One Couple Tries to Cope With AIDS : Health: A five-year study is focusing on heterosexual relationships in which at least one person carries the infection.

Young love blossomed two years ago at a hospital detox center. Sara and Rafael were both 20, both shooting heroin and cocaine, both looking for a way out. They found each other.

“When we started, he was determined to stop drugs,” said Sara, who didn’t want her real name used. “I would go get high, and I would curse him out. He would say: ‘Come on. We can change together.’ ”

The detox program didn’t change them. But 18 months ago, they joined the Addiction Research & Treatment Corp.’s Heterosexual and HIV transmission study. The five-year study involves counseling and periodic follow-ups. Participants are tested for exposure to the AIDS virus.

Sara tested positive. Rafael did not. And that changed everything.

“I felt cheated,” she said, thinking of the moment when she read the results. “Here I am getting my life together, and this is happening to me?”

“She went crazy,” said Rafael, who also did not want his real name used. “She said she was going to get high again that day. She said she was going to do drugs. I was watching her, because I was nervous she was going to do something crazy, something stupid.”

She cried, and he held her. “I love you,” he told her. “It doesn’t matter.”

But Sara’s anger and confusion were overwhelming. For a month, she washed her dishes in bleach for fear her nieces or nephews would somehow catch the virus from her. She wouldn’t let anyone touch her. She couldn’t believe Rafael wanted to stay with her.

“I tell him that if I had found out he had it, I would have left him,” Sara said.

“And I tell her: ‘Not everybody’s the same. You got your feelings, I’ve got mine,’ ” Rafael said. “I know she got hurt, knowing that she got it. I’m going to treat her bad too? I didn’t treat her bad, and she wanted to go kill herself anyway. Imagine if I had said: ‘I’m leaving you now.’ Maybe she would have done it.”

Sara knows when she was exposed. She shared a needle with her older sister, who had said she carried the AIDS virus. Sara didn’t believe her. Now it is Rafael who has a hard time believing.

“He doesn’t face it. He doesn’t face it at all. To him, this is like a flu that’s going to get better,” Sara said. “He says: ‘I know you’re not going to die.’ He doesn’t face it at all. And we talk about this every day, that he has to accept it, that I’m going to get sick. And that he has to go on with his life.

“He says: ‘It’s not true. Don’t worry about it. You’re going to keep living.’ I say: ‘Please listen to me. This is happening to us.’ He doesn’t want to hear it.”

About 20% of the 12,236 women with AIDS in the United States are Latino, like Sara, even though Latinos make up just 7% of the population. More than half of those women contracted AIDS through needle-sharing, like Sara and her sister.

“If we had both had it, it would have been OK. But he didn’t have it, and I felt like I was depriving him of his life. I told him that day: ‘Do your life. You can find somebody else,’ ” said Sara, who grew up in the Bronx and now lives with Rafael in her mother’s house.

This brown-eyed man with the soft voice and gentle ways is the best thing in her life. The worst thing is the possibility that she might infect him.

“I don’t want to get him sick. That’s my biggest fear. It would be worse for me to know I got him sick than to know I’m sick myself.”

The risk of contracting AIDS is at least 15 times greater among black and Latino heterosexuals than among Anglo heterosexuals. Heterosexual contact between intravenous drug users and their partners is spreading the virus faster than any other transmission mode, with the number of those cases up 27% from 1988 to 1989.

Sara and Rafael know the risks. Rafael told their counselor, Regina Phillips, that he was afraid he would hurt Sara’s feelings if he insisted on using condoms. Now it is Sara who insists, often without success.

“He doesn’t want to protect himself. I bought all kinds of them, $7 for one of them. He won’t use them,” she said. “It wouldn’t hurt me, if he uses them. It would hurt me more if he got sick. That would kill me.”