Brain on Fire Read Online Free Page A

hospital gown.
    The technician grinned at me and leaned his body against the wall. “So what do you do?”
    “I’m a reporter for a newspaper,” I said.
    “Oh yeah, which one?”
    “The New York Post .”
    “No way! I’ve never met a real-life reporter before,” he said as we walked back to the changing room. I didn’t reply. I put on my clothes as quickly as I could and rushed toward the elevators to avoid another conversation with the tech, who I felt was being awkwardly flirtatious. Unpleasant as they can be, MRIs are largely unremarkable. But something about this visit, especially that innocent exchange with the tech, stayed with me long after the appointment, much like the Carota picture. Over time, thetech’s mild flirtations teemed with a strange malevolence created entirely by my churning brain.
    It wasn’t until hours later, when I idly tried to twirl my ring on my still-numb left hand, that I realized the real casualty of that disturbing day. I had left my lucky ring in that lockbox.
     

    “Is it bad that my hand still feels tingly all the time?” I asked Angela again the next day at work. “I just feel numb and not like myself.”
    “Do you think you have the flu?”
    “I feel terrible. I think I have a fever,” I said, glancing at my ringless left finger. My nausea matched my anxiety about the ring. I was obsessed by its absence, but I couldn’t get up the nerve to call the office and hear that it was gone. Irrationally, I was instead clinging to that empty hope: Better not to know, I convinced myself. I also knew I was going to be too sick to make the trek later that night to see Stephen’s band, the Morgues, perform at a bar in Greenpoint, Brooklyn, which made me feel worse. Watching me, Angela said, “You don’t look too hot. Why don’t I walk you home?”
    Normally I would have refused her offer, especially because it was Friday evening on deadline, which typically kept us at the office until 10:00 p.m. or later, but I felt so nauseous and sick and mad at myself that I let her escort me. The trip, which should have taken five minutes, today took a half-hour because after practically every other step I had to stop and dry heave. Once we got to my apartment, Angela insisted I phone my doctor to get some answers. “This just isn’t normal. You’ve been sick for too long,” she said.
    I dialed the after-hours hotline and soon received a phone call back from the gynecologist, Dr. Rothstein.
    “I do want to let you know that we’ve gotten some good news. Yesterday’s MRI came back normal. And we’ve eliminated thepossibility that you had a stroke or a blood clot, two things that, frankly, I was worried about because of the birth control.”
    “That’s great.”
    “Yes, but I want you to stay off the birth control, just to be safe,” he said. “The only thing that the MRI showed was a small amount of enlargement of a few lymph nodes in your neck, which leads me to believe that it’s some kind of virus. Possibly mononucleosis, though we don’t have the blood tests back to prove it yet.”
    I almost laughed out loud. Mono in my twenties. As I hung up, Angela was looking at me expectantly. “Mono, Angela. Mono.”
    The tension left her face and she laughed. “Are you kidding me? You have the kissing disease. What are you, like, thirteen?”

CHAPTER 4
THE WRESTLER
     
    M ono. It was a relief to have a word for what plagued me. Though I spent Saturday in bed feeling sorry for myself, I gathered enough strength the next night to join Stephen, his oldest sister, Sheila, and her husband, Roy, at a Ryan Adams show in nearby Montclair. Before the show, we met at a local Irish pub, sitting in the dining area underneath a low-hanging antique chandelier that let off little tufts of light. I ordered fish and chips, though I couldn’t even stomach the image of the dish. Stephen, Sheila, and Roy made small talk as I sat there, mute. I had met Sheila and Roy only a few times and hated to