Showdown in Choctaw County

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THE NEXT TUESDAY morning de-Shazo drives out to see Rebecca and Sara. He has been thinking about them all weekend. "I wasn’t going to cry, and then I had all this stuff dammed up inside and the tears just came," he says. "Then the anger started. I’ve got to channel that anger. This girl ain’t going to die. She ain’t going to die. These girls are going to have a chance."

When he arrives at the Jacksons’ trailer, there is no sign of anyone. A late-’70s Chevrolet drives up the road. Sara is in the backseat with her son, Benny. "Where’s Rebecca?" he asks. Sara says Rebecca collapsed on Saturday. Just stopped breathing. She’s in the hospital in Waynesboro.

DeShazo shakes his head, smiles grimly, gets in his Pontiac, and pulls off in the direction of Waynesboro, talking as he drives. Rebecca’s being in the hospital might be a good thing. A hospital stay will make it easier to get home health care. He’s rationalizing.

Waynesboro is a city of around 6,000. DeShazo passes a cluster of single-story brown cinder-block buildings—a housing project that seems out of place in a small town. After a couple of wrong turns, he finds the hospital. In the elevator heading up to Rebecca’s room, deShazo looks tired and stares nervously up at the blinking floor numbers.

He finds Rebecca’s door. Inside, she is in the fetal position facing a single window. She’s alone. A movie is playing on a television bolted to the wall. Rebecca has her arms pulled up close to her face. An IV is hooked up to her right arm, and she’s clinging to her blanket like a small child. DeShazo walks around to the side of her bed. He leans up against the radiator next to the window. "How you feeling, Rebecca?" he asks. "I’m going to have surgery tomorrow," she says, her voice raspy.

"What for?" deShazo asks.

"My gallbladder," she says before being seized by a fit of heavy coughing.

"How old are you, Rebecca?" deShazo asks.

"Nineteen," she answers.

"You know, Rebecca," deShazo says, "there’s a lady in Mobile who does nothing but check on children whose parents are infected."

"He ain’t infected," Rebecca says. This is the strongest statement she has ever made to him.

"I know," he says, "but it may be wise for William to see her anyway."

"My mama’s with him," Rebecca says softly.

"Yeah, I know your mama’s there doing a real good job." Realizing that there’s nothing he can do or say at this moment to make the situation better, he decides to leave.

IN THE COMING deShazo will dedicate almost all of his time to this case. Rebecca’s doctor will drop her for failing to take her medications. It will turn out that the doctor never even prescribed protease inhibitors, the most powerful lifesaving drugs, because he didn’t believe she would take them. DeShazo will drive Rebecca to a specialist two hours away in Mobile, who will diagnose her with pneumonia, CMV, and thrush. When he tries to get home health care for her, an anonymous caller will warn the Choctaw County health department not to send a nurse to the Jacksons’ because Rebecca plans to bite and infect as many people as she can before she dies. Sara will go into labor a month prematurely. The hospital in Waynesboro, saying they don’t have the facilities to handle a premature birth, will refuse to admit her and opt instead to drive her to Mobile. Forty-eight hours after she gives birth, the hospital in Mobile, citing policy for mothers on public assistance, will attempt to discharge her with a bus ticket back to Gilbertown. DeShazo will get her another day in the hospital. But when Sara gets back to her trailer, the electricity will be shut off.

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