Doctor-Patient Confidentiality: Chapter Sixty-Four

My eyes are reluctantly still on the ring when he speaks again, forcing me to remember its loaded and incredibly sobering implication. “Like I said before,” he says, his eyes still on the form as his voice temporarily distracts me from the taste of bile in my throat and the wave of guilt now washing over my soul, “we can either go with the endoscopy or do an abdominal ultrasound. Or…,” he continues as his eyes move to meet mine again, “we can do an endoscopic ultrasound; a merger of the two procedures.”

As his cold, icy stare seeps into my own eyes, I realize with a strange sort of clarity that there’s definitely something wrong with me. There has to be. I’m not quite sure what it is, but it’s there, because for some reason, my sudden feelings of disgust and increase in guilt are accompanied by a sick, twisted jump in my arousal as well.