Mortality Report: The POW Virus
Sunday, November 22, 2009
THE FLEA.
by John Donne
MARK but this flea, and mark in this,
How little that which thou deniest me is ;
It suck'd me first, and now sucks thee,
And in this flea our two bloods mingled be.
Thou know'st that this cannot be said
A sin, nor shame, nor loss of maidenhead ;
Yet this enjoys before it woo,
And pamper'd swells with one blood made of two ;
And this, alas ! is more than we would do.
O stay, three lives in one flea spare,
Where we almost, yea, more than married are.
This flea is you and I, and this
Our marriage bed, and marriage temple is.
Though parents grudge, and you, we're met,
And cloister'd in these living walls of jet.
Though use make you apt to kill me,
Let not to that self-murder added be,
And sacrilege, three sins in killing three.
Cruel and sudden, hast thou since
Purpled thy nail in blood of innocence?
Wherein could this flea guilty be,
Except in that drop which it suck'd from thee?
Yet thou triumph'st, and say'st that thou
Find'st not thyself nor me the weaker now.
'Tis true ; then learn how false fears be ;
Just so much honour, when thou yield'st to me,
Will waste, as this flea's death took life from thee
The patient had lived a sedentary life in his Maine home for over 25 years, leaving only occasionally. Medical examiners scoured the property, looking for any clue as to the man’s peculiar condition. Seeing overgrown bushes, leaf piles, stacks of old lumber and scrap metal the examiners decided to trap several mammals near the patient’s property. Collections from the mammals and surrounding foliage yielded 31 and nine mammals. Of the nine animals collected, four were infected with the POW virus, a disease carried on ticks, yet doctors were not able to isolate the virus from any of the 31 ticks.
This was among one of the first documented cases of POW virus infection in the United States. It is probable that there are more POW infections that we can count, and the only way to tell is by proxy, through testing for the West Nile Virus. The POW virus has a morbidity rate of 10-15%. No therapy exists.
***
Stumbling out from a party, I saw Cooper fall into the grass behind the apartment complex on the corner of Portland and Saratoga. He pressed his hands into the grass and hoisted his torso higher. His legs flailed and sputtered like a fish’s might if a fish had legs and if a fish were dying. A cold resolution came over him and he just sat up, Apple Sauce style, and pulled a cigarette out of his pocket. He sat there for ten minutes, smoking and looking up at the starless sky. The slivered moon hung loosely on the horizon, like a giant toenail that had been clipped and jettisoned into the air. Cooper looked up at it and laughed quietly, a puff of smoke curling towards it.
I heard him burp. I heard him groan. And in the moment before he leaned back over the grass to vomit I wondered if it was cold enough for the ticks to be out. Had he been out a moment longer I would have walked him home, but I didn't know the way and wiping the vomit from his lips he sprang up and ran towards the median.
