Page 17

Marcos

I try not to fidget as I wait for the doctor, feeling ridiculous and more than a little embarrassed in the thin paper gown.

I can feel cold air blowing on the exposed skin of my upper back, sending goose bumps skittering down my spine.

The patient table is too tall—as they usually are—and I idly kick my feet in the open air as I wait, attempting to calm down a little bit.

I try to organize my thoughts, and prepare what I want to say to the doctor.

When I’d called to make the appointment, I’d given them only a vague I need a general checkup and left it at that.

Before I can cobble together some sort of script, however, the door opens to admit a middle-aged woman in a white coat.

I clear my throat, and straighten so that I’m no longer hunched over.

“Marcos?” I nod, and she holds out a hand for me to shake. “It’s nice to meet you. My name is Dr. Adrianna Radford—I’ll be taking care of you today.”

“Thanks,” I mumble, twisting my fingers together in my lap and trying to convince myself this is the same as any other time I’ve been to the doctor. I need to relax. It’s just like a routine physical for baseball—nothing to get worked up about.

Dr. Radford leans over the small sink in the corner, washing her hands. She looks over at me and smiles a small, friendly smile that is obviously intended to put me at ease.

“I noticed this is your first time visiting us, so I’m going to start with a routine exam. After that, we can chat about what brought you in today. Sound good?”

“Sure.”

She goes through the motions in near silence, speaking only to tell me what she’s doing or to ask me to move a certain way.

When she listens to my lungs and heart—the stethoscope cold on my chest and back—she smiles at me and murmurs a soft excellent.

I relax as she does the exam, feeling more comfortable now than I was when I first got here.

I think I could actually see myself telling her what my problem really is.

“Well, Marcos, you are a very fit young man,” she praises me, sitting down at the desk and inputting a few things into the computer. “Do you get enough sleep at night?”

“Yeah, I think so.”

“And you feel well-rested in the morning?” she presses, apparently sniffing out a lie in that response. I shift, and the paper covering the table crinkles softly.

“Sometimes,” I reply, dodging the truth.

She adds a note, and proceeds to ask me a few more leading questions.

I try to answer as honestly as I can, but lying about how I’m doing has become second nature at this point.

Several times I remind myself that I’m here for her help, and withholding the reality isn’t going to make that easier for her .

“And is there anything in particular that brought you in today, or merely a wellness exam?”

Taking a deep breath, I sit up a little straighter once more. I can do this. I said it to Nate, and I can say it to a doctor.

“Well, actually, there is something else. I…I think there’s something really wrong with me. I, uhm, I sometimes…I don’t like it when people touch me. A lot of the time, actually.”

I say this last part in a rush of air, the words exhaling out of me so fast they barely sound like words at all. Dr. Radford doesn’t even blink, just rests her linked hands on her lap and regards me calmly.

“Can you tell me a little more about that?”

“Well, it’s not—I have a big family and growing up there was never any space , you know? I’ve never liked being that close to people, but it wasn’t ever a problem. I just didn’t like it. I could go have a sleepover at Max’s house, and sleep in his bed and be fine. But now…”

She waits patiently, before gently encouraging me to continue when I take too long to keep talking.

“But now things have changed?” she prompts. I nod.

“Sometimes, I get sick. Like, when someone’s sweaty arm touches mine in the locker room, it makes me feel like my skin is too tight and like I’m burning up with a fever. Sometimes, I feel like I can’t breathe, and my heart beats strangely. I don’t know the right words to describe it.”

She nods. “Okay. And when did this start getting worse? Recently?”

“About two years ago.” I hesitate, because I think I can pinpoint the exact date things started getting worse. “Me and my best friend transferred here at the start of our sophomore year, and it was…it was a really stressful year. ”

“Okay. We’ll circle back to that in a moment. Did it bother you when I was examining you, just now?”

I shake my head. “No, that was fine.”

“Disliking human touch doesn’t mean there is something wrong with you,” she says soothingly. “In fact, it’s more common than you might think. Contact that catches you by surprise might cause a reaction simply because you were not expecting or prepared for it.”

“But what if…what if it happens even when I am prepared for it?” I ask, voice tight with the worry I can no longer hide.

I need her to fix me. I need her to tell me exactly what’s wrong, and what I can do to be better.

I need to not worry about what will happen if I want to hold someone’s hand. If I want to hold Nate’s hand.

“Why don’t you tell me exactly what’s been happening,” she suggests.

“Some days it’ll be a good day, and I already know it is because when I think about someone touching me, it doesn’t make me feel anxious, you know?

But…but I could be having a really good day, and I could be—” I pause, unsure of whether I want to tell this virtual stranger about me having sex.

She’s clearly good at her job, though, because she fills in the blanks without blinking an eye.

“Are you able to be intimate with another person when you are having a ‘good day’?” she asks.

“Yes, and no. The last time I was with someone I was doing really good until I wasn’t.”

“And what happened then?”

“I got all sweaty, and my chest felt a little tight. My whole body was hot, like the heat was cranked up in the room.”

“All right. And this was a consensual encounter?”

I fidget again, paper crunching under my ass. “Yes. Of course. It wasn’t like I didn’t want to touch him, I just…it’s hard. And I worry about it all the time. I can’t think of anything else anymore.”

“All right,” she repeats. “What you’re describing could be a form of haphephobia, which is essentially extreme distress over being touched.”

“I don’t have a phobia ,” I argue immediately, gut clenching with humiliation. “I’m not afraid of people touching me.”

“There is nothing shameful about it if you did,” she tells me. “And perhaps you are not there yet, but even a minor form of touch aversion is distressing and could easily cause problems in your daily life. Particularly for someone as young as you. I imagine you’ve been having a tough time.”

“I just…I just want it to stop. I want to go back to normal—like I was before. I didn’t like it when people touched me, sure, but at least I didn’t freak out about it.” I can’t hide the disgust and self-loathing in my voice, and I know she can hear it.

“Your sophomore year,” she prompts gently. “That’s a pretty specific time frame. Was there anything that happened on top of the already stressful experience of moving schools?”

I shrug my shoulder in a nervous twitch, and look away.

“Marcos.” I meet her eyes again. “PTSD responses look different for everyone. You—who already have a predisposition for disliking uninvited contact—might find yourself with a more extreme form of touch aversion after experiencing a trauma. Did something happen your sophomore year, Marcos?”

“I…well, yeah. My best friend, Max…” I square my shoulders and harden my jaw as I look at her.

I have to tell her what I did. “I took my best friend to a party; someone roofied him, before bringing him into a bedroom and raping him. I took him there. I took him there, and then I left him, and he got hurt.”

She doesn’t even blink as I spit the words out roughly. I wait for her to look at me the way I deserve to be looked at—like I’m a piece of shit. Like I’m a failure. I’m the one at fault, as surely as if I dropped the Rohypnol into his drink myself.

“Marcos.” I clench my jaw at the kind, almost soothing way she says my name. She obviously doesn’t understand. If she did, she wouldn’t be able to look at me with sympathy in her eyes. “A trauma such as that is going to effect?—”

“Nothing happened to me . I’m fine.”

“Something did happen to you, Marcos. Touch can be strongly associated with negative experiences and trigger anxieties. The trauma you experienced with your friend has placed an enormous amount of stress on you, and likely has a great deal to do with your current struggles.”

“So, that’s it?” I ask, a tad desperately. “I’m just stressed? If I relaxed a little bit, it wouldn’t bother me when people touched me?”

“Sometimes, incredibly empathetic people struggle with situations such as these. Yes, I do believe a certain amount of self-care and stress reduction would benefit you greatly. However, there are a couple other things we could try as well. I can start you on an anti-anxiety medication, and I would also like to refer you to a colleague of mine. Dr. Rosen is a psychologist who specializes in CBT, or cognitive behavioral therapy, which has proven beneficial in treating PTSD.”

Wishing I was wearing pants so that I could dry my suddenly sweaty palms, I swallow around the lump in my throat. My mouth is so dry.

“That sounds extreme,” I manage to get out .