Good Girl

”You don’t exactly know where he’s been…”

Mallory thought about what Erin had, not liking her words at all. She’d been so shocked and in denial that there was nothing she could say to Erin or Matt. Erin had told her that Matt was cheating on her by the evidence, and Matt acted like nothing was wrong. She didn’t tell him about the credit card issue when she got home on Saturday, not feeling like talking. Matt had asked what was wrong, but she lied and said she wasn’t feeling well and went straight to bed.

The three days after their shopping trip, Mallory found herself purposely distancing herself from Matt. She didn’t want to kiss him anymore. She didn’t even want to touch him or sleep in the same bed as him anymore. She was still in denial, no matter what Erin told her. She couldn’t make herself believe it if she wanted to, even if she knew it was true. She couldn’t bring herself to confront Matt just yet, either.

Mallory sighed as she stared at the white wall in the gynecologist’s examination room. She was naked from the waist down, only a thin blue sheet covering her naked half. Her legs were slightly bent at the knees and spread, her feet in the stirrups of the chair. She hated the part when the doctor had to prod down there and stick cold metal objects up inside of her. She hoped to make it back to her office by the end of her break at one, or 1:30 at the latest.

The door cracked open a few minutes later before the doctor discreetly slipped into the room. Mallory had been seeing the same gynecologist since she was eighteen. The gynecologist was a short, olive-skinned Indian woman with short black hair pulled into a ponytail. She wore a printed blouse and black pants, her white doctor’s coat overtop.

“So…” Mallory looked at the woman in anticipation, sitting up in the chair a little.

Dr. Verma sat down on her small rolling stool. She held a few sheets of paper in her hand, pushing her reading glasses up her nose. She looked up at Mallory after a moment. “Well, you’re not pregnant so that’s good news, right?”

“I told you that, Doc,” Mallory said. Mallory faithfully took her birth control pill every day.

Being that Mallory didn’t have regular periods while on birth control, the doctor had decided to check anyway to make sure. She drew Mallory’s blood and sampled her urine for testing.

“I know, I know,” Dr. Verma said in her thick accent. “But I am your doctor, so I have to make sure of these things. There is one thing, though…”

“What is it?” Mallory asked nervously. She prayed to God that it wasn’t what Erin told her it was.

“I don’t want you to be scared or upset,” The woman started carefully. She glanced back down at the paper. “You do have a sexually transmitted disease. You’ve tested for trichomoniasis, or what they call ‘trich’.”

“What the hell is that?” Mallory asked quickly, sitting up on her elbows and staring down at the doctor.

“Now, before you freak out,” Dr. Verma put her hands up, “it is a very, if not the most, common STD, Mallory. It’s caused by an infection of a tiny little parasite. That explains the itching and the inflammation, which in your case, is a very good sign. Symptoms usually develop from 5 to 28 days after being infected. Most people don’t get symptoms at all, so they don’t know they have the infection.”

Mallory couldn’t believe what the woman was telling her. She had an STD, an infection, a parasite inside of her body. Somehow, and she didn’t want to admit to herself that it was Matt, she’d gotten infected. Matt couldn’t do that to her, he would never, and she knew it.

“Am I going to have it forever?” Mallory whispered, not even sure how to react. It was something she’d never heard of in her life. She thought syphilis or gonorrhea was more common. She couldn’t even pronounce the word if she wanted to.
Dr. Verma chuckled and shook her head. “No, Mallory. Trich is highly curable with a single treatment. One pill of a prescription antibiotic is all you need.”

Mallory nodded, biting her lip uncomfortably.

“I’ll step out while you get dressed and I’ll be back in a few minutes with the medication,” Dr. Verma stood up from her chair and left the room, closing the door behind her.

Mallory removed the cloth from her lower half and hopped down from the examination chair, her legs nearly giving out at first. They had gotten numb from being bent and raised up for so long. Mallory muttered to herself as she started to get dressed. The bad news was that she had an infection. A fucking STD, she thought. She pulled her cotton panties up her legs and onto her ass. The good news was that it was treatable. One pill was all she needed. One pill would cure everything. She pulled her tight, gray pencil skirt up and over her hips. She tucked her dark purple blouse into the skirt before reaching behind her and zipping it up.

There were two knocks at the door and Dr. Verma stuck her head in. Seeing that Mallory was fully dressed, she stepped in. She was holding two little cups, one in each hand. Mallory stuck her feet into her pointed, black pumps.

“This is the antibiotic medication,” Dr. Verma handed her one cup with an oval white pill. Then, she handed over the second cup filled with water.

Mallory tossed the pill to the back of her throat and downed it with water as if it was a shot of liquor. She tossed the two cups into the trash bin.

“The symptoms should go away within a week,” The doctor said. “If they don’t, you come back and I can give you another dose. You need to wait to have sex until the symptoms completely go away, okay? I know you’re engaged and it’s none of my business, but if you know who you got it from, you should tell them right away so they can get treated too.”

Mallory nodded slowly, keeping her lips in a thin line. Her doctor was now skeptical that either she was fucking around with other men, or her fiancé was cheating. Dr. Verma’s expression was almost apologetic, like she felt sorry for Mallory.

“Thanks, Doc.” Mallory grabbed her purse and said goodbye. She practically ran from the doctor’s office and to the parking lot.

The frustrated scream that left Mallory’s mouth once she got inside the car shocked her. She always kept it together. She slammed her hand on the leather of the steering wheel out of anger. This couldn’t happen to her. Things like this never happened to her.

When she wiped the tears that pricked at her eyes, she needed to pull herself together. She had less than twenty minutes to get back to work. She couldn’t fall apart right now. She turned the key in the ignition, taking deep, but angry, breaths in an attempt to calm herself down. She was going to try to get through the last few hours of work, but she wasn’t sure if she could handle it when she got home.