Sandro Vento
Phnom Penh, Cambodia

Enzo entered the room with hesitancy. A nurse drew his blood, then moved him to where a young doctor was waiting, looking serious. As he asked Enzo to sit down, he inspired confidence. Enzo answered his initial questions with few words, having told his story too many times to too many doctors, but this doctor looked at him attentively and with respect. Not only that, he looked interested in his life, not only to his medical history. How strange! Was it to gossip about him once he had left the room?

Still, he opened up. He was twenty-nine and had been using heroin since the age of sixteen. He had had poorly paid jobs from time to time, a wife, and an eight-year-old daughter. He was recently found to have AIDS; in the last couple of years, he had lost weight and had noticed oral thrush, but he had not paid much attention to them as heroin had been his only real interest. He had taken methadone for a few weeks over the course of the years but had always gone back to heroin. But this doctor did not blame Enzo for his addiction; how unusual! Enzo went on talking about his negative experience in his hometown hospital, where he had been admitted with a severe form of pneumonia—once his HIV test had come back positive, the already unfriendly doctors and nurses became fearful and hostile. It was 1987, and Enzo was one of the first people with AIDS in his poor province. His mother contacted some relatives from a richer province, and there they moved. There were more patients with AIDS in that university hospital, and their doctors and nurses were already used to the disease. Enzo had been between life and death for two weeks before getting better; pentamidine had worked for him, in the end. However, the drug had badly affected his pancreas, and he had found himself on insulin since. He had AIDS and insulin-dependent diabetes: his life had changed forever!

Suddenly, Enzo asked the young doctor how short his life would be. The answer was surprising: “Nobody can know, but if you so decide, we will fight together to make it as good as we can.” Again, different from the answers he had received before: “Don’t worry, take the treatment and everything will be ok.” Why? The doctor replied, “I cannot give you false hopes, but we will fight together and whatever we will be able to do for you will be done.” How could he be so confident? He was just a registrar. In any case, Enzo needed to believe his words, for the unit was the only one in the entire region truly looking after patients with AIDS!

After that first trip to the provincial hospital, more followed. Enzo was seen also by a few other doctors; even though professional, they had a different approach to him and to his diseases, and they dedicated less time to him. Zidovudine was the only drug available to treat HIV then. He and his mother decided they would return to the young doctor.

During the following year, Enzo never used heroin again; he wanted to “fight” AIDS with a clear mind, he wanted to live, as he had people who understood his problems, especially the one doctor. He was accepted by all the personnel of the small unit. He was admitted to the ward twice for AIDS-related problems, shared the room with young people with past experiences like his own, and encouraged them to get out of addiction and to face their struggles. Enzo knew that his life would not be long, but he had found a purpose to it. His conversations with the young doctor grew broader and broader. He was no longer bitter about his wife and told the doctor that she was right in separating from him, as he was injecting heroin even while she was giving birth to their daughter and had not seen the baby until two days later. How much he regretted his behavior now! The doctor encouraged Enzo to accept whatever he had done in his life, as, after all, there was no way to go back in time. His dignity in the fight grew increasingly visible to unit staff and patients alike.

By 1989, his condition was deteriorating, but he did not give up. The young doctor asked him whether he would agree to participate on World AIDS Day in a television interview. He would make sure that the interview would be appropriate. Enzo agreed with a smile, concerned only about whether he would be the right person to speak of the needs of the then called “seropositives” (people with HIV infection). Enzo had no hesitation, and he answered the interviewer’s questions outlining widespread stigma in society, advocating for improvements in the hospital, asking for more nurses and specialist doctors to be assigned to the only unit really helping patients like him in the region.

The last question was, “What would you like to happen to you in the future?” He answered, “I would like to find peace, to accept my fate.” The interview was broadcasted and seen by many. It impressed many people in that provincial hospital, some of whom afraid of even of entering a room with a “seropositive,” let alone touching them. Many people at the time considered patients with AIDS as drug addicts who deserved to get infected, had no place in society, should be imprisoned, and should disappear from sight. And now one of them, from his hospital bed, had publicly spoken and advocated for the rights of people like him, had asked to improve their care—and all this while having pneumonia and knowing that he would soon die—hoping that some positive effects might come out of it.

Enzo’s condition deteriorated further in the following month. He went home for a couple of weeks in December but was back in the hospital after Christmas. He developed encephalitis and died three days later. Enzo had just turned thirty-one. His last words for the young doctor, in a rare moment of alertness, had been: “I am close to the end of the fight, my dear doctor. I am indebted.” Thirty-five years later, the then young and now elderly doctor and the few nurses still alive remember Enzo vividly. It may well be that they are not the only ones.