Sweet Romance14 min read
Five Hundred, A Gastroscope, and the Doctor Who Did Not Blink
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I never thought a gastroscopy would be my plan to catch a man. If someone had warned me about the gagging, the tears, the nose running all at the same time, I would have laughed and run the other way.
"Open your mouth," Callum said, his voice low and steady. I did exactly as he asked.
"Hold it," he murmured. "Relax."
"It goes down to the throat, it will be uncomfortable," he warned professionally, and I closed my eyes and tried to be brave.
I lied on the narrow bed and watched the white coat sway above me like a cloud. I had come here for a different reason than most patients. I had come because my friend Alexandra had schemed, because a girl I wanted to help get revenge had a rival who wouldn't stop stealing men, and because I thought—absurdly, bravely—that I could make Callum fall for me.
Then the tube slid in and my dignity slid out with it.
My saliva ran, my nose leaked, I cried. I wanted to disappear. The whole room could see me fail spectacularly at being glamorous. I wanted to die of embarrassment.
The nurse patted my shoulder. "It's normal," she said. "Lots of people react this way."
Callum barely glanced at me. He was focused on the monitor, the technician's level of concentration unchanged by my public meltdown.
"In our eyes there is only the patient," he said, offhand, as if reading the chart aloud. "You get used to it."
"Tell that to my dignity," I thought, and cried a little harder.
After it was over, Alexandra grabbed my arm as soon as I stumbled out. "How did it go? Did he notice?"
"Kill me," I said.
"That's dramatic."
"I had a tube! Five centimeters! Down my throat! How do you expect me to flirt after that?"
She rolled her eyes but smiled. Alexandra has always been persistent in a way that looks like sunshine but hides a practical grinder. She had been the one to push me to book Callum's slot at the hospital, to get me in his line of sight. "He is very reserved," she admitted, leaning in. "But I swear, Kiana, the way he studies his patients—if you catch him off guard, you might get him."
I had given in partly because Alexandra's boyfriend had been cheated on, then his new fling had run off to chase Callum. Alexandra had sworn she'd rather I intercept than let that shallow girl win again. "It'll be fun," she said. "Just five hundred, a small trick, and he will talk to you."
"Five hundred?" I repeated. "What are we, robbers now?"
"We'll fake a transfer. You send him money by mistake. He'll want to return it. He will add you on WeChat to return it. It's basic."
I stared at the comical simplicity of her plan and agreed to it because the alternative was to be honest, and honesty with a man like Callum—cold, brilliant, unbothered—felt risky in its own way.
Later, when the report came back—"superficial gastritis"—Callum saw me waiting and approached like somebody who moves through a crowd with a measured step. He was taller than I expected, even when he didn't feel imposing. He had the clear, tidy face of someone who knew the difference between precision and accident.
"Do I need medication?" I asked, brandishing the paper like a prop.
"No, just a light, regular diet," he said. "I wrote the result."
"You didn't even look."
"I read it, I wrote it. It's mine."
He looked like a man who measured everything the way he measured medical reports. That thought made me want to tease him. "Can I add you? For symptoms?" I asked, flustered and cunning both.
"Yes," he replied. Calm. Unruffled.
He handed me a business card and walked away as if it had been part of the routine. I kept the card like a talisman. He had not added me on WeChat, but the card had his phone number. I searched for him through the number and found an Alipay account. "If he transfers back," Alexandra said, "then you have a reason to talk."
So I did something small and stupid and decisive: I had Alexandra lend me five hundred and I "accidentally" transferred it into Callum's account. I sent a polite message: please return, sorry for the mistake, here's my WeChat.
He didn't reply for a day. Did he check his messages? Was he ignoring me on principle? I texted again. "I transferred five hundred to your account by mistake, could you refund? My WeChat is..."
The reply came late: "I haven't used Alipay for years. I only saw it now."
"Okay," I said on the phone when I finally got him. "I'll come by to pick it up."
"Cash," he said.
I had intended to catch him at his sharp edges. I had not planned to be caught by anything but his eyes. He was like a painting that had been oriented straight at me and refused to shift. He let me stand while he counted out the cash with long, clean fingers, and then, when a pretty woman in a soft blouse—Kirsten—walked in, he didn't look away.
Kirsten brushed past me like she invented the art of meanings in one sip of her coffee. Her smile was a weapon. She was the kind of woman who knew how to slide into places and take them as if they were hers by design.
"You're here for a refill?" Callum asked her kindly.
"Yes, thank you," she purred, and she bumped my shoulder with an amused flick.
"Forgive me," she said to me as she passed. "You're someone who knows how to get close to handsome things." Her voice had a soft, sarcastic edge.
I bristled. "Not everything handsome is open to appropriation."
We were moving like actors in a scene where each of us had already memorized the other's lines. I asked Callum to dinner in front of them both, half-joking, half-hopeful.
"How about a meal later?" I said. "You're free?"
He scribbled on a box and said nothing for a bit. Then he smiled, almost undetectably. "I will be there this afternoon."
When we left the clinic together, he said, "Walk with me."
"I have to catch the subway," I argued.
"It's early. I'll drive you."
I let him. The wind was soft in April and the city had that impatient, expectant glow like it was waiting for someone to make a choice. He seemed to know how to read my small acts, and he called me out for them.
"You're trying to get close to me," he said simply.
"I was," I admitted.
He looked at me, and I felt exposed and ridiculous and electrified all at once. "You began like a plot, but you continued with truth."
We kept seeing each other. I insisted I would keep no tricks. I told him from the start about the five hundred. He grinned like a man who was amused more than offended. "You did not think I would refuse cash," he said dryly. "But you created a reason to meet."
It felt messy and honest. The absurdity of how we began made everything feel fragile. One month in, he said, "Be my girlfriend. I can look after your stomach and the rest."
"Why me?" I demanded, half-demand, half-hunt.
"You came in nervous and candid and a little reckless," he said. "Those things are rare."
I hadn't expected that, and I melted into kisses that tasted like an uneven, thrilling victory. We were a couple that people noticed: me, loud and theatrical, and him, precise and quietly fierce.
For a while it was easy and soft in between the clinic hours and the nights. Alexandra teased me like a proud matchmaker. "That five hundred bought you more than you knew," she joked, and I tossed a paper napkin at her.
Then everything managed to get complicated in the stupidest way.
One evening, he was late replying to my messages. "Callum hasn't replied," I told Alexandra, pouting.
"He's a doctor. He tends to be late in life as in career," she said.
But then I overheard a recording he played to me. It had my voice—my laugh, my planning in the bookstore with Alexandra—and he looked at me like someone who had found an artifact that betrayed intent.
"What is this?" I asked, stupid and honest.
"Your voice," he said. "You were planning to catch me."
"I told you—"
"Yes. You told me. But Kirsten told me, too, that you were the one moving to intercept her."
He quit on me like that. For a few nights he was distant. He hadn't told me to go, but his distance was worse. I wanted to explain. I wanted to explain the smallness of what I'd done and the largeness of what I'd felt since.
The universe, in its never-tidy way, decided it was time to punish my stomach.
I ate spicy food I shouldn't have, I drank coffee I should have skipped, and one night my stomach turned on me. The pain was hot and sharp and relentless. I ended up in the emergency ward, pale and shivering, and when I looked up, there he was: Callum, in a white coat, more composed than I had any right to expect, eyes that took in my every line as if cataloguing a more precise name for the pain.
"You should not have eaten that," he said. "Did you take care of yourself?"
"I tried," I said, and then I cried because pain makes being a person suddenly too bright.
He stood over me, and despite everything, despite the recording my voice had betrayed and the pride that hurt him, he stayed. "You didn't text me all day," he scolded.
"I was ashamed," I lied. "I was embarrassed to admit I missed you."
He watched me like a man seeing someone he was not done with. "You have acute gastroenteritis," he said after checking me. "We'll put you on IV. Rest."
"Callum," I whispered, "I'm sorry."
He didn't answer. He only stayed, and later, when the nurse asked, he said, "She's my girlfriend."
That night the ward became a private world. I dozed with the drip, my head on his thigh like it was the only pillow in the world. Other patients looked over and smiled with secret warmth. Nurses teased us. A colleague—Flynn, my ex—saw us and lingered at the door, taken by surprise, before he nodded and left.
Flynn's presence made a hard knot in my stomach that had nothing to do with medicine. He had called me earlier that week, asking to get back together. He had been persistent and verbose. Now seeing me coddled by the man I'd chosen as mine, he paused and said something like, "I gave us a chance." It sounded wrong and sad.
Later that week tensions relit into a match when I found out the recording had come from Kirsten Boyd. She had not only been flirting subtly, she'd recorded my plotting—my stupid plan—and delivered it as proof I had been dishonest. Callum's hurt came out of that evidence.
Kirsten felt untouchable. She had the confidence of someone used to getting desires handed to her. Alexandra and I were tight-lipped about our embarrassment until Alexandra hatched a plan that went too far right. "Let the truth be known," she said. "Let the people who saw her take from others see her for what she is."
I resisted, but the more I thought about it, the more I realized I wanted clarity—not spectacle, but clarity. If Kirsten had recorded me to shame me, perhaps public truth would be a fair measure. Alexandra wanted a proper stage. She wanted Kirsten to find herself corrected in front of a crowd of witnesses. I wanted less drama, more honesty, but the world doesn't ask permission.
We arranged, awkwardly, a setting I had not expected: a community health forum at the hospital where Callum would give a brief talk on dietary health. It would be attended by nurses, some faculty, patients who had been called in, and a smattering of the public. Alexandra insisted this would be just the right occasion. "She'll come," Alexandra said. "Kirsten loves to be seen."
I didn't want a spectacle. I wanted to set facts straight. But Alexandra had made up her mind and, gently or not, she pushed.
On the day, the auditorium smelled faintly like coffee and disinfectant. People sat in rows—familiar faces from the clinic, a few neighbors, staff who had joked about our story. Callum delivered a practical, thoughtful talk, exact as ever. He spoke about diets and habits and the small gestures that protect a stomach. He then opened the floor for questions.
Kirsten arrived late, all smiles and perfectly timed hair, a dress cut exactly to command attention. She sat in the back, tapping her phone as if testing the audience. When the Q&A opened, she stood and asked a question about medication timing in a voice trained to attract follow-up glances.
After a few interactions, Alexandra got up, calm and steady as if she were the one trained to run a show. She waited until someone passed her the microphone; then she spoke.
"Callum," Alexandra said, "you have a patient who was honest and messy and brave enough to come here today. But I'd like to address something else." She turned, and slowly, she held up a phone. "This was recorded without permission. It was used to shame someone into silence. I would like to know, Kirsten Boyd, why you recorded a private conversation and why you gave it as proof that someone had ill intent."
The auditorium rustled. A few heads turned. "What are you suggesting?" Kirsten asked, tone clipped like a blade.
"I'm suggesting you used a violation to hurt someone for sport," Alexandra said, and she did not look away. "You recorded Kiana's private plan, you delivered it to Callum to embarrass her, and then you shared it to paint her as untrustworthy. Why?"
Kirsten's smile thinned like paper. "You have no proof of that," she said loudly. "I was protecting a friend. I was making sure the doctor knew the truth."
"Whose truth?" someone called from the audience. "The one you scripted?"
Callum's jaw tightened. He had been watching all this with a professional distance, but now his hands were clenched. "Kirsten," he said quietly, "did you record this without Kiana's permission?"
Kirsten blinked, caught off guard by the sudden directness. "I—" Her voice teetered. "I didn't mean... She was manipulative. I wanted to warn him. I had every right."
"No right to record," called a nurse in the front row. "That breaks hospital policy."
Kirsten's face paled. Her posture, once so pristine, wavered. "I—I only—"
"You're not a judge," Alexandra shot back. "You took a private moment and turned it into evidence for gossip."
Kirsten's cheeks flushed crimson with anger. "This is slander!" she hissed. "You're trying to ruin me."
"You're the one who recorded and distributed private conversations," I said, my voice steadier than I felt. "You used someone's vulnerability as a game."
"You started it," she cried. "You tried to steal someone from me. I'm defending myself."
"Defending yourself by breaching someone's privacy?" Callum asked, incredulous. "Kirsten, what you did is wrong."
Her expression cracked. The auditorium went quiet enough that the hum of the air conditioning was loud. People shifted; some whispered.
"Is this the kind of person you want to be?" Alexandra continued. "Someone who uses others as stepping stones? Who takes pleasure in their fall? If you truly cared about anyone, you would have confronted them, not recorded them."
Kirsten's teeth bared. "You all judge me," she said, but now the edge had gone wobbly. A few phones lifted, faces turned, cameras flicked. People in the room had begun to record, because public behavior begets an audience. The nurse who had called her out nodded, satisfied.
"Do you have anything to apologize for?" Callum asked.
"What is there to apologize for?" Kirsten's voice rose. "They were trying to trick me. She came in with a legend. Who am I supposed to trust?"
"Maybe yourself," I said softly. "Maybe you could have spoken. Maybe you could have chosen better."
Her face shifted—first indignation, then realization, then panic like someone who had been climbing a glass wall and suddenly found the grips failing. "This is unfair," she said. "You're all being cruel."
"No," someone in the back said. "You're facing what you did."
Her defense fell apart. She began to pace. I watched her look at the rows of faces and see them assemble like witnesses to a verdict. "I'm sorry if anyone was hurt," she blurted suddenly, not from sincerity but because she saw the audience turning into judges.
"You recorded me," I said, and for the first time my voice didn't shake. "You violated me. You thought it was your right to expose what you felt was private."
Kirsten's shoulders drooped. Her eyes darted, searching for a savior she had expected but didn't find. "I didn't think—" she started, then broke.
"We should all think before we weaponize privacy," Callum said, his voice so calm that it felt sacred. "If someone has doubts about another person's sincerity, the right way is to ask, to speak. Not to tape and shock."
The crowd was kept in a hush, then, like a room holding its breath and deciding a verdict. Some heads nodded in solidarity. A few clapped, small and tentative. The nurses at the front whispered about policy. Someone filmed a short clip and I saw it later online—a snippet of Kirsten's expression changing from confident to hollow while people watched.
Kirsten's final collapse was not cinematic. It was a human thing: first the stiff smile drooped, then the back uncurled, then she slunk down into a seat, fanning herself as if air could mend the weight of attention. She tried to say something, but the words became thin and brittle. A woman behind her muttered, "She deserved better," and then clarified, "She deserved better than to be left to think she could do that without consequence."
Kirsten tried to fight back one last time. "You think I'm a monster," she snapped. "You think you are perfect—"
"We don't think we're perfect," Alexandra said. "We just think privacy matters."
Around her, people stirred. A man in the front stood up, walked to the microphone, and said, "In this hospital, we honor patient dignity. We will not condone recordings used as weapons. I suggest we file a complaint, document the breach, and ask for an apology."
Kirsten's expression finally broke. She looked around at the faces—people who had once perhaps smiled at her in the hallway—and realized that her maneuvers had consequences. She set her head down and cried, or pretended to; at that point I couldn't tell, because something in the room had switched from spectacle to the practical business of correction.
Later, outside the conference hall, a small crowd gathered. Some looked at her with contempt, some with pity. Someone took a photo and uploaded it. The internet did the rest. Her social image shifted as quickly and impermanently as the weather.
Kirsten's denial came next. She called Callum rude names in messages. She tried to therapy-speak her way back to respectability. She demanded apologies. She begged on social media for people to hear her side. Each time she posted, others reposted the video; the more she fought, the more evident the mistake looked: a girl who weaponized another's privacy and then was surprised when the world did not reward her.
At one point she showed up at the clinic, asking to speak to Callum. He told her, calmly, "This is not about punishment. It's about boundaries. You crossed them."
Kirsten's face when everyone began to turn away was the worst part. She had used others' attention like currency; now it was vanishing.
Her final collapse—the moment of public unraveling—happened in the hospital cafeteria. She stood up during lunch and demanded to be heard. People gathered because a scene attracts like a flame. She shouted, flailed, called Alexandra names. The crowd's reaction was an odd mixture: disappointment, anger, some small vindication. People filmed; her friends who had once admired her now looked away. She tried to kneel, to plea. Some offered her a tissue; others handed her the cold shoulder. When she finally left, it was not with the triumphant air of someone who had won; it was the shuffle of someone who had stopped trusting her own script.
I didn't feel triumphant. I felt relieved and exhausted. Public humiliation had done something: it had shown that choices have consequences. It had not been pretty, and it had not been merciful. But it had been real.
After that, Callum and I rebuilt things more slowly. He forgave, not because I demanded it, but because he watched how I had tried to make amends. We walked forward together, sometimes clumsy, sometimes perfectly matched. Flynn, my ex, accepted the finality of what he'd hoped would resume. Alexandra and I joked more cautiously about schemes.
One night, a while after everything settled, I lay in bed and swallowed the weird little memory of the first time I had seen my own embarrassment through Callum's indifferent eyes in the gastroscopy room. I reached into the drawer where the clinical report lay—"superficial gastritis"—and I smiled. I had come for a doctor and, in the noisy, ridiculous way life sometimes manages, I had found a companion.
There was a moment—simple and private—when he slipped a note under my apartment door. It had no grand flourish, only three words: "Five hundred solved." Beneath it, in his clinical handwriting, he had added: "And. Stay. Healthy."
I laughed, because only he would make punctuation sound like care. I folded the note and kept it with the business card he had given me the first day. The tiny paper trail looked silly and perfect in its smallness.
I learned the hard way that beginnings can be awkward and messy, that a foolish plan can be a doorway to something real, and that privacy is not a toy. I learned that people can change when they choose to, and that repair is work, and worth it.
"Will you still forgive me?" I asked him once, under ordinary lights, while he stirred a pot of coffee in my little kitchen.
He looked at me with the same steadiness he'd shown in the clinic. "You had a plan because you wanted me," he said. "I had a wall because I was afraid of being toyed with. We both were honest enough to stay when it mattered."
"Does that sound like an official diagnosis?"
"It sounds like human progress," he said, and kissed my forehead.
When the memory of the gastroscopy sneaks up on me now, it's less a trauma than a thread. It's the name of the event that started a long, tender plot. When friends ask how we met, I tell them simply: "Through a mistake and a tube and a stubborn friend." They laugh.
One day, Alexandra texted: "You paid me back, right?"
"No," I replied. "You invested in my happiness. It paid dividends."
"Good investment," she wrote back with a string of smileys.
I tucked the business card and the little note into my wallet. Sometimes I take them out and look at them like charms.
"Will you still do something that reckless again?" he asked one night, unserious.
"Maybe," I said. "But not with a gastroscope."
He laughed and kissed me, and I knew the answer didn't matter. What mattered was a man who could stand by me when I was ugly and brave both, who could scold me for spicy food and also put a pillow under my head. What mattered was that the tube had been a weird, ridiculous beginning, and all that came after was real.
And if anyone finds something tender in my mistakes, they can have it. For me, the memory of the machine's whir and the nurse's "it's normal" are as much a part of us as our first shared umbrella. I keep the little clinical paper not because it says "superficial gastritis"—it really is such a small phrase—but because it is the first ledger of the story that turned into love.
The End
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