Romantic Fever, Pt. 3

I knew that only a mother’s blind sympathy could now save me from a father’s stern hand.  “I don’t feel good,” I sobbed. 


“Where does it hurt?” my mother asked, tugging at my wet clothes. 


“my neck…..  my throat…..  my legs……  my chest……” I sobbed. 


The next thing I heard was my mother on the phone with Uncle Jimmy.
“Hospital……  Hurry……..”


Thirty minutes later, I was sitting on an examination table in a doctor’s office.  I heard the doctor say to my mother something that sounded like romantic fever. 


He had looked into my throat using one of those tongue depressors that are about the size of a wooden spoon, asked me to say “AH,” and then looked away.  My throat was sore from having 20 pounds of frozen snow shoved down my throat an hour before.  He grabbed my head and twisted it around.  “Does this hurt?” he asked.  “Yes,” I replied (an hour earlier a 140 pound girl had been sitting on it).  He pulled my arm.  “Does this hurt?” he asked.  “Yes,” I replied (an hour earlier a 110 pound high school girl had wrenched her beanie out of my hand.)  He pulled my legs.  “Does this hurt?” he asked.  “Yes, ouch,” I replied (an hour earlier two high school girls had lifted me up by my legs and stuffed 100 pounds of ice up my pants.) 


Mind you, this was a time in American history when parents were more afraid of polio than they were of the Communists and fluoride.  So, I could tell immediately by the look on my mother’s face that she was thinking “polio.”  She seemed relieved when the doctor told her it was only romantic fever. 


While a nurse was giving me 500,000 units of penicillin in the ass, I heard the doctor say to my mother, “heart damage…..   complete bed rest……  no school……..  strep throat……  only time will tell……”


For the next six months, I lay on the sofa at home, listening to a radio that my father had brought me home from a local furniture store where he worked.  It had a built-in record player, and to this day I can sing the songs that I listened to over and over and over as I recovered from romantic fever.  I had learned to read at age four, and so my mother assured me that I would be able to start second grade in the fall with my classmates.  


My friends came to visit me often after school, my parents having assured their parents that romantic fever was not contagious but a side effect of an untreated strep infection.  Rita was not allowed to visit and I never saw her again.  Nor did I ever see again either of the two girls who had given me a beating and romantic fever.  


For years, I checked the box on medical intake forms indicating that I had had rheumatic fever when I was a child.