By Becci Robbins

He has full-blown AIDS,” she said. The sound of it, like air escaping.

Full. Blown. AIDS.

The social worker handed over his file, a single sheet of paper with some handwritten notes on it, mostly addresses and phone numbers, which I scanned for clues to what might be coming.

Mark was 41. He had been in Columbia only a few months, since being forced to leave his home in Los Angeles after having grown too ill to care for himself. With nowhere else to go, he had moved in with his sister, who was stationed at Fort Jackson.

It was far from an ideal living arrangement. “Dysfunctional” was the term the social worker kept using. The sister was often gone; Mark was increasingly bedridden. She had an alcohol problem; he had a coke habit. She resented Mark’s intrusion on her life; he, in turn, was humiliated, lonely and raging mad.

After she had left him alone for three days, knowing he was too sick to make it down to the kitchen, Mark had called Palmetto AIDS Life Support Services to ask that someone be sent over to make sure he didn’t “starve to goddamn death” in his upstairs room.

As a PALSS volunteer, that was to be my job. To make sure Mark didn’t starve to goddamn death.

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