Chapter 2
CHAPTER 2
“ I’m so sorry, Mr. Sheraton .”
Words no one ever wanted to hear their doctor start a sentence with replayed over and over in Jake’s mind.
He’d left his doctor’s office and started walking with no idea where he was going. His head buzzing and his feet shuffling were the only things that registered. He just needed to keep moving, as though movement would prevent him from thinking. Walking had worked on the thinking part, but had done nothing about remembering.
Jake looked down at his hand, which held a to-go cup full of something hot he didn’t remember ordering, or from where. Frowning, he stared out at the tanker ships anchored farther out as he mentally retraced his steps. The doctor’s office. His doctor’s mouth moving but the words coming out of it not making any sense. Standing on the street until someone bumped into him. Walking, walking, walking. Past the Queen Elizabeth Theatre, past the Vancouver Public Library, and through Robson Square. Past St. Paul’s Hospital, and along Davie Street. Wandering until he reached the sandy shore of English Bay Beach.
Not a long distance, but he felt as though hours had passed. Just now registering how far he’d walked, his legs grew shaky, and his knees weakened. He spied an empty bench and sat before he fell. Jake placed the to-go cup on the bench beside him and shoved his hands into his pockets. His knuckles scraped the envelope containing a week’s supply of pills the doctor had given him to start taking immediately. The physical reminder of his new reality sent a jolt of panic spiking through him. He yanked his hands out of his pockets and clasped them in his lap.
“ I’m so sorry, Mr. Sheraton .”
That low buzzing sound filled his ears again. He closed his eyes and focused on breathing slow and even, until the steady breaking of waves over the shoreline drowned it out.
“I’m so sorry, Mr. Sheraton,” his doctor had said. “Your results came back positive for HIV.”
Jake had tuned out the rest of what his doctor had said. At first because the words didn’t compute, and then because there had to be a mistake. He couldn’t understand how he, mister monogamous and faithfully married, could test positive. Not unless he’d stepped into some sort of alternate universe.
He’d been a child at the tail end of the AIDS crisis. He hadn’t seen or experienced what those before him had, but he had watched his favorite uncle lose his battle with AIDS. After that, Jake had always been careful with his sexual partners. Not that he’d had many. One boyfriend in college and then Andy, who he’d been married to for the last sixteen years.
Until the day Andy had come home looking distraught, and, in one fell swoop, pulled the rug out from under Jake’s world. Jake hadn’t been able to parse which revelation was the worst. That Andy had been bored with their sex life and been hooking up with random strangers for years; that his careless and selfish lifestyle had led to him contracting HIV; or that he’d met someone new—aka someone younger—and wanted a divorce.
Jake had never signed a legal document faster. The divorce made easy by him not wanting any reminders of his life with Andy. They’d sold their condo downtown and their cabin in Whistler, and Jake had taken his share of the proceeds to purchase a new condo overlooking Stanley Park and the North Shore.
And now here he was, somewhere he’d never imagined he’d be at forty-three years old: divorced, alone, and HIV positive.
How had he not seen the signs that Andy was unhappy? That Andy was stepping out on him? That his life wasn’t the perfect successful vision he’d strived for and, so he’d thought, had achieved? And what did he do now? He’d be alone for the rest of his life. Sure, his doctor had told him that HIV wasn’t the death sentence that it was in the early days of the crisis. That with medication and proper care, he could not only live a full and healthy life, but he could find love again.
Jake snorted. Find love again . Had he even had love with Andy? Jake had thought so, but clearly Andy had a different notion of what love and committed relationships looked like. And how could he ever be with anyone ever again, knowing he could pass this disease on to them, too? How did he shift into this new reality? How did he let go of the before and move forward into the after?
Seagulls squawked and cried above, but none had any answers for him. Boats sailed back and forth in the bay. Traffic along Denman Street increased and decreased. Afternoon gave way to twilight as the sun began its descent into the Pacific Ocean. Still Jake sat. Feeling an odd sense of detachment from the world. Detachment from himself. And time that no longer had meaning marched on.
What did he do now?