Page 207 of My Sweet Dollie, You Have to Love Me
“Love.” Dad attempts to comfort her again, his hand smoothing through her newly dyed, darker hair, but his paling face stays on me with a look of shock I’ll never be able to scrub from my mind.
“We’d like to do a rape kit, and if that shows as positive, we will then test for any transmitted infections, including HIV.”
“HIV?” Mom’s cry is strangled, and I push myself up on the bed, Dollie still clinging to me as I look down on our mother.
She stares up at me, feeling everything I do and more because she understands what that means, and I don’t. “I’m sorry. Oh, God. I’m so sorry.”
“No, he can’t be prodded like that.” Dad shakes his head.
“What the fuck are you talking about!” Mom spins in a rush of dark hair, thrashing away to get his hand off of her. “We are doing this.” Her hands cover her face, muffling the words. “He is our son! How can you not want to know if something like that has happened to him?”
“Of course I do. But?—”
“There are no buts. We have already failed them. We are doing this. He needs this. Please, don’t fight me.”
“I can give you a minute to talk things through if you wish, but I urge you to agree with your wife.” My doctor takes a step back.
Dad’s tight smile returns.
I catch another sight of the police outside until the heavy door blocks them out with a loud thud.
“Gen…”
“I don’t want to hear it.”
“And I don’t want to have to have this conversation in front of the kids, but?—”
“No buts, Ronan! He is your baby, our son! They are thinking of testing him for HIV! Does that mean anything to you?”
“Of course, it does.”
“Then you understand that we have to do this. No matter what happens afterward. God, I want to walk out there to the police and tell?—”
Dad’s finger finds Mom’s lips and presses them closed, silencing her.
“Shhh… we can’t. They need us.”
Both Dad’s and Mom’s eyes move to me and Dollie on the bed, our arms tightly around each other.
I sit there silently because I have to, but my thoughts are loud.
We need no one but each other.
CHAPTER 50
Ambrose—present day
Arush of shower water washes the groggy feeling off me. I let it slip into my mouth, which has gotten drier and drier since the nightmare. The screaming scratched my throat, and now, hours later, as the sun rises beyond the frosted window, it still hurts.
I stay below the pouring shower, the water a little cooler than I like, to ease the swelling in my throat as I stretch back.
There should be no easing how I feel.
I did something awful last night, the worst thing I’ve ever done.
The guilt is still there and clinging to me tighter than the towel I wrap around my waist as I step out of the shower.
I hurt Dollie.
