Going Bovine (9 page)

“Not hungry,” I say, taking half of Jenna’s bagel from her plate.

Jenna snatches it back. “Mom, could you please remind your son that he’s not to have any interaction with me?”

Mom throws up her hands. “Could we not do this today? I have a very important meeting with the Dean.”

“He started it.” Jenna pouts.

The kitchen smells like smoke, and for a minute, I panic, remembering my pot-induced episode from last night. “Mom, you left the toaster on. It’s burning.”

“No I didn’t. Where on earth is that earring?”

“Mom-dude. I can smell it overheating. It’s making me nauseated.”

Jenna holds up her bagel for inspection. “Hello! Not toasted, okay?”

“Ha! Made you talk!” I’d gloat some more but even that exchange hurt my brain.

“You guys, please. Jenna, could you help me find my earring?”

The stench of burning plastic is getting stronger. I know Mom has used the toaster and forgotten to unplug it. If it overheats, Dad will have a cow.

“Fine, I’ll unplug it.”

A low, pressurized hiss escapes the toaster. Tendrils of smoke seep out around the sides. There’s a flicker of orange that makes me jump back. Before I can pull the plug free, the flicker morphs. Long, curved fingernails of fire inch out from behind the smoking toaster and rake deep black scars into the wall there.

“Mom …” My voice cracks.

The toaster bursts into flames, shooting a stream of fire all the way up to the ceiling. Mom and Jenna yelp, but I can’t stop looking. The flames have eyes—hard black diamonds in a face of blue-orange heat, and they’re staring right at me.

“Get the fire extinguisher!” Mom shouts.

They’re not real. They’re not real. They’renotrealnotreal-notreal. It’s another dream, Cam. Just wake up. But I can’t. In my ears is the hiss and pop of flame coming closer. My knees buckle. I’m on the floor, shaking. Above me, the fire giants laugh, and I feel it in my body like a virus I can’t eject.

Help me. Help me. Help me.

“Cameron? What’s the matter? Cameron!” Mom yells. “Jenna—get your father. Frank! Frank!”

Mom falls on top of me with her full weight, but I’m fighting her. I’m not trying to. I just am. Stop. My brain’s screaming the order, but my legs aren’t getting it.

“Cameron?” Mom’s eyes are wide with fear. I want to tell her, warn her, but I can’t make the words. And the fire giants are so close. Feels like I’m melting from their heat. One bends down, cocks its head. Its flickering tongue snakes out and licks along my arm to the shoulder, sending hot shards of stabbing pain through me. It laughs that terrible laugh I heard in the cotton fields. I can’t wake up and I can’t make it stop. And then the only sound I hear is my own terrified screams.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

In Which I Recount the Untold Joys of MRIs and Open-Backed Hospital Gowns

“Okay, Cameron, just hold still for a second.”

I’m lying on the conveyor belt part of an MRI with the feel of cold medical stainless steel against my bare ass. They’ve made me wear this ridiculous, open-backed hospital gown that I swear is made out of tissue paper, and my buns are freezing. They let me keep my socks on, though, like that’s supposed to make me feel better.

This is my third doctor’s visit in four days. I’ve had questions asked, blood taken, reflexes tested, MRIs examined, and one biopsy sent off. I’ve been poked and prodded in places I’d always prided myself on keeping untouched for that one special doctor who gives me a ring and a promise someday. “We just want to rule some things out,” they all say—doctor code for “brain tumor/cancer/meningitis-TV-movie disease of the week.”

The conveyor belt moves me through the metal circle till I’m mostly inside. My body’s shaking, and I don’t know if it’s whatever is wrong with me or just the fact that I’ve been nearly naked for hours on end. The disembodied voice from the MRI control tower reverberates in the cone. “Cameron, we need you to lie perfectly still, okay?”

“Okay,” I answer, but my voice doesn’t go farther than the metal over my head.

The thing starts up, taking snapshots for some doctor’s photo album. Nobody warned me about the sound. Kerchung-kerchung-kerchung, like a giant stapler traveling across my skull. Shit. I can’t wait to get out of this thing. After what seems like ten minutes past forever, a tech comes in, takes the IV out of my arm.

“You’re done,” he says. “You can get dressed.”

I’m sitting on my bed, reading Don Quixote when Dad comes home. He knocks and lets himself in.

“Hey, buddy.” The last time Dad called me buddy I was eight and had the measles.

I look up briefly. “Hey.”

“How’re you feeling?”

“Okay.”

“Yeah?” He asks like he really wants to know.

“Yeah. You know. Okay.”

“Yeah.” He nods and picks up a Great Tremolo LP and pretends to read it. “This guy any good?”

I shrug.

“Your mom told me about the, ah, the doctor’s visit. I swear those guys don’t know their asses from their elbows. Anyway, Stan in my office—you know Stan Olsen?—he gave me the number of a specialist in Dallas. I made an appointment for Tuesday.”

“Okay.”

“I’m sure it’s nothing, Cam. Viruses can mimic all kinds of things. The doc will probably throw us out for wasting his time.” Dad puts the Great Tremolo LP down. He looks at the junk-strewn floor like it’s causing him actual pain but he only clears his throat. “Cameron, what did you see? When the toaster caught on fire? Your mom said something about fire giants.”

“I guess I was just getting sick.”

Dad thinks it over, nods. “Speaking of fire, maybe I’ll build us one tonight. We could toast marshmallows, watch a movie?”

It seems like a bad time to point out that it’s sixty degrees, not exactly cozy fire weather. “Sure.”

“Okay. Well. I’ll, ah, just … chop some wood. Okay, buddy?”

I hear the sliding doors into the backyard open and close. When I peek out my window, Dad’s standing in the yard with his hands on his hips, just looking around like he’s never really seen our backyard before. He picks up the ax, takes a halfhearted swing at a puny log. Then he drops to his knees and closes his eyes for a minute. I’d almost swear he was praying. But my dad’s a scientist. He doesn’t believe in religion. He leaps up and swings the ax down hard on the log, putting his whole body into it again and again till there’s nothing left but a mess of splinters.

The specialist’s office is in a huge glass-and-stone complex near the hospital. I’m starting to think there’s an interior decorator who specializes in medical décor. Somebody responsible for choosing the so-fake-they-almost-look-real plants and the beige striped wallpaper I’ve seen in every doctor’s office I’ve been in lately. She probably even fans out the magazines on the side table, the copies of stuff no one ever reads like Let’s Fish! and Mazes for Kids and Automobile Quarterly.

“How are you feeling, sweetie?” Mom asks me for the fourth time this afternoon. She holds my hand.

“Fine.”

Dad drums his fingers on his knees. “Maybe we could go to Sancho’s for enchiladas after. Would you like that?”

“Sure,” I say.

Mom stares straight ahead. “They have good guacamole.”

“Very good guacamole,” Dad seconds.

I pick up a copy of Automobile Quarterly and pretend to be interested in an article about a guy with a used car lot specializing in refurbishing old Cadillacs. Anything to avoid talking.

A nurse pokes her head in. “Mr. and Mrs. Smith? The doctor would like to see you first.”

It’s another fifteen minutes before I’m summoned to Dr. Specialist’s office. Somebody’s X-rays are up on a light box behind his head. I don’t know if they’re mine or not. At this point, they almost seem like they could be part of the medical décor arranged by that same decorator. Dad’s sitting in one of the chairs. His face is gray. Mom’s clutching a tissue.

“Hi, Cameron. I’ve just been talking to your parents here. You’ve had quite a week, I hear,” the specialist says like he’s trying to be jocular, like this is a social call. Fuck him. I try to fold my arms over my chest but they won’t cooperate, so I let them twitch at my side. Just a virus. Viruses can do all sorts of things.

“Your case is very unusual, Cameron.” The specialist taps his pen against a folder on his desk. “Have you ever heard of Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease?”

“No. What’s that?”

“It’s a neurological disease. It affects the brain. You might have heard it referred to as mad cow disease in animals.”

I glance at Dad, who looks like he’s posing for Mount Rushmore—not a single eye twitch.

“Mad cow disease,” I repeat. “Doesn’t that affect … cows?”

“Yes. Well. This is the human form. But it works in much the same way.”

I vaguely remember hearing a news story about mad cow disease. Some cows got it from bad feed and went insane, hence the mad cow. But I’m pretty sure I haven’t been munching on any bad feed, unless you count what they serve in the Calhoun cafeteria. So I don’t see how I could have this Creutzfeldt-Jakewhatever. Sounds like a brand of kick-ass speakers.

My right hand’s trembling. I can’t make it stop. I feel like unzipping my body and crawling out.

“You see, there are these infectious proteins called prions that aren’t normally a threat, but sometimes they go awry. And when that happens, it’s trouble. For instance …” He pulls out a paper clip. “This paper clip holds papers just fine. But if I bend it, like so”—he pulls out one leg of it—“it no longer functions in the same way.” Dr. Specialist Man shoves a sheaf of papers into the messed-up paper clip and the papers scatter across his desk. “Then those prions—the bent paper clips—reproduce like that, bad copies of a wrong protein, taking over your brain, destroying it over time.”

“Oh. Uh-huh,” I say, because I can’t really take in any of what he’s saying.

“This is nuts. Where could he have gotten it? You tell me how a normal sixteen-year-old kid ends up with CJ!” Dad barks.

“Could have been anything,” Specialist Man says with an unconvincing shrug. “Could have been tainted beef or even something genetic waiting to happen. The truth is, we’ll probably never know.”

“Unacceptable. This is pure conjecture,” Dad snarls, and for the next few minutes, he and Dr. Specialist confer in some secret language—Dad basically telling the doc he’s full of shit, and the doc making a case for why he’s not. I don’t under stand a lot of it because my head hurts and it feels like there’s an army of ants doing an aerobics class under my skin and I don’t want to be here anymore.

“So, what’s the treatment?” I ask.

Dr. Specialist taps his pen against his desk lightly. Dad goes quiet. Mom squeezes her tissue. Something terrible twists inside me.

“There’s a cure, right?”

Nobody says anything for a few seconds, and those feel like the longest seconds of my life. Dr. Specialist sits up straighter, morphing from man to doctor-machine. “We’re still exploring options at this time,” he says in that calm voice they teach you in medical school along with crappy handwriting.

“But, like, the other people who’ve gotten this Crew, croix …”

“Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease …”

“That, the, um, mad cow thing, what happens to them?”

The doc clears his throat. “It depends on the progression of the disease. But there are some things you need to know, Cameron.”

Dr. Specialist finally finds his voice, and now I just want to tell him to shut up. It’s like the information is a big wave rushing over me, and I can only grab at certain words and phrases to hold me up. “Progressive muscle weakness,” “uneven gait,” “dementia and delusions,” “four to six months,” “hospital,” “experimental treatments.”

I don’t hear anybody mention it’s going to kill me. Probably because no one actually comes right out and says it. In fact, Dr. Specialist does everything he can not to say it.

And that’s when I know I must be in some deep shit.

CHAPTER TWELVE

Wherein, Now That I’m Officially Screwed, a Pep Rally Is Celebrated on My Behalf, and Staci Johnson Gives Me the Time of Day

What happens to us when we die: an informal poll.

Theory #1: The Christians are right. There’s a big guy with a white robe and a long, flowing beard and a devil with a pitchfork, and depending on whether you’ve been bad or good (oh, be good, for goodness’ sake!), you’ll wind up playing a harp with the angels or burning in the everlasting fires of hell, both of which sound sucktastic.

Theory #2: The Jews are right, and when you die there’s nothing, so you better have gotten plenty to eat in this life.

Theory #3: The Muslims are right, and I am in for some serious black-eyed virgin time. Then again, I’ve got black eyes and am a virgin, so I may be in for some serious trouble once I kick.

Theory #4: The Buddhists and Hindus are right. This life is one of many. You just go on working through your karmic baggage till you get it right. So be nice to that cockroach. That could be you someday.

Theory #5: The UFO crazies are right, and we are all one big experiment for a race of superaliens who like to sit around in the alien equivalent of the Barcalounger, sipping a brew and watching those wacky humans get up to the nuttiest sorts of hijinks. And when we buy the farm, they swoop down in the mother ship and take us back to Planet Z and the primordial ooze.

Theory #6: Nobody knows shit.

This is just one of the many nifty lists I’ve been making up over the weekend since I got my diagnosis and entered it into that devil’s playground, the Internet. Turns out I’m in for a fun ride. I’ve learned a lot of spiffy new information.

For instance, if you want the technical term for what I have, it’s Creutzfeldt-Jakob variant BSE. BSE stands for Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy. Should I tell our studio audience more about it, Jim? Sure, let’s tell ’em what I’ve won. Well, folks, it’s a fatal virus that eats holes in your brain, turning it into a sponge. The tying-shoes brain cell? Sorry, this item permanently out of stock. We regret to tell you that your gross motor skills and neurological functioning will no longer be in your control. Here’s your econo diaper pack. Watch out for those hallucinations, and have a nice day.