WYATT WAS numb for most of the trip. And terrified. When he wasn’t too numb to feel anything at all.
Howard was HIV positive.
Wyatt gave Katherine an animal-caught-in-headlights look and tried with all his might not to cry. There had been a lot of tears in the last few months…. They’d been a gift from the man he had loved with all his heart. And now this?
Wyatt looked out the windshield, trying to calculate how much longer it would take to get to the city. Where were they? And then he saw it. The Kansas City skyline. Fifteen minutes now?
Then he went numb again. It had been like that since Katherine herded him into her van—the one with Treasures of Terra painted on the side—and drove them out of town. Sometimes a minute seemed to take two hours to go by, and then a half hour was gone in a flash.
I’ve got it too. I have to. How could I not? Why else would they want him to come in right away?
“You don’t know you have it,” Katherine said as if reading his mind—and who knew, maybe she could?
Oh, look! They had somehow entered the city, and he’d lost a chunk of time again. They’d be there in minutes, thank the gods… and yet the thought made him want to vomit. Again. Katherine had already had to pull over once so he could puke by the side of the road.
She placed a hand on his knee and squeezed lightly. “It’s going to be okay,” she said.
“How can you know that?” he asked, voice trembling.
“Whatever the outcome, Little Bear,” she said, using the endearment only certain people used, “it’s going to be okay.”
Wyatt saw the sincerity in her crystal-blue eyes. She believed it. But how could it be okay? He knew the real world. When they tested him and told him his result, then nothing would be the same again. He’d be a pariah. He had eyes. He saw. He knew what happened the second someone admitted they were poz. Did those guys ever get a hit on their Growlr app? Their Craigslist ad? No. They certainly didn’t have a chance at finding a lover. He had already been convinced he’d be forever single. But now that he had HIV?
He felt his stomach rise again but fought it back down. They were on a busy city street in a center lane, and Katherine couldn’t just pull over, and he couldn’t upchuck in her car!
Calm. Calm down.
Wyatt closed his eyes. Tried to imagine the green grass of Camp Sanctuary. Or the path through the trees he loved so much—the one that reminded him of being in church, but a church that didn’t hate him for who and what he was.
…my religion is nature came a voice in his head, he knew not from where.
This is it, he told himself. Enjoy these last hours. These last moments of knowing you’re just Wyatt, and not poz-Wyatt.
Except it was worse, wasn’t it? It would be two weeks before he actually knew. How was he supposed to wait that long? How was he supposed to sleep? Fuck. How was he supposed to be awake? Eat? Work? Do any-fucking-thing?
They had to drive around to the back of the building. The three spaces right in front had been made into handicapped parking since he’d been here last—what? The beginning of August? Since Howard had fucked that kid bareback? That had almost been the ending of them right then. And if he had only been willing to admit it, it might have been him that had broken up with Howard instead of the way it turned out. Getting dumped. Thrown out.
Why did I forgive him… again? Why did I believe anything that man said? Why didn’t I have the guts to tell him I was done?
How many times had he asked himself that since that July day?
The problem was, he hadn’t been brave enough to leave Howard. All those years of Howard telling him that if he left he’d never find anyone again. That Wyatt would be alone. He’d believed Howard too.
“Who would put up with you?” Howard had asked him on so many occasions. “The only reason anyone puts up with you now is because you’re with me!”
Quite suddenly the thought made Wyatt surprisingly angry. My friends “put up with me”! They did a Yule ritual with me! And it was fucking amazing. Better than any ritual you and I ever did!
Howard’s voice came again: “The only reason anyone puts up with you now is because you’re with me!”
But then something happened. A new voice surfaced.
Not true!
It sounded familiar, but he wasn’t sure just whose voice it was.
Not true, not true, not true. My friends love me! They love me.
Gods. That voice! Was it his voice?
“Wyatt?”
He jumped.
It was Katherine. “We need to go in now, Little Bear.”
He looked around him. They’d parked. When had they done that? Wyatt nodded, and damn it, the tears were back.
Katherine came around and opened that door, and gods, he was feeling like a “silly little faggot” again. He wished that “new voice” would just take control of his feet, but when it didn’t, he figured he would just have to do this for himself. Prove he was no silly little faggot. He somehow got out of the car and marched to the back door of the clinic. But by the time he got there, his resolve was gone. He let Katherine put her arm around his shoulder and lead him inside, down the hall, into the elevator, and up. The doors opened silently, and a dread fell over Wyatt like he had never felt before.
But Katherine was there, thank the gods, arm still around him, and they crossed the lobby and went through the doors of the clinic and up to the counter. In some part of his mind, Wyatt noticed that the place looked different than the last time he was here. And the sign….
The sign! It didn’t say Free Health Clinic anymore.
“Do I have to pay now?” Wyatt moaned.
The pretty African American nurse—at least he thought she was a nurse—asked him why he was there.
“They told me to!” Wyatt cried.
“Who told you, sir?”
Katherine leaned over the counter slightly. “His ex was here a few hours ago. He received a positive result on his HIV test. He was told that he should have his sexual contacts come in—”
Sexual contacts, Wyatt thought. Not husband. I’m a “sexual contact.”
“—to get tested right away.”
“Oh,” said the nurse. “Your name, sir?”
“Wyatt Dolan,” Katherine supplied.
The nurse nodded, then pulled out a sheet of paper. “Yes. Yes, I have it right here.” She looked up. “You got here fast. I’m glad.”
Yes, he got here fast. Katherine had taken care of that. Luckily the store had been slow, and she put Melrose in charge and got Wyatt into the car before he could find a way out of it. Katherine knew—told him so—that there was no way he could have driven himself. In truth, the relief was enormous when she said she would take him. Gigantic. Huge. And he might have chickened out. Now how could he?
It wasn’t like he could call his friends. Asher and Peni were in California. Scott was involved with some big legal thing—had been getting more and more recognition at the law firm where he worked and getting more and more responsibility. From what Wyatt understood, he was actually in court today. And Cedar had a brand-new job, was in his first ninety days and needed to have perfect attendance. Sloan was at work—something terribly important was happening today; he’d been talking about it for days. Max would be in classes.
“Would you please sign in, Mr. Dolan?”
The nurse gave him a clipboard, and he wrote his first name down. The form didn’t ask for a last, yet somehow it felt like he was signing his life away. He did it blindly. The nurse had to tell him to add his birth date and the last four numbers of his social.
“If you sit, we’ll call you shortly,” she said and gave him a cheerful smile.
Katherine helped him to a seat against a wall under posters asking, “Have You Been Tested?” and, “HIV. It’s No Longer a Death Sentence.”
“Oh, gods, Katherine. This is it. This is it!”
“Is what, Wyatt, sweetie?” She petted his back.
“The very beginning of the very last two weeks where I don’t live in the land of knowing I’m HIV….” And there he stopped. He couldn’t say that last word.
Positive.
“Wyatt. You do not know you’re HIV positive,” Katherine said firmly.
“But in two weeks I will!” Tears. Fuck it! More tears. How many tears could a human body hold?
Katherine shook her head. “My Little Bear. Two weeks from now doesn’t exist. And right now we don’t know anything. Stop claiming a fate that might not be yours. Let’s just wait.”
“Will you go in with me?” he asked. “I’m so fucking afraid of needles.” Which had made getting a tattoo almost impossible—would have been impossible if his friends hadn’t all been there holding his hand and the tattoo artist hadn’t been a big hunky bear.
“I will if they let me. But Wyatt, dear, I don’t think they’re going to allow that.”
“But Katherine…,” he whined, “I’m scared!”
“Wyatt?”
Wyatt jumped again and turned in the direction of the voice. A man was standing in a doorway. He was maybe sixty, with stylish black-and-antique-gold glasses.
Gay. Thank the Queer Ones, Wyatt thought. He raised his hand. “Here!” He winced. Why did he say that? He wasn’t in grade school!
“Why don’t you come this way, Wyatt?” the man said, motioning.
Somehow Wyatt stood up and then asked, “Can my friend come with me?” He turned pleading eyes on the stranger and then Katherine and back again. His biggest puppy-dog expression ever.
The man shook his head. “I’m so sorry. It’s completely against policy.”
“Please…?” Wyatt begged. He looked at Katherine helplessly. Then back at the man. “Can’t you just this once? Please?”
A look of total sympathy came over the man’s face. “I am so sorry, dear,” he said. “I just can’t do it.”
Wyatt felt a hand on his shoulder, and Katherine was beside him, eyes focused deeply into his. “You’ll be fine, Little Bear. I will be with you. Right here. If you need to, just picture my hand in yours. I am right here.”
It was only that and the sympathetic look on the man’s face that did it—allowed him to uproot his feet from the floor and begin walking. Had the guy been some kind of asshole, Wyatt would have fled. He went through the open door, and once more a hand came down on his shoulder, gently but firmly guiding him down the long hall that lay ahead. They turned left at the first corner and toward an open door. “Right in here, Wyatt.”
The room was small but nice and bright. Sunshine-yellow walls, no examining table—which Wyatt thought might be a mistake as far as he was concerned. He liked to lie down when he was getting his blood drawn. In case he fainted. He had before.
“My name is Geoff, by the way,” the man said and held out a hand for Wyatt to shake.
Wyatt almost didn’t take it—this was the guy who was going to harpoon him, after all—but he did, and thankfully it settled him. Strong enough to comfort, but not to hurt. Howard’s handshakes were crushing.
“I really am sorry your friend couldn’t come back with you,” Geoff was saying. “The testing is completely confidential. If you choose to tell her your results afterward, that’s entirely up to you.”
“Why don’t you have a table?” Wyatt snapped, ignoring the comment.
“Why would you need a table?”
Wyatt told him.
“Oh,” Geoff said. “But you’re not getting a blood draw.”
“I’m not?” Wyatt looked at him in complete surprise. “Don’t you need to get my blood for the test? How can you test me without blood?”
Geoff smiled and patted Wyatt’s knee. “Because all I need to do is prick your finger. We’re doing a rapid HIV test today. Normally we don’t on Fridays, but in this case we thought it best to find out right away. If anything, to reduce your anxiety. I imagine you’re quite distressed right now. I know I would be.”
“You don’t have to draw my blood?” An immense wave of relief fell over Wyatt. It was like a comforting blanket. For some reason it made him want to cry. And the man really did seem nice.
“Nope. Just a tiny little prick on the end of your finger and that’s it. I won’t promise you won’t feel it at all, but the needle is very small these days, and I’m pretty damned good if I say so myself. It’ll be over and done in a jiffy.”
Wyatt nodded. Or tried to. He was still going to have to get poked. But then it hadn’t been so bad at the Gay Pride celebrations where he had his done annually. Of course, during those Howard had been sitting at another table within eyeshot.
Another immensity hit him. The full meaning of what Geoff had said previously. Rapid testing? “I’m—I’m not going to have to wait two weeks?”
Geoff shook his head, smiling again. It was such a nice smile. A good smile to have with a job like this. Wyatt wondered how many times the man had had to tell someone they had HIV.
“O-okay…,” Wyatt managed.
Then another image came to his mind.
Peni’s pe’a. The vastness of his Samoan tattoos, spanning nearly half his body. The fact that it had been done with razor-sharp tools of bone and tusk, pounding deep into Peni’s thighs and legs and back and ass, relentlessly, hour after hour, day after day.
And he had the fucking gall to worry about one teeny tiny little pricked finger?
I’m not Peni!
No you’re not, came that voice again. You are Wyatt Dolan. And you are Little Bear!
Somehow, that inner voice did it. And when, on the very tail of that voice, Geoff asked him if he was ready, he held his hand out sure and strong and—damn—barely shaking.
He did look away, though. “Warn me? So I won’t jump?”
“Sure,” said Geoff. Then he did something to Wyatt’s finger, wiped it with something cool, and sort of—touched it?—and then to Wyatt’s surprise said, “Okay. Done. Can you hold this against your finger?”
“What?” Wyatt asked and realized Geoff was pressing a piece of cotton against his finger and then was doing something with a little piece of something. Wyatt wasn’t looking too closely, but Geoff was doing something else with a tiny, tiny little test tube (that didn’t show blood, thank gods). He placed it to the side and set a timer.
Geoff then explained that the rapid test was 99 percent effective and these days just as sure as the two-week-long wait. That the test detected HIV antibodies and not the virus itself. In other words, the body began making antibodies to try and kill off HIV, and that is what they would be looking for. Those antibodies and not the virus itself. And that HIV died within seconds of hitting the air, and that’s why ejaculating inside the body was dangerous and getting semen on you was okay. “That’s the old saying, cum on me and not in me,” Geoff said.
Wyatt nodded. He’d probably known that. Been told that, surely. Right now he wasn’t in the right mind to remember any-fucking-thing.
“Now I have to ask you a bunch of questions. Sorry. All these questions they need to know to track statistics and so on. But it will help the time go by fast. Funny how twenty minutes flies when you’re having fun and drags like hell when you’re not.”
“And this ain’t fun,” Wyatt said sarcastically.
Again the gentle smile. “No. I don’t imagine it is.”
Then Geoff started asking all kinds of questions. Whether he’d had oral sex—“Hell yes,” he said and blushed. Giving or receiving and yes and yes. Anal sex, giving or receiving. Only receiving as far as the last year was concerned. “Howard never let me top him—”
The image of Howard and those two men flashed 70mm once again in his mind.
“—and I lose my hard-on half the time if I try and top anyone while I wear a condom.” So Howard didn’t wear condoms when he topped Wyatt? And the answer was, of course, “no,” because it never occurred to Wyatt that Howard played without wearing them with others.
The picture came back—Howard, Howard, getting fucked. Bareback!
“He always used rubbers while I was there. With the other guys.”
Again, that image.
No! Stop! Stop looking! He shook his head to banish the vision.
“You okay, Wyatt?”
Wyatt sighed. “As okay as I can be.” Knowing that I am about to find out I am HIV+.
“You don’t know you have it” came the echo of Katherine’s voice. He felt her hand. Reached out with his thoughts and felt it, just as she’d told him to do. “It’s going to be okay. Whatever the outcome, Little Bear. It’s going to be okay.”
But how could she know that?
It couldn’t be okay to hear those words, “I’m so sorry, Wyatt. You have HIV. Now this is what we do next….” He’d die. He’d freak out. Geoff was going to be so sorry he hadn’t let Katherine come!
There were more questions. A lot of them had to do, over and over again, with how many sex partners he’d had—
“None! Not since Howard left!”
—and if Geoff had asked if he’d had sex with someone besides Howard over three months ago, then Wyatt might have been able to say more than one. Howard would have seen to that. Hell, the last time they went to Cactus Canyon—was that September?—he’d had sex with at least four other guys (and gods knew how many Howard had been with, thinking retrospectively).
The questions about if and how often he’d had any vaginal sex made Wyatt laugh. “How about none. Ever. Never-ever. Mr. Gold Star Gay, here.”
Geoff laughed. “Me too.”
Geoff also wanted to know if he’d ever been incarcerated or gotten a tattoo—
“Wait! Why am I asking you that?”
Wyatt laughed. “No! I have! Look.” He bared his upper arm and showed Geoff the teddy bear, about five inches tall. “It was supposed to say something too, but my friends rightly talked me out of it. If the artist hadn’t been such a hunk and my friends hadn’t taken shifts holding my hand, I wouldn’t have been able to do it.”
—and if he’d ever exchanged sexual favors for sex—
“Oh, please.” Wyatt rolled his eyes. “Who would pay me for sex?”
(“The only reason you get laid is because of me. I tell them they have to have sex with you if they want me.”)
“I don’t know.” Geoff actually blushed. “I think you’re pretty darned cute.”
That shocked Wyatt into silence. He couldn’t remember when someone had said he was cute. Wait! The tattoo artist had flirted with him. Wyatt had just chalked that up to the big guy trying to calm him down.
—and if he’d ever used IV drugs or had sex with any known IV drug users.
And finally there had been the questions about how much risk he thought he’d taken in the last twelve months on a scale of one to ten, with one being the lowest and ten being the highest, in doing something sexually that could have allowed him to contract HIV, or scarier, that he might “test positive today”?
It was just as the timer went bing.
That had almost brought the tears back. “Ten, I guess,” he said and moaned.
“Well, Wyatt. I can tell you right now that you are—”
“Nooooooo…,” Wyatt cried and dropped his face into his palms. He moaned long and hard and actually began to rock in his seat. Positive! He knew it! Geoff had said the words. He was positive! What was he going to do?
“Wyatt!” Geoff all but shouted, making Wyatt flinch back and drop his hands.
“Wyatt. What’s wrong? Aren’t you happy? This is great news!”
“That I’m positive?” Wyatt asked incredulously.
Geoff gawked at him. “Sweetheart! I didn’t say positive. I said negative. You’re HIV negative.”
Wyatt looked at the man, stunned.
The room took on a tremendous quiet.
A celestial mute button had silenced the world.
Time stopped.
Then: “Wyatt? Did you hear me?” Geoff was smiling.
Time decided to start moving again.
“Wh-what?”
Geoff nodded. “Yes, Wyatt. Now I do recommend you get tested again in about one month. From what you said you had sex with your ex about two months ago?”
He had to think. Hard. The world was going all wonky again. Howard had dumped him right at the end of September?
Yes. Of course it was. September 29th. A Monday. He would never forget it. He said the date aloud.
Geoff checked a calendar. “So, wait. End of September? That means all of October and November and December. Wyatt. That’s three months. Honey!” He clapped. He actually clapped. “That makes you free and clear.”
Wyatt gaped at him. “Wh-what?”
A wave of dizziness came over him.
“R-really?”
Then for a second he thought the man might kiss him.
“Wyatt, the HIV antibodies usually show up in about three to four weeks. But to be safe we say ninety days. It’s been more than ninety days.”
“I—I don’t believe it!” Wyatt cried.
Geoff nodded vigorously. “You know, my little man, I honestly cannot tell you when was the last time I so joyously gave somebody that news.”
Wyatt leapt to his feet and threw himself into Geoff’s arms and—godsdammit!—started to cry again.
But of course this time the tears were of joy.
THE JOURNEY home was much better than the drive into the city.
Katherine asked him if he wanted to stop at The Male Box for a celebratory drink first, or even The Watering Hole (he was far too worried that Howard might be at the second), but Wyatt didn’t want that. After crying in her arms in the waiting room—
“Ah, my Little Bear, didn’t I tell you? Didn’t I tell you that you didn’t know you had it?”
—all he wanted to do was go home. Even if it was his new home.
She dropped him off, and he watched her go—insisted she go on even though she wanted to wait until he’d gone inside—and then stared at the house. Suddenly it didn’t seem so awful a place. Even welcoming. Like it was telling him to come on inside and it would keep him warm, just as warm as friends could.
It was nice.
But that wasn’t completely true.
He wanted to see his friends.
So he went directly next door instead and rang the bell, and when Sloan answered the door—Max or even Logan, or hell, Devin would have been okay—Wyatt was so skyrocketing happy that it was Sloan that he threw himself into his best friend’s arms and buried his face in his shoulder and just… held him.
Wyatt didn’t cry. He thought he would. He thought for sure he would. Hadn’t he cried a mammoth amount lately? But somehow he didn’t. And when they finally separated—a bit, not much—he looked into his friend’s dark, honey-colored eyes and said…
“I don’t have it.”
Sloan hunched closer, and for half a second he thought Sloan was going to kiss him, and then he saw puzzlement in those eyes.
“It?” Sloan asked.
“HIV,” Wyatt exalted. Funny the way that word sounded. Like an alleluia.
And Wyatt told him. Right there. In the threshold of Sloan and Max’s home, neither in nor out, and then Max was there and so was Logan and they led him inside and he started telling it all again from the beginning and Sloan was calling Scott and when Scott got there with Cedar he told it again.
They called Asher too. He actually answered his cell phone. He was on a break and he “Hee-hawed!” in great shouts and said he would call Peni right away.
Somehow it had all come out all right. After one horrid, awful thing happening after another for months, finally something had turned out right.