Going Bovine

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.