Chocolate Fever (2 page)

“What do you mean, ‘what’s the matter?’ ” Henry said. “Can’t I just stand here? Do I have to carry on and behave like a nut?”

“OK, OK,” said Michael. “You don’t have to bite my head off. It’s just that you’re kind of different today. Not like you at all.”

Just then the whistle blew, and all the children began marching into the school building. “I feel funny today,” Henry said to Michael. “I have the feeling something’s going to happen, and I don’t know what.”

That exact feeling, that something was going to happen, stayed with Henry all morning. He felt strange in his homeroom, strange when he went to gym class, and in Mrs. Kimmelfarber’s math class, he felt strange all over.

Henry couldn’t concentrate on what Mrs. Kimmelfarber was saying. He just sort of sat there and stared. Without thinking about it, he was looking at his arm and the back of his hand. And then he noticed something. There were little brown freckles all over his skin. Now this would not have been such a startling discovery except for one thing—those little brown freckles were not there when he woke up this morning!

At the front of the room, Mrs. Kimmelfarber was going through the drill on fractions. She was saying, “And if I take six and a half and subtract one and a quarter, what will I have left?” She looked directly at Henry, who was looking directly at his arm. “Henry,” she asked, “what will I have left?”

“Little brown spots all over,” said Henry.

THERE WAS SILENCE in the room for about two seconds. Then there was a riot. All the girls began to giggle. The boys chortled and chuckled and laughed right out loud. Henry turned red, and Mrs. Kimmelfarber, who did not appreciate the humor of it all, turned white.

She rapped her ruler against the desk and shouted for silence. “Henry Green,” she said, “what is the meaning—”

“Little brown spots all over,” said Henry. “I was looking at my arm and I have these—”

“Little brown spots all over,” interrupted Mrs. Kimmelfarber. “I heard you quite clearly.”

“But you see, Mrs. Kimmelfarber, I didn’t have them all my life. I didn’t even have them this morning. But now—”

“I know.” Mrs. Kimmelfarber sighed. “Now you have them all over. I’d better have a look at them.” Taking Henry’s arm, she led him to the window. “Hmmmm,” she said as she peered at his arm, “looks like freckles to me.”

“No, ma’am,” said Henry. “It just can’t be.”

“Why not?” said Mrs. Kimmelfarber.

“Because I have clear and delicate skin, like my mother.”

“Is that so?” Mrs. Kimmelfarber said. “And who told you that, pray tell?”

“My father.”

“Ah,” said Mrs. Kimmelfarber, “exactly. Now you are sure you didn’t observe this phenomenon before this morning?”

“If that means did I see them,” said Henry, “no, I didn’t.”

“Well, then,” she said, “you, Henry Green, stand right where you are. And class,” she said, turning to face the room, “you will continue to look at your books until I return. In perfect silence,” she added as she went out into the hall.

Henry stood, as told, while the class looked at him. Mrs. Kimmelfarber walked the few steps down the hall to Mr. Pangalos’ room. She looked through the doorway and waited until Mr. Pangalos glanced in her direction. Catching his eye, she waved him out into the hallway.

“Listen, Phil,” she began earnestly, “I want you to take a look at a kid—”

“For heaven’s sake, Dolores,” said Mr. Pangalos, “I’m right in the middle of Americus Vespucci!”

“Who has little brown spots all over his arms.”

“Little brown spots? You got me out here for little brown spots?”

“I thought, maybe, measles?”

“Oh, no,” said Mr. Pangalos.

“Chicken pox?”

“Hmm,” said Mr. Pangalos. “I’d better take a look.”

The two of them turned Henry to the light near the window, right in the corner where the potted plants were growing on the window ledge. Mr. Pangalos poked and prodded and even took his eyeglasses out of his pocket and put them on. “Freckles,” he said finally. “Just freckles.”

“Are you sure?”

Mr. Pangalos’ round nose twitched, and he sniffed the air. “Chocolate?” he said. “Have they brought the chocolate milk upstairs already?”

“Forget the milk,” she cried. “Look! Now he has them on his
face
!”

“Oh, no!” said Henry.

“Oh, yes!” said Mrs. Kimmelfarber.

“Oh, my,” said Mr. Pangalos. “And they weren’t there before?”

“No. Two minutes ago that boy’s face was as clear as day. And now. . . .”

Henry felt as if his heart were about to drop into his shoes. He swallowed hard and stared at the two teachers, who were staring at his face.

“Little brown spots all over,” said Mrs. Kimmelfarber. “And I see more of them coming out even as we speak.”

A tear, just one, welled up in Henry’s right eye and began to trickle down his cheek, running slowly in and out of the little brown spots.

DIRT BREEDS GERMS, Nurse Molly Farthing would often say, and germs have a nasty way of making healthy people ill. Naturally, the infirmary of P.S. 123 was always spotless because Nurse Molly Farthing wouldn’t have it any other way. And naturally, as Mrs. Kimmelfarber and Henry rushed through the door that morning, she made both of them go back and wipe their feet on the mat. “And don’t bring any of your cocoa in here,” Nurse Farthing added. She sniffed the air loudly.

“Cocoa?” said Mrs. Kimmelfarber.

“Don’t think I don’t smell it,” Nurse Farthing said.

“Please, Nurse Farthing,” said Mrs. Kimmelfarber, “we have an emergency on our hands. This is Henry Green. He’s breaking out in a rash of some sort.”

“So I see,” said Nurse Farthing. She sat Henry down in a chair and turned on a bright light. Pushing her spectacles down to the tip of her nose, she bent close to Henry and looked him over. “It’s a rash all right,” she said at last. “Peculiar. Looks like little brown spots all over.”

“Exactly,” Mrs. Kimmelfarber said. “But what is it?”

“Have you ever had measles?” Nurse Farthing asked.

“Yes,” said Henry, “when I was five.”

“Chicken pox?”

“When I was three and a half.”

“Then I would say you have an unidentified rash. And frankly, I don’t like the look of it.”

Henry, who up until now was merely frightened, began to feel terrified. Nurse Farthing laid her cool hand on his arm and steadied him. “There, there, dear,” she said. “Nothing to be frightened of. I’m sure it’s not serious. How do you feel?”

“Not very good,” said Henry.

“Warm?”

“No.”

“Cold?”

“No.”

“Dizzy?”

“No,” said Henry. “I just feel . . . strange.”

“You poor dear,” said Nurse Molly Farthing, “you really must be frightened.” She ran her fingers through his hair and patted the back of Henry’s neck. Somehow this made him feel a little better.

“Did you say something?” asked Nurse Farthing.

“No, ma’am,” said Henry.

“What is that noise, then?” she asked. “It sounds like something going pop.”

“I heard it, too,” said Henry.

“So did I,” said Mrs. Kimmelfarber.

Pop! Pop! Pop!
Now they all heard it. The sound of popping filled the infirmary. Little pops and bigger pops and poppity-pop-pops kept popping. Henry looked at his arm and in an instant knew where the noise was coming from. His little brown spots were growing bigger and bigger. They were popping out all over him. No longer the size of freckles, they were as big as the chocolate bits his mother used for making cakes and cookies. He could feel them popping out on his arms and face, could feel them growing under his shirt. In less time than it takes to tell it, Henry Green was covered with little brown lumps from the top of his head to the tip of his toes.

IN LATER YEARS, Henry couldn’t remember who screamed first. All he could recall was that both he and Mrs. Kimmelfarber were yelling their heads off. And that Nurse Molly Farthing was as cool as a cantaloupe.

“Calm down now, both of you,” she said. “Mrs. Kimmelfarber, you go and call Mrs. Green on the telephone. Tell her we’re taking Henry to the City Hospital.”

Mrs. Kimmelfarber didn’t move. She just stood there with her mouth open, staring at Henry.

“You scoot now,” insisted Nurse Farthing in a stern tone. “Shoosh . . . off with you!

“And you, Henry Green,” she said as Mrs. Kimmelfarber left the room, “are coming with me. Let us go. Quietly. Calmly.”

She took his hand, and once again, Henry noticed that it felt good and somehow made him feel better. He kept holding her cool hand as they left the school. All the way to the hospital, as the taxi sped along, Henry held fast to the calm steady hand of Nurse Molly Farthing. In fact, it wasn’t until he had been checked by two different doctors and was waiting to be examined by the hospital’s chief of children’s medicine, Dr. Fargo, that he dared to let go.

“What—what? What—what?” said Dr. Fargo as he came bounding into the examining room. He was a small, round man with a bushy white mustache and a confused look on his face. “What have we here, eh?” he asked. “Boy looks like he fell in a mud puddle.”

He leaned down so close to Henry’s nose that Henry could smell his puffy breath. It smelled like peppermints. “Didn’t fall in a mud puddle, did you, lad?”

“No, sir.”

“Didn’t think so,” said Dr. Fargo. “Too bad, would have explained what those big brown spots are all over you.”

“Well, then,” he said, turning to Nurse Molly Farthing, “tell me things.”

“You’re not going to believe this, Doctor,” Nurse Farthing began, as she told Dr. Fargo about the events of the morning.

“I am not going to believe this,” Dr. Fargo repeated when she had finished. “It’s impossible. No rash in the whole history of rashes ever appeared so fast. Or grew so big. Or popped out with a noise you could hear. Impossible!”

“It happened,” said Nurse Farthing.

“So I see. Well, we’ll soon get to the bottom of this or my name’s not . . . er. What is my name, by the way?”

“Dr. Fargo, I believe,” said Henry.

“Pleased to meet you, son,” said Dr. Fargo, and he shook Henry’s hand. “Ought to do something about those big brown spots, though.”

“Yes, sir,” said Henry, who was beginning to feel confused himself.

Dr. Fargo took Henry to the examining table and switched on the big lamp. For a full five minutes he said nothing but “hmmmm” and “hah” as he poked and prodded Henry. He looked at every big brown spot and at all the bare spots in between the brown spots. He looked with a magnifying glass and without a magnifying glass. In Henry’s eyes and ears and nose and even under his tongue. Finally he said, “I don’t know any more than when I started. They look just like your typical big brown spots . . . except, of course, in the whole history of the civilized world there has never been a case of big brown spots before.”