A friendship fractured by AIDS

THE PRINCIPALS in this tale wish to keep their names out of the public eye for fear of further damage to their child's emotional well-being. The perpetrators - if they are that - would claim, if they were not denying every accusation, that they were protecting their child's physical well-being. Ancillary characters range from righteous bureaucrats to ignorant humans.

There is no proving either side of the story; no evidence exists save testimony in dispute. I happen to believe the one side, but I have only my instinct to offer as weight.

All the names have been changed by me.

Ann and Gene, who grew up in Babylon Town, in Suffolk County, now live in Nassau County. Last year they sent their then-3-year-old son, Patrick, to a private nursery school in a community adjacent to their own. They learned of the nursery school through Ann's friend and neighbor, Elizabeth, whose mother works at the nursery school. Elizabeth's son, Carl, regularly plays with Patrick.

Last year, Elizabeth's mother helped Ann register Patrick at the school and offered Ann invaluable advice about its personnel. The two boys would have been in the same nursery school class last year, but Patrick, who has a speech impediment, was seeing a therapist in the mornings, so his mother enrolled him in the school's afternoon session. Carl attended school in the mornings. Ann had hoped that beginning last month, Patrick would attend the morning session with Carl.

In February, just after the beginning of Patrick's second semester at the nursery school, Ann and Gene received the disturbing news that Gene's brother, Robert, who had been living near Washington, D. C., had tested positive for the HIV virus. No warnings or warning signs heralded the shocking news. Robert suddenly was in the intensive-care unit of a hospital. He had contracted a virulent strain of pneumonia common to AIDS patients and was diagnosed as having AIDS.

Ann and Gene had to fly to the Washington / Maryland area to visit Robert. Ann told Elizabeth where they were going and why. "Nobody down there believes that Robert is going to live," Ann said to her close friend, whose next question haunted Ann for weeks and puzzled her. "Then why are you going?" Elizabeth had asked.

Miraculously, Robert survived the pneumonia, but he was too weak to work or otherwise to support himself. So, with the help of his family, Robert moved back to Long Island, to live with his parents in Babylon.

Worried about Robert's mental and emotional well-being as well as his physical health, and struggling with the prototypical, child-care dilemma common to working parents of young children, Ann and Gene asked Robert if he would babysit for them. They needed him particularly during weekday mornings, when Gene was working and Ann, a night-shift nurse, most required uninterrupted rest. Robert was happy to take the job.

Having confided in Elizabeth when Robert first was diagnosed, Ann now asked Elizabeth - more or less as a pro forma courtesy - if she and her husband would mind if the boys continued to play together every day, as they had done all year.

"That marked the beginning of the end of our relationship," Ann recalled. Ann said that Elizabeth said she would check first with her pediatrician. The pediatrician then told Elizabeth, she phoned Ann to say, that if other children were to play with Patrick, they would be putting themselves at risk of contracting the AIDS virus.

"The fact that my son didn't have AIDS seemed to have nothing at all to do with it," Ann said.

To Ann's further surprise, Elizabeth, who did not like the idea of Robert's babysitting in the first place, now said she was no longer sure that the boys should play together in the afternoons. Ann then said she would fire her husband's brother as a babysitter to accommodate Elizabeth's trepidations regarding Robert's having the AIDS virus.

Elizabeth said, "Well, you're still going to see him, right?"

"See him?" asked Ann. "Of course we're going to see him. He's Gene's brother."

"Obviously," Elizabeth said, "I couldn't ask you to not do that."

"In other words," ventured Ann, "you're ending our friendship."

"Well, I couldn't ask you to not do that."

Ann said, "Goodbye" and hung up the phone.

"These were friends, people we went away on vacation with," she said angrily.

Next, Ann received a call from the director of the nursery school, who said she would like to meet with Ann and Gene. Ann said, "I'm sure I know what this is about, and there's nothing to discuss."

The director insisted, and they met. The director suggested strongly that Ann and Gene were irresponsible as parents to allow contact between Patrick and his uncle. They were putting their child at risk to contract AIDS. Ann and Gene were appalled and said so. In a subsequent conversation, the director suggested that " . . . it would be best if we found another school for our son," Ann said.

Ann called a lawyer. The lawyer wrote a strongly worded letter warning the director against discrimination. The director called the lawyer and said that of course Patrick could attend school. No one ever had said he could not. No one ever had said a word about a family member's HIV status.

It later turned out, after several guarded exchanges, that there simply was no room available for Patrick in the morning session. He could attend the afternoon session, as he had the year before. Ann and Gene felt they had gotten the message. They found another nursery school for Patrick.