Series: Four Lives, One Last Chance - A Year In Drug Court: Part 4 Of 41

ACT I. LINDA

Linda had been in trouble with the cops so many times that her latest bust
seemed routine.

For the past several years, she had been living along a strip of low-rent
hotel rooms on Jefferson Avenue, where she spent her days financing a crack
addiction by turning tricks. Police officers knew her well, and she'd been
arrested enough times to know the drill.

She'd be locked up for a while, and then her charges would probably get
knocked down to a lesser offense. She'd be out in no time.

She didn't expect this stay in jail to be any different than before.

When she arrived, the deputies placed Linda on the drug block, the portion
of the Newport News Jail where the chronically addicted are housed and
enrolled in a drug program called Inner Reflections.

Some addicts get their first glimpse at sobriety there, a chance to see
what the chemicals and the drug life have been doing to their minds and bodies.

In addition to counseling, they can get free HIV screens as well.

Local health officials know the statistics and realities of addiction. Drug
use is associated with about a third of all new HIV cases in recent years,
according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. And that
figure could be much higher because many unscreened addicts don't know they
have the disease.

The greatest number of new cases are found among women living in the inner
city, experts say. Many of them inject drugs or, like Linda, engage in
high-risk behavior, such as having sex for drug money.

When Linda landed in jail, HIV was not on her mind. She often insisted that
her tricks use a condom, and she had been tested twice before, including a
test that had come back negative just a few months earlier.

One day shortly after she arrived, a woman from CSB - the Hampton-Newport
News Community Services Board - came through the drug block offering the
HIV screens, which consisted of a simple swab of the cheek.

Everyone, including Linda, volunteered to take the test.

Linda knew there were times when she wasn't as careful as she liked to
believe, times when she ignored her own condom requirement or used a needle
to inject cocaine.

"Hey, there's always a chance," she thought.

But, in reality, she wasn't worried.

A blond-haired country girl with a lilting Southern accent, Linda had come
from a hard-drinking North Carolina background. With a bubbly personality
and a hearty laugh, she had always been the life of the party and popular
with the boys.

She had spent her life moving around the country, chasing good times and
leaving two children to be raised by her parents. She had rarely thought
about consequences. She didn't want to think about those things,
particularly when the partying deteriorated into streetwalking and
crack-smoking.

A few days after the test, a deputy came to her cell and took her to the
counselor's office.

"What's up?" Linda asked, standing in the windowless room.

"Linda, sit down," the counselor said, motioning to a chair. "That test we
took the other week came back positive."

"No, it couldn't have," Linda answered. "I just had two tests that came
back negative."

"Yes, Linda, they're 99.7 percent accurate," the woman said.

Because she did not know the difference between HIV and AIDS, Linda thought
she had just been handed a death sentence.

"No," she said again. "It couldn't have."

The counselor and the CSB worker tried to explain the difference between
HIV and AIDS. They tried to tell her she could still live a long life with
HIV, which is simply the virus that causes AIDS. They tried to explain that
new antiviral drugs could fight HIV, driving it down to such small levels
that she might never develop the deadly disease of AIDS.

But the terror that washed over her thoughts drowned out those soothing
explanations. Even if she had heard them, it wouldn't have mattered. In
Linda's mind, there was still no way she had HIV. She insisted that the
test had been wrong, and she demanded a more comprehensive blood test.

Devastated, Linda returned to her cell with a manila envelope stuffed with
HIV literature and brochures.

She gave the news to her cell mate, a woman with a similar background, and
the two lay together in Linda's bunk, crying. The brochures and literature
remained untouched as Linda sank into a deep depression and refused to come
out of her cell.

Meanwhile, the other women on the block pieced together what had happened.
Linda could see them whispering in the corners, and she knew they were
talking about her. When she finally did come out of her cell, the other
women refused to go near her.

With her frustration, depression and fear mounting, Linda finally exploded
in a fit of curses at another inmate, nearly getting into a fight. Then she
asked to be moved to an isolation cell.

In the waning days of summer, she stewed in the tiny space, thinking about
the road that had brought her to this point. She was scared. She didn't
know whether she could stay clean. She didn't know whether she could fight
HIV and drug addiction at the same time. She had already agreed to enter
Drug Court, but now she faced an even more uncertain future.

When the blood tests came back, confirming that she had HIV, there was no
denying the truth.

With nothing else to do and no where else to turn, Linda tried to find some
hope by reading the brochures and leafing through the Bible.

There was good information in both.

One day, a sympathetic deputy pointed out a passage in the Bible - Psalm
27: 1 - that Linda has clung to ever since.

The Lord is my light and my salvation;

Whom shall I fear?

The Lord is the strength of my life;

Of whom shall I be afraid?

In the handouts, Linda found that her notions about HIV were mostly wrong.
She wasn't living with a death sentence. She could fight HIV, stay healthy
and stay alive. She could learn to live with HIV.

But there was one thing the counselors made clear to her: If she continued
to use drugs, the HIV medication wouldn't work.

That dire warning echoed off the cinder-block cell walls until she came to
believe one fundamental truth:

"If I use again, I might as well put a gun in my mouth," she told herself.

And Linda wanted to live.