Page 74 of Sexting the Cowboy
Positive.
The single word is small. The value below it isn’t ambiguous.
Positive.
I stand very still and let the floor move under me until it stops. Then I sit, because I’m not invincible and I would like not to faint in my own lab like a teenage melodrama.
Positive.
Okay. Okay. Okay.
My brain says the word like tapping a pocket three times to be sure I didn’t leave my keys on the counter. It doesn’t help.
The word doesn’t change. The number doesn’t take it back. The inverse logic of medicine—when you want a negative—plays a joke on the way my eyes want to see the result they asked for.
My chest tightens. It’s not a panic attack. It’s not anything that dramatic. It’s the simple, brutal narrowing of the world to twopaths, neither of which looks like the one I sketched in the margins of the life I thought I’d get.
The feelings in my head, my gut, my heart all coexist with a cold little clarity that goes about its business. I am going to cry. Not now. Not in here. I promised this room I’d keep it for other people’s tears.
My phone buzzes again. Brick. Two more.
I can come to you. Just say where.
I keep thinking about your hands on me and not the other way around. Never mind. Ignore me. Head is loud. I’ll behave.
He doesn’t know the words that would unmake me right now. He could guess, and he might guess wrong, and I cannot afford to find out if he’s the kind of man who says, “We’ll figure it out,” and means it, or the kind who says it and thinks the figuring is my job.
He is kind. He is steady. He is not my plan.
Nothing about this is my plan.
I scroll to his thread and hover. My thumb shakes. I set the phone down again, like it’s burning me from the back, like letters can scorch through plastic and wood and into bone.
I stand up because sitting is a luxury I don’t deserve. I walk to the lobby and turn the AC down three more degrees because I want to be cold enough to feel something besides the hot throb of blood in my ears. The blinking message light on the landline stares at me like a wagging finger. I press play out of spite.
Three telemarketers. One patient rescheduling her Pap for next month. One man asking if we do DOT physicals and if we can “becool about it” because he “doesn’t like doctors.” I delete them all with more force than necessary.
Back in the lab, I wash my hands again like it’s a baptism and not an obsession. I clean the counter twice. I clean the sink. I clean the place on the floor where nobody’s shoes have been in a month. I have never wanted a job I can fix with bleach more than I do in this minute.
My phone buzzes, and I don’t look. It buzzes again.
I’m not ready to talk to him. I need to choose the next step while I can still pretend the future is a single line that goes forward and not a web that catches you no matter which way you lean. I am responsible for a clinic I promised to keep alive. I am responsible for a nurse who trusts me. I am responsible for a version of my life that makes sense to a girl who wrotepreventative care saves liveson a sticky note and put it in the pocket of every jacket she owned.
“All I want to do is talk to someone.”
The words come out without a thought. Like my tears. Admitting I need help has never been easy for me. I’m not…I don’t like leaning on people. It feels like weakness. And I know how stupid that is, that it’s rooted in insecurity, blah, blah, blah, but it feels like weakness all the same. Plopping on the nearest stool and slumping against the table is all I have strength for while the tears glide down my face. I’d rather do that here than on the drive home.
For a long while, I do nothing but listen—to the AC pushing the stale air into corners, to a truck downshifting outside, to my own breath finding a place to land.
Jaden will be at the tent. Mac will point her camera at a horse. The announcer will find his vowels and spend them carelessly. When I return, people will fall and I will put them back together, one strip of sterile tape at a time. My hands will remember what to do even if my heart forgets how to keep a rhythm.
The phone lights up again—one long buzz that says a call I won’t take. It stops. A text rolls in five seconds later.
I’ll give you space, Annie. Just nod if you need anything and I’ll pretend I got your text.
It’s unfair that he’s that person. It would be easier if he were a piece of shit. Instead, he’s insufferably kind and terribly thoughtful and painfully wonderful. If he were a piece of shit, I wouldn’t have to consider his feelings in any of this.
But when has my life ever been that simple?
