#177: Cat Scratch Disease

When I was a kid, just morphing into a teenager, I felt the world go hot around me and my throat go tight, not all at once, thankfully, but slowly, over a period of days, until I had nearly grown used to the discomfort. Then I told my mother about it, and she had noticed my sweaty neck, and face, and drove me to the hospital, where the doctor asked many questions and finally became interested in our cat, and then in a scratch he’d left on my ankle, which had grown thick and red. “Cat scratch disease,” the doctor said. “Or fever. How long ago did this happen?” “Are you serious?” I said, because it seemed impossible that such a disease truly existed, and even as the doctor related its details and wrote a prescription for antibiotics I tried to put together the right words to ask if he was toying with me, having a joke, but my brain was hot and wet and the words banged against each other and stuck and fell around all wrong.