Ava Johnson waits at the airport bar for her flight home to Idlewild, Michigan. She tries to ignore a nearby talk show interviewing women with AIDS, or acquired immunodeficiency syndrome. Ava disagrees with how the women discuss their experience as she recently tested positive for HIV (human immunodeficiency virus), the virus that can lead to AIDS. She knows she’s drunk, but she’s trying to dispel her fear of flying. She wants to drink less, but since her diagnosis, she’s relied on alcohol to calm her down. When the plane takes off, she doesn’t feel scared.

Ava waits at the Grand Rapids airport for her sister, Joyce Mitchell, to pick her up. She has another drink and writes in her journal. The last time she kept a journal was when she left Michigan for Atlanta, Georgia, in 1984. Atlanta wasn’t what Ava expected, but she ran a successful hair salon there. However, things changed in the wake of Ava’s diagnosis. After she was diagnosed with HIV, she wrote letters to the men she’d slept with over the last 10 years, despite Joyce’s warnings not to.