During the quick flight over to the lab, I ran the problem over and over in my brain, and in the end, I determined that Dr. Rosenblum wanted to inform me of one of three things: that one of us had a sexually-transmitted disease, that one of us was infertile, or that Ben was a wanted man. If it were the first, of course, he was far too late in telling me.

Two things in life make me uncomfortable: government bureaucracy and doctors' offices, and here I was faced with both simultaneously. I was downright queasy. I'm sure the security team thought me suspicious as hell. My palm left behind a liquid residue, presumably sweat, that had to be wiped off the sensor by a querulous uniformed woman. My eyes kept watering during the retinal scan, making the test infuriatingly difficult. And I was visibly jittery, practically quaking in my proverbial boots.

After eventually passing the three-fold security check, I was given a yellow pass that would give me access to Dr. Rosenblum's office. They told me that if I veered off my assigned path in the slightest, including a stopover at the ladies' room, I would set off oodles of alarms and would be immediately taken into custody. I asked a security guard what would happen if I needed to use the restroom, and she just sneered at me. "See that it doesn't happen."

The whole thing was more than a touch intimidating, but I did make it to the doctor's office, and I held my nervous bladder under control. The doctor, a pudgy balding man, sat behind a messy desk, apparently doing not much of anything when I entered. He rose and shook my hand. "Ah, Ms. Harmon. I'm glad you could make it." I explained to him that I didn't really know why I had been summoned and that I was certain there had been some kind of misunderstanding. He pressed his fingers together under his chin, like a praying mantis, and paused before beginning his explanation.

"Please, have a seat, Ms. Harmon. I'm sure you are nervous, and I have to admit that this is a bit...um...awkward for me." He cleared his throat. "Let me begin by saying this is an unofficial visit. I apologize for not telling you that over the phone, but I didn't think you'd come if you knew the truth."

Now, I have to admit that I did find this newfound bit of information irksome, but at the same time, intriguing. With all of his stammering, I thought he'd never get to the point of the matter, so I decided to hurry things along. "That's fine, Dr. Rosenblum. I'm here, and if I've come all this way and taken time off from work, I might as well hear what you have to say. But please do get to the point. Does this have to do with Ben's and my pre-nuptial blood tests?"

He started fidgeting with some e-papers on his desk, and cleared his throat once again. "Yes, it does. I promise to get to the point soon, Ms. Harmon, but I need to tell you some background first. I could get into serious trouble for telling you what I'm about to tell you, and I need you to trust me first. Is that all right, Ms. Harmon?" I nodded, trying to show my impatience as best as I could, and it must've worked because he did start to speak faster at least.

"Before I came to work at the GBL, I worked over at the Human Genome Project. You remember that, don't you, it finished up in '64? What most people don't realize is that we didn't focus entirely on the genome; some of us, including myself, branched off into hormone exploration. Well, to make a long story short, here at the GBL, we are only allowed to make a few select tests on pre-nup samples. Sometimes, when I'm bored out of my skull, I fudge a bit and run some extra tests. Hormone exploration is still my pet research project, although I'm only allowed to do it on my own time. But, the only way I have access to samples is through the pre-nups."

At this point, I was truly impatient, and my bladder was actually starting to ache. He could run words in circles all day, it seemed. "Yes, Dr. Rosenblum, I understand. What does all this have to do with our pre-nups?"

Finally, he leveled with me. He stopped his fidgeting, and actually managed to make eye contact with me. "Ms. Harmon, please understand that I could lose my job over this. The only reason I'm even telling you is because it is something I thought you should know. I'll be blunt. Your fiancé is not in love with you, not in the slightest."

I have to admit, I was irate and thoroughly insulted. "You have no right, Dr. Rosenblum, to treat me this way. How could you possibly know how Ben feels about me? He is the kindest, gentlest man I have ever known. You must be horribly mistaken. Now, I've had enough, Dr. Rosenblum! The only reason I won't report you to your supervisors is because I've had a bad enough day, and I don't want to go through the agony. Good day, Doctor!" I grabbed my jacket and got up to leave.

He started speaking faster than ever, like one of those old-fashioned auctioneers you sometimes see on one of those peculiar sports channels. "There are thousands of hormones, Ms. Harmon. Two in particular that I'm interested in. One indicates lust, the other love. Usually, when I run these tests on pre-nups, the results indicate a mixture of both. In Ben's case, Ms. Harmon, he registered pure lust, and not a drop of love." I stopped and turned back. He took a breath and slowed down. "I've never seen those results before, so I checked them five times. There's no mistake, Ms. Harmon. Your fiancé doesn't love you, although you're remarkably in love with him. I know it's none of my business, but I don't think you should marry him."

I practically collapsed into the chair. "Could you show me? I'd like to see for myself." He looked dubious. Scientists never seem to trust the intellect of a layman, so I added, "I ranked in the 98th percentile in high school bio-chem. I just might understand. But, even if I don't, I'd like to see the results."

He nodded. "Fair enough." He called up our files on his terminal and uploaded them to two e-paper tablets. "The one on the left is yours, Ms. Harmon. The one on the right is Ben's. Blue indicates lust and red, love."

I stared at the two tablets much longer than I needed to understand them. Finally, I asked him to show me some other random samples. He must have shown me a dozen before I let him stop. "Okay, okay. That's enough. I understand." Now, it was my turn to pause. It was true. Ben didn't love me. "Dr. Rosenblum, thanks for letting me know. I know it was hard for you, and I'm sorry for yelling earlier. I just have one more question. Some of those other samples were almost nil in love. Did you call those people in too?"

He stared down at his desk and started fidgeting again. "No, Mary, I didn't. You're the first person I've ever called in."

I was surprised that he called me by my first name. To the government, I was Harmon, M. 845-96-8773, but I just assumed that he had learned my first name through some prosaic means, like the phone directory. "Why me and not the others?"

He shrugged and said, "Yours has been the most drastic so far, and I just thought you should know."

Something still puzzled me, but I chalked it all up to the shock of discovery. Dr. Rosenblum and I shook hands and I thanked him again before leaving his office. When I got home, I did break it off with Ben, giving him a vague, lame excuse. "Things just don't feel right between us, Ben. Something's missing." He seemed disappointed at first, but apparently, he got over it quickly, because it was just the next week that I saw him entwined around some poor girl who probably bought his kind-and-gentle act too.

Then, a few months later, I got together with an old friend from high school, and she asked why Ben and I had broken it off. I told her the whole story. At the end she said, "Didn't a Rosenblum guy go to high school with us?" In fact, one did, but I had forgotten all about him years earlier. We decided to check in our old yearbook, and, sure enough, there was a picture of Jacob Rosenblum. Jake, who had sent me obsessive love letters incessantly for four years. How could I have forgotten? Good old geeky Jake. In my mind, I could see how that photo could easily be morphed into pudgy, balding Dr. Rosenblum. That sneaky, little rascal!

I was hardly stunned when I got a call from him a few months later. Not surprisingly, he asked me out for dinner, and, surprisingly, I said yes. And, why not? He had been right about Ben, after all.

About the author, Shannon Wendt:

Shannon Wendt lives in a quirky town in rural New Mexico. When the power is on, she edits for Palimpsest Internet Magazine (http://www.chuchin.com/palimpsest), writes fiction, and attends cybercollege.