The power of love

When the phone rang one sunny day in September 1997, Anne Leon dashed across the flat in Durban, South Africa, that she shared with her fiancé to answer. With three weeks to go until their wedding, the vibrant 32-year-old insurance assistant was on a bridal high, juggling dressmakers, florists and caterers. But this was her GP’s receptionist: could Anne and Trevor come in to discuss the tests they had done for Trevor’s life insurance policy?

At the surgery, first Trevor was called into the consulting room, then Anne. Her tests were clear, the doctor told them, “But Trevor is HIV positive.” Five words – and their lives changed forever.

“What are we going to do?” asked Trevor. “How will I tell my father? Should we call off the wedding?”

“No matter what, I’m not going to leave you,” said Anne fiercely, “we’ll work through this thing together.”

That night, the couple clung to each other and wept, struggling to come to terms with their new reality. Trevor had been mostly responsible in his relationships, but there had been a night five years before when he and a dancer girlfriend had been careless and had unprotected sex.

Anne felt shocked and frustrated. Immediately, she asked if the woman was a stripper, but Trevor assured her she hadn’t been that kind of dancer – and besides, he loved Anne now.

Convinced of the sincerity of his feelings, Anne decided they would get through whatever lay ahead.

When the phone rang the next day, there was another shock. It was the GP’s receptionist again – could Anne come in? The report had been read incorrectly: it wasn’t Trevor who was HIV positive. It was Anne.

When they got to the consulting rooms, the GP’s partner sat them down to explain that two pages of the report had stuck together. Shaken and angry, Anne and Trevor drove to nearby King Edward VIII hospital for a second test. There was no doubt this time: Anne was HIV positive.

“How long has she got?” Trevor asked the busy doctor.

He shrugged. “Three years.”

Trevor hugged Anne as she stood ashen and stunned in the hospital cubicle. “I’m marrying you anyway,” he affirmed.

Thirteen years ago, antiretrovirals (ARVs) were still being developed, and ignorance, fear and stigma surrounded HIV/AIDS. Contracting the disease was seen as a death sentence, but neither Anne nor Trevor would accept the dark prognosis: they were going to marry.

Before the couple could figure out a way forward, however, Anne needed to pinpoint precisely how she had been infected: like many other South Africans, she had always thought of HIV as a disease of gay, promiscuous or disadvantaged people, not middle-class whites like herself.

The answer stared at her from an evening newspaper a week later. On the front page was a photograph of a man Anne had gone out with two years earlier. Her heart lurched as she read the story beside it – the man in the article was being charged with manslaughter for having unprotected sex when he was aware of being HIV-positive, infecting seven women.

Memories of a weekend with the man in the newspaper profile flooded back. Anne had been on the pill, and had regularly used condoms, but she had forgotten to take them along on a camping getaway. Her partner persuaded her to have sex anyway, just that once.

Once was all it took. Now he lay in a hospice in Sherwood, a ten-minute drive from their flat.

The news shook the couple deeply. But it was Anne’s reaction that was even more astounding for Trevor: she asked him to drive her over there. She knew it was the only way to deal with the situation.

The man Anne found in the hospice was barely recognisable as the affable, strapping businessman with whom she had once been infatuated. He had shrunk painfully with his illness, and was wrapped in cling film to protect a mass of cancerous sores.

As she looked at him, she felt her own anger drain away and pity pour in. Weak as the man was, he was tense and defensive. What did Anne want – had she, too, come to sue?

“I’m just here for the truth,” she told him through her tears. “Be honest – did you know you were positive that night we had unprotected sex?”

He had known. He wasn’t sure why he’d had sex with her anyway: “You were in the wrong place at the wrong time,” he murmured.

If he had only told her the truth, Anne thought, and they had not had sex that night.

Then it struck her that ignorance, fear and stigma were what had brought him to his predicament. And it made her more determined than ever to face her own situation head-on.

Anne turned to the man in the hospice bed. “I had a part in this as well,” she told him gently. “I agreed to unprotected sex even though I knew there was this virus around. I just didn’t think it affected people like us.”

“All I can do is apologise – I’m truly sorry for what I did,” he said, before breaking down and asking her to forgive him.

Anne did, without hesitation. Minutes later he coughed, then closed his eyes. He died before her eyes.

Devastated as she was, Anne felt at peace with herself. Trevor sensed it when he fetched her. “I’m not going to hide this sickness,” she told him, hugging him hard. “I’m going to fight this virus, and the shame and fear that feeds it.”

Trevor nodded in silent agreement.

Two weeks later, on October 4, 1997, Trevor and Anne married. They had shared Anne’s status with family and friends, and 90 of them filled the church. As the feisty, fun-loving bride swept up the aisle in a sheath of white lace and organza, she could hear whispers about how well she looked, and how beautiful.

It was the day of joy and laughter she and Trevor had asked everyone to make it, but when her best friend sang Celine Dion’s “Because You Loved Me”, tears flowed: “For all those times you stood by me ... I’ll be forever thankful baby … You were my strength when I was weak ... Lifted me up when I couldn’t reach. I’m everything I am because you loved me.”