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as she sits in the off-white reception room unable to read an old Newsweek with Reagan's picture on the cover waiting for an answer. "Oh baby, don't worry. I don't sleep around, and I love you so much." She doesn't know if she even believed him then. But the night is a cold and lonely place and empty beds are hard to sleep in. Maybe she loved him, she's not sure. She hasn't seen him since that night, that night when they fell together in a tangle of limbs, and passion clouded her mind. Damn, he was good. The memory of that night is still with her, in the ache of her body, in her longing for his touches, and his kisses. She couldn't think straight. His kisses swallowed her questions, closed her mouth before she could ask them, Then it was too late, and they'd gone too far. "I'm on the pill, so it'll be okay," she thought as he filled her with dampness, "It'll be alright." She felt his kiss on her forehead the next morning as he left. It's been a couple months since then, and she hasn't seen him since, and in all that time, she's had to live with the questions she never asked. The doctor comes out and calls her name. She looks up and can see the answer in his face, in the way that his features have become a mask of stone, in the tenseness of his posture. She feels a tear burn its way down her cheek, and there's an emptiness in her stomach. She drops the old newsweek to the floor, and all of a sudden it's become hard to breathe. No. It must be some kind of mistake. It can't be. They had to have made an error, her mind insists quietly. She's just 20. She can't be dying. She's numb as she gets up, numb as she listens to the doctor's voice. "Thank you for coming down. We'd like to talk to you about your test results, and what exactly they mean." Thery are words with no meaning. Incomprehensable sounds that echo through the painful emptiness where her future had been.
written 1996 |
