Chapter 1
The day before our wedding, my fiancé, Julian, threw my medical report in my face. "You filthy whore. You've got HIV. And you hid it from me!"
"That's impossible! There has to be a mistake!"
I tried to explain, but he kicked me away, as if I carried a plague he desperately feared catching.
After that, I spent three years in a psych ward.
When I was finally released, news was everywhere: Julian was getting married.
The bride smiling in his arms was Vanessa, the same woman who had done my medical exam three years ago.
Vanessa's triumphant smile blazed from my phone screen, a brand of pure victory.
Her wedding dress was a replica of the one Julian had commissioned in Paris for me three years ago.
He'd said only a woman as pure and talented as I was deserved something so uniquely white.
I had never tried it on.
The day before our wedding, a single sheet of paper declared me “HIV Positive."
The media exploded with headlines:
"Brilliant Doctor's Promiscuous Lifestyle Exposed: Diagnosed with HIV, Goes Mad, Attacks People!"
"Billionaire Julian's Fiancée Diagnosed with HIV!"
...
Even now, you could find photos online of me pinned to the hospital floor by security guards, my face covered in blood.
Back then, all I'd wanted was to run to the lab and demand a new test. Instead, I was treated as a violent, rabid thing to be contained.
My hands and feet were ice cold, my stomach cramping, making me want to throw up.
It was ridiculous. Socially isolated, biologically impossible. In seven years with Julian, I had no vector for infection..
But for three years, I just told myself it was sample contamination or a misdiagnosis.
Only now did it all click.
There was no misdiagnosis.
Vanessa had set me up.
No wonder when I tried to get re-tested, Vanessa was the first to scream, claiming I was trying to infect her with HIV!
She even twisted the knife in front of the media. "I'd seen Dr. Ava getting cozy with male patients before, and I warned her to uphold medical ethics."
Fist clenched, I thought of all the humiliation I'd endured.
My phone vibrated suddenly in my palm.
The screen lit up with an unfamiliar text.
"Ava, I heard you're out?"
It was Julian.
The man who once promised to protect me for life, only to deem me "dirty" and personally send me to a mental asylum.
I didn't reply. I just deleted the message.
Outside, the wail of a siren pierced the air.
Instinctively, I clutched my head, curling into a ball under the counter, trembling uncontrollably.
It was a lingering gift from the psych ward. Even back in the light of day, that sound still triggered me like a terrified animal.