Childish of her, the magic beans. Sweet though, too. They stayed on the shelf long after our divorce was finalized. Don’t know why. Maybe I was lazy, except I’m not. If Elizabeth noticed them, she never said a word. Not that she’d have cared. The bottle is in the back of a desk drawer somewhere, I’m pretty sure. Never could throw it away. Maybe I got sentimental, even though I’m not.

Now here I am, lost among the details that started it all: shelves and rows of cups and strips for urinalyses, throat cultures, glucose and lipid and pregnancy tests. I prep solution for Nick’s swab, twist his cells into a vial, set a timer, and return to Exam Room Four to tie a rubber ribbon above the kid’s elbow, to prep a needle like I do this all the time. Nick’s veins are healthy and impossible to miss. “Just a little prick,” I say. I haven’t printed labels, because these vials will go in the trash. His serum levels don’t matter to me. I just want to watch him squirm.

Then it’s back to the nurses’ station to dispose of sharps and check the timer. Ten minutes to go. He’ll be antsy by then. Nobody—no matter how risk averse or sure the unlikelihood, no matter what—enjoys the moments leading up to HIV test results. People aren’t thinking about weather or groceries or how nice a nurse was, how pleasant the wait is—including, or perhaps especially, those who pretend to have only been reading Redbook or Sports Illustrated or Vanity Fair, or those who act as though they’d forgotten why they were waiting in the first place. People hold their breath when I enter the room, and when I say “negative,” they release a sip of air. Some confess their anxiety, while others laugh in such a way as to expose their delusions of immunity. Their righteousness was stupidity all along. Stupidity or trauma. The young ones aren’t stuck in the eighties or nineties like their parents—a generation haunted by a plague that came by night; by outdated data and debunked myths, heartbreak and sleight of hand; by cellular betrayal—but the young ones hold their breath anyway. Genetic memory.