I am sitting in a grassy field under a small tent. A young nurse is taking my blood pressure. She is dressed in army fatigues, like one of the nurses from the old television show M*A*S*H. It is sunny and the light is very bright. She is talking to me, her voice muffled like we are under water. There are no other sounds. No birds singing, no traffic, no other voices. We are alone.
“We are going to get you to a room soon honey, okay?”
“My head hurts.”
And later:
I am lying in a bed somewhere. My head feels as if it were in a vice. I hear my son’s voice.
How you feelin’ dad?”
“I don’t know what to do. They gave me all these COVID kits to put together, and the instructions are in Chinese. Can you help me figure it out?”
I would later learn that the first memory never happened. I was admitted to the hospital by standard procedure, through the emergency room.
The second did. My son found me babbling like that the next day. I had received no treatment up to that point. My fever had spiked to 103.
I remember almost nothing about what transpired in the week that followed. Most of what I write reconstructed from The Book. Other things were false (or no) memories that the Redhead explained in the days and weeks afterward.
No, family did come to see you, you talked to them. Yes, you did have your phone, but I did not see you look at it. Yes, you were awake a good bit of the time. Yes, we talked about a lot of things. No, they did bring you meals. Don’t you remember any of that?
I did not. I do not.
The Book has pages and pages of tests. Bizarre imbalances in blood profiles. Some categories were extremely low, others alarmingly high. There were also MRIs, CT scans, and ultrasounds.
They were looking for West Nile virus, but that test was negative. They considered meningitis, but never did a spinal tap (an error, given what was to come). The baffled internist bowed out and referred me to the “Infectious Disease Expert.”
After four days of intravenous antibiotics and fluids, the blood tests returned to normal.
A memory, confirmed to be true:
I am sitting in a chair and a doctor is speaking to me in a quiet voice.
“Mr. Clifton you have been an extremely sick man. We have done a lot of tests, but we do not know the cause. I suspect it may be related to the tick bite you had, but tick-borne infection tests must be sent to a lab in Virginia. It will be two weeks before the results come back. Until then, I am giving you a prescription for one week of Doxycycline just in case. By the way, I noticed from your chart that you haven’t had your COVID vaccine, and I really think you should consider…”
“No. I am not taking your shot. You should focus on figuring out what I have rather than trying to get me to take some so-called vaccine for something you think I may get.”
“Sir this is not a political thing, but…”
“No, it is not political. End of discussion.”
“Understood. I will call you when your lab results come in.”
Admittedly rude, that. It might have affected our future relationship.
The Redhead drove me home soon afterward, but to this day I do not remember the ride.
Words Not On Paper 
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