A Memory

For some reason, when I was happily eating the dessert I had made today and thinking of all the fun things I will get to do in NYC when I will be living 30 miles away from the Big Apple...

...for some reason, I remembered something that I forgot to write about.

Have you ever had someone tell you something, where you just have nothing to say in response? I remember one time in clinic, I walked into the room and felt unsafe. There was like a cloud of thunder and lightning hanging over the patient sitting in the chair by the computer. To be honest, if I had been by myself, I might have walked out and gotten a chaperone.

The patient was a very tall and muscular man. I am married to a tall, muscular man, but this guy was like the Hulk or something. An intimidating presence, even though he was in his late forties and starting to a gray over. It didn't help that he also happened to have HIVantiretroviral lipodystrophy (weird fat distribution on his face and back and chest), giving his facial features a strange, unnerving coarseness and roughness. Even when he wasn't scowling, he looked angry, but the patient was angry on top of it all, so he looked like he was about to murder someone.



He kept clenching his bear paw hands open and shut, open and shut, and rocking slightly in his chair. I was exceedingly uncomfortable, but my attending knew what she was doing. She highlighted the obvious right away.

"You look upset, Mr So-and-So."

The patient nodded, then said,

"My wife's in the hospital now with kidney failure from her HIV. She can't get a f*ckin' transplant because of the f*ckin system. It makes me so ANGRY. I could shoot something."

Then he looked straight at me. My heart stopped and my mouth turned dry. I seriously thought I was going to die.

"Doc, you know what my biggest regret in life is?" he asked. He held my gaze straight and aggressive, like someone going into a boxing ring. I was mute; I shook my head.

Suddenly those eyes filled with tears.

"I gave her that HIV."

His face contorted and screwed up, and that giant man began to weep.

Honestly, I can't remember what I said or did after that. I just remembered that moment.