"Excuse me, but I was wondering if you had any updates on Demetrius Key's condition? I've been waiting several hours already to hear anything about how he's doing, and so far no one has told me anything—"
"Mr. Coffey, as we have already informed you multiple times, once we have an update on Demetrius's condition, we will inform you and Piper Key right away. You coming to ask me every twenty minutes does not make the process go by any faster, sir." The hospital receptionist looked quite bored with his job, like dealing with hysterical people who have lost someone important to them in their lives every day isn't exciting or fun. "Now if you would, can you please take a seat?" The man gestured towards the waiting room behind us, which was barren besides from Piper Key, Demetrius's mom. Even with her there, though, the room seemed empty as she looked off in the distance with an empty look in her eyes.
Clenching my hands together in a tight fist, I walked slowly over to Piper and took a seat next to her. She didn't acknowledge me as I sat down, she just kept staring at one of the many abstract paintings hung around the waiting room, like the bright colors on the painting would distract people in the room from how sad and depressed they felt about whoever they were waiting for.
"Piper?" I asked cautiously, turning to look at her. After a moment's hesitation, I leaned forward and rested a hand on her knee. "Are you alright?"
She jumped, flinching away from my touch, glaring at my hand as if I was trying to kill her with it or something. "Am I okay? Did you really just ask me that, Kristian?" Piper spat, her eyes filled with anger and the undertone of pain.
"It was really more of a formality than an actual question, I know that you're not actually okay. I'm not okay, and he's your son," I mumbled, looking down at the ground, feeling horrible for offending her. Demetrius already told me that his mom hasn't been doing that great since his dad died, and now I had to go and offend her by asking if she was 'okay' when her son was now also in the hospital, in an undetermined condition that we were awaiting to hear more about.
"Kristian?" Piper suddenly inquired, not looking away from the painting still. She looked really tired, now that I stopped to really look at her and study how she'd changed since I'd last seen her about a year ago. Underneath her eyes she had puffy gray bags, her hair was graying in several places, and she was developing several new wrinkles that weren't there a year ago. Was stress really causing her body to change this much?
"Yeah?"
"Has Demetrius been acting odd recently? Anything that he did that might explain what's wrong with him?" she inquired, her voice filled with a level of emptiness, despair and monotony that made my heart drop to the floor to hear her so upset and ready to give up.
"Outside of being really tired recently from work and school, I haven't really noticed anything off about him," I answered, shaking my head. "When he passed out it took me completely by surprise, I almost didn't even know how to react."
"Thank you for being there for him when me or his father couldn't be, Kristian. It means a lot to me, and a lot to Daniel too, I'm sure." My whole face flushed and turned a bright red as I looked away, trying to hide it.
"Really, it was no problem," I assured. "I'm always going to be there for him, for the rest of our lives."
Piper finally looked away from the painting to look at me with a curious look in her eye, furrowing her brow. "The rest of your guys' lives? That's a pretty broad thing to say when you're both only seventeen, don't you think?"
"Wait . . . you mean Demetrius didn't tell you?" I questioned, confused. Did Demetrius really not tell his own mother that he was buying a ring for me and that I got him one in return? He didn't even tell her that we were now engaged? Sure, his mom does seem very stressed from losing her husband, but not telling her about her son's soon-to-be husband seems a bit ridiculous, right?
"Didn't tell me what?" Piper asked, her voice sharp as a knife. I felt myself shrinking under her gaze, intimidated by her sudden surge of anger.
"That . . . um . . . on our anniversary yesterday, the two of us, um, got engaged." My face turned red as I slowly lifted my left hand up to show her the ring that now decorated my ring finger.
Piper sat looking at my hand and the ring in shock. "O-oh . . ." she trailed off. "No, Demetrius didn't tell me that."
"Mr. Coffey and Mrs. Key?" a doctor asked, standing on the edge of the waiting room, tapping a clipboard in his hands. The two of us immediately perked up and rushed over to him.
"Do you have any news about Demetrius's condition!?" I exclaimed, looking up at him with wide, concerned eyes.
"Do you know what's happening with my son!?" Piper practically screeched, her voice going up an octave higher than I'd ever heard it before.
He looked at the two of us, a perplexed frown appearing on his face. "I'd like to talk to you about that with Mr. Key in the room, so he can hear about it as well," the doctor proposed.
"Okay," Piper agreed shakily.
"But family only, so if Mr. Coffey could wait out here in the waiting room until we're finished discussing with Mr. Key about—"
"That's my fiancé you're talking about!" I hissed, feeling my anger flare up. "I am not waiting out here!"
The doctor looked taken aback by my exclamation, eventually sighing and massaging his temples.
"All right, fine, you can come too," he gave in, pulling on a pair of reading glasses and turning to walk down the hallway with several patient's rooms. Over his shoulder, he beckoned for the two of us to follow.
After walking down the hallway next to Piper for about thirty seconds, the tension between the three of us so thick I thought that the entire hospital would actually implode, we ended up outside of Demetrius's room.
"After you," the doctor said graciously, holding the door open for the two of us. Swallowing nervously, I stepped into the room. All of the walls were painted a bright white color, and the whole room stenched of bleach and hand sanitizer. But lying on the bed in the corner of the room against the snowy white bedsheets was Demetrius. His brown skin contrasted the white of the whole room, drawing my eyes to him as he seemed to be one of the only things that looked lively in the entire room, despite the fact that he was sick. In his arm there was an IV, and a heart monitor was strapped to him, beeping in a metronome along with his heart beat. My ears seemed to ring with the beeping noise as I could hear it echo all around the room in its robotic monotone.
"Demetrius!" I gasped, running forwards and kneeling down by his bed. I lifted my shaking hand up to lace together with his left one, admiring the gleam of the ring on his finger. "Oh thank God you're okay."
Piper stood towards the back of the room, watching her son with a sort of perplexed look on her face. It appeared to be a look of concern, but with Piper I couldn't really tell anymore.
"Kristian? Is that you?" Demetrius asked groggily, trying to sit up and face me. Instead though, he just fell back against the bed, to weak to hold himself up.
"Yeah, it's me," I whispered, leaning forwards and embracing him, pulling him into my chest and just holding him. "I'm here, it'll be okay, alright? Whatever this is, it'll be okay."
"Promise?" he mumbled.
"I promise," I confirmed, placing a chaste kiss to the crown of his forehead before leaning back and linking our hands together again.
"Well, Mr. Key—or Demetrius, as your mother and fiancé refer to you, do you know why you're here today?" the doctor interjected, interrupting our conversation.
"Um, I passed out at work this morning, right after Kristian got there. So I guess Kristian called 911, and I got brought here?" Demetrius guessed, squinting adorably as he tried to remember. Gently, I squeezed his hand in reassurance.
"Yes, that's true. However, when we running some tests on your blood, we found something that I believe your mother and fiancé will be very interested in hearing," the doctor told Kristian. "Have you ever gotten your blood drawn before to have it tested?"
"No, I can't say that I have," Demetrius answered, shrugging. "There never was a need to."
"Well, as it turns out, Demetrius, you have acquired immune deficiency syndrome," the doctor announced, writing a note on his clipboard. My jaw dropped before I could stop it.
"Are you saying my son has AIDS?!" Piper screeched, her face livid. "But what about HIV? Doesn't someone have to have HIV for awhile before they get AIDS?"
"That's true, ma'am, but your son must've had asymptomatic HIV—which means HIV with no symptoms—for a few years before it turned into AIDS," the doctor informed Piper. "And as HIV is a virus that can be transmitted from person to person during sexual intercourse, I strongly recommend going to test to see if you're HIV positive, Mr. Coffey. In fact, I'd be very surprised if you weren't HIV positive, it's very easy to be transmitted, especially during anal sex."
"What!?" Demetrius spluttered, sitting up from the bed, ignoring his heart monitor that had started to spike. "That's impossible, Kristian and I have never had sex with each other, we're waiting until after we get married!"
"Right, well, it seems that you didn't really honor that Demetrius. Though I guess for a black homosexual teenager, that isn't all that surprising that you got HIV, is it? Gay and bisexual African Americans are the most affected population by HIV due to how much unprotected sex they have, in fact gay and bisexual males account for 82% of all males affected," the doctor rattled off from his clipboard.
"Excuse me!? Don't talk to Demetrius like that!" I fumed. "Demetrius is a virgin, how dare you accuse of sleeping around just because he's black, that's racial stereotyping!"
"That's where you'd be wrong, Mr. Coffey. I looked up Mr. Key's foster records, and he was checked for HIV before he came into America, and he was determined to be HIV negative. He must've picked it up somehow, Mr. Coffey," the doctor told me, shrugging candidly. "Anyways, Mr. Key here is quite rare to have been diagnosed with AIDS at the age of seventeen, only 4% of people diagnosed with HIV/AIDS are thirteen to nineteen years old. I suppose that's one stereotype he doesn't fit into, then."
"Wait, Doctor, does this mean that my son is going to die?" Piper questioned from the other side of the room, her face painted in concern. "Is he going to leave me too?"
"Well, Mrs. Key, without treatment people with AIDS live for about three years. However, if Mr. Key here gets a dangerous opportunistic illness his life expectancy will be lowered to one year, as his immune system will be unable to fight off the disease. But if he starts the proper treatments, his life span can be increased, but it will be considerably shorter than those without AIDS."
"I'm sorry, what proper treatments are you referring to? Does he have to go through chemotherapy?" I piped up, concern and fear flooding through my entire body.
"No, Mr. Key will not have to go through chemotherapy. However, as there is no actual cure for AIDS, there are some medications that he can take that will slow the spreading of HIV. However, these medications can have some bad side effects. Or, you can stop HIV from spreading by using a combination of HIV slowing vaccines, called antiretroviral therapy or ART."
"So . . . I just have to take medication all the time to stop the HIV virus from spreading to more of my cells?" Demetrius asked. His eyes were wide as he stared at the doctor, fear present in his entire expression as his lip trembled, as his eyes started to shine with unshed tears.
"Correct. However, the monthly cost of all of taking the medication or doing ART is about two to five thousand dollars," the doctor told us, causing all Demetrius and Piper to look at him like he was crazy.
"We can't afford to spend that much money each month!" Demetrius fretted. "The two of us can barely pay rent each month!"
"Have your insurance pay for it," the doctor offered, shrugging indifferently.
"Our insurance won't cover that much!" Piper hissed. "What do you expect me to do? Let my son die?"
"I could have my parents pay for it," I offered meekly, staring down at Demetrius and my intertwined fingers.
"No, Kristian, I can't take money from your parents. I'll just take extra shifts at Hartley's," Demetrius argued.
"What extra shifts? When if there time for you to take another shift? You already work before school and after school until it closes!" I countered.
"I'll figure something out," Demetrius muttered.
"You better," the doctor lectured. "Be here tomorrow at three thirty to start your treatments."
"But I'm working then!" Demetrius protested.
"Not anymore, I suppose. I'll have a copy of your medical records sent to the school so the teachers and staff will understand what's going on if you ever have to miss school for an appointment or something," the doctor explained, scribbling down notes on his clipboard. "I'll send in a nurse with your release paperwork in a few minutes. Thank you for being so patient, the three of you, it really made my day better."
The doctor finally finished his notes, clicked his pen shut, and sauntered off to the door and slammed it shut behind him.
~~~
"That doctor was awful," I mumbled into Kristian's hair, clutching onto him tighter. He just hummed in response and drew me closer to him, rubbing his hand in soothing circles on my back.
"I didn't really like him either," Kristian admitted, sighing. "The way he just stereotyped you because you were black was totally uncalled for." Kristian shifted slightly, so his breaths were fanning out evenly across my neck.
"Could you really blame him, though? A gay black kid whose medical records deny me being born with HIV, any rational person would jump to the conclusion that I just slept around with people and got HIV," I scoffed, almost starting to believe the doctor's messed up opinions about myself.
"People shouldn't just jump to conclusions about others just because they look or are a certain way!" Kristian spoke sharply, his voice enough to make me flinch into his arms and bunch up my sheets in one of my hands. "He should've at least talked to you first, gotten to see what type of person you were before just jumping to conclusions."
"It's just the world we live in, Kristian. I'm used to it by now," I whispered, shrugging indifferently. "Besides, it's not like his opinion actually matters to me."
"Demetrius," Kristian scolded. "I know you better than anyone. You take everyone's opinion of you seriously, you just put your blind faith in people and are left destroyed when they crush you afterwards. Nothing you say can fool me."
And Kristian was right. Even though I definitely shouldn't, I care about what everybody tells me and strive to make other people proud, try not to disappoint people. It seems that my whole life I've just kept conquering and hiking up the mountain, kept achieving things that appeased others and didn't even stop to look down and look at myself until it was too late and my body had given up.
"How can you even hold me right now?" I whimpered, feeling prickling tears trying to force their way out of my eyes, making me blink in an attempt to keep them from spilling. "Aren't you afraid I'll give it to you?"
"Demetrius, don't be ridiculous," Kristian chided. "I remember learning about HIV and AIDS in health—it can't be transmitted from hugging or kissing or breathing next to someone. The only way I could get it is if we had sex or shared needles."
"But if other people knew I had it, they'd stay away from me because they would think I'd give it to them," I protested softly.
"Anyone who thinks that is just uneducated and ignorant," Kristian told me, gently petting my hair. "And luckily, no one but me, that doctor, and your mother knows about this."
"I can't believe I have AIDS," I suddenly blurted, turning bright red afterwards. "I don't understand, it's not like I share needles or do anything that could possibly constitute me getting HIV in the first place."
"Well . . ." Kristian sheepishly started, scratching the back of his head. "I've been doing some research on babies born in Africa around the time you were born, and about how babies were checked for diseases before coming into America."
"Oh really?" I hummed. "What did you find?"
"So HIV can be transmitted from the mother to the child when the baby is in the womb, during labor, or while breastfeeding. Now they have pills the mother can take to prevent their baby from getting HIV, but in Africa when you were born they didn't," Kristian explained.
"Okay . . ." I mumbled, furrowing my eyebrows as Kristian wove our hands together, holding them up in the air to admire our rings.
"Then I did a little bit more digging," Kristian admitted, biting his lip. "Supposedly, the foster care agencies were supposed to higher scientists with a medical degree to examine the babies for various diseases. However, some companies just hired random people for a low wage, and these people just made up results and didn't actually test the babies for any of the diseases."
"Wait," I implored. "You think that's what happened to me?"
"It's very plausible, and the best thing we've got as of now," Kristian confessed, a slight frown forming on his face. "I also wanted to do some research on how HIV even infects cells, but then I decided that you should come over instead, so I could see how you're doing."
"I'm okay, right now at least," I reassured Kristian, who breathed a sigh of relief. "But as for how HIV infects cells, we learned about it in AP Biology a few months ago, if you want me to explain it to you."
"Please do," Kristian lamented. "I feel like just knowing what's going on makes it seem more controllable, more like something we can handle if we know what we're dealing with."
"So after HIV enters the body, it binds to the receptors—a group of nerve endings on a cell—on the surface of CD4 cells—which are white blood cells that helps the immune system fight diseases. After that, the HIV envelope fuses together with the cell membrane of the CD4 cell, which enables HIV to enter the cell. Once in the cell, HIV uses reverse transcriptase to change its HIV RNA into HIV DNA, which then enters the cell's nucleus and binds to its DNA. This HIV DNA releases an HIV enzyme called integrase which converts the HIV's viral DNA into the DNA of the CD4 cell. HIV then uses the machinery of the CD4 cell to make long strands of HIV proteins, which are just the building blocks for more HIV. These new HIV proteins/RNA move to the cell membrane of the old CD4 cell and turn assembles into immature HIV. And lastly, the immature HIV pushes out of the cell and releases another HIV enzyme called protease, which breaks up said long chains of immature HIV into smaller, mature strands," I rattled off, finally finishing and falling silent.
"You are such a nerd," Kristian teased after a long moment of silence. "You remember all of that from a few months ago from your biology class?"
"Just because you don't remember anything from your classes doesn't mean that none of us do!" I joked in a sing-song voice, feeling Kristian chuckle against me.
"Come on Demetrius, we should sleep before tomorrow. Do you have a morning shift before school?" Kristian questioned, reluctantly pulling away from me to turn his bedside lamp off for the night.
"My shifts went back to being just on Tuesday and Thursday morning after our anniversary, so I don't tomorrow," I answered, letting out a huge yawn.
"Good, you need all the sleep you can get," Kristian decreed, crawling back in bed and drawing me into his arms. I rested my head against his chest, chuckling as he tangled our legs haphazardously together and protectively snaked an arm over me, pulling me close. "Sweet dreams," he whispered, kissing me softly on my head.
We both laid there in silence for a few minutes until I finally got the courage to pipe up, "Do you think everything will be different now?"
"Demetrius, I still look at you as the exact same beautiful, gorgeous boyfriend I had before. Nothing's going to change because of this, okay? Together we'll be able to get through this and end up walking out of it stronger than we were when we came in," Kristian answered determinedly.
"Stop being such a soppy romantic poet, it makes me feel bad," I mumbled.
"Don't ever feel bad, Demetrius. I'm the luckiest person in the whole world to get to hold you at night and call you mine. Don't think that that will ever change, because it won't.
"I love you."