My Sister Thought She Caught Herpes

She woke up one morning and looked at her husband and said: “We need to talk.”

On a sunny morning in the late summer of 2013, my sister — Nada — kissed her husband goodbye as he got onto a party bus to the airport. His next stop — Las Vegas, Nevada.

My sister spent her week working as a realtor during the busiest time of year. Her husband was drinking and partying — giving his best friend a farewell to a bachelor’s life.

On the second day of her husband’s trip, he called Nada in the morning. The clock had read 9:08 am. She performed quick math and realized it was 7 am in Las Vegas. She answered, in fear that something had happened to him.

Nada: “Hello, are you okay?”

Her husband: “How do I get back to my hotel?”

Nada thought to herself: how dumb is this guy, he hasn’t slept, and he can’t remember where Caesar’s Palace is?

She quickly explained that his hotel is just a few blocks down the road, and he is almost there.

“I have to go. I have a meeting.” She ended the call and set her phone down.

She took a deep breath and reminded herself that Vegas never sleeps.

A few days later, when her husband arrived home, they went for dinner, and he told her about the wild bachelor party. No detail was left unsaid — she almost wished he had shared less. She had forgotten about the early morning call and never questioned him about his absent-mindedness at 9:08 am just a few days earlier.

The following week our family took a yearly trip to our cottage.

I want you to imagine a remote location, a place where multiple men spend the fall and early wintertime hunting the local game. Imagine no electricity, no toilets, and barely running water — in the northern part of Canada. It was a country bumpkins paradise.

Nada knew that her skin was sensitive, and our cottage isn’t the most sanitary place to spend a week of fun-filled activities. When she returned home from the cabin, Nada wasn’t worried that she had the beginnings of a minor rash.

Three days after coming home from the cottage, my sister looked in the mirror. She was shocked at what the reflection displayed. The rash was extremely red. There were bumps scattered on her legs, and the pain was unlike anything she had experienced.

What Nada was looking at was not just any regular rash; this was something she had never seen before in her life. The rash was large, ugly, painful, and shocking to see. The only thing she could think of was genital herpes.

She vividly remembered the call she got when he was in Las Vegas. He couldn’t remember where his hotel was, he was alone, and the sun was rising. This time she wanted answers.

Nada stormed into their bedroom.

“What the fuck happened the night you called me at 7 am in Las Vegas? You couldn’t remember where the fuck the hotel was. Where were you before that?” She demanded answers immediately.

When she returned to the bathroom, she couldn’t believe her husband had cheated on her, gave her herpes, and never mentioned anything. Thoughts of the disgusting woman he had laid his hands on. The thought of him cheating made her feel sick.

Nada lost all the trust they had built in a matter of seconds. For the first time in her 27 years living on this earth, she thought that a man finally loved her the way she needed. Nada thought he was trustworthy. What she thought was true honest love was a lie.

Nada changed into jeans and a baggy t-shirt. She looked at her husband with disgust and grabbed her keys from the bedside table. Nada slammed her car door. Angry, hurt, with tears in her eyes, she pulled into the doctor’s office driveway. Barely able to breathe, she wiped her tears and walked towards the office door.

She looked around the office and let out a sigh of relief when no one was in the office. She walked to the secretary and checked in. The secretary motioned for her to sit in the waiting room.

Just then, an idea came to Nada’s mind. She pulled up a google search on her phone.

Google Search: “What does genital herpes look like?”

Google Search: “Pictures of HIV”

Google Search: “How long does it take to have symptoms of herpes.”

Petrified, she locked her phone and put it in her purse. She thought of all the Jerry Springer episodes she watched and pictured herself sitting in one of the chairs while her husband took a lie detector test.

Just when she started to fall into a nasty daydream, the secretary called her name.

“Nada.” The secretary yelled out to an empty office.

“Yes, that’s me.” Nada hesitated and spoke quietly. She was embarrassed by her situation.

“We can put you in room 2.”

She looked around, verifying that no one that she knew was in the same waiting room. Still, no one had entered the office in the time she had fallen into her daydream.

As she walked into the office, shaking, tears in her eyes, embarrassed, and shocked, she sat on a cold examination table. While she waited, she drifted into thought.

A light knock on the door brought her back to her living nightmare. Dr. T entered the room and looks at Nada, puzzled.

“Are you okay?” Dr. T asked my sister.

“No, I am certain my husband cheated on me. I have HIV or Herpes or some genital disease.” Nada let out a hard sob.

Dr. T looked at her up and down and said, “We need you to remove everything.” She looked at Nada in the eyes, and Nada looked back and examined her emotion. A smirk came to Dr. T’s face.

“This isn’t funny. You’re starring at my husband’s mistake. Do you know a good divorce lawyer?” My sister barked.

“You don’t have herpes; you have Poison Ivy.” Dr. T chuckled.

They both began laughing, but that didn’t last long. My sister realized she needed to go home and apologize to her husband. She had to explain that it wasn’t herpes; it was poison ivy from the trip to the cottage.

A woman who can’t say sorry. It’s almost as if a part of her mouth doesn’t work in that way. Sorry isn’t a word that is a part of her vocabulary.

When she walked into the house, she yelled at him to come downstairs. When he stumbled down the stairs barely awake, she said the words she thought would never come out of her mouth.

Firstly.

“It’s not herpes.”

Then

“It’s poison ivy.”

Finally

“I’m, I’m.”

A sigh exhaled from her lips.

“Look, I’m fucking sorry. I didn’t mean to question you.”

As I sit around the dining room table with my sister, she recounts this story to me as if it happened yesterday, even though it happened nearly five years ago. A family weekend together, reminiscing about the many trips to the family cottage, this story came to light.

Fear is a familiar feeling for anyone in any relationship. We can have an ample amount of trust in our spouses, but we may skip to the worst possible situation the second that something isn't right. They have conditioned us to question every relationship in society, and the media sometimes tells us that most partners have cheated.

Just because society has said that your partner is a cheater doesn’t always mean that they have cheated. You have to look at the bigger picture and never assume that the worst-case scenario is reality.

The world has taught us that our imperfect, yet perfect spouses, will never be honest, loyal, and make us feel secure. This narrative is wrong.

In life, things aren’t always as they seemed.

Poison Ivy, why do you look so much like herpes? — Nada Kovinich