‘I Don't Want It'

It was 4:15 p.m. when my nurse gave me a “heads up” about the next patient. With a weary expression, she showed me a note affixed to the chart. “Mother is in waiting room and wants the patient to be tested for STDs,” it read. I scanned the chart before I entered the room. I had never seen this girl as a patient and did not know her. She was seventeen and had a thirteen-month-old daughter. The chart also told me that she’d had a sexually transmitted disease in the past...

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