"Easy for you to say when you aren't responsible for all of this shit!" I wait for him to collect himself and I can hear echoed footsteps around him and a loud click. I hear him sigh and the water running in a sink, and I realize that he must have locked himself in a bathroom. "I'm sorry. I know you were just... It's been a really long day, okay?"

"It sounds like it. So what's up?"

"I fucked up. Badly. I... I, ummm... There was a guy I hooked up with a couple of months ago, he's from a group I'm part of on FreeDom. Don't ask if you're going to judge. We talked for a little while and he seemed okay. His user ratings were great. I thought I'd give him a try and we picked a time to meet up and we had a good time. Everything was great. Everything was fucking fine! Christ..." Any number of fucked up things could have happened at this point: he could have followed him home, he could be stalking him now, he could have shot a nonconsensual video and sold it online, he could have sent nudes to Jake's boss, he could have just showed up in B.C. and tried to murder him... People can be fucking insane if they choose to be.

"What happened? The suspense is killing me."

"That's not funny, Rob," he says very sharply, his anger reverberating in the tile room. We sit in silence for a few seconds until he sighs loudly. "How many times do I have to tell you that you're not fucking funny?" His voice is gentler now as he starts to collapse in on himself again.

"That was probably about the three hundredth time, but you know I'll never stop trying. You know you sound goofy when you laugh, right?"

"Stop it, you're making me feel less bad. I don't deserve that."

"Of course you do. Now stop playing with your shoelaces and tell me what happened." He gives a little snort of laughter and I hear his shoe stomp back down on the ground and echo all around him.

"This isn't easy, you know? This fucking sucks... We met up and everything seemed great, all sunshine and rainbows and all of that beautiful crap. Lizzie stayed at my place for a few days and we played around, then she went home and a few days later I came over and stayed with you until I left the following Monday to come back to this shithole. I got an e-mail today from another guy in the group telling me to check the news and guess who was on there? That fucker from the dungeon."

"For what, though? Did he turn out to be a serial killer, or...?"

"Not really. I know it's going to sound too fucked up to be real, but hear me out. There's this weird kink some sick bastards have where they go around trying to intentionally infect other people with HIV." Suddenly, his voice sounds too loud in my ear. I understand now why he was losing his shit a few minutes ago. "Some people take off the condom during sex, or they sabotage the condom so it looks like they didn't do anything. It makes it easier to get away with but it's impossible to prove either way. You know how they are about victim blaming and shit."

'Oh, trust me. I know.'

"Basically, he was taking the wrappers and pushing needles through them to make a bunch of little tiny holes, then... Well, he gets his way, doesn't he? Sick freak. God, I can't believe this is happening. I-I'm sorry, okay? I didn't know. No one else knew, either, and he got around to pretty much everyone in the group. The police found him and he's being charged with fraud of all fucking things, but they haven't seen a case like this before, as far as I know. The newspaper quoted him as saying he'd infected over a hundred guys. A few people have already tested positive and I freaked out and I left the meetings early today to go find a health clinic, and I just got my results back. The saliva test came back positive so they ran a blood test just to make sure. They said there was a chance that it was a false positive. They said this one would be more accurate but it would take three to four hours for the results to come in. I... I'll let you know what they say..." Nothing but dead silence for too many seconds. "Rob?"

"Yeah?" My voice almost sounds normal. I feel proud of that.

"Are you okay?"

"I'm fine, man. It's just... a lot to take in. Everything is going to be fine."

"You don't even sound like you believe that."

"It will be. Even if you're positive, they have advanced antiretrovirals now. They have good medicine for it now, and it can be like almost nothing changed. We aren't living in the seventies, in case you haven't noticed."

"Rob. You need to go get tested."

"I will. Of course I will. I'll go first thing tomorrow."

"No, dude. You need to go now. They might have emergency prophylaxis. You need to go right now."

"It's almost nine at night here, Jake. Nothing is going to be open."

"Google it. You need to find somewhere. Go downtown and find something. Find someone who does house calls. Find someone who will see you after hours. Go to the fucking ER! You have to do something, and the longer you wait, the bigger risk you're taking." When I don't say anything for a few seconds, he inhales angrily. "Is it the bill you're worried about? I'll pay the fucking bill if you can't afford it. I'll wire you the money if you need me to. But you can't just sit there, Rob, you need to go. Don't make me that asshole who infected everyone and... don't let me ruin your fucking life like I ruined mine." His voice cracks and I can hear him sobbing by himself in a bathroom five thousand kilometers away. I would give anything to be there right now, instead of here in my dark, dusty, stale-smelling apartment in front of my damned computer. All I ever do is sit here and, someday, I'll probably die here with my empty eyes staring at the screen for days before anyone even notices that I'm gone.

I need to get a life - that was the lesson I was supposed to learn from this.

'I'll try harder next time.'

"Shhhhh, shhhhhh... I'm looking for a place right now. I'm going to be fine, just worry about yourself." It suddenly occurs to me that I'm not the only lost soul he's worried about. "Have you told Lizzie? Is there anyone else you need to tell?"

"I still have to call Lizzie. Stop wasting time and go find a health center or something, and call me when you find out something. Get a blood test, Rob, I mean it. Your life is worth more than two hundred dollars, even if your insurance doesn't think so. And trust me: they don't think so."

"Good to hear it. My Mom might disagree but... you would have to take that up with her." He tries to keep himself from laughing and he almost succeeds. "I'll call you in a little while, okay? Let me know if you hear anything."

"Will do."

"Take care of yourself, man. Don't do anything stupid. You weren't the one who chose to do this. You aren't the bad guy here, Jake."

"We'll see about that." He hangs up and I won't lie: I didn't like that. His tone seemed wrong somehow. I know I have trust issues: that's why none of my serious relationships last more than six months and my break-ups are always fucking hideous. Would it be too far-fetched for me to think that he might be the villain he just described to me? I just got tested when I went to the doctor in May, but a lot of things can change in three months and this isn't something that I can screw around with. He was right about one thing - my insurance only covers two tests per year. What if everything he has ever said to me, and everything we've done together, has been an elaborate lie? What if I was just prey to him and, now that he's tired of me, he's ready to move on to the next clueless person and raise his body count?

'He was right: in a different time or place, that would make him a serial killer. If that's the real Jake... is he proud of himself?'

'If he was really going to do something like that, why did he get Toby? Why would he bring a needy puppy into this?'

'He might be your needy puppy now. You might never see Jake again, if that's even his real name. All he ever did was pawn him off on everyone else, anyway.'

Speaking of needy puppies, I reach up and run my fingers through the downy fluff on his head to wake him up, knowing that I'm about to get a fresh dose of guilt from the giant Furby snuggled up to my ribs, listening to my heartbeat. I make kissy noises at him and I can see him blinking, but he doesn't want to look up at me. He doesn't like when I wake him up at night anymore and I just hope that this doesn't break that routine.

"Hey there, Mr. Blink-182. I can see that you're awake. You have to get up so I can go. I know you were eavesdropping, I can see those ears wiggling." He licks his nose lazily while I rub his ears and he gives a shaky yawn when I stand up to carry him back to the other end of the apartment. "You're so god damned spoiled. What are we going to do when you're all grown up and you weigh like fifteen kilos? I can't be carrying you around like a sack of potatoes forever." I set him down in his crate and he immediately turns around and tries to escape. "No, you have to stay in your room. I know you hate it. I hate the noises you make when you're in it, but I really have to go, bro. It's not my choice to leave you here but there's no way in hell they're going to let a pissy puppy walk around in a health clinic. I'm sorry, Toby." He's crying already and he won't even take the treat when I hold it through the bars for him. The rock-hard dog cookie falls on the floor of the metal crate and it stays there while he gnaws at the bars, screaming hysterically and attacking the shiny black metal while he follows me as much as he can in his cage. I turn off all of the lights and grab my keys and wallet off of the bar before I wave goodbye and pull the front door shut behind me.

I can hear him out here in the hallway and I just hope the neighbors take pity on me and don't try to get the landlord to serve me an eviction notice. Between Toby, my recordings, and the wrestling and sex noises with Jake, I should count myself lucky that this isn't my third or fourth apartment so far this year. The old bags in this building deserve a fucking award for putting up with me and my noisy shit. With a little luck, maybe they have their hearing aids out for the night and can't hear a thing.

I push the button and call the elevator, searching for HIV testing somewhere nearby and finding way more hits than I thought there would be - but none of them are free. There's a 24-hour drug store a couple of streets over and I decide to take the time to walk over, not wanting to dig through my wallet and hope that I find my parking pass card so they'll let me back into the parking garage. It's the best and worst thing about living near downtown: everything is within twenty minutes of you, but parking is an absolute bitch. A quarter of my monthly rent for this apartment is to cover my fucking parking space in their itty bitty covered garage. I should really just suck it the hell up and buy a bike and a tire pump and use that to get around; leave it to Quebec to make you regret buying a new car. I step out of the elevator and the security guard seems annoyed that I caught him almost falling asleep on the job, but he waves at me, anyway. I check around outside through the glass windows before I step outside, still overcautious after Mitch's ongoing game of hide-and-seek with his biggest not-a-fans.

The cool evening air helps clear away a smidgen of the anxiety and I pull out my endless cigarette to help chase the remainder away, if only for a few minutes. I can't decide if I should walk faster or take my time and enjoy the march to the death. I should probably hurry so Jake and Toby will get off of my case. I step up the pace just a little bit, and within seconds I'm reminded how out of shape I am. I should really start jogging again and bring the furry along to wear his ass out. Half an hour of dodging bikes and electric scooters is worth having a couple of hours of peace and quiet, yeah? The haze of white smoke comes out of my nose in jagged furls and I can already hear the people at the pharmacy trying to shame me into not smoking. Like fuck they know what's best for me when no one can even tell me what to do about the chemical imbalances warring in my brain.

The idea of being on more pills and having more side effects and drug interactions isn't a fun one. I already feel like a freshman's chemistry experiment without adding more life- and mind-altering drugs into my schedule and bloodstream, not to mention having to worry about flying around the world and interacting with thousands of people with a weakened immune system. It almost makes me laugh: here I am, the one who sits on his ass in his apartment all day, doing pretty much nothing but staring at screens, and I'm worried about how fucked up my life might become soon. Jake was right to lose his shit, with him taking planes back and forth across the country and over the Atlantic every couple of weeks. No one can fill in for him if he needs to take an extended period of time off, so the company would be losing clients and his ass would be on the chopping block in no time. Regardless of his final diagnosis today, I wonder if he's had enough excitement for his lifetime yet, or if this is just another obstacle for him to overcome on his neverending search for himself. Not that I have anything against open relationships or him swinging around the word like Tarzan, but this had to have put a different kind of kink in his lifestyle. I need to find a way to put our arrangement on hold until we're both sure of where we stand without pissing him off and losing one of my best friends. That can wait until later, when I'm done worrying about my own ass.

Then again, I don't think I have that much to worry about. The transmission rates for oral aren't extremely high if you don't have gaping sores in your mouth, and that was only a couple of times. It's still fairly possible that I might be positive if he is, but it's not like I'm a bugchaser, out hunting for donations like Lachlan does shiny Pokemon. I feel like my first bug scare kind of numbed me to the possibility of having HIV, like I've already imagined the worst possible ways I could die and somehow lived through them in other timelines and recurring nightmares. I've imagined dying from dozens of different cancers after years of radiation therapy, I've imagined feeling each and every one of my organs shutting down until I'm like a patient in a failed surgeon simulator, I've imagined collecting diseases and ailments like ores in a CrazyCraft let's play, I've imagined living in society in a body spotted with Kaposi's sarcoma and dealing with the stigma, I've imagined cancer and bacteria eating me from the inside out until I die of starvation, and I've even imagined accidentally infecting my parents and watching them die in front of me, because of me. There aren't many more outcomes for my mind to torture me with, so what's left for me to fear? It's like a sick version of the lottery: if I have a ticket, who knows which grand prize I'll draw? With modern medicine it's obviously nowhere near as heinous or deadly as it used to be, but I don't want to spend the rest of my life worrying about what my body might decide to do to me next week.

I have so little control over my life already, I can't imagine having even less. I don't want to be a living randomizer.

I can see the glowing red and white sign in the distance, so I click off my tiny hookah and bury it back in the shallow pocket of my baggy not-capris-and-not-quite-sweatpants. My knees aren't weak yet but my palms are sweaty. I take a second to be respectably grateful that I'm not broke enough to be stuck eating canned spaghetti this month, or living back at Mom's house. I pretend to be dusting something off of my hoodie to dry my hands off, then I realize that I'm absolutely covered in dog hair again. Life would be so much easier if I could just wax his hairy ass... I know it's hopelessly embedded in my clothes, but at least it might give me something to do while I wait. I look like actual trash.

The fluorescent bulbs inside the store are too bright and I have to squint to see when I walk in the door. The cashier greets me halfheartedly and goes back to wiping down their cash register, waiting conspicuously for me to pass to they can follow me around the store, watching to see if I try to steal something. I walk directly back to the pharmacy counter, my eyes scanning the list of fees next to the glass wall dividing the public from the drugs to see how much this is going to hurt. They charge $55 for a quick test, which I could probably do myself if I was more confident in my quack doctor skills. When I see that they can't read results until the doctor is back on site tomorrow morning at 8:00 AM, I decide that I'm going to pretend to be Darryl for the night and buy an instant test for home. I know it isn't very reliable but I'm not about to wait eleven hours for any hope for peace of mind. I dig out my credit card and prepare to charge another $240 on it, to be dealt with some distant day in the future when I can afford more than the interest payments. I ring the bell to end somebody's lunch break and start down this new trail to hell.

"I'll be right there!" somebody calls from between the giant shelves of pills over to the left. I wipe my hands off on my pants again before I decide to just hide them in my pockets where no one can see the sweat stains. I look over at the fee schedule again and I see that they charge another $150 for post-exposure prophylaxis, knowing that they are going to try to sell me that, too. I check my phone to see if Jake has sent me any sign of reprieve: nothing. He was serious about this, so I need to take it seriously, too. Even if it doesn't show up on my tests tonight, I might have still been exposed a few days ago, so I should play it safe and get the drugs, too. On the other hand, I might have to pay to take both of these tests again in a few weeks and a few months from now to make sure that a negative wasn't just a delayed response to the bug. I honestly don't have the money for the tests tonight, let alone drugs and more tests in the near future, and I don't want to ask Jake for money even if he is who he says he is. I don't know what to do here without being a fucking leech. The only way I can see to get out of this would be to wait to do more tests until the university does free testing again, but who knows when that will be?

I wipe my hands inside my pockets again and my mind is made up: I have to waste the full $390 tonight plus buy a home test, which will probably be another $10 to $15, at the very least. Even if the credit card bill costs me $600 with interest, even I think my health is worth maxing my credit card out for. I haven't always thought that way, but I'm not trapped in that mindset now. I stand in silence, waiting for the paper bags behind the glass pane to stop crinkling and the voice to reappear so I can stop thinking about how many different ways I'm fucked right now. The inside layer of my pockets are noticeably damp before the pharmacist appears to deal with me.

"Hi, how can I help you?" She isn't a good actress, or make-up artist; the dark circles under her eyes are still showing through her layers of foundation. Her stress and tiredness are even more blatant in her fake cheerful tone and in the lines around her practiced smile.

"I need to get an HIV blood test and PEP." There are the words I've been hoping I would never have to say again. Why am I being forced to live through all of this again and relive all of that bullshit from my past? She glances up at me for only a second, a worn-out sympathy still clinging to life around her eyes when her eyebrows knit together as she scrolls through the computer screen.

"Was the exposure two or more weeks ago?"

"Yeah. Two weeks ago and again a day and a half ago" Judgment flashes in her eyes and she intentionally avoids looking me.

"We'll have to call the phlebotomist over from our other location. Would you be okay to wait about half an hour?"

"Yeah, that's fine." I think guiltily back to Toby at home, but there's nothing I can do about that right now. He has to have tired himself out from his tantrum by now, right? Then again, he's only very rarely ever left alone, between Jake, me, and Lizzie, and whoever else Jake tries to share him with. I still don't understand why I'm fine with sharing my boyfriend but not my boyfriend's dog.

"That will be $437.69 today. Is there anything else I can help you with?"

'Fuck. I forgot how they screw you over with incidentals and taxes. Shit.' To be honest, I don't think I have that much on my credit card. I need to take a second to check my account before they kick my ass out of here and I have to walk all the way back home again to get the car.

"I wanted to look at the home test kits, too. Do you have those, or...?" You would think that I would be better at lying, as often as I do it. I don't need to be lectured on being overcautious or stingy right now.

"I wouldn't recommend relying on those." We look at each other for a brief second before she glances into the store behind me and continues. "We have a few different ones on hand behind the glass case. I can show you which ones we have and walk you through the process of taking the test. But we can't guarantee the accuracy of the test results since you're doing them yourself and everything is non-refundable."

"That's fine by me." She fakes a half-smile of tolerance and turns to walk around to the other side of the pharmacy counter to open the supposedly Nooch-proof security case across from where we're standing. I hurriedly slide the phone out of my pocket and log into my account to check my card balance, wiping my disgusting sweaty hands on my thighs again.

'I hope the sweating is from hyperactive nerves and that it's nothing serious.' I don't remember feeling different or sick, but then again, it might be too early for it to even be detectable, let alone have a noticeable effect on me. The app finally loads and my heart drops.

Available Credit: $304.71

I am so royally screwed right now. The pharmacist slides the glass door open against her better judgment and pulls out two white and red boxes, checking the labels before she tucks them under her arm and relocks the case. I lock the phone and hold it up to my ear, pretending to be listening to someone on the other end.

"Yeah, I'm here right now... I know. I just don't think it's going to work." I'm talking to myself as much as I'm trying to distract her. I have a plan but I'll admit it isn't a very good one. I walk toward her just as she stands up and I can see the thinly disguised fear in her eyes. There's no doubt that she thinks I came here to rob her, no pun intended. Why does everyone think that I'm either a murderous lunatic or an armed drug addict? I hold the phone back from my ear for a second. "Can you hold those for me for a few minutes? I'll be right back." She nods, still recoiling, and I can see her staring after me in the rows of mirrors lining the top of the walls of the store as I walk toward the bathroom. "I told you it was a bad idea. You're just going to have to find a way to do it somehow."

When the swinging door closes behind me, I pull the phone away from my ear and glance at my messy, overgrown hair and furry hoodie in the mirror before I duck into a stall to see if I have any luck left at all. Jake and I are two of a kind, hiding in trashy public bathrooms to try to escape from the unforgiving reality outside. I unlock my phone and stare down at the credit card app, the bold blue words burning into my retinas: Request Credit Line Increase.

My credit was pure gold four years ago, then it turned to pure dog shit two years ago when I couldn't pay rent and all of my bills were overdue for almost six months straight. I don't know if this is going to work. They already charge me an insane interest rate on this card, like I'm a nineteen-year-old who doesn't know any better. What choice do I have? If I do this and it falls through, it will lower my credit score even more and make it even harder to find pots of golden debt in the future. This is a one-time-only magic trick, if it even works this time, and I don't have high hopes that it will. I need to try, and quickly, before I seem any more suspicious and they send security in here after me. I click the button, digitally sign my name and wager my soul on the line, then I wait for the little circle of lines to stop spinning. Left, top, right, down, left, top, right, down, left, top, right, down, left, top, right, down, left, top, right... It froze. I wait for thirty seconds and nothing happens.

"Shit. Fucking shit. Why is it always me? Fucking damn it," I mutter under my breath as I close the app and wait for the choppy animations to end so it can reopen. I hold my breath and hope it processed and that I will either have my answer on the next screen or an e-mail in a few seconds telling me that I'm too much of a fuck-up for them to trust me with more money. The app loads and I click to log in, taking a deep breath before I close my eyes and click on my account summary. I hold the breath as long as I can before I open my eyes.

Available Credit: $3,304.71

"You have to be fucking kidding me. I have to be seeing things right now." I blink a few times and the comma is still there. I scroll down and skim through the terms and conditions at the bottom and, of course, they raised my interest rate from 19.75% up to 28.1% just to laugh at me, knowing that I'll have to pay whatever they want me to pay. They actually are trying to make people go bankrupt, aren't they? I'm not about to look a gift horse in the mouth, so I close the app and lock my phone, rushing to the sink to wash my stall hands and get back to the counter as soon as I can. When I ring the bell, I can tell by the surprised look on her face that she didn't expect to ever see me again, and she looks down at my hands to make sure I don't have a weapon to assault her with. "Hi, again. I think we're going to get one of the home test kits, after all."

"Just give me one second and I can walk you through the instructions." She walks back around the counter and goes back to the glass case that she had very obviously put the boxes right back into as soon as I was out of sight, shielding them with her arm until she gets back behind the glass wall separating us. "We have the OraQuick for $42 or the InstaV 2 for $65 for two tests. Both of these are just mouth swabs: you run the tip along the bottom of your gums on the top and bottom and leave the swab in the sterile solution for 20 to 30 minutes, whichever the instructions tell you. One line might be a negative, two lines might be a positive. Blood serum tests are always the most accurate and reliable, but between the two I would get this one," she says quickly and quietly, looking behind me for eavesdroppers while tapping her short, marred French manicured nails on the more expensive test. Of course she was told to sell the more expensive one, so I can't really trust her judgment on which one is better. However, I'm not in any position to be Googling product reviews, so I have to take her word for it.

"We'll get that one," she taps on the bigger box again and I nod, "then I have to get a blood test and PEP." She squints down at the screen as she clicks, totalling up how many hours I'm going to have to work to pay all of this off as I literally sell some of my life to the credit card company.

"Your total is $507.96. Is that okay?" I smile and pull my sweaty credit card out of my pocket and prepare to do the deed.

"No, but I still have to do it." She cracks a somewhat genuine smile and I slide the card, quickly scribbling my name as Toby's phantom crying echoes in my ears again. I hope I don't have a nastygram from the landlord taped to my door when I get home, as if tonight could get any worse. I feel like Aladdin: one jump ahead of the bread line, one swing ahead of the sword.

"The phlebotomist will be here in about half an hour. I can take you back to the exam room if you want to wait in there."

"Sure. Thank you. What about the drugs?" She spins back around, holding her finger up while she searches for something. I'm not about to forget the massive bill I just paid, but apparently she already has. Is it safe for her to be working as a pharmacist when she seems so spaced out?

"I need you to fill this out first," she explains patiently as she slides a packet of papers and the mostly empty white box I just paid two weeks' worth of groceries for onto a clipboard and hands it to me through the little window in the glass wall, "then I will bring everything over in a minute after I fill the prescription." She gives me another plastic smile and walks back around the counter for the third time in the last twenty minutes and leads me over to a white door with a frosted privacy window only a meter or so away from their miniature waiting room. How private can it be if people can hear what you're saying through the gap under the door?

'I wonder why places like this have such bad reputations. It must be the scent of dirty laundry being aired for the world to sniff.' She turns the light on and leaves me to sit on the little paper sheet partially covering the bed, closing the door behind her. "Thank you."

I fold the receipt up and shove it somewhere among the scraps of paper in my wallet to be an unpleasant memento for another day and check to make sure I put my card away. I check my phone to see if Jake ever wrote back - nothing yet, and maybe nothing ever again. I decide to give him the benefit of the doubt for a moment and send him a text.

Me: I'm waiting for the test now. I'll let you know as soon as I do.

Jake: Good, I'll keep you posted.

I look at the time and I realize I never asked him what time he had the test done. I would think he'd hear back in another hour or two at the latest, but I won't know about mine until sometime tomorrow morning after some omniscient doctor can read a symbol no one else is allowed to. I still feel skeptical of Jake and his terseness; he is just as likely of a suspect as the guy he said was on the news. Speaking of which, now that I have some time, I can troll through the news sites and see if this series of unfortunate events is a real thing, or if patient zero has been sleeping in my bed all along. I fly through the paperwork as quickly as I can, my mind autofilling my plethora of drug names and dosages without a second thought. I set the clipboard over on the counter by the greying sink and I start my investigation with CBCNews, hoping it's a front page story: it doesn't look like it. My doubts start to grow exponentially. I type 'HIV' in the search bar and wait for the page to load, slowing skimming the headlines and hoping against all odds that I'm wrong this time. The first article is about new research findings for a cure; the next one is about the cost of drugs; the third one is about condom usage dropping because of antiretrovirals; the fourth one is about a law proposed for criminal infection. This is what I was looking for.

There's a picture of a nameless representative I've seen in the news too many times already, and below the advertisements there's a mugshot of an older guy with close-cropped light brown hair named Daniel Covfefe, his colorless grey eyes boring into the camera. I don't read the details of the article but I feel marginally less convinced that Jake is a serial gift giver. I open a new tab to start searching for 'criminal infection' when I hear footsteps in the empty store outside, getting louder every second. The pharmacist pops her head in and I reach over to hand her my prescribe my life challenge, wishing I didn't have to see her again. People don't generally react well when they see which synthetical chemicals are stabilizing my brain. She disappears again without a word to try to puzzle out which drugs she can give me with the lowest chance of killing me. Pharmacists fucking hate me already, and here I am, getting more drugs to make their game of sudoku just that much more fun. I forget what I was doing for a minute or so, my brain too focused on what the conga line of pill bottles in my medicine cabinet is going to look like when I get home.

'I hope Mitch doesn't get a bug up his ass to come snooping through my apartment.'

'You know that you're going to have to hide your new stash from him, right? What are you going to do if you're on a whole new cocktail for life now? How long are you going to try to hide it from him?' I don't need to be thinking about this right now. This is one of those moments when I wish I didn't have friends who actually give half of a shit about me. I unlock my phone again and go back to my trolling, skimming through articles about the proposed law and how queer rights groups are afraid that it might be misused to punish people who accidentally infect consenting partners, or even to re-criminalize 'deviant lifestyles'. There really is no good way to solve this problem, is there?

I'm checking to see if Jake has texted when a door slams right next to my room and I just about jump out of my fucking skin. I wipe my cold, dripping hands on my pants again and rub my eyes, trying to slow my heart back down just when the little white door swings open at the speed of light with a loud crash, the handle bouncing back off the wall and hitting the metal table in the person's hands. They pull up their mask with their gloves as soon as they step into the room, as if I'm infectious through the air, their black nail polish still visible through the powdery blue gloves. From the one glimpse at their face, they look like they're about sixteen years old, and I try to counter my uncertainty with the fact that they have to be certified to have this job. I hope this doesn't go terribly wrong.

"Lisky?" I nod, knowing that there is no one else here for them to confuse me with. The table is set roughly to the side and the door is awkwardly shut with their foot, swiftly eliminating any confidence I had that this wouldn't hurt. People who had been nurses for twenty years have a hard time hitting my veins; I hope this person is cocky because they're actually good at their job.

'Once again, I wonder why these places have such bad reputations.' I put my phone in my pocket, glancing behind me to check that the home tests are still sitting on the paper bed sheet. Three very large vials appear out of a lab coat pocket and I catch a glimpse of the Nickelodeon slime-colored ponytail trailing down to their lower back. They run an alcohol swab over a little yellow stress ball and hand it to me, and I reluctantly stretch out my arm to take it. I squeeze it for everything it's worth, hoping to get my nerves under control. This is horrible. A wide, red rubber band is tied around my bicep and ice cold alcohol tries in vain to mop the fur and dog germs off of my arm before rough fingers start squeezing my arm like a chunk of cheap meat, poking and prodding the flighty veins underneath. They just roll away every time. I grip the stress ball as hard as I can in the hope that it might help, but it doesn't seem to make a difference. A second pair of gloves is snapped in place on top of the first pair and a very thick needle appears out of another coat pocket before they go back to trying to mold my arm like Play-Doh. I don't trust myself not to laugh, so I don't talk. I need them to do this somehow and me pissing them off isn't going to help with that.

Poke. The vein disappears back into the depths of my arm.

Poke. I didn't actually see a vein that time.

Poke - rrrrriiippp. I grit my teeth as they wiggle the needle around inside of my arm like a crochet hook, trying to spear the elusive blue line like it's Moby Dick. Alas, to no avail.

Poke. It pops back into place as soon as the needle goes through the skin. The phlebotomist sighs..

Poke. It moves ever-so-slightly to the left and they try to chase after it, but they weren't quick enough. At this point, I wish they could just strangle me and stick it in the artery that pops out in my neck when I choke.

Poke. I don't know what they were going for that time.

Poke. Oh, for fuck's sake!

Poke. Are you fucking kidding me?

Poke. Just stab me in the fucking leg and get it over with!

Poke. I let out a deep breath and their dark eyes glance up at me.

"Is it always this hard?"

"Yeah... They usually show me to their interns and give them an anatomy lesson." I see eyes scan my visibly scarred arms, looking for another option and seeing none. No one with an ounce of sanity would touch my patch job forearms or hands and risk ripping something important open. They look down at the collection of little red drops drying in the crook of my elbow.

"What do they usually do?"

"That's my better side. It's just a struggle." They sigh again and lean back down to continue my invisible tattoo. At this rate, they'll just be able to scrape the blood sample off of my arm.

Poke. I feel like I have earthworms wiggling around in my arm instead of veins.

Poke. I'm glad they can't charge me extra for this shit.

Poke. I probably shouldn't come back here or they might find a way to.

Poke. I'll have to make sure my arms are clean before I let Toby out of his crate. Dogs can't get HIV from humans, right? Fuck. I need to research that, too.

Poke. I bet Jerome is going to have a fun time browsing through my search history.

Poke. He wanted secrets; now he and Mitch can throw me to the wolves if they so choose. He must be giddy.

Poke. I guess I don't have to worry about hiding anything from Mitch, then. By tomorrow morning, he will probably already know.

R-iiiiipppp.

An absolutely unholy pain ripples through my arm, but a gush of crimson squirts into the syringe and I know that this chapter of the nightmare is almost over. They slide the first tube into place with a loud click and the tube fills up like my arm is a tap at a dive bar. Less than two minutes pass and all three vials are full and I'm staring at a Hello Kitty bandaid on my arm.

"Thanks." They just glance up at my face and round up all of their supplies without a word, ditching their metal table in their rush to escape from my presence. I test my fingers, flexing them each in turn to check for potential nerve damage, then stiffly stand up from the hard exam bed, reaching for the home test kit and leaving the stress ball in return. I pull out my phone to check to see if there has been any news from Jake: still nothing. With nothing to delay me any more except for the sinking lead weighing down my bruised veins, I pull the door back open and walk over to the pharmacy to retrieve my adult Halloween candy. There's an older lady standing at the counter, tapping impatiently on the handle of her walking cane while the pharmacist frowns down at the screen. I take the opportunity to close all of the research tabs and erase the history on my phone, hoping that Jerome won't go out of his way on a whim to retrace my steps when nothing sketchy is happening. I've done a lot of hoping lately.

"Hi." The lady is finally walking away from the counter and the pharmacist glances down at the mouthless cat staring blankly at her from my arm before she reaches under the counter to retrieve... two full paper bags of shit. This is very different from last time, when I just took one little white pill twice per day for two weeks. I didn't realize I was going to turn into Frankenstein's fucking monster when I woke up this afternoon, but it looks like this is going to be a thing. No wonder it costs so much for this shit. "This bag has Tenofovir 300 mg and Emtricitabine 200 mg pills. You take these together an hour before you take these other two, with or without food. There are also Ritonavir 100 mgs in here. This bag is Darunavir 800 mg, which you take once per day with two Ritonavir with food. You need to do this daily for four weeks then come back for another blood test, regardless of whether you think you need it or not." She starts packing everything into a plastic bag with leaflets about testing fees, coupons, and who knows what else. "Read through the drug information sheets as soon as you get home and call your doctor if you notice any side effects, even if they seem small or aren't on the fact sheets. Do you have any questions?"

"No, I think I'm good. Thanks again." She fakes one last smile and passes the bag of drugs through the window to me, the pills clicking loudly against the plastic bottles. The bag is much heavier than I expected and I dread seeing the shit I'm going to have to try to swallow without puking when I get home. I put the test kit in the bag and hurry back out of the store as fast as I can, pretending that I don't notice the cashier's eyes boring a hole through the side of my head on the way out the door.

Five steps outside of the exit door, my sweaty, clammy fingers are clicking my e-cigarette on and I feel like I can finally breathe again. I don't even want to think about what chemical interactions are going to be happening in my bloodstream when I start popping all of these pills with my other pills and mix in the nicotine and whatever else is in the vapor. I've tried giving up smoking - I really have - but it never worked at the best of times, let alone when I'm so stressed out that I can feel my heart bouncing around inside of my chest like a fucking hockey puck. Any side effects from smoking are just going to have to be a necessary evil until everything settles down. The trip back home passes by in a blur in a case of highway amnesia, my mind focused only on the next drag of pure white, scentless smoke. I'm staring at my reflection in the smudged elevator doors in the front lobby before it sinks in that I'm going to be taking an HIV test. Again.

'I've always been so careful so that this wouldn't happen again.'

'Nothing about being with Jake is careful. Don't try to lie to yourself. You should have known better, and you know that.' A fresh wave of shame rolls over me as I let out the last puff of white in the elevator, watching the curly white tendrils reach out to scratch at the metal walls. The hallway outside of my apartment is empty and, thankfully, silent. There aren't any notes on my door and, when I open it and look into the darkness, I see that nothing was slipped under it, either. However, when I turn on the light, Toby is nowhere to be found.

"Fuck. Fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck f-uck. Fucking fuckity fuck. Fuck!" I quickly shut the front door to make sure he can't escape and throw everything down next to the sink before I start hunting for him, afraid of what he might have done in two hours by himself. The back of the cage is unhooked and popped out of place and lying uselessly on the floor next to scraps of shredded paper towels. I look over and see that he tipped the garbage can over and the floor is covered in garbage, including bits of the garbage bag it used to be in. There isn't a drop or scrap of anything edible left on anything from the can, and I just hope that he didn't eat anything inedible. "Fuck. God damn it, Toby, you little prick." I'm more worried than mad at him. I look around the room, but he isn't in the living room or kitchen anymore. I glance in the bathroom and see toilet paper everywhere and drops of toilet water dripped all over the floor, meaning that he was here somewhat recently. I turn the light on in my room and the only thing in here is mounds of once clean clothes littered everywhere from my TV stand dresser. I'm afraid of what he might have stashed under the bed this time, but that's an adventure for another later.

The only place left is my office.

The only place he wasn't allowed to go was my office.

I left the door open.

He could have destroyed everything in there.

He could have electrocuted himself.

We might have to find an emergency vet tonight.

I might have to replace my computer set up.

I can't even begin to afford any of that.

"Fuck." I can't inhale nicotine fast enough to deal with all of the shit in my life right now. I turn the last light in the apartment on and I slowly step forward, searching for plastic, blood, live wires, anything.

I find him curled up on my computer chair, fast asleep with a scrap of crispy, dried toilet paper stuck to the top of his head, the audio from the recording I had been working on playing through my headphones on the desk. It would almost be cute if it hadn't happened today.

"Toby." His eyes snap open and he just looks up at me, his eyebrows wiggling as he lays there, frozen in guilt. "What did you do?" Big brown eyes blink up at me sorrowfully, telling me that I never should have left him here all alone. I never should have expected anything different. I sigh and my fingers trace their usual path through my barely manageable hair, and he slowly sits up, stretching before he jumps down for a bittersweet hello. I pull the toilet paper off of his head and he looks up at me in wonder, like I had just done a magic trick in front of his eyes. "You're going to help me clean this up, you know. And I noticed that that tuna sandwich from yesterday was gone. You didn't get away with anything, Toby." He doesn't give a single shit about anything; I came back, and that was the only thing he cared about. Sometimes I wonder if he's actually an Animagus, doing horrible shit just so that he can watch me clean it up again and again. "Come on. Come help me."

He bounds down the hallway to the patio door, dancing back and forth for me to let him outside, and I'm too busy looking for more debauchery in the living room to notice the puddle before I step in it. I look down and see streaks of dried piss down the inside of the glass door. He shrinks back in guilt and I get more evidence that someone else has been beating the shit out of him when he isn't here with me.

"I'll take care of it later. Go on." He lowers his head, tucks his tail between his legs, and sprints outside, staring back at me to see if I'm going to try to come after him. We look at each other while I peel my soaked socks off, throwing them back down in the puddle to remind me that I still need to deal with it. I leave him to his business and walk back to the kitchen to get a dish rag to clean the cold piss off of my feet, the bright white bag of drugs standing out against the marble countertop.

I let the hairy whirlwind back inside and he watches in fascination as I rip the test kit open, wondering why I get to destroy shit and he doesn't. I grab one of the foil packages from inside and pull the tab open while I read the instructions. I check my blood-spotted arm again and see that the crook of my arm is now covered in dozens of tiny dried scabs; I feel like Lizzie Borden's mother. Toby dances around while I shake the test solution, thinking that I'm about to throw it into the living room and watch him break something else.

"This is mine, bro. Go find your tennis ball or something, or did you already eat that, too?" He just keeps spinning around, his eyes glinting in the bright light until the bottle goes back on the counter and he sees me uncapping the test swab and sticking it in my mouth, his tail fanning the clumps of dog hair floating around on the floor. "This isn't food. You don't get any, I'm sorry." The plastic sides of the test strip rub my gums raw and I start to wonder if this is a blood test for the squeamish when little tangs of copper reach my tongue. It looks like a spit test, but that shit hurts and it drew blood even if I don't see it on the little strip. I stick it in the bottle and stare at it for a few seconds. I glance at the clock: 10:47 PM. I have to wait until 11:17 until the results will be ready. I might as well start cleaning up his aftermath so I don't just sit here and stare at a piece of plastic for half an hour. "Come on, come help." Toby's ears perk up and he trails along behind me, sniffing at the debris as I pick everything back up, watching me reservedly like I would ever hurt him. I feel guilty for someone else's misdeeds.

'I thought grinding cobblestone took forever; this is one of the longest days I've ever lived.' The minutes pass by even slower than the speed of continental drift and I feel like I just found out I have the ability to freeze time. The entire mess is cleaned up and Toby is licking the salty sweat off of my hand over and over from the couch for what feels like hours before the alarm on my phone goes off. He jumps with his ears flat against his head while he looks around for the sound, looking dissatisfied with life when I lift him off of my lap and set him next to me on the couch.

"Let's go see our future. Or stay there, see if I care." He only stays behind for a second before he trots along next to my ankles, his tail swishing against the full garbage bag leaning against the end of the island bar when I finally drag myself over to the kitchen again. I don't want to look. I don't want to know, which sounds stupid because I know that I need to know as soon as possible. I might die if I don't look. I might get deathly ill from things like the fucking mold on the bathroom ceiling if I'm positive and I don't get help immediately. I wipe my sweaty hands on my increasingly damp pants one more time before I step forward to learn my fate.

My eyes trace the shape of the test swab, from the rounded handle to the bright red text that won't let me forget for a second what this test is for, down to the bright magenta results box. Whatever this says, it might not be accurate. I won't know for sure until tomorrow when they call me with the blood test results, and even then it might be too early to test for the antibodies. Even though I won't truly know for months, I still need to know something. I take a deep breath and look:

| ........... |

| ........... |

| ........... |

| ........... |

| C ------ |

| ........... |

| T ........ |

| ........... |

One line.