Here in San Francisco, at least one hospital has a ward devoted to AIDS patients. The care of AIDS has gotten specialized enough that it is likely to be its own field soon. Pretty much a dying patient could be put anywhere in any hospital - within certain guidelines. For example, if someone is on a respirator (can't breathe - which also means can't talk) that person would definitely be in the Intensive Care Unit, where visitors are strictly regulated (usually 5 min every hour, even then only if the patient is stable enough). If someone is dying, and does not want "heroic" measures taken, that person does not go to the ICU. Any patient, anywhere, can always say they do not want certain people to visit them - but it is rare. The hospital would not keep visitors away (except in the ICU example) without the person requesting it. Finally, in the States it is hard for anyone to stay in the hospital for a solid month, unless the patient is so sick that they cannot be discharged to either a nursing home or a hospice. For a person to know he/she was going to die from AIDS within a month would mean that this person's AIDS virus is resistant to every drug we have (which, sadly, happens). You could heighten the stakes of the story by always holding out (until the end) the tantalizing prospect of an experimental AIDS medicine that might work, but doesn't. The types of infections from end-stage AIDS that kill people often affect the mind, or leave the person wasted, or blind. One option that does not result in these obvious symptoms is if the person gets non-Hodgkin's lymphoma from AIDS, and dies from that (which can or cannot go to the brain). Chemotherapy would be part of that treatment. Hope this helps!
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