Series: Four Lives, One Last Chance - A Year In Drug Court: Part 22 Of 41

ACT III. LINDA: 'MY ISSUE IS LIFE'

Linda puts the crack in the pipe and tries to light it, but the rock falls out.

Or she's searching the streets in vain for a dealer, but she can't find a fix.

When she describes these dreams to a counselor, the therapist tells her to
"play out the tape," to follow them to their conclusions.

Tracing these visions to the end, she smokes the crack, and she always dies.

And then she wakes up drenched in sweat.

This, she knows, is her plight. To use drugs would mean a sure death.

She might not die from an overdose. But the drugs would quickly destroy an
immune system already taxed by HIV.

For Linda, what could be a greater motivation for staying clean?

Her drug addiction, she believes, is something that will take care of
itself as long as she can stay healthy.

"My issue is life," she says.

Her counselors and parole officers at Drug Court don't see it that way.

In their program, all the addicts are told that Drug Court comes first,
that nothing can be as important as their recovery from drug addiction. So
when Linda asks them to substitute her HIV support groups for the required
NA meetings, they refuse.

In her first eight months in Drug Court, Linda has often felt isolated from
peers who can't identify with her battles, and counselors who don't
understand her priorities.

After missing several NA meetings in the last month and arguing with her
Drug Court counselors, she risks being sanctioned. Ford eventually tells
her to "come prepared" for jail the next time she sees the judge.

"I can't do everything they want me to do," she says. "It's like I take one
step forward, then two steps back."

Although Linda has been in jail many times before, she fears this sanction
will threaten everything she has accomplished in the last few months. For
weeks she's been working as a cashier at a Dollar General store, and she
worries that her boss will fire her when she learns about the sanction.

She's most afraid, however, that she will get sick in jail. She has learned
that she must take her medicine on a strict regimen. If she deviates from
the schedule, the virus can build up immunity to the drugs. In jail, she
will have to rely on the deputies to bring her pills. She fears that her
timetable will be thrown off, or she won't get her medicine at all.

"Then it won't do me any good to go back on it," she says woefully. "It's
frustrating. I'm thinking about skipping."

She can't understand why Drug Court won't give her some leeway. She has
different issues and different problems than anyone else in the program,
yet the staff treats her the same as the others. They're just too rigid,
too unfair, she thinks.

Besides, by the time she entered Drug Court, Linda had already been clean
for nearly a year - far longer than any of her peers.

Most of that time was spent in jail and Serenity House, an inpatient
drug-treatment center. There Linda began her HIV and AIDS education,
hooking up with a counselor from the Peninsula AIDS Foundation. She hounded
the man, constantly seeking information on her illness.

"He hated to pick up the phone," she says.

Linda can't explain why she became such a devoted student of her illness.
She had seen others give up. She had seen them refuse to learn how to stay
healthy, even as they withered away.

Maybe it was because she had always been a survivor on the streets. Maybe
it was just some primal instinct. But Linda accepted her situation and
began the fight for her life.

She first learned how to take care of herself, how to protect herself from
illnesses that could complicate her HIV. Even a common cold can become an
"opportunistic virus" capable of depleting her system and turning HIV into
full-blown AIDS. Even drinking tap water is forbidden because of possible
contaminants that could affect her immune system.

She discovered that, contrary to what she had thought, HIV can't be passed
through casual contact. It can only be transferred through bodily fluids,
such as blood.

Later, she learned how to protect sexual partners. Having HIV doesn't mean
she can't have sex, but precautions must be taken seriously.

Perhaps most importantly, she was told that her medication - if taken
properly - could reduce the HIV to undetectable levels.

So, when Linda entered Drug Court, she still had HIV at the forefront of
her mind.

She started attending her HIV support group meetings. She began
accumulating even more literature and information, eventually filling a
giant Tupperware box in her bedroom. Before long, she was asked to teach
some classes about HIV.

Still, Linda can't avoid the fears that come with living with the disease.
She constantly monitors her own health and worries that the slightest
changes could mean the virus is growing stronger.

Concentrating her energy on this life-and-death struggle is the only thing
that makes sense to her.

In court that week, she knows she will face the penalty for her attitude.

Ford tells the judge that Drug Court "has taken a lot lower priority in the
scheme of things" for Linda, and he recommends three days in jail.

Linda doesn't mention the problems this punishment could cause her. She
knows it won't do much good.

"You're confusing your priorities," Judge Conway says. "You said you're
doing all you can do. I think you're underestimating your powers."

Then he sends her to jail.

"I'm about to skip out of this mother," she mumbles on her way out of the
courtroom.

Behind bars, Linda sleeps on a thin mattress, laid out on the floor of the
detox tank. She passes the time reading a trashy romance novel. It's
Veterans Day, a long weekend, so the cells are full of the aggressive,
criminally drunk.

The deputies, though, bring her pills according to her tight schedule, and
Linda soon stops worrying about her medication. She's still concerned about
losing her job, but her boss takes a lighthearted approach to the whole
matter. She simply writes across the work calendar that Linda is off
because she's in jail.

"I'm not going to fire her," she says, "but I am going to beat her ass if
she doesn't make those meetings."

As the sting from the sanction starts to wear off, Linda has some time to
think and take a look around. This is the first time she has been in jail
since the arrest that landed her in Drug Court. While much has changed in
her life, the atmosphere in the lockup has not.

"It's the same place," she says. "The same game, the same smell."

The sanction has forced her to regroup and think about how far she's come
since her last stay in jail. She thinks about what Drug Court expects of
her and wonders if maybe she can't do what they ask. Maybe she's not so
different from everyone else. They're all addicts, after all, fighting the
same battle together.

"I'll just do the sanction and get it over with," she says. "I guess I'm
like everyone else. A rule's a rule."