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“Thank you.” Her face was soft and her eyes warm as she looked down at him.
“You should warn your dean.”
She shrugged. “He knows about my HIV.”
“But your students don’t and their parents don’t. And he won’t want to be blindsided about this. Give him time to craft a statement of support for you.”
“That’s good advice.”
“But before you do that, let’s go to bed. You need some sleep. In a few hours, you can call your department chair and write your introduction.”
“And you’ll still be there for me after.” She said the words with a smile, but he could hear the uncertainty in her voice.
“Yes. Though I think both of us will need a nap. Come on,” he said, with a gentle push at her waist so that she stepped back. “When I climb back into your bed, I want you to be in there with me.”
* * *
WHEN MINA WOKE up a couple of hours later, it was light out, and Levi was still sleeping next to her. A storm was blowing in from outside, and she wanted to sink back into a deep sleep with him warm and comfortable next to her.
She felt safe with him, she realized. Not that she’d felt unsafe before, but this was a safe that came from knowing someone deep in his core, rather than hoping for the best and taking a leap of faith. A safe that was part of the air she breathed.
This will all be okay.
She rolled over in bed, and Levi popped awake immediately. “Good morning,” he said with a lazy, indulgent smile, his arms reaching over his head in a catlike stretch. “Is it time to call Thomas?”
The clock on the nightstand said eleven thirty. It was a Saturday. This needed to be over. “He’s got kids. I’m sure he’s awake.”
“Good.” The peck he dropped on her cheek was quick, like this was any other Saturday morning. “I’ll go make us some breakfast.”
Another bit of worry flaked off. She kept thinking she was done with doubts, and then Levi would do something, and more of the worry would disappear. It was like shedding a skin she hadn’t known she had grown out of.
Mina went into her office to call her department chair. His wife said he was leaving for a round of tennis, but she ran out to the garage to catch him when Mina said it was important. She summarized the situation for him, including that the news was spreading anyway, and she didn’t know how quickly it would make it back to campus. Or if it was already there.
“Damage control?” he asked. Dean Thomas had been a professor and administrator for a long time, through many different academic crises. As a black man who taught Japanese, he’d been on the receiving end of incredulity, which made him compassionate to others who seemed like they were about to hit a personal wall.
“Control,” she said, slowly. “I prefer not to think of it as damage.”
“Give me until two this afternoon to make sure everyone who should know knows. Then post away. The department will be behind you, and the university will be behind us. Lord knows we need some good publicity around here.”
“You see this as good publicity?” She hadn’t expected the university’s reaction to be bad, but she definitely hadn’t expected anyone to see this as an opportunity. She didn’t know whether to be relieved or grossed out.
“I see this as the university standing on the side of education against ignorance. Which is, after all, what we’re supposed to be about.”
“It sounds like you already have your pitch to the naysayers ready.”
Thomas chuckled. “I wrote that down as I said it. It’s pretty good, don’t you think?”
She didn’t realize how nervous she’d been about this conversation until now, when her entire body seemed to release its tension all at once, and she nearly fell over. “Thank you. So much.”
“I have a brother who’s HIV positive. Everyone knows someone with the virus. They just might not know that they do. And it’s just a virus. As a society, we moralize because of how it’s transmitted, but a bug is a bug is a bug.”
“Sometimes I forget that.” Sometimes she also fell into the trap of believing that there were innocent victims, and there were those who deserved the virus, and she belonged in the latter group. But HIV was a virus, not a punishment handed down from on high. God wasn’t capricious.
