Just Hang On: a novella by Jackson Spencer Bell

Author:Jackson Spencer Bell [Bell, Jackson Spencer]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2014-05-26T22:00:00+00:00

11.

Sunday, April 2, 1995

Saturday night, nobody felt much like partying. Jeannette brought a tape home from Blockbuster Video—Natural Born Killers, with Woody Harrelson and Juliette Lewis—and they popped it into the VCR after taking apart a tasteless pizza. Rebecca had seen the movie in the theater last year. Halfway through, she got up and went to bed.

Because she couldn’t get a moment’s peace, because it would offend the natural order of all things for her to get even a tiny break from this, she dreamed. In her dream, she sat on an examining table in the office of Dr. Aegerter in Woodbridge, whom she had seen as long as she could remember. This made no sense because Dr. Aegerter actually practiced pediatric medicine and he couldn’t see her anymore at age twenty. But this was his office, the smooth eggshell walls and laminate wood floors, the antiseptic smell that seemed to hang over any space where the people there wore white coats. Charts of the human skeleton and various organ systems hung on the walls. She recognized this place. It appeared exactly as she remembered it; nothing had changed.

No, not true; she had changed. She could feel it. She

AIDS, AIDS, AIDS, adios, infected dick sucker, you disgusting, needle-sharing heroin addict, you have AIDS and you’re going to DIE

shivered with a chill she didn’t actually perceive, not in this dream office, and when Dr. Aegerter entered the examination room she tried to stand and found she couldn’t. He motioned for her to remain seated and took a chair from the little note-taking table built into the wall by the sink. Like his office, Dr. Aegerter looked the same as he always had—the silver hair, the tanned skin, the collared shirt and tie visible there beneath his white coat. He hadn’t changed, either.

He smiled. “Well, you’ve got AIDS. Full-blown; no hiding it from anybody now. Everyone who takes a look at you will know what you are.”

She opened her mouth to ask him what he meant by that, but her jaw felt impossibly heavy. Everything felt heavy. She looked down and saw

oh my God

her legs, which poked out from beneath her gauzy examination gown. And she understood why she hadn’t been able to stand when Dr. Aegerter came in; her legs were leather-covered bones.

“You’re one sick bitch now, Rebecca. You’re going to die. Nothing we can do to help you.”

Her arms—more leather. More bones. She saw a mirror hanging on the back of the door and—no. No, no, no, she wouldn’t look. She couldn’t look.

“But that’s okay, because I think you and I both know you deserve this. You’re a rotten, filthy and sick whore, Rebecca, and that’s who this disease is made for; God sent the virus to wipe out people just like you. People who can’t keep their pants on.”

She tried to speak again, but he held up a hand, chuckling. Chuckling and smiling. “No, no, no, don’t try to talk. Keep your mouth shut, okay? I don’t want you breathing the air in here.

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