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By Root 1142 0

that was a crude forerunner of today’s blood bank e-chair. The blood was heated to up to 115 degrees Fahrenheit, thus killing the virus, then cooled and returned to circulation. The procedure, performed by an Atlanta doctor, took a mere two hours. One of his two treated patients went on national TV and declared himself cured of AIDS—an overstatement, yes, but his viral activity had in fact dropped significantly and his T cells had shot up. Soon thereafter, though, the blood boiling fever broke. A third patient died from the procedure, and government investigators promptly deemed hyperthermia dangerous, worthless, and done with. As it turned out, what we’d all conveniently forgotten in the excitement was that HIV takes up residence not just in the bloodstream but in organs and the glands of the lymph system. So the blood would inevitably be flooded with new virus; it was just a matter of time.

In the spring Steve had started taking AZT, the sole FDA-approved drug at the time, and he’d begun seeing a new physician, a Spanish-born woman recommended by a friend at Project Inform. Our first impression of Dr. Inmaculada Marti was that she had turned what would’ve been just another drab office in the Davies Medical Center into a glistening cavern. The space was a geode—the shelves, windowsill, and her whole desk covered with crystals, save for a tiny spot reserved for her prescription pad. Steve stuck with her for about nine months. She recommended acupuncture, which he tried, and at every office visit, while I watched from the rose quartz section, she would spend a lot of time examining his tongue. As his immune system staggered, Dr. Marti seemed to get angry first at the lab results, then at Steve, as if he were an uncooperative patient. “You’re taking an antiviral,” she bristled during one appointment, “so why do you have virus?” She started him on an alternative therapy, Iscador, an extract of mistletoe, which she ordered from Switzerland. In the end, however, we knew she’d run out of tricks when she proposed sending a sample of Steve’s blood to New Mexico, where, for four hundred dollars in cash only, a colleague would perform a “visual study” of his virus and cells. How would the equivalent of a tarot card reading of Steve’s T cells help steer his treatment? Dr. Marti admitted she couldn’t say.

After switching to a new doctor, a wonderful woman firmly grounded in Western medicine, Steve, over months, then years, worked his way through the latest antivirals—ddC, ddI, d4T, 3TC—all bleached-white tablets, like generic aspirin. By contrast, I remember how very different Steve’s first protease inhibitor looked. Saquinavir came wrapped in bright gold-and-green capsules, plump and shiny like movie candy.

I once read an article on how pharmaceutical companies create the names for their forthcoming products, a skill requiring sales savvy and a gift for poetry. Experts invent words aimed to evoke just the right feeling, mood, quality, or image. The best-named drugs seem to start working just by saying their names. Say it slowly again and again and the sleep aid Ambien becomes a lulling chant. And it’s no coincidence, I’d wager, that Viagra is so close to Niagara, that mighty flow of fluid. To me, the names given to the protease inhibitors seemed intended to call to mind fabled heroes of an earlier time. One after the other they arrived, modern-day Knights of the Round Table: Saquinavir, Ritonavir, Nelfinavir, Crixivan.

In the Arthurian legend, as Steve recently pointed out to me, more than a hundred knights earned a place at the Round Table, but a single seat, or “siege,” remained empty: the Siege Perilous. It could be filled only by the true finder of the Holy Grail and would bring death to any pretender. Though the notion of killer furniture seems silly to me, I do love the element of the waiting chair. This says so simply that the right person just hasn’t arrived yet. One day, the Siege Perilous will be occupied.

I SPOKE WITH DR. JAY LEVY ALMOST TWENTY YEARS TO THE DAY after he had co-discovered the virus that causes AIDS.