The Love Hotel

Chapter 4

She thought about what she could do now. She had been sitting on the bench in front of the apartment building. She didn’t even care if Seth was looking. He could look and think whatever he wanted to think. She was done with him. She had stopped caring completely. She was going to do what she had to do and she was going to leave.

She looked around and saw the busy street. She saw a great deal of beauty in how busy New York seemed to be all of the time. So many people with so much to do, so many people living their lives and finding no time to think about others. Rochelle wanted to start thinking about others so she decided that she was going to go out of her way to try and make people feel better about themselves.

She got a taxi and took it to the hotel. She wanted everything to work better now, so she decided that starting tomorrow she was going to start working a great deal harder. She was going to work as hard as she possibly could and she was going to get a promotion at the first possible opportunity she got. She had not really focused on her career up until now. She had assumed she would always have a boyfriend that would help her out with that. She had assumed she would always have someone that would financially support her, and she felt that her true purpose was to make her partner feel comfortable, to make sure her partner had everything he needed in order to be happy. She was done being that way. She was going to live for herself now. She reaffirmed this to herself yet again. She wanted to be rid of the old Rochelle.

However, before she was rid of the old Rochelle, she was going to have to do something really important. She was going to have to get herself tested. Just because the man she had been fu*king, the man that had been fu*king other men behind her back, had not thought to get himself tested in spite of the fact that he had been fu*king other people, she could not help but think he might have caught something without realizing it. She did not care about him. She did not care about him at all anymore. This was about self preservation. This was about making it so that she would be able to get out of this without having an unpleasant reminder of the fact that her man had been fu*king other men. She did not even want to know about what they had gotten into. They had probably had so many different kinds of s*x. It was very possible that he had caught something, and this meant she might have caught a disease and that was the only reason that she wanted to get tested right now.

She dropped the suitcase off in her room, not wanting to get a concierge that would end up avoiding an actual customer in favor of his fellow employee. After she was done with that, she left the hotel and went to the nearest hospital. She thought of the fact that she had once thought she would never have to do something like this. She had even judged some other people that had had the misfortune of getting a sexually transmitted disease. She had simply assumed that every single person that had a disease of this nature deserved to have it, because how else could you get a disease other than delving into the depths of depravity? She knew now how wrong she was. Not everyone that got such a disease deserved to have it. And even if they had been s*xually active with a few too many people, that was just one of their flaws and everyone had flaws that they had to work through. Everyone had things they needed to get over in order to be the people they truly wanted to be. She was ready to forgive these people. She was ready to forgive them because in doing so she would allow herself to forgive herself as well, because it had been her own submissive nature that had allowed her to be cheated on in such a grossly violating way. She knew the vast majority of the fault lay with her boyfriend, but she was responsible in a small way too. She was responsible for making him feel like he could do something like that and not face any serious consequences. She had proven him wrong of course by leaving him high and dry and not caring about how much his guilt made him suffer, but the damage had been done. She had to forgive herself, and the best way to start doing that was by forgiving other people that had committed mistakes as a result of their character flaws.

She got to the hospital and took a deep breath. She went to the counter and caught the attention of the nurse that was sitting there. She was a kindly old woman who smelled wonderful. She looked at her, smiled and said, “How can I help you, dear?”

“I need to get myself tested,” said Rochelle. “For s*xually transmitted diseases,” said Rochelle in case the old nurse did not quite get what Rochelle was trying to say.

The old nurse chuckled and said, “Well there’s no need to specify what you need to be tested for. Everyone that comes in here and asks to be tested like this is talking about STDs. Don’t be so worried, dear, most of the time people are just worrying for no reason. And I’m sure that whatever it is, you’ll be able to handle it without too much difficult. You look like a strong person after all, the kind of person that would not let a problem like this get the better of her.”

Rochelle was completely taken aback. First of all, this woman had not judged her at all for the fact that she was here to get tested. On the contrary, she had chuckled. She had taken it with amusement. This made Rochelle feel a lot better about herself. It took away a great deal of the shame she had felt for so long, shame that she had felt as a result of the fact that her boyfriend had been fu*king other men behind her back. She was also surprised that the old, kind nurse thought that she was strong. Was she strong? She had been feeling it but she had no idea whatsoever that she gave off that kind of aura. She just assumed that this was the sort of thing she would have to deal with now, with people telling her that she looked weak and proving them wrong. But this was not the case at all. She looked strong. If this kind old nurse saw it, it meant other people were going to see this too and this was extremely important, it was a step in the right direction for Rochelle.

“Now, just sign here,” said the nurse. “It’s the form that states that you came in here willingly and asked to be tested for STDs.”

Rochelle took a quick glance through the form. Everything seemed to be in order. She did not think she was going to have to read into it too much. It looked like a standard form that indemnified the hospital in case it turned out that she did, in fact, have an STD, because a lot of people probably ended up suing the hospital after this happened.

She sat and waited for her name to be called out. It felt like the longest wait of her life. She did not think she could ever feel this uncomfortable but she had clearly been wrong all her life. This was the single worst wait of her entire life, even worse than when she had had to wait and find out what the status was after her brother had broken his leg playing basketball. She chuckled as she thought of that. She had been worried about a broken leg, something that healed quite easily nowadays. She had never thought she would be waiting for something that was so serious.