Hypochondria

Each arm of the fever began to push its way from the pituitary gland, around each side of the neck and cheeks, into her temples - colliding at the center of her forehead. She was sick, there was an itch in the back of her throat that could not be scratched. She gagged and cleared it, coughed and pushed – it made the agonizing sound of a cat expelling a hairball, but into her toilet, not on the floor. She would throw up. There was a queasiness, now; an uneasiness growing from the dark depths of her belly. She could feel it inside, and - as she tenderly placed the palm of one hand on her stomach, and gingerly lifted the back of the other to her forehead – it was obvious that she wished to reach inside and pull the sickness out. As she imagined the illness – the bacteria, the virus, the disease – growing inside her, her face sunk and her eyes drooped, her eyebrows clenching their sockets as tight as possible – a look of horror, worry and disgust the scale of which has before this not been seen or imagined. Then, with one powerful motion – in a beautiful, almost belletristic display of coordination between mind and body, the muscles which gave her support and movement collapsed, her body dropping to the floor like a dead bird from the sky. The only movement which could now be seen were the frantic convulsions from her stomach as she desperately wept; a hyperventilating heap on the hardwood floor.