I’m nervous now but don’t want to back down considering the fuss I’ve made. She reaches for a cubby next to the door and pulls out a surgical face mask and latex gloves. “Here, put them on,” she says.

I don’t know what I was expecting when I go inside, but it’s not the antiseptic smell of a hospital. Three incubators line the walls and as I look around at them, I notice the ominously still bundles inside two of them. Tubes of fluids creep like vines around oxygen tanks and other kinds of lifesaving equipment that you’d expect to find in a geriatric ward at a hospital, not in the pediatric ward in an orphanage.

I step toward the nearest incubator and bend over to peer inside, slowly and quietly so as not to wake the sleeping newborn, which is what I judge the shape inside it to be. I am wrong. Two black sunken eyes stare back at me, the pitiful creature looking unlike any baby I’ve ever seen. Its cheekbones jut out obscenely on a too-large head, and I realize I’ve never thought of babies as having cheekbones until now. It’s not a feature of their skull that should be visible.

Where’s the angelic face and chubby cheeks? This child looks like an alien and is undoubtedly terminally ill. I step back, revolted at the sight of it and even more revolted at myself for my response. I sway as I struggle to control my mutinous thoughts and reach out to balance myself. Within a second, a nurse is next to me, stabilizing me. She too is wearing a face mask and gloves.

“It’s very sad, hey?” she says kindly, nodding at the shriveled child. “His name is Themba, it means ‘hope.’ He’s two years old and has been very sick. We are surprised he has even lived this long. There isn’t anything we can do for him except manage his pain and wait for him to pass.” She shrugs as if this is a perfectly reasonable course of action.

“What’s wrong with him?”

“AIDS.”

AIDS. That at least explains the latex gloves and the air of sickness that permeates every inch of the room. But it doesn’t explain much more. “But AIDS is a gay men’s disease.” Everything I’ve read about it says so. “How can a baby have AIDS?”

“It’s no longer a homosexual disease,” she says. “Women are very susceptible to it, and anything they’re at risk of getting, they’re likely to pass on to their unborn children.”

Jesus, talk about a double whammy.

“I think I’d like to go outside now,” I say, and she nods.

Once I’m back in the corridor, I rip off the mask and gloves while taking great big gulps of air.