The day before our wedding, my fiancé, Julian, threw my medical report in my face. “You filthy whore. You’ve got HIV. And you hid it from me!” “That’s impossible! There has to be a mistake!” I tried to explain, but he kicked me away, as if I carried a plague he desperately feared catching. After that, I spent three years in a psych ward. When I was finally released, news was everywhere: Julian was getting married. The bride smiling in his arms was Vanessa, the same woman who had done my medical exam three years ago. Vanessa’s triumphant smile blazed from my phone screen, a brand of pure victory. Her wedding dress was a replica of the one Julian had commissioned in Paris for me three years ago. He’d said only a woman as pure and talented as I was deserved something so uniquely white. I had never tried it on. The day before our wedding, a single sheet of paper declared me “HIV Positive.” The media exploded with headlines: “Brilliant Doctor’s Promiscuous Lifestyle Exposed: Diagnosed with HIV, Goes Mad, Attacks People!” “Billionaire Julian’s Fiancée Diagnosed with HIV!” … Even now, you could find photos online of me pinned to the hospital floor by security guards, my face covered in blood. Back then, all I’d wanted was to run to the lab and demand a new test. Instead, I was treated as a violent, rabid thing to be contained. My hands and feet were ice cold, my stomach cramping, making me want to throw up. It was ridiculous. Socially isolated, biologically impossible. In seven years with Julian, I had no vector for infection.. But for three years, I just told myself it was sample contamination or a misdiagnosis. Only now did it all click. There was no misdiagnosis. Vanessa had set me up. No wonder when I tried to get re-tested, Vanessa was the first to scream, claiming I was trying to infect her with HIV! She even twisted the knife in front of the media. “I’d seen Dr. Ava getting cozy with male patients before, and I warned her to uphold medical ethics.” Fist clenched, I thought of all the humiliation I’d endured. My phone vibrated suddenly in my palm. The screen lit up with an unfamiliar text. “Ava, I heard you’re out?” It was Julian. The man who once promised to protect me for life, only to deem me “dirty” and personally send me to a mental asylum. I didn’t reply. I just deleted the message. Outside, the wail of a siren pierced the air. Instinctively, I clutched my head, curling into a ball under the counter, trembling uncontrollably. It was a lingering gift from the psych ward. Even back in the light of day, that sound still triggered me like a terrified animal.
Three years ago, I was St. Jude Medical Center’s prodigy. A twenty-six-year-old attending physician, a candidate for a prestigious overseas fellowship, and engaged to a fiancé everyone envied. My fiancé, Julian, was the Dean’s son, the youngest star surgeon. We were the hospital’s golden couple, praised by everyone. As part of the pre-departure protocol, I underwent the standard battery of tests. The day the results came back, Vanessa, the head nurse, walked into my office. She didn’t offer it. Instead, she fixed me with a look I couldn’t decipher-a fleeting, performative pity drowning in a sea of cold, triumphant scorn. “Dr. Ava, your results… there’s a problem.” I smiled, taking the report. “What problem could there be? I’m perfectly healthy.” Until I saw that line of red text. HIV Antibody: Positive. I stared at the words. I knew them, but my brain couldn’t process their meaning. “This can’t be.” My hand shook, and the report fluttered to the floor. Julian pushed the door open just then. He bent down to pick it up, a smile still on his face. “What’s wrong? Not healthy enough to go abroad?” But when his eyes landed on that line of text, he recoiled three steps, as if burned. His face contorted with a horror and disgust I’d never seen before. The way he looked at me… it was like I was a pile of rotting garbage. “Julian, listen to me, this must be a misdiagnosis, I don’t have…” I instinctively reached out to grab his sleeve. “Don’t touch me!” He violently yanked his arm away, so hard I slammed into the corner of the table. All eyes in the vicinity turned to us. I watched him pull out a disinfectant wipe from his pocket, scrubbing at the spot on his sleeve I’d almost touched. Once, twice, three times. As if it had been contaminated by the filthiest thing on earth. “Julian!” I screamed his name, my voice cracking. He finally stopped, lifting his head. His handsome face was cold and resolute, a look I’d never seen. “Ava, our engagement is off.” “Effective today, you are no longer a member of St. Jude Medical Center’s medical team.” “The hospital’s reputation cannot be stained.” He signed my death warrant in front of everyone. I was kicked out of the hospital, utterly humiliated, like a whipped dog. I fled home like a coward, hoping to grasp my last hope. But my home didn’t want me either. I pushed the key into the lock, but it wouldn’t turn. My parents considered me a disgrace to the family name. They’d changed the locks overnight and tossed my luggage onto the street. No one listened to my explanations. No one believed me. That night, it poured. Homeless, I fell from grace into the mud. I developed a high fever, curled up in a cold alley, my consciousness fading. That’s when Vanessa appeared. She stood over me, holding an umbrella, dressed in a pristine white dress, looking down. “Dr. Ava, how pathetic.” Her lips said ‘pathetic,’ but her eyes glittered with malicious glee. She didn’t help me up. Instead, she took out her phone and snapped several photos of me. The next day, my story was all over the internet. Those photos, paired with sensational headlines like “Brilliant Doctor’s Promiscuous Lifestyle” and “STD Infection from Promiscuity,” nailed me to the pillar of shame. Every denial I made only became desperate, self-incriminating excuses. In despair, I thought of the most drastic way to prove my innocence. In front of everyone, I took a scalpel and deeply slashed my wrist. If my blood was clean, wouldn’t that prove my innocence? Blood stained the white coat Julian had given me. I thought death would clear my name. But Julian just stood there, coldly telling a nurse: “Clean up the blood. Don’t let it infect anyone.”
I didn’t die. I woke up encased in padded walls. No window. Just a single, heavy steel door. Julian had me committed to a psych ward. His reason: severe “persecutory delusions,” marked by “suicidal ideation and violent impulses. A forged diagnostic report was even more damaging than that HIV report. It stripped me of my last bit of agency as a normal person. Every morning at six, I was dragged out of bed. Ice-cold water was sprayed directly onto my face. They called it “physical cooling to eliminate viruses.” I’d huddle in a corner, teeth chattering from the cold. Julian never visited, but he sent boxes and boxes of antiviral drugs. They were HIV post-exposure prophylaxis (PEP). The side effects were brutal. He’d given a strict order: they had to watch me swallow them. Three times a day. The medication made me vomit violently, my hair falling out in clumps. I cried, I screamed, I begged them. “I’m not sick! I really don’t have it! Please, just one re-test!” My pleas, in the doctor’s notes, became another cold, impersonal line: “Patient’s condition is unstable, experiencing hallucinations, and resisting treatment.” Then came the electroshock therapy. As the current surged through my temples, my muscles spasmed uncontrollably. I started losing control of my bladder, drooling, convulsing like a true madwoman. But I still held onto a sliver of hope. I thought, Julian is a germaphobe so he’s just terrified. If only I could see him, if only I could explain… Three months later, Vanessa came. Through the thick glass of the visitation window, she showed me photos on her phone. They were her and Julian’s wedding photos. In the pictures, she wore the exclusive wedding dress I’d dreamed of countless times, smiling sweetly and triumphantly. “Ava, isn’t it beautiful?” “Julian said only someone clean in body and soul deserves to wear this dress.” “And you,” she gestured at my baggy patient gown, “deserve to rot in here.” I lunged at the glass like a madwoman, pounding it with all my might. “I’m not sick, it was a misdiagnosis! Vanessa, please, beg Julian to take me for a re-test!” Vanessa looked at me with pity, like I was a dying ant. “So what if it was a misdiagnosis?” “Ava, do you really think the truth matters?” “The whole world believes that report, and Julian only thinks you’re dirty. Do you think you have any chance of turning things around?” At that moment, I saw a familiar figure at the end of the hallway. Julian had arrived. I desperately pounded the glass, screaming his name. “Julian! Please, take me for a re-test! I’m really not sick!” Julian glanced at me from a distance. He frowned, then turned and walked away. Vanessa turned back to me, mouthing words: “He doesn’t want to see anything dirty.” In that moment, the light in my heart went out.
From that day on, I stopped fighting. I knew that here, being lucid was a crime. I wanted to survive. I stopped crying, stopped trying to explain. Whatever the orderlies told me to do, I did. When the doctors gave me medication, I swallowed it obediently. They all thought I had finally been “cured,” transformed into an obedient, soulless puppet. But they didn’t know. Every time I took my medication, I’d hide in a blind spot from the cameras, stick my fingers down my throat, and throw it all back up. To keep myself from going mad, I replayed surgical procedures in my mind, over and over again. Every incision, every stitch. I had to live. Live and walk out of this place. Then, I would uncover everything and clear my name. Three years. Over a thousand days and nights. I endured the withdrawal symptoms, the psychological torture. The hospital eventually declared me “stable, no longer aggressive.” I was finally “recovered” and discharged. No one came to pick me up on discharge day. I just thought I was unlucky, a victim of misdiagnosis and betrayal. … “Mommy!” A child’s innocent voice pulled me back to reality. Leo, with his little backpack, charged into the flower shop like a cannonball and hugged my leg. He was the son of a fellow patient I’d met in the psych ward. His mother had taken her own life, leaving him an orphan. I adopted him. Two people abandoned by the world, finding warmth together in this small flower shop. On a weekend, during the kindergarten’s parent-child event, Leo whispered excitedly in my ear, waiting for the activities to begin. The host’s voice rang out, full of enthusiasm: “And now, let’s give our warmest welcome to today’s special guest – St. Jude Medical Center’s youngest surgical authority, Dr. Julian, who will be giving a lecture on pediatric first aid!” Under the spotlight, Julian and Vanessa walked onto the stage hand-in-hand. Vanessa’s gaze swept through the crowd, and her eyes widened when she saw me. The next second, as if she’d spotted a monster, she deliberately raised her voice. “Oh, my… am I seeing things right?” She raised a perfectly manicured finger, pointing directly at me, her tone a masterful blend of false concern and pure malice. “Isn’t that… Dr. Ava? The one our hospital had to let go… after that whole nasty business with her lifestyle choices?” The entire auditorium fell silent instantly. Parents immediately pulled their children away, scurrying from Leo and me as if we carried a plague. Instinct took over. I pulled Leo firmly behind me, shielding him with my body. Julian also looked our way. When he saw Leo, his face instantly darkened, enough to drip ice. He strode over, directly blocking my path. “Whose kid is that?”
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