I waited. I looked at my watch and realized that I had been waiting for half an hour. What could they be talking about? What could they be doing? I had been in there only ten minutes. I walked down the corridor to see if there was another way out of the office, another door, but there was not. I went back and sat down and flicked through the magazine again. I wondered if the doctor was examining him as he had examined me. I thought about Pablo without his shirt on, vulnerable as the doctor listened to his heartbeat. I hoped that he was not sick. I had no family; I could die in whatever way I pleased. I smiled to myself at the thought of that. But he had his mother and father to think about, he had to worry about when he would tell them, when they would find out. Maybe that was what he was talking to the doctor about. He had been in there for forty-five minutes. I was hungry.

When he appeared his eyes looked glazed and his manner seemed distant. Doctor Cawley came to the door and smiled at him and shook his hand and then looked at me as though it were perfectly natural for me to be still sitting there, and then he smiled at me too. I could think of nothing to smile about. Pablo and I walked silently out of the clinic and into the street.

“Have you got it as well?” Pablo asked me.

“Yes, I do,” I said.

“Have you been seeing him for long?”

“About six weeks.”

“Is that when you found out?”

“Yes.”

“It never occurred to me that you might have it as well. I was really frightened when I saw you there.”

“I couldn’t believe it,” I said. “If you’d been late we’d never have seen each other. You should have contacted me.”

“I have a terrible problem,” he said. “I have CMV.”

“What’s CMV?”

“It’s an eye disease.”

“It’s the one that makes you go blind if it’s not caught in time, is it?”

“Yes, that’s it. I have it. It was diagnosed yesterday by an eye specialist. I have to make a decision about it. I have to decide whether to have treatment here, which will involve me going into the hospital for two weeks, or whether I go to San Francisco and try to get into a hospital there, which might be difficult since I have no health insurance.”

“What’s the problem about here?”

“My family. I don’t want them to find out. They’ll have to hear the news sometime, but I don’t want it to be now. But the main problem is time. The treatment has to begin in the next day or two.”

“You could tell your parents that you are going to San Francisco.”