Miami Herald - July 9, 2005
Nicholas Spangler, nspangler@herald.com.

In the morning the bride and groom walked down the HIV wing to a room they called the honeymoon suite.

"Thrush, pneumonia, sores," she was saying. Lorena Miner: 43, slight and once pretty, diagnosed with AIDS in 1984. "They were feeding me through tubes at one time."

Lorena had a cup of coffee in her hand, and she was spilling it. "Honey," he said. "Honey!" and he took the cup from her.

Isaiah Gaines: 43, medium build, red-eyed, healthier than his fiancee but no longer taking his medication because of the crazy dreams and slow drunk they gave him. He was diagnosed with HIV in 1996.

"It's like a wave," Lorena said. 'The meds come on, and it's like a wave coming over your face. I got my nails done last night and halfway through I started to nod off. 'Oh my God, I'm so embarrassed,' I said, and she said, 'Don't worry about it, Honey.' "

"They make her clumsy," Isaiah said. "I have to be there to protect her."

He opened the door to the honeymoon suite. Two hospital beds were pushed together in the middle of the room. Conch shells and dried flowers that she arranged in craft class were on the wall.

They walked around the room, fingering the bedspreads, the pillows, the little things in the room.

Lorena and Isaiah met at an HIV support group at the Greater Bethel AME Church four years ago and fell in together. They'd been in and out of trouble with the law, with alcohol and crack. He'd been married once before, she never.

ONCE HOMELESS

They were homeless before they came here. It's a converted warehouse in the Allapattah fruit district called the Unity Health and Rehabilitation Center. Living at Unity are 298 patients, 45 of them HIV positive. Many of the others are diabetics missing legs. It is not an unhappy place, if you can look past these things.

"I see you're looking at my books," Lorena said. The books were Power of a Praying Wife and 20 Keys to a Happier Marriage. "The nurses gave them to me. They've been so nice to us."

A nurse named Toby gave Isaiah a black bow-tie and a white shirt.

Connie, the head nurse, gave Lorena her old wedding dress. It was silk and lace with pearls on the front and a four-foot train.

Connie would be a bridesmaid, along with some of the other nurses.

Cornell Thomas, Isaiah's running mate in the bad old days and now a patient in residence down the hall, would be best man.

"He's changed," Cornell said. "He found a lady to help him change. Now they've just got to trust in each other. I know what I'm talking about. I've been married three times."

Lorena spent the early part of the afternoon in Unity's beauty salon, a small room with a big mirror.

She got her hair done and her face powdered, and she got into her wedding dress.

"I'm feeling exhausted already!" she said. "Everyone's been pulling on me all day. I had no idea it would be like this. I've never been married before."

WEDDING PARADE

Isaiah was outside playing host. He wore a dark chalk-striped suit and walked around shaking hands and giving hugs. The trellis was laced with flowers and there were flowers and candy on the tables.

Most of Unity turned out. Wheelchairs lined the room. Some of the nurses had changed from scrubs into dresses and heels.

After the union was made under the trellis to the accompaniment of nurses' tears, there was a wedding parade down the halls of Unity, and dancing: Ernest with the false legs doing something crazy in the middle, Cornell and Connie courtly and stiff, the new couple close.

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