Chapter 17
17
Monday 21 March
3:10 a.m.
Woke up from a nightmare where I had to pee during a biology exam, but couldn’t find a washroom anywhere. Tried to fall asleep but a vague, lingering unease from the nightmare kept me awake (that, and the intermittent glancing at the smartphone screen checking for a weather update and you know, Orson’s texts, but not in an obsessive way, of course).
3:25 a.m.
Decided to watch an episode of
Orange Is the New Black
.
3:50 a.m.
Will have a wee tipple of wine.
5:00 a.m.
No text from Orson. It’s fine. Technically it’s only been seventy-five hours or so since he left. Is it normal that I’ve needed to pee twice in the last hour?
7:13 a.m.
Decided to stop drinking wine.
7:25 a.m.
Shit, realized midway during the fifth episode of
Orange Is the New Black
that I have to be at work in thirty-five minutes. Shit!
8:25 a.m.
Slunk into the office and hoped no one would notice me, but of course, Genevieve called me out in front of everyone as soon as she saw me. Bitch!
9:45 a.m.
My bladder and kidneys are working a little
too
efficiently today. Hmm. But need coffee. Nearly fell asleep while peeing.
12:05 p.m.
No text from Orson, still. Decided to send him a flirty little text, since it’s been more than eighty hours and I won’t seem desperate, saying:
What’s up, stranger? Did you lose your phone on the way home or get hit by a car? *angel emoji*
12:30 p.m.
Texted Orson again:
Haha I’m just kidding. I hope you’re fine, though. Miss you, LOL.
As soon as I sent it I regretted it. Only desperate or unfunny people use LOL in their texts.
6:00 p.m.
No text reply from Orson. But maybe he’s busy with his work. Creative types and all. I then realized that I didn’t really know where he worked. I pulled up his LinkedIn profile, which I had consulted in passing. It only contained a brief profile describing him as a creative designer and no mention of the company. Hmm.
8:30 p.m.
Eating cold soup alone in my office, surfing pictures of kittens and baby otters while attempting to work on a file. I’m officially worried. Have not heard from Orson for three and a half days.
10:00 p.m.
Total number of toilet visits since I awoke this morning: fourteen. Something is off.
11:50 p.m.
Still no text from Orson. I must accept the truth: he is dead.
11:58 p.m.
Who am I kidding? It’s worse—I’ve been jilted.
Tuesday 22 March
3:45 a.m.
Wide awake in bed. Oh God. Something is burning up down there. WTF.
5:30 a.m.
Fifth time peeing in less than two hours. Each time feels like an exorcism, all sulfur and pain. I tried not to panic, but all my hypochondriac tendencies are in overdrive. Forced myself to lie in bed and not WebMD myself.
5:45 a.m.
Tried not to think about peeing. Made myself lie still, like a corpse.
6:05 a.m.
But to no avail. Feel completely parched yet every sip of water I take makes me sprint to the toilet.
6:20 a.m.
Frantically typed in my symptoms after my fifth panic pee in three hours. One of the sites told me that I most likely have a urinary tract infection, or UTI, which sounds scary enough, but then WebMD told me I may also have:
Urethritis
Appendicitis
Diverticular Disease
Herpes Simplex Virus
Sexually Transmitted Diseases (Shit. Shit. Shit.)
Menopause (!)
Spent a half hour scrolling through pictures and descriptions of different STDs, which amplified my hypochondria. #FML
7:03 a.m.
It’s probably syphilis, though. With my luck. And could one contract leprosy from sex? Has that skin tag on my chin always been there?
Has it?
8:50 a.m.
“You are not going to die from leprosy,” the doctor at the twenty-four-hour clinic said snidely. He was drawing blood from me for the STD screening, looking peeved at my barrage of hysterical questions. “It looks like you have a urinary tract infection, nothing more.”
“How can you be a hundred percent sure?” I said, eyes bulging. “How can you be so sure about what I haven’t contracted? I mean, I used a condom, but still, this is a boy, I mean,
man
, whose sexual history I know nothing of. So there is indeed a chance that he has passed me leprosy, syphilis, HIV. These diseases and UTIs aren’t mutually exclusive, you know!”
Even in my hypochondria, I was lawyering him. No wonder our kind is so beloved.
“Well, it’s true that I can’t say for sure at this point of time,” the doctor conceded without bothering to suppress an eye roll. “You could indeed be that very unlucky person that has contracted every STD known to mankind from one single encounter, along with leprosy, which isn’t transmittable through sexual contact.”
“Thank you,” I said, gratified. “And it wasn’t one single encounter. There were
several
encounters, albeit in the course of a night.”
The doctor looked like he was suffering intense regret over his career choice, so I shut up.
“Miss Tang, I would advise you to stop speculating on how your life will end. Take your mind off things by spending time with your family and friends. We’ll know more in three to five working days’ time when we get your STD test results back. In the meantime, please finish your course of antibiotics and drink lots of fresh cranberry juice.”
I cabbed home with my medicine and two liters of cranberry juice concentrate. Felt extremely sorry for myself, and was not at all assuaged by the doctor’s empty assurances that it was most likely “only” a UTI—I could see the judgmental light in his eyes as he shook my hand goodbye. It didn’t matter that Orson was the first man I’d slept with in close to a year, that in all my three decades plus of life I’d only been with four men, all in monogamous relationships. If I had been a man, the doctor would have looked at me with commiseration.
9:15 a.m.
Called Kai to tell her I was not coming in. I think she fell off her chair. I have taken less than three days of sick leave in the five years I’ve worked for my law firm.
“How sick are you?” she whispered in fear.
“Heartsick,” I mumbled, before hanging up. She didn’t have to know that I might be dead soon, from leprosy. That’s not her burden to carry.
9:55 a.m.
I was feeling so sorry for myself that I decided to call the one person who had seen me through all the shameful events in my life: my sister, Melissa.
As soon as she picked up the phone, I started to blubber. “Orson hasn’t texted me
at all
since we had sex and I think I’ve been d-dumped and I hurt when I pee and I-I think I’m going to die!” I wailed.
“Ghosted,” she corrected me.
“What?”
“The correct term here is ‘ghosted.’ It’s when . . . ah, never mind. Go on.”
She listened to my tale of woe without interruption and didn’t even try to make me feel stupid for being a hypochondriac. She accepted my quirks. “Look, sis, you need to give yourself a break. You made a mistake but worrying about it won’t change what happened. Go fix yourself a glass of warm milk and go to bed. You sound completely ragged.”
“I am,” I sniffed.
“Take another day off and take your meds,” she reminded me before we said our goodbyes.
I did as I was told and fell into an uneasy slumber.
Wednesday 23 March
3:40 a.m.
Woke up from a troubled sleep feeling like the back of my eyes were sandpaper. It doesn’t seem to be burning down there anymore, but my pee was the color of irradiated lemons.
7:00 a.m.
Stumbled out of bed, dazed, my face the size of a watermelon from water retention, possibly due to the meds or the tubs of salted caramel ice cream I had been eating. Tried to take my mind off things by scalding myself in the shower, which achieved nothing except making me look like a real-life Freddy Krueger. Got depressed thinking that no one Orson’s age who accidentally finds this diary and reads it would understand the reference unless they googled it. Stupid brain.
I tried to get myself out of the funk by repeating inspirational sayings from my collection of quotable quotes scribbled around my
desk, but this exercise only served to hammer home how uninspired I was that I had to read other people’s stupid quotes to solve a problem I should have seen coming. Instead I should be writing my own guide to life. My first piece of advice to pre-millennials in my position is this: don’t date anyone who does not remember VHS. Don’t even look in the vicinity of anyone who has mouthed the lyrics from anything by One Direction. Because if you do, if you are lured in by their flat bellies and full hairlines, you will live to regret it.
Just tried to find my rose gold Cartier Ballon Bleu watch among my collection of watches and can’t find it. It was a present from my parents for graduating from university, engraved with a sweet message; it was one of the few times I’d seen them collaborate on something. Hmm. Maybe I left it somewhere. Will look for it in my gym bag at work.
8:35 a.m.
Have unearthed a rank-smelling pair of socks that caused Suresh to dash from the room, choking, but no watch. Maybe it’s with Linda. She has the keys to my place and often helps herself to my clothes and accessories, which is a little unfair because she’s a size smaller than me, which means I cannot borrow her clothes, although she does have a divine collection of Hermès, Delvaux, and Chanel bags. Speaking of bags, the watch could be in one of mine. Will have to go through all of them when I’m home.
Texted Linda to confirm our lunch at noon, since it’s been weeks since we last met. She’s supposed to be checking on my/our Tinder progress. I made sure to ask her if she had my watch.
9:40 a.m.
Genevieve cornered me in the cafeteria with a Cheshire grin. “It seems that a little birdie saw you with a certain juicy young thing at Quinn’s the other day. Is it so thin on the ground that you have to date teenagers now?”
“Who served you that dish of bullcrap?” I said, frowning. I was never very polite when challenged.
“My own two eyes!” she crowed. Then she wrinkled her nose. “Well, you know what I mean. You cradle snatcher.”
The truth was too humiliating, so I slunk away with my tail between my legs, no witty comeback for the Human Sandworm. The only thing I can rely on is my friends. That’s why I’m going to have lunch with Linda—she’s such a strong woman and doesn’t need a man in her life. I must be like her.
1:10 p.m.
Waited forty minutes for Linda in the lobby before I slunk back to my desk, trying desperately to focus on my work when she finally texted me with this flimsy excuse:
Have something work-related that cannot be rescheduled. So sorry.
Which is fine, of course, because friendship, like romance, is flawed, and more often than not people end up stomping all over your dreams after dangling a goddamn carrot before you like . . . like . . .
“What is wrong with you?” Suresh said, jerking back from his screen with alarm. “Why are you crying?”
“Leave me alone,” I blubbered. Not wanting to tell him the truth, I lied, “I-I just lost a fortune at online crabs!”
“What?” His eye was twitching.
“You know, the game of crabs, you roll a die and then you place a bet . . .” I trailed off, realizing I had no idea how to play crabs.
“Let’s go out for some air,” Suresh said quickly, unable to meet my eye.
We ended up having sandwiches at the new Japanese fusion sandwich bar in Raffles Place, where we did not speak for thirty-five magical minutes before heading back to the office for hard-core typing. He even patted my back and gave me an awkward no-contact-between-genitals hug when we entered the office.
Someday, when Anousha finally moves to Singapore, Suresh is going to make her very happy.
8:30 p.m.
Went home early today (yes, this is early for a mid-career lawyer hoping to make partner in Singapore). Made assam laksa Maggi Mee with an egg and ate it while binge-watching episodes of
Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt
, which is the brainchild of Tina Fey, who is my hero.
11:00 p.m.
Is it reflective of my own truly sad state of affairs that the thought of being imprisoned in an underground bunker with an improbably good-looking Jon Hamm alongside three other harpies is not immediately rejected by my brain as anything other than unbearable?
1:20 a.m.
Oh crap! My watch! Texted Linda again to see if she had my watch.
1:35 a.m.
Text from Linda:
I don’t have your watch. When was the last time you wore it? The last place you saw it?
The burning feeling is definitely back—but in my stomach. I remember exactly when I last wore it: on my date with Orson. And the very last place I saw it? On my nightstand, falling asleep as Orson and I cuddled.