I didn't want to answer him. If anything, it grated on me.
That one message, popping up out of nowhere, had wrecked a whole day's worth of good mood.
I'd thought Alex was reaching out to pick up the pieces of what we'd had. Instead he'd fired off a screenshot and demanded an explanation.
"Three months. No texts, no calls, like we're strangers. And you sneak off to a gynecologist? Don't you think you owe me an explanation?"
I opened the screenshot. It was his chat log with Clementine, and he'd even saved her under a cozy little nickname, "Clem."
She'd played her game perfectly, sending him a photo of me at the gynecology clinic in the dead of night, wrapping it in a whole simpering speech.
"Alex, I know it's not my place to say this, and I really shouldn't butt in, but your girlfriend hasn't contacted you in three months and I'd hate for you to be kept in the dark! Look, here's a photo of her getting treated at the gynecologist."
The person in the photo was definitely me.
No idea who took it, but they'd deliberately framed me right beside the gynecology sign, then twisted it into a rumor the second they opened their mouth.
Worst of all, Alex bought it. He didn't stop to sort out fact from fiction before he laid into me.
"Fiona, I never imagined you were this kind of person. All prim and proper on the surface, and God knows what you've been hiding from me behind my back! You're not even married! Out there sleeping around until you get a gynecological infection?"
"If I hadn't asked, if I hadn't come at you with proof, were you just going to figure you'd gotten away with it? Four years together, and this is how you treat me?"
He tore into me, then sent over my medical record from the visit as confirmation that it was a gynecological infection.
I saved every bit of it as evidence. I was going straight to the hospital to find out exactly who had leaked my private information.
I wasn't angry, wasn't upset. I just let Alex spiral through his own paranoid theories until he'd driven himself half-mad and couldn't stand it anymore, and called me.
"Fiona! Did you not see my messages? What's going on with you? You just ignore me, don't answer me, is that it? Have you done something behind my back?!"
I laughed, so worked up it nearly hurt.
"Alex, do you really enjoy sticking horns on your own head that badly? And besides, three months of no contact, doesn't that mean we're broken up by default? Isn't that what you said before? So why are you picking a fight with me now?"
I didn't wait for him to answer. I cut in and let him have it.
"I went to the gynecologist because the flood hit while I was on my period, and I waded through that floodwater to go get the necklace back from you and Clementine, and that's how I got a bacterial infection! I'm not like the two of you. When I'm sick, I get treated. I don't walk around sick and clueless about it, the way you two do."
"Oh, and this is the photo and medical record Clementine sent you, right? Then do me a favor and tell her this. Tomorrow I'm going to the hospital to file a complaint, and anyone with a hand in this, not a single one of them is getting away."
Alex froze. All that fury of his got choked right back down.
He was quiet for a long time, and in the end all he managed was something that meant nothing at all.
"Why didn't you tell me you were sick? I could have gone with you."
"No need. Like I said, we're already broken up by default. This is as good a time as any to make it clear. Don't contact me again."
"You..."
Alex wanted to say more, but I hung up on him.
Early the next morning I went to the hospital, straight to the complaints department, printed out every screenshot Alex had sent me the day before, and handed a copy to everyone I passed, livestreaming the whole thing.
"Everyone, take a good look. This hospital has no ethics. A young woman comes in for a gynecology appointment and gets secretly photographed and slandered. She pays for the visit, and on top of that her reputation gets destroyed, and who knows how many looks and how much contempt she has to swallow after this!"
"I'd advise you all not to come to this hospital. There's zero privacy here!"
The hospital panicked and hurried to sit me down, promising to investigate at once.
Once they threw their weight into it, it took less than half an hour to find the person who'd photographed me, a young intern who'd just started, named Naomi Finch.
I didn't know her, but she knew me.
The moment she saw me she burst into tears and pulled out her phone to call Clementine.
"Cousin, you... you need to get down to the hospital, now. That thing with the photo I took for you got reported, and my job's on the line! Fiona's come to the hospital looking into it."
Clementine panicked too. In under twenty minutes she showed up with Alex in tow...
