The nurse at the clinic was so sweet, the kind of woman who remembers your birthday and asks about your grandbabies. I paid my $120 copay and didn’t think twice about it. It was just a regular checkup for someone my age. You spend your whole life taking care of others, and eventually, you figure you should at least make sure your own blood is running right.

I was back in my kitchen by 11:45 that morning. I had a chicken salad sandwich on the counter and the radio playing some old country station. My life felt solid. It felt like a house built on flat, level ground. I had been married to Clifford for 34 years. We had our routines, our little arguments about the lawn, and our comfortable silences. I never once worried about where he was or what he was doing.

The phone rang at 2:10. It was my doctor, Dr. Aris. He is a good man, but he sounded different on the line. He sounded like he was trying to hold his breath. “Faye, I am looking at your blood work,” he said. He paused for a long time. “Your hepatitis panel came back positive.”

I laughed because I didn’t know what else to do. “That is impossible, Doctor.” I said it with a smile in my voice. “I have been married 34 years. I don’t have any risk factors.” I honestly thought he had mixed up my chart with someone else. People make mistakes. Doctors are just people, right?

“I want to run it again, Faye,” he told me. His voice was very firm now.

He ran the tests again. The result was exactly the same. Positive. When I went back into his office, he looked older than he had the week before. “The antibody pattern suggests exposure decades ago,” he said, looking down at the file. He didn’t look at me. He just kept staring at the paper.

I went home and sat Clifford down at the kitchen table. He was reading the paper, same as he did every day. I told him what the doctor said. I told him he needed to go get tested because I was scared for both of us. He didn’t even look up from the sports section. “Lab error,” he said. That was all.

“Clifford, please,” I said. My voice was starting to shake.

He finally looked at me. His eyes were cold, like glass. “I am not going to some clinic to waste my afternoon because of a clerical mistake.” He went back to his reading. That was the end of that conversation.