“It’s easy to stop,” Courtney surprises us by saying, and the young man nods as if he suspected this all along. “Just make everyone in the world stop having sex. You can lead by example,” she says to him with a wry smile.

Julian shakes his head. “What about a cure? Or an inoculation?”

“At the moment, studies are showing positive results in terms of something called AZT, which is helping to drastically reduce mother-to-child transmission. But once you are infected, there is no cure. The US is working hard on medication that HIV-positive people can take, called antiretroviral therapy, but it hasn’t shown very good results just yet. They’re trying their best but it will take time.”

I raise my hand. “What’s the life expectancy for a child who’s born HIV positive?”

“Fifty percent of HIV-positive children will die before their second birthday,” she says.

Mandla is already eight months old. That means he has just over a year left.

“Okay, that’s it for the theory part of the course,” Courtney says. “Let’s look at some videos to help us prepare for what awaits.”

She pulls a television and video machine on a trolley over from a side wall and pops a VHS cassette in. I take deep, steadying breaths and try to stop my hands from trembling as Courtney closes the curtains. We watch instructional videos, which thankfully include the caring for HIV-positive babies as well as adults, and are shown how to treat a severe rash brought on by days of diarrhea and how to prevent bedsores. We’re also taught the correct way to administer medications through plastic syringes. Immediate vomiting means the medication hasn’t gone down, so we’ll have to do it again.

I scribble notes furiously, terrified that a slight lapse in concentration will result in my missing out on some technique that could one day save Mandla’s life. And then we’re told that even though HIV can’t be transmitted through tears or mucus, we should wear medical gloves when touching HIV-positive people.

Just in case.

It’s a jarring thought but one that makes the butterflies stop flitting against my rib cage. It’s the only reassuring thing I’ve heard all day and I’m immediately depressed about what that says about me, that I want to put a latex barrier between myself and a baby that up until a week ago I wanted more desperately than I’d ever wanted anything. And I’m a person of voracious appetites, so that really says something.

When the course is over and everyone has packed up, I can’t bring myself to move.

“Are you okay? You look a bit green,” Courtney says as she ejects the cassette and shoves it into her bag along with the binder full of slides.