by McKay, KC
The doctor looked at me, perplexed. "You seem awfully happy for a man who's just been told he may have genital herpes."
"You have to actually have intercourse to get it, right? I couldn't get it from just lying next to her, right?" I saw a silver lining. "I mean, we'd have to touch privates, right?"
"Well, the lesions must be active at the time, and yes, it would require intimate physical contact."
I wiped pretend sweat from my forehead, then raised my hand in a Boy Scout salute. "Ma'am, I never dorked Charlotte Kemp."
"Dorked?" She rolled her eyes. "Why would she make it up? This is not something she'd want to broadcast, so I can't see that she would name you, needlessly adding to her embarrassment, if she didn't have an intimate relationship with you. I need to examine you." She stood up. "Drop 'em."
She slipped on latex gloves as I lowered my pants and underwear. She scooted her chair over as I stood in front of her while she had a good look and feel around.
The quietness was unsettling. All that could be heard was her breathing as she looked at my penis. For that kind of exam I was pleased to have a woman doctor and not some guy named Bruce; but the truth of the matter was, she was inspecting my cock, and not many women had ever seen it totally limp. Except of course for Charlotte Kemp.
The good lady doctor finished her exam, and after I hitched up, we both sat down around her desk as we were.
"Well," she started as she wrote some notes. "There's no signs of infection, but you need to keep a close eye on yourself. If you notice any lumps, abrasions or scabbing, or unusual outbreaks of any kind, you're to report to sick bay immediately. And keep checking yourself. Evidence of infection may appear later. And if you're going to have sex, make sure you use a condom."
"Yes, ma'am," I replied reverently.
She tapped the pen on the desk. "Now, are you going to tell me about anyone else you've had sex with?"
"No, ma'am. I mean, I haven't had sex with anyone else."
She shook her head and sighed. "Have it your way. Who's your division officer?"
"What? Why?" I'm sure she heard the panic in my tone.
"It has been known that when diseases of this nature are passed along it's not uncommon for the transmitter to suffer reprisals from the person they infect. Your superior needs to be made aware of any potential conflicts or malice you may hold against Petty Officer Kemp. It's just a precaution."
"You can't tell her I might have herpes, for God's sake. You just checked me out, and didn't find anything." My voice went louder than I expected. I slapped my hand on the desk. "I never fucked Charlotte Kemp."
The doctor was taken aback by my outburst and took a moment to regroup. "Petty Officer Chambers, calm down and refrain from swearing or you're going to find yourself on report." She held her pen at the ready. "Now, for the last time, who is your division officer?"
I looked at the white and gray speckled tiles beneath my feet and nearly chucked the entire contents of my stomach onto the floor. I re-swallowed the bile that had worked its way up to the back of my throat.
A nuclear explosion would have less fallout than this revelation. I took a deep breath. "Lieutenant Novak."
Chapter 26
I made my way to the supervisor's meeting at the end of the day and Darcy greeted me cordially, so I figured she hadn't heard about the potential problem yet. How embarrassing. I didn't know what I was going to tell her.
The little angel on my shoulder urged me to tell her the truth. Yeah, right. Well, Darcy, Charlotte and I laid next to each other totally naked all night long, but we never did anything of a sexual nature.
I gnawed on the end of a pencil as she spoke, not hearing a word she said. My mind was in a galaxy far, far away.
"Chambers!" Master Chief snapped.
I took the pencil out of my mouth and looked around. "Oh, sorry, Master Chief, I was miles away. What was that?"
"You're gonna have miles of my boot up your ass if you don't start paying attention." He smacked his hat against the desk. "I said, did you go to sick bay like I told you to?"
I glanced at Darcy. She looked inquisitive, but not pissed. "Yeah, Master Chief. I went up there."
"What'd they want?"
Holy crap. I briefly toyed with the idea of telling him they wanted him to mind his own business. "It was nothing. They just wanted to check my blood pressure."
He gave a grunt of indifference.
Darcy ended the meeting and smiled at me as I left. I prayed that wouldn't be the last time I saw a smile on her pretty little face.
I returned to the shop and dismissed the boys for the day. Billy Earl stayed behind and sat with me, twittering on about some chickens his ma bought and how many eggs they were laying a day. I drifted off in my own world while he babbled on.
Since the workday had finished it wouldn't be until the following day before the medical team would have a chance to warn Darcy that I might be infected with some incurable sexual disease. Somehow I had to convince her I didn't have sex with Charlotte. She was going to go as ballistic as one of the submarines tied up alongside.
It was even worse because she had asked me directly if I screwed Charlotte, and I said no. She'd think I was a liar and a disease-ridden scumbag. All the while, Charlotte was walking funny from being air-fucked five times. I told some bad lies in the past, but this may have been my worst.
"Howdy, boys." Darcy walked in and sat on the bench behind Billy Earl and me. We turned our chairs to face her.
"Howdy, Lieutenant." Billy Earl ran his hands over the front of his shirt.
"To what do we owe the pleasure, ma'am?" I asked.
"Nothing special. Just a social call." She crossed one leg over the other and held her knee with both hands. "How's things back on the farm, McClure?"
Billy Earl beamed, obviously pleased she directed a personal question at him, and from the context, excited that she remembered something about his hillbilly life. "Fine, ma'am. Ma had one of the pigs slaughtered and got a right pretty penny fer it. Then she bought some more chickens… and the bull…"
It looked like Darcy was in for the 'EI, EI, OO' treatment.
Charlotte came in and interrupted Billy Earl's stories from the farmyard. "Oh, sorry." She stopped herself at the doorway.
"That's all right, Kemp. Come on in," Darcy urged her.
"No, that's okay, ma'am. I just wanted a word with Zac—I mean Chambers." She gave me a pleading look.
I wanted to scream 'We never fucked' for both of them to hear and run out of the room. Instead, I maintained my dignity. I nodded toward Darcy. "Excuse me, ma'am."
She opened her hand toward the door where Charlotte stood. "By all means. Don't let me stop you." Her eyes told a different story than her words.
Charlotte and I walked to the other side of the shop.
She violined her finger under her nose. "Have you been to sick bay?"
I gave a single nod.
"Look, I'm sorry, but it wasn't my fault. I didn't know. Some guy from R-Three division gave it to me. How was I supposed to know he had crotch rot?" She forced a shudder. "I'm gonna kill that fucker when I see him." Charlotte held a murderous look in her eyes. She rubbed the side of my arm. "Don't hate me, Zac. I really didn't know. I didn't find out until after our night together. I thought I just had a rash." Tears pooled in the corner of her eyes.
A bolt of sadness hit me, but at the same time immense relief comforted my loin. I could have had her so easily, yet divine intervention saved me from a terrible fate of having my penis fall off. The doctor lady was right. There was little doubt Charlotte would be seeking revenge on the guy with the rotten dick from R-Three division.
Besides the anger, guilt and shame was written all over her face. I wanted to comfort her and at least let her know she hadn't infected me. My hand on her shoulder drew her eyes to mine. "Look, Charlotte, I really do feel for you, and you have my sympathy, but you and I didn't actually do anything."
She smiled. "I know, Zac. I w
ent through the same stages of denial. It's not easy to accept, but it happened."
"No, Charlotte, it didn't." I looked even deeper into her eyes. "Nothing happened. We didn't have sex. I just pretended we did."
Her face turned stern. "Zac, what happened isn't nice, but you have to face facts. I had trouble walking for the next three days, and you just told me the other day we had sex five times that night. Why would you say we didn't do anything now?" Her bottom lip quivered and her eyes twitched. "Are you getting rid of me now because I'm damaged goods? Are you ashamed of me?" A tear ran down her right cheek, then her left.
Oh shit.
I stepped forward and embraced her as the tears flowed. "It's okay, don't cry."
Her shoulders jerked as she sobbed, her face buried into my chest. I comforted her for a while, holding her, praying she would pull herself together in the next nanosecond or sooner.
"Is everything okay here?"
I cast my eyes past the ceiling and into the heavens, silently asking God to strike me down. I already knew the voice, and the peach scent confirmed Darcy stood behind me.
Charlotte pulled back, wiped her eyes with the back of her hands and had a few deep sniffles.
I turned around.
My eyes followed Darcy's as she looked at my shirt, assessing the wetness from Charlotte's tears along with some of her mascara on my shirt. She folded her arms across her chest, her eyes narrowed, and her lips flat-lined. She looked every inch the angry girlfriend.
Moving away from Charlotte, I put my arm across Darcy's shoulders and turned her around, then quickly dropped it when I realized that could be seen as showing affection to an officer.
"Umm… Dar— I mean, ma'am," I whispered, hoping Charlotte wouldn't hear me. Darcy stared at the floor, concentrating on my words. "Char— I mean, Kemp's mom just died, and she's pretty cut up about it. I'm just offering her some comfort."
She turned to me, her head cocked to one side. "Is this part of your 'damsel in distress' rescue program?"
My stomach churned. "No, it's just that she knows my mom died on me a few years ago, so I know what she's going through. Can we talk about this later?"
"Sure," she said sarcastically. She turned around. "Sorry to hear about your mom, Petty Officer Kemp."
Charlotte's mouth dropped open. "What?"
Darcy turned back and gave me the evil eye. "That's what I thought." She stormed off.
I looked down and shook my head before turning to face Charlotte. I let out a full sigh generated from the bottom of my lungs.
Charlotte swiped at her eyes again, and took a deep breath. "Okay, it's time to be rational, Zac."
"Rational?"
She nodded. "Yeah. I know it's going to take you a while to accept things, but once you get past the denial and emotional trauma of what's happened, we need to look toward the future."
"The future?"
She nodded again. "The only real choice is for you and me to become a couple. We can't be screwing non-infected people. Since we both already have the virus, it doesn't matter, and we can keep this between ourselves. For me, it's only a choice between you and that dickhead from R-Three who did this to me in the first place — and I'm not fucking that fuckwad again, I can assure you. For one thing, he's gonna be dead when I get my hands on him." She swiped at another falling tear. "So, the only logical choice is for you and me to be boyfriend and girlfriend. That way, we can both still have sex without worrying about other people." Her mouth twitched somewhat nervously. "So, whaddaya say?"
I stared at her in disbelief, fighting the action of my mouth dropping open. "We don't need to do that. I mean, I'm not infected, and I'd like to keep it that way."
Charlotte stepped forward and pinched my cheeks together with her hand. "Oh, Zac, don't fight it, baby, but I understand. Once you get over the shock, we'll talk again."
Before I knew what was happening, she moved in and gave me a kiss on the lips. When she backed away, she held her face close to mine. "At least I'm not fat or ugly, and you already know I'm a good fuck. It'll be fine." After giving me a reassuring pat on the cheek, she walked away.
I wiped my mouth, hoping she didn't put any herpes on it. My thoughts turned to Darcy. Her not buying the 'dead mother' routine confirmed me as a proven liar. Sometime in the next day or two, a medical doctor was going to tell her I had herpes, just days after she and I had unprotected sex. To top it off, she just saw me hugging the woman who allegedly infected me; the very same woman, in the doctor's opinion, I may want to kill for giving me the gift that keeps on giving. And that very same woman, whom I denied having an affair with, wants us to live happily ever after as Mr. and Mrs. Herpes.
I asked myself: Could my life get any worse?
No, I didn't think so.
Chapter 27
My shoulders slumped as I walked back to my office. As I came over the threshold, Billy Earl talked about his goats, but I ignored him, plonked in my chair, and lit a cigarette. When I thought about it again, I looked at Billy Earl and admired him for a moment. The only thing on his mind was how much cheese the family goats would produce. I had a hell of a lot more to worry about than freaking goats.
I'd have to deal with the Charlotte problem later. Darcy was my primary concern. There were too many risks involved in having a heart to heart with her on the ship. It wasn't the kind of conversation we could have without emotions getting involved. The last thing I wanted was the PMA or Master Chief busting in on us, asking why Darcy was crying, or why I had a hard-on — depending on how the conversation went.
Despite his backwardness, Billy Earl did seem to hook up with a lot of women. Desperate times called for desperate measures. "Hey, Billy Earl." I took a drag and watched the smoke travel upward. "Have you ever had problems with girls? I mean major problems."
He leaned back, casting his eyes skyward, stroking his chubby little jaw. "Hmm…" His eyes nearly closed and the creases on his forehead fluttered. "Well…" He grabbed a can and spit in it. "I was at a family reunion once, and cousin April Mae come up to me. The only problem was, cousin Betsy Jo was right there. Well, Betsy Jo got huffy and…"
I let my head fall on the desk, accidentally whacking it too hard, but it was better than listening to his family reunion orgy. He kept talking as I nestled my arm under my head, blocking him out while he droned on about hillbilly hoedowns. Although I didn't really want to face Darcy, I'd have to talk to her sooner or later, and as it stood, facing her was a better option than listening to Billy Earl. I wanted to get out of the office before the story started involving animals.
Pushing back from the desk, I stubbed my smoke out and headed out the door. With heavy feet, I headed for Darcy's office. Part of me hoped she wasn't there, the other half hoped she was. Sucking in a deep breath, I pushed the door open and walked into the reception area. The door to her office was ajar, so I peeked in. She sat at her desk.
I lightly rapped on the door and she called out, "Enter."
Her face was expressionless. I could have used a clue: Pissed, sad, hurt, jealous, atomic type rage? A starting point would have been nice, but she gave nothing away. She didn't even speak, just stared.
I looked down at my shuffling feet. "Umm… ma'am. I'm not sure what you're thinking, but whatever it is, I'm sure it's not what you think." I risked looking her in the eyes.
"Do you have any guesses what I may be thinking, Petty Officer Chambers?" Still no expression.
Addressing me by rank and name, formally. Yeah, she must have been pissed. "No, ma'am, but whatever it is, I bet you're wrong."
She lightly shook her head. "It doesn't exactly take Miss Marple to figure it out, Chambers. Just go." She flicked her hand outward.
"No, ma'am. We need to talk, but not here. Can we meet at your place?"
Her eyes grew narrow as she delivered each word harshly and independently. "No - we - can - not."
Uh-oh. She needed swooning fast. "How about if I take you to Diane's for dinner? Just you and me, and
a bottle of fine wine."
"Chambers, forget it. I got the message, and this whole thing was a bad idea anyway." She leapt from her chair and pointed to the door. "Now go!"
"But, ma'am, there's something I have to tell you. In private," I pleaded. "Please."
She stomped her foot, her arm still extended toward the exit. "I said get out!"
I turned and walked out, feeling like I had just been punched in the gut. She was irate, and that was just from thinking I screwed Charlotte. What was she going to do when she thinks I gave her herpes?
***
I barely slept that night, tossing and turning, dreading the moment when Darcy would confront me about giving her a lifelong sexual disease. One of Billy Earl's bulls couldn't conjure up enough shit to get me out of this one.
I got out of the morning meeting relatively unscathed. Darcy was her usual professional self, and if I wasn't personally involved in the fiasco, I wouldn't have even known I was in deep shit.
Darcy had made it clear she didn't want to talk to me, but I had a feeling all that would change once she discovered the devastating implications of us having sex.
I handed out the work assignments for the boys in the shop to get on with while I sat at my desk attempting to do paperwork but was unable to concentrate. Hours passed and there had been no word from Darcy to come see her.
"Petty Officer Chambers."
Finally. Darcy stood at the door, leaning against the frame. Her voice was calm and she hadn't tried to clobber me, so maybe she didn't know about the herpes yet.
I smiled, but she wasn't receptive to it. "Yes, ma'am?"
She was firmly in her businesslike persona. "Come on, we've been summoned to see the XO."
"The XO?" That was serious. The Executive Officer was the second in command of the entire ship. Was it really his concern whether I screwed Charlotte Kemp or not? Or was he taking a personal interest in the herpes epidemic? Or maybe he knew about me and Darcy. I couldn't think of anything I had done lately that warranted a medal or a pat on the back, so it could only be bad news. "What's it about, ma'am?"