That Awful Burning Sensation

That Awful Burning Sensation

Joseph Deans was having a pretty typical Wednesday morning at work. It seems ironic now, but Joe is a marriage counselor and he works with couples who are struggling to save their relationship. He knows that infidelity is a common problem and it plagues more marriages than he likes to admit. Doctor Joe helps them to heal. He helps them find the love that first brought them together and then he helps them rebuild the communication they need to nurture that love and rebuild trust.

It was midmorning and Joe had just finished with his second couple of the day when the need to visit the men's room became unbearable. He had a few minutes before his next appointment, so he quickly left his office and headed down the hall. It was all so automatic. He walked into the men's room and without a thought he stepped to the urinal and opened his pants while staring at the wall and wondering, "Why did they pick such an ugly tile?" He was in mid-stream when suddenly he felt the most intense burning sensation. He looked down and saw that he was passing blood.

Doctor Joe wasn't a medical doctor. He was a psychologist, a therapist, but he knew enough to realize this was not good! The pain was remarkable, like the inside of his penis was on fire. He breathed a sigh of relief and exhaled when he was finally finished. His breathing was hard. That was rough! He knew what he had to do and when he got back to his office he called his doctor to request an emergency appointment. Jim Stanley, the doctor with two first names, was his doctor and his friend. He'd see him that evening as soon as Joe was finished with his daily appointments.

Driving over to Jim's office, Joe ran through the list of possible ailments. Kidney stones were at the top of the list. He'd heard that passing a kidney stone could be excruciating and he fixated on the possibility. When he got to Jim's office it was only a matter of minutes before he was ushered into an examination room and not long after Jim came through the door. Joe told him the story, short as it was, and Jim told him to be calm and not to worry. They would get to the bottom of it. It was probably nothing too bad. There were ways to break up or dissolve kidney stones. "Soon the pain will pass." He was smiling just a little too much at his own joke. Jim's sense of humor left something to be desired.

Jim took a swab from the tip of Joe's penis. Sometimes Joe wished his doctor was not also his drinking buddy. He took blood and urine samples; the blood sample was less painful, and he told Joe that if these proved negative they would do an ultrasound or CT scan to look for kidney stones. It was likely the problem would go away in a few days regardless.

Joe went home and poured himself a beer. When his wife, Janet, asked him how his day had been, he decided to spare her the worry and just said that it had been long and he was tired. Janet was a good and attentive wife. He couldn't tell her too many personal stories about his clients, but every now and then he would tell her a sanitized version that left out names and changed a few details. She liked the idea that people could get a second chance to fix their mistakes. It gave her optimism.

Friday morning, Joe got a call from Jim's office and the receptionist told him that he needed to come in as soon as he could that day. She wouldn't, or couldn't, tell him anything and that made him think the worst. Were the test results all negative, or were they so bad that she wouldn't tell him over the phone? Joe had a long day and found it difficult to think about his clients.

When the last client left, Joe packed up and raced over to his doctor's office. Since visiting there two days ago, Joe had urinated six times and every time it had been the same: there was that intense burning sensation and blood in the urine. He was getting more worried by the minute. The only ray of hope he held was that he felt no pain between urinations. He'd always heard that kidney stones are painful all the time with back and stomach pain until they pass, so he thought, "Maybe it's nothing, or just some minor infection. Maybe all I'll need is an antibiotic. I'll be fine." He kept telling himself that.

Once again, he was ushered into an examination room quickly and he soon found himself sitting with his friend, his drinking buddy with the poor sense of humor. "I have good news and bad news. Which do you want first?"

Joe thought, "Are you kidding me? Is this what you tell all your patients?" He took a breath and said, "Ok, give me the good news first."

"You don't have kidney stones." Jim wasn't smiling anymore. Joe was getting worried.

"Ok. What is it?"

"Joe, you have gonorrhea." He waited and let the news sink in. Jim knew his friend well enough to know that he wasn't the sort to fool around; he didn't cheat on his wife. The next few minutes would be hard on them both.

"Joe, I am bound by the law on this. I have to report it. I also have to ask you for a list of all your recent sexual partners. There is no way that Janet won't find out." Jim was watching his friend and wondering if he would still be married the next time he saw him.

Joe just sat there in a daze; he was in shock. "It's a short list, Jim. I've never told you this. Most men don't admit it even to their closest friends, but I was a virgin when I met Janet. She's the only woman I've ever been with, the only woman I ever imagined I would be with. We were going to live our lives together, grow old together, and love each other until we die." He sat their looking at the floor. He knew the implications of all this. "She's been cheating on me. Damn it, my wife has been fucking another man behind my back!" His voice was rising now and he was getting mad. He looked like someone who wanted to kill a cheating wife.

Jim knew he had to get his friend to calm down. He couldn't send Joe home to his wife with homicide on his mind. "I'm almost done for the day. How about you give me 30 minutes and then I'll buy you dinner?"

Joe thought that might be a good idea. He knew he was in no condition to face her tonight. Not only did he want to get in control of his emotions, but he wanted time to think about his options. How was he going to approach this? Would he confront her tonight? Could he trust her to tell him the truth? Would he hire a private investigator to get the evidence and learn for himself what was going on? Would he just go to a lawyer and divorce her cheating ass and never speak to her again? All of a sudden twenty years of training went out the window. He was an angry, humiliated husband who wanted revenge.

Jim saw that his friend was deep in thought and decided it was time to bring him back to the present. "Before I buy you that steak, there's one more thing you need to do."

"What's that?" Joe said.

Jim picked up a syringe and began to draw liquid from the vial. "Drop your pants and bend over."

Joe dropped his head again. "Do you have to smile when you say that?"

"I find it puts a patient more at ease." Jim smiled even more as he said it.

Doctor Jim and Doctor Joe headed off to their favorite steak and ale house to drown their sorrows and calm their emotions.

"I want you to tell me who the bastard is when you find out. I swear I'm going to make him wish he was never born with a dick!"

"You know I can't do that. It will be next to impossible for me to keep Janet from guessing who led me to her, but I can try. However, I am strictly forbidden from telling you the names she gives me."

"Names? Plural? Shit, I never even considered that. What kind of whore am I married to? I wonder how many of my friends are laughing behind my back? Oh, fuck, if I find out she's been doing them in our house, in our bed, I swear I'll kill her and serve the time!"

"Easy. Calm down. You don't know what's going on. Maybe it's not as bad as it sounds. You don't know. It could have been one colossal mistake involving too much alcohol and a total loss of all common sense. God, it's horrible to contemplate, but maybe she was assaulted and is too ashamed or embarrassed to tell you or too frightened you might go after the guy. There could be a logical explanation that you can get past." Jim said it. He didn't believing it himself, but he wanted to believe it. He'd known Joe and Janet for years and neither was the sort he'd expect to cheat on the other. He wanted there to be another explanation. Joe wanted there to be another explanation, too, but they both were thinking the same thing: Janet was having an affair.

"Can you delay notifying the CDC for a few days? I need to get to the truth and it will take a while." Joe was thinking hard and trust was not part of the equation.

"I can let it slip my mind for a few days, but after that it's my license and I don't have a choice."

"Thanks. I appreciate that."

"So what are you going to do?" Jim was worried for his friend.

"I'm going to hire a private investigator. If it was a one-time thing, they won't find anything. If it's ongoing, they might."

"I hate to say this, but you won't have much time for them to find anything. I can't give you more than until the middle of next week." Jim didn't like scheming against Janet. Both she and Joe were friends of his, but Jim felt a rising anger within his own heart. He was divorced from a wife who cheated on him and the memory of that year was flooding back.

"If it's someone from work, the P.I. may catch them going to lunch together. At least that gives me a suspect. Maybe I'll get lucky." Joe reflected on the idea that catching his wife cheating on him was what he now considered "lucky". His life was changing fast and not for the better.

It was the weekend and Joe couldn't make any appointments until Monday, so he stopped at a store on the way home and bought a GPS tracking device for his wife's car. He read the instructions carefully before going home and took a moment to install it on her car before he entered the house. At least now he'd know where she was when she was out.

It was going to be a bad weekend and he needed his game face. Joe didn't want to give anything away. He and Janet spent a quiet night at home. They made some small talk, and he spent a few hours in his basement workshop trying to stay busy and away from his wife. Both went to bed feeling tired and slept without any attempt at intimacy by either of them. The rest of the weekend wasn't much better. He tried to stay busy in the yard, the basement, and his home office; and he made the occasional small talk with his wife. Saturday night Janet tried to initiate sex, but Joe begged off saying he was feeling out of sorts. The truth is that Jim told him he had to abstain from sex for a while until the cure worked and Joe wasn't eager to get re-infected anytime soon. Besides, he had a thing about getting leftovers from his own wife.

Joe had spent all those years counseling couples in this same position and all that training had gone out the window with one lab test. He always told his clients that nothing was so bad that they couldn't overcome it together. Now he believed none of it. For the first time, Joe was on the inside looking out and he didn't like the view. His best friend, his confidant, his lover, had lied to him and given herself to another man. He wanted to run, but there was no place to go. His home was fouled by deceit and he felt the knife in his back. When Joe looked at his wife he saw disease and betrayal. He needed answers and he needed a resolution to his problems. He needed an end to his pain. He needed to know.

Monday morning he placed a call and he caught his first break since Wednesday. The P.I. had time and Joe cancelled his morning appointments. He told the P.I. what little he knew and gave him a photograph of Janet. Joe got the best advice he didn't want to take: "...do nothing, try to put it out of your mind, and I'll get back to you when I know something." Joe impressed upon him the urgency of the situation and that come Wednesday, maybe Thursday at the latest, Jim would need to call Janet and have her come to his office. Once they met, things would change rapidly. The P.I. took that as a good thing and gave Joe some equipment for the house. He installed a wire tap in the basement rafters so all phone calls would be recorded. Maybe the diagnosis would make them careless; Janet would be forced to give up the name of her boyfriend and then the CDC would come to him. He had to be warned. Meanwhile, the P.I. would watch her at lunch and when she left school in the evening. They might get lucky.

They didn't get lucky. They got nothing. The GPS revealed that Janet was never anywhere other than where she said she'd be. There were no suspicious phone calls. The P.I. sent a few of his people into the school under one invented cover after another, but she was always at her desk and doing her job. She ate lunch at her desk or with the other women in the school. She never went out after work in the few days she was watched. She was never in the storage room or behind a closed door. They found nothing suspicious.

Wednesday came and Jim was out of time. He notified the CDC that he had a diagnosed case of gonorrhea and he was calling in all sexual contacts. He would notify them of the progress. Then he called Janet and asked her to come to his office at her earliest convenience. She made an appointment for Thursday morning and Jim prepared for the second worst part of his job. Telling someone they were dying was the worst part of his job; but watching a friend's marriage die had to be the second worst thing he ever did and he was wishing there was a way to avoid it. He wanted no part of this, but the alternative meant involving investigators who would treat them like criminals.

Janet sat in the examination room and Jim tried to break the news to her gently. "We've had a patient in this office with a diagnosed case of gonorrhea and the law requires me to track and report all sexual partners. Your name was given to us as a sexual partner that was likely infected by the virus and I am obligated by law to report it." Jim paused to let the information sink in. Janet was in shock. He could read her face; she was panicking. He had a pretty good idea what she was thinking and Joe was undoubtedly at the center of her thoughts. "I'm sorry. It would be best for you if I perform the necessary lab test to see if you are, in fact, infected. It might also be a good idea to start treatment now as it appears that infection is a very real possibility." Jim waited and he knew that her next words would betray her.

"Does Joe have to know?" There it was. She knew she didn't get it from her husband. If she'd been faithful, she'd be angry at her husband right now. Anger wasn't the emotion on her face; it was guilt.

"I'm required to maintain doctor-patient confidentiality, but the CDC will want to make sure that all contacts have been interviewed and, if necessary, treated. There's a good chance that he will find out."

Janet broke down in tears and wept uncontrollably. It was breaking Jim's heart to watch his friend go through such pain and it was the second close friend in a week he'd watched going through this. Jim was accustomed to witnessing physical pain, but it was the emotional pain that was hardest for him to watch. He wondered if he'd have both as friends when this was done.

"Janet, both you and Joe have been my friend for a long time. I love you both and I'm not here to judge. But if you'll let me offer a word of advice, you need to sit down with your husband and tell him how much you love him. Then tell him everything and beg for his forgiveness. I'm not trying to humiliate you. We all make mistakes; but right now you have to convince your husband that you love him, that you can be trusted, and that you won't betray him again." Jim paused for a moment and then decided that he owed her honesty above all else. "I know Joe is always talking about how marriages can get through this sort of thing, but I also know that half of my patients have been divorced and this is the number one reason why."

She continued to weep bitterly. "I didn't mean to cheat on him. It was one time, one stupid time and I've been riddled with guilt ever since!" She was sobbing between the words. "It was the teacher conference last month. I was enjoying the excitement of the meeting, having adult professional conversations instead of talking with teenagers all day, and at the banquet I had too much to drink. I've never been much of a drinker and that night I got stupid. There was a teacher from a school across the state. I'd met him before and always enjoyed our conversations. He makes me laugh and he makes me feel safe. I got to feeling too safe. I don't know if it was just the alcohol, or maybe he slipped something into my drink; but we sat and talked after dinner, we danced some, and when I woke up I was in his bed. I knew I'd had sex. He was asleep next to me and I had no idea how I got there. I just assumed I'd had too much to drink and went willingly to his room. I've been feeling guilty about it ever since. I cry when Joe isn't with me and I try to keep it together when he is. It's killing me that I betrayed the one person who loves me completely."

Jim was fighting to hold back his own tears; he felt his friend's pain. "Janet, tell him that. Tell him everything, but most importantly tell him how bad you feel and how much you love him. That man loves you like nothing I've ever seen. Give him a way back and help him find you again. I know he wants his marriage back; but he feels lost, abandoned and betrayed. He feels unloved. You need to make him understand how it happened and how you feel about it."

She just nodded and cried.

Jim took his samples, swabs, blood, etc., and was ready for the last chore before he turned her loose to face her fate. "Ok, dear heart, that leaves just one more thing." Jim picked the needle off the tray. "Bend over and drop your knickers." He never did develop any kind of bedside manner, but she knew his offbeat sense of humor well enough and it did bring the first small glimmer of a smile to Janet's face since she walked into the office.

As Janet left his office, Jim thought that maybe he'd seen a ray of hope for his friends. Something happened that night, but even Janet didn't seem to know exactly what. There was no affair. At worst, there was one night with horribly poor judgment. At best, if you can call it that, she had been drugged and raped. Either way, Janet and Joe both wanted their marriage above all else. There was hope.

That night Janet sat in their house and waited for her husband to come home. She'd had only two sexual partners in her entire life and the one she regretted was 200 miles away. She knew full well that she'd caught gonorrhea from that lying, worthless excuse for a man and that he wasn't the patient who had turned up in Jim's office. She'd given this disease to her husband and he knew it. Now it was time for her to convince Joe that she loved him above all else and that this would never happen again. Her future rested on his willingness to listen, and his ability to understand and forgive; maybe then, in time, she could forgive herself.