“It’s staggering, modern medicine”

Chad, my boyfriend, types to me from the Hyatt on New Jersey Avenue, “I am hiv positive.” We study the screen together, 1,426 miles apart. The cursor of my chat window blinks for me. I’m not stunned, or even much scared, really; definitely not sickened, repulsed. I am more overcome by the simple fear that the chat window will time out, that my Internet connection will lapse, that he will think, alone in a computer lab on the other side of the country, that I have closed out. So I type in a rush, “That’s OK,” and then add, “Really.”

I’m not sure he entirely believed me, then, but he came back.

So begins John Fram’s beautiful debut piece for The Atlantic, “Odd Blood: Serodiscordancy, or, Life With an HIV-Positive Partner.”