Page 37 of The Single Dad's Guide to Recreation

At least the room is warm, and the gown is actually made of fabric instead of paper. I’ll be sure to mention both in my Yelp review. Unfortunately, when the PA comes in, she goes through my entire history like I hadn’t just filled out the form. It’s a good thing she took my blood pressure before the inquisition; otherwise, it’d be off the charts.

“Hmm.” A little wrinkle appears in her brow.

“Is something wrong?”

“Um. I don’t know. I’ll just flag this for the doctor.”

“You can’t tell me?”

She looks up. “I don’t mean to worry you. It’s really just an inconsistency in your history. I’m sure the doctor can clear it up.”

She exits pretty quickly after that, but by the time the door opens again, I feel like my heart could win a horse race. “The PA said that something’s wrong,” I blurt out.

The petite woman in a trim white coat holds out a hand to me. “I’m Dr. Bautista. Good to meet you, Ms. Mills.”

Her smile is as warm as her handshake, which helps to settle me a little. Until she settles on a stool and rolls over to the computer screen, where the same wrinkle appears in her smooth brow, and she makes the exact same “hmm” sound as the PA.

“What’s the matter?” It’s a good thing this gown isn’t paper, or I’d have shredded it by now.

She blows out a breath. “I’m just trying to sort out this salpingitis diagnosis.”

“The PID?” I learned way more than anyone ever should about pelvic inflammatory diseases like salpingitis after waking up in the hospital.

She nods, eyes still on the computer. “It says here that you had a salpingectomy after your fallopian tube ruptured due to an ectopic pregnancy.”

“That’s right.” My voice is so thready I’m not sure she heard me, but she continues anyway.

“I’m so sorry for your loss,” she says, meeting my eyes with what looks like real compassion before looking back at the screen. “What I’m confused about is the fact that the doctor determined that an STD was the cause of the salpingitis, when there’s no record of any test.”

“It all happened kind of backward, I guess, because of the emergency surgery.” I have to swallow past the lump of shame blocking my throat. “I didn’t know I had an STD, just like I didn’t know I was pregnant and didn’t know I had the PID, because I didn’t have any symptoms until I started bleeding.”

“It can be difficult to talk about these things.” The doctor hands me a box of tissues, her voice as full of sympathy as her eyes.

I nod, determined to get back on track and get through this. “But after the surgery, the doctor said that the ectopic pregnancy was a result of scarring in the fallopian tubes, due to me having an STD.”

The doctor’s lips flatten. “But they didn’t test for it?”

I shake my head.

“Were you having unprotected sex at the time?”

As I nod, an ugly wave of self-disgust washes over me. “My boyfriend and I weren’t using condoms because we’d been together for a while, and I was on the pill. But I guess I didn’t take them regularly enough because I got pregnant anyway. So I figured that maybe I’m just bad at birth control.”

Peter’s harsh words echo in my ears, and it takes everything I’ve got to keep from pulling the gown over my head to hide. He swore he hadn’t cheated, so all I could think was that I’d somehow contracted something before we got together. My freshman year of college, I had a lot of sex. I’d been a bit of a late bloomer, and the attention from so many guys was intoxicating. I always used condoms, but all I could think was that some random guy must have had some random disease that I got anyway. That was the only explanation I could come up with, but Peter didn’t believe it. He was sure I was cheating on him.

Dr. Bautista waits patiently while I blow my nose and wipe away the tears chilling my cheeks. Before I can ask her about tests for sneaky STDs, however, she says, “I’m sorry if this is upsetting to you. I don’t mean to rehash old trauma. But I have one more question. Did you tell the doctor about your appendectomy?”

“Um, no? What does that have to do with it? That happened, like, years before.”

She winces. “Since the ectopic pregnancy was an emergent situation, he might have performed the surgery without checking old records. But he should have asked afterward.”

“Why?”

She meets my gaze. “Because it’s entirely possible—if you never had symptoms of a sexually transmitted disease—that the PID and subsequent scarring were caused by the appendicitis.”

I’m sitting in front of my computer, trying to remember what it is I needed to get done this afternoon, when a throat clearing startles me back to the present moment.

Two throats clearing, I guess, because when I look up, Daisy and Leia fill the doorway to my office.

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