Howdy!

Welcome to Diagnosis: X! This story is 100 percent true, and is an account of my experiences in Washington D.C. It was formerly known as Mistaken Influenza, but that was a rather horrid title, and there were a lot of mistakes in the original, so I edited it and reposted it under a different title. Enjoy!

Diagnosis: X

Part One

Cleanliness may be close to godliness, but in my case, I suppose godliness isn’t very becoming…

We’d planned it months in advance. In the weeks preceding, I had made absolutely positive that all my friends, relatives, neighbors, and pets were well informed of it, maybe to the extent that they were tired of my continuous, rambling monologues. If someone were to see the inside of our house, one would think we had just moved in, what with all the boxes and clutter lying about. Yes, our plan was perfect; nothing could go wrong, nothing at all. Or so I thought.

It began normally enough; my father, being the overenthusiastic aficionado of politics, planned a lovely little family trip to Washington D.C. We had plans to visit the White House, the Lincoln Memorial, the Smithsonian, all the usual tourist attractions one gawks at in our nation’s capitol. The first two days of our trip went as planned; we visited museums, Ford’s Theatre, even paid a visit to dear ol’ Georgie. The tables turned on the morning of our third day in D.C. That’s when the hysteria began.

On the third morning, I woke up to the pleasant wake-up-call of someone stepping on my face. Classy, I daresay. (Since there was only one bed and a couch in the hotel room, my parents got the bed, my little sister got the couch, and I got the softest bit of floor I could find.) I’m not a morning person by any means, but I felt extremely…off; more so than usual. My mother had ordered a breakfast tray laden with cinnamon rolls; my favorite breakfast food. Though my head was pounding and I felt light-headed and dizzy from fatigue, I shrugged it off and silently chewed on my cinnamon roll whist watching the local weatherman predict scattered showers.

Five minutes later, the cinnamon rolls returned…in the form of vomit. How lovely. Ever the trooper, I convinced my self it was just a stomach bug, and flushed the horrible mess down the drain. My family must have heard the cacophony of retching, because they demanded “What happened?” “Are you okay?” “Do you need a hospital?”

“No,” I replied in an offhand sort of voice. “That roll wasn’t cooked right, that’s all,”

It was a lame excuse, but I wasn’t spending my exciting week in Washington D.C. in the E.R. “I never need a hospital.” I told myself. “Never.”

After my slightly revolting experience with the unfriendly cinnamon roll, I quickly dressed myself and brushed my hair, preparing for a happy day in the streets of D.C. I wasn’t going to let a little stomach bug bring me down! Whilst on the subway, my head began to pound, exactly as it had this morning. “It’s nothing,” I convinced myself. “Just a little headache, nothing to get worried about,” My head ache slowly digressed.

While a horde of tourists crowed around the window to watch the as the subway slipped under the Potomac, I held my sweaty face in hands, frantically praying that the train would stop moving. Every time I glanced out the window, hallow voices echoed and pounded in my skull, and blurred, garish colors strained my eyes as a fresh wave of nausea swept over me. “Not again,” I pleaded silently. “Not here, anywhere but here…”

As my hands began to go numb and overwhelming heat consumed me like a sleeping bag on a sweltering July afternoon, the subway began to slow. Breathing heavily, I look a peek out the window. It was dark; we were in the underground boarding station. For some reason, I had expected blinding sunlight. Eternally grateful for the end of the terrorizing subway ride, I grabbed my bag and followed my father and sister out of the station, feeling slightly better.

I stepped, for the third time, into the streets of D.C., squinting in the bright morning sunlight. My eyes ached slightly as they adjusted to the vivid light, as opposed to the dimly lit station I had exited mere seconds ago. My headache ebbed away slowly, the cool, crisp autumn air relieving it from the smothering heat of the underground tunnel. This is why fall is my favorite time of year. It’s not too hot, and it’s not too cold. Perfect for headache relief!

My father and my sister, who were engaged in conversation, both turned around and stared at me. I stared back. They looked intently at me as if they were waiting for me to say something. “What?” I asked, trying to speak as little as possible.

My father sighed.

“I said, ‘Do you know where we’re going today?’ Goodness Sarah, try not to space out so much!”

My sister giggled.

It dawned on me that I, in fact, didn’t know where we were going or what tourist attractions we were going to ogle at today. It was the last thing I was thinking about, really. Who cares about the Smithsonian when you’re having some sort of attack in an overcrowded subway?

I shook my head, feeling like an idiot.

My father grinned. “I guess you’ll find out when we get there!” He turned around and took off in the opposite direction, chatting happily with my sister. I groaned inwardly. This was no time to play head games!

As I trudged forlornly behind my family, the blaring sun swept yet another fresh wave of nausea over me. “No…Dear God, please no…” I thought helplessly. I glanced wistfully at my father, who was deep in conversation with some Italian fellow with a very thick, unintelligible accent. They had no idea how I felt; they thought I was happily enjoying our vacation, like everyone else. I put a pale, trembling hand to my forehead. Just listening to them made my head pound.

“Here we are!”

I glanced up. I didn’t particularly care where we were going, but anything to take my mind off my throbbing headache was fine by me. I squinted in the bright sunlight, trying to decipher the words on the building before me.

Smithsonian: Holocaust Museum

For a fraction of a second, all thoughts of illness were completely forgotten. The Holocaust Museum? Holocaust Museum? What the-? I was expecting some small, cheap cultural exhibit! Not some place crawling with Nazis, crematoriums, massacred Jews, and mad dictators with hideous moustaches! I clutched my head. Watching goose-walking supporters of the Third Reich is no cure for a mystery illness.

“Why?” I rasped through my fingers. “Why here, of all places? W-whose idea was this?” Everyone turned around to stare at my father.

“I thought you’d like it,” He said, looking slightly crestfallen.

“Eet ‘as vairy great ‘istorical signeeficance,” The Italian guy commented.

Historical significance? At this point, I didn’t give a damn about historical significance! The only thing I cared about was going to sleep in my bed, not the floor of the Holiday Inn. I wanted nothing more than to take an Advil and sleep. However, a busy city street is seldom a good place to take a nap, there was no Advil in sight, and the closest thing I had to a bed was a starchy bundle of linen sheets on the floor of our hotel.

I soon found myself being dragged through the endless museum, looking at infinite arrays of Nazi uniforms, a scale model of Auschwitz, myriad photographs of charred corpses, historical short films of Hitler shouting in German, and a butt load of other gruesome things. Every last one of them made me feel sicker and sicker with each passing minute. A peculiar musty stench made me feel nauseous every time I inhaled.

As everyone else crowded around to gawk at a large gate that read ‘Arbeit Macht Frei’, I leaned against a wall and sunk to the floor. “My head… Dear God, make it stop… Please… Just let it end…” My vision began to swirl and become blurred as my head pounded, like someone was hammering against my skull. Faces swam before my eyes and voices became meshed together.

“Sarah?”

The voice seemed muffled and far away, and the sound rang painfully in my head.

“Sarah?”

My vision…I couldn’t see anything… My throat seemed to be made of cotton and my hands were numb.

“SARAH!”

Everything faded slowly to black. I knew no more.

“…I don’t know, sir, she just seems to have collapsed suddenly-”

“For what reason?”

“We…we’re not sure, sir,”

“Miss, are you incapable of administering a proper diagnosis?”

I groaned slightly. “Why can’t they shut up?” I thought. “They’re making my head hurt,” I ran my hands down beside me, trying to take in my surroundings whilst attempting to ignore the muffled voices bickering nearby. “No…” Not starchy linen sheets, again! I gradually lifted my heavy eyelids, hoping I wasn’t back in our hotel room…

I blinked several times in the brightly lit room, which made my head throb- again. It slowly ebbed away as a bare, unwelcoming ceiling swam into focus. Fabulous. I tried pushing myself into a sitting position, but my arms quickly gave way. I frowned. As an athlete, I’m usually in tip-top shape. “What’s going on…?” I wondered, more frightened than I cared to admit. After fifteen minutes of struggling, I managed to push myself into a somewhat upright position.

The room was small, with no windows and a dingy door with a tarnished doorknob. I was lying on a stiff gurney with corroded wheels on the legs and a very rigid mattress. There was a lovely stain on the opposite wall that looked remarkably like blood. A chipped, wobbly chair sat in a corner, and occupying that chair was my sleeping father. His head was tilted a little to the side and his mouth slightly agape, with an open Stephen King book on his lap and his glasses askew.

I stared bemusedly at the room, gazing absently at the bloodstain...

Then everything came flooding back, like a strike of lightning. The cinnamon roll, the hectic subway ride, the Italian guy, the horrible museum, crematoriums, people shouting in languages I couldn’t understand, clutching my head, someone shouting my name, and then…

Nothing.

No pain, no light, no feeling, nothing.

“I didn’t collapse, did I?” I thought. My memory was hazy, I could only recall vague details.

“Dad,” I called softly. Or, at least, I tried to call. My voice has hoarse and raspy, unrecognizable as my own. I tried clearing my throat, but it only made me feel as in I was trying to swallow a porcupine. I gagged slightly as the taste of bile rose to my tongue.

As I began to fall into a coughing fit, the door creaked open and two people walked in.

The first person was a very tall man in a white lab coat; obviously a doctor. He had dark skin, black eyes and a stethoscope around his neck. He had an air of authority about him, daring anyone to contradict him. The second person was a rather mousy-looking woman clutching a clipboard; a nurse. Her posture was stooped slightly, and large pair of glasses magnified her eyes to twice their normal size.

“These must be the people who were arguing outside,” I thought.

My father jumped, startled at the presence of the newcomers. He quickly pushed his bifocals back onto his face and slammed his Stephen King novel shut.

“Ah, sir!” He exclaimed, straightening his necktie. “Are you back with test results, Dr…?”

The doctor looked at him stonily through the corner of his eye. “Umaru,” He said emotionlessly. He had a very deep voice, and a slight Nigerian accent.

“Ah! Umaru! Dr. Umaru, yes, of course, I mean, um…” ’s steely glare silenced him immediately.

“As a matter of fact, we do have test results. Miss, I assume you’re quite unaware what has happened?”

“More or less,” I rasped.

“You see, Miss, after you collapsed in the museum, this man here-” He gestured to my father in the corner. “-escorted you here as quickly as possible. You’ve been here, unconscious, for the past five hours. In that time we’ve run some tests on you to confirm a diagnosis,” He gestured to an I.V. in my arm that was attached to a sac full of murky brown fluid dangling over my head.

My eyes narrowed. “No wonder I’m so sluggish,” I realized. “God knows what they’ve been drugging me with!”

“Now that test results have been finalized, I can now administer a proper diagnosis,” ’s bespectacled assistant handed him her clipboard, and I noticed him glare at her with formidable hard gaze for no more than a second. Subtle, but there nonetheless. I shuddered. For some reason, I felt…scared.

Dr. Umaru pulled out several papers covered in complicated medical codes and diagnostics. He began to translate them into English.

“Due to a great lack of antibodies and restriction enzymes, and perhaps your history of migraines, and a slight bit of physical stress and motion sickness, your immune system quite possibly may have malfunctioned due to a form of RNA virus caused by bacterium Orthomyxoviridae, resulting in a severe infection if Influenza.”

The room was silent. I felt as if someone had hit me in the face with a frying pan, and my father wore an expression fitting to a contestant on ‘Who Wants to be a Millionaire?’ who had no earthly idea what the answer to the question was. I slumped back against the bed, wishing I had paid more attention in Biology class.

“Come again?” My father finally broke the silence.

“Influenza,” The doctor said slowly, like we didn’t understand English. “In other words, a nasty case of the flu,”

I breathed a sigh of relief. It was just a bad flu! Nothing to worry about! I could barely believe my own luck. I had thought for sure I’d be bedridden! I began to laugh, but it made my head throb again.

Dr. Umaru quickly scribbled something on his clipboard. “I recommend you just relax and take it easy,” He said. “I can’t prescribe any antibiotics, but this should all clear up in two or three days,” He nodded curtly to my father and strode out, slamming the door behind him.

The nurse fidgeted awkwardly before she squeaked “Feel better, Miss,” and scurried out after the doctor.

“Well, that’s good news,” my father said, chuckling. “You’ll be fine in a day or two!”

Two days later, my condition had worsened tenfold.

Please review, flames welcome.

God Bless,

Frenchie-chan