Patient A
By Lee BlessingDr. Acer - pronounced "Ack-er" is the dentist who infected Kim and several of his other patients with HIV.
LEE
Dr. Acer... I've been thinking what to do with him... All I can see is that terrible graduation shot of him that ran all over the country. Grainy, black-and-white... the very quality of the shot - the remoteness it forced on you... it made him look like a criminal... I'm not saying he was. There could've been accidents, oversights. Certainly no one ever proved that he willfuly infected anyone. He even published a letter, the day before he died. It said he had HIV. It also said he'd been advised he could continue to practice, as long as he followed the guidelines of the Centers for Disease Control. If any of his patients was worried however, they should get tested. The last paragraph was quite touching...
As it turned out, he'd infected at least six of his patients with HIV. The questions these events raised were all ugly ones: had Dr. Acer deliberately transmitted the virus? Had he done it negligently? Or - even more disturbing - was he trying to follow the CDC's guidelines? No one knew the answers to these questions. And Dr. Acer was dead. All that was left was a blood sample and a tiny, black-and-white photo.
This is all we have to judge by, so many of us. On one hand, we see a young, composed, telegenic woman dying. On the other, this little grey, remote head. This dead man. This mysterious letter in a newspaper.
Some stories just push us in a particular direction. We have to face that, we have to give it its due in a sense - and yet struggle to withhold our final judgment.
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