The Boy With BlAIDS

Prologue

Prologue

"Julius!" a shrill voice rang throughout the building. "Stop!"

"Kelby, shh! Do you want them to hear us skiving off of work again? We could get fired, then what would we do?" Julius chastised, but his voice remained amused as he whirled around to face her with a smile on his face.

"Find a new job, I suppose?" Kelby offered, giggling slightly. Julius just rolled his eyes, lightly shoving her shoulder in response.

"We've already switched jobs so many times, Kelby, I don't know if we'd be able to find another job after this one," Julius stated with a melancholy smile before lacing their fingers together. "Even now we can't do this job right. Do you even know how to check a baby for osteoporosis, malaria or HIV? I feel like I'd just kill it on accident, you know?"

Stress lines appeared on Julius's forehead before he buried his face in his hands. "I'm sorry, I just want to be able to support you, Kelby. You deserve the absolute best, and I want to at least try to give that to you."

"Aw, Julius! What'd I ever do to deserve you?" Kelby questioned, tapping a finger to her lip as if pretending to think about it.

"That's a ridiculous question," Julius laughed, rolling his eyes. He leaned back against one of the barren walls in the room, next to a table full of various instruments. "There's no one else in the world I'd rather be with, no one else I'd rather fake a medical degree to get a weird job checking the babies from foreign countries for dangerous viral diseases—that is what we're doing, right? None of this equipment really looks safe, let alone government regulated."

"It seems like that's what we're doing, at least," Kelby commented. A knock sounded on the wall before another employee walked in and thrusted a baby into Kelby's arms. She fumbled for a moment and almost dropped the baby, finally getting a hold of the baby before the other employer sauntered out again.

"So . . . how do you test for HIV positivity?" Julius asked, looking down at the first question on the clipboard he was holding. In his hand, he clutched a pen that he tapped against the clipboard incessantly.

"That is an excellent question that I don't have the answer to," Kelby responded, her gaze still locked on the baby she was holding. "Isn't he adorable? He seems so innocent, there's no way he could possibly have HIV or malaria or whatever else they must be accusing him of carrying."

"Well, who knows? If the virus is in his bloodstream, he wouldn't show it on the outside, not until later in his life at least," Julius answered pensively, sighing. "I'm sorry, Kelby."

"Do you want kids?" Kelby suddenly piped up, her gaze still transfixed on the baby. "I was thinking of having four—two girls and two boys." Julius stood with his mouth dropped open as he stared at Kelby.

"Me too," he finally stuttered out. "I would love to have a family with you."

At that exact moment the baby had taken to screaming, crying in Kelby's arms as she rocked him, trying to give him some sense of comfort.

"Where do you think his mother is?"

"If he's here now," Julius started, feeling heavy-hearted, "probably dead." Julius felt a lump forming in his throat as his thoughts drifted over to the tangent of losing Kelby in a similar manner. It's not like he had much money saved up to spend on healthcare if something did go wrong, so the thought wasn't all that far fetched. Even though it had turned to the new century just a few days ago, healthcare wasn't a cost that was going down anytime soon, it seemed.

"That's just awful, can you even imagine how he must feel?" Kelby questioned, the amount of pain in her voice causing Julius to wince noticeably.

" I don't really want to imagine that, it must be terrible." With a small smile Kelby walked up to Julius and wrapped an arm around his shoulders, playfully shaking him.

"Hey," she whispered in his ear, resting her head on his shoulder. "It'll be okay, he'll get adopted by a loving family and be loved like he was their own."

"And when he grows up, he'll find someone to spend the rest of his life with," Julius finished, a hint of a smile appearing on his face.

"And they'll be the Kelby to his Julius," Kelby remarked, laughing softly as she wove their hands together and gave him a comforting squeeze.

"Or the Julius to his Julius, you never know Kelby," Julius chastised, though he found himself laughing as well a moment later.

"Either way, he'll meet someone and fall and love and have the life he deserves, the life everyone deserves."

"You're going to be a great mother one day, you know?" Julius announced.

The door flew open not even a moment later and the employee from before waltzed back in and grabbed the baby from where it laid silently on the table.

"Did it test positive for anything?" she asked, holding out a hand to take the clipboard from Julius, who hadn't even started to fill it out.

"Um," he stuttered dumbly as she ripped the board out from his hands and started to scan over the document. When she finished she just let out a long sigh and ran a hand through her hair.

"You two don't know what the hell you're doing, do you?" she accused, her voice harsh.

"I-I'm sorry, ma'am, we were just—"

"Exactly like the rest of the yahoos that we employ, because we can't pay for actual doctors," she interjected, sighing again. Without waiting for a response she started walking back over to the door before calling out over her shoulder, "at least next time make up some stuff so I don't have to!"

The baby in her arms remained silently asleep, blissfully unaware of the dangerous virus in its body, rapidly ejecting its DNA into his poor unsuspecting CD4 cells, bringing the baby spiraling closer and closer to his inevitable demise.