The large black circles around his bloodshot eyes are not just from crying. His hands grip the industrial fabric and plastic chair, nails white, knuckles pale. Dark eyes filled with sadness and loss. He nervously whets his bottom lip, purses and exhales slowly.

His Cote d'Ivoire football shirt, once tight, hangs limply around his withering shoulders, flapping and shuddering as he tells his story.

He's seventeen. First-generation Swiss. Everyone always asks where he's from, when he moved here. His parents, a teacher and an accountant, moved for a better life, so he could get a degree.

Before this. Before all the medicines.

He rubs his tightly curled hair nervously, waiting for his newest numbers. He mumbles in rolling French, pausing and recalling how this happened. He itches the lesion on his arm.

He never really liked beach volleyball. His friends wanted him to play. Really, he says, I'm a football guy. Switzerland doesn't even have beaches. This is no 1980's Venice or Bondi, he says, grimacing.

You can't play volleball in shoes. Football, he says, you wear shoes. Who shoots up at a beach?

The doc reads his numbers and he nods slowly, takes his pile of prescriptions and leaves. Today his CD4 count is greater than 400. For him, it feels like just another result, a figure, a pile of soothsaying digits.

He feels faceless. A number.