By the time we arrived in Zermatt, I was delirious and had a fever. There are no cars in Zermatt, so they pick you up in horse-drawn carriages and escort you to whichever hotel you’re staying in.
I walked straight into the hotel and asked to be pointed in the direction of the bar, where I ordered myself two margaritas to try to cure whatever I had caught on the train. Margaritas always straighten me out, and I didn’t see why this little episode would be any different. Plus, I hate checking into hotels, and Sue, Shelly, and Gina love it.
Our suite was designed like a giant cabin/chalet, with two stories, two bedrooms, and a hot tub on the balcony overlooking the town and a direct view of the Matterhorn.
This is what I was wearing when I arrived in Switzerland, and that’s the Mattherhorn behind me.
“There are other people out here,” Sue warned me after I stripped down and came outside in my bra and thong. “Just saying…”
I looked at the people on the balcony next to us and said hello. I was sweating and delirious and was hoping the cold air would help cool me down. I took some snow from the ledge of the balcony, packed a snowball, and smashed it into my face. Then I sat down Indian style and asked what time dinner was.
“You’re going to catch pneumonia if you sit out here naked. Come in the hot tub,” Gina instructed me.
“I hate hot tubs, and everyone who knows me knows that. Secondly, I was already hot, so why would I get into a hot tub to get hotter? Do you want me to die?”
“You’re always hot,” Gina said with a wave of her hand. “Why don’t you take your temperature and find out if you have an actual fever?”
“Thanks for your sympathy,” I said. “I would love to take my temperature, but I don’t carry a thermometer around in my ass. Do you?”
I’m against thermometers, because (1) I believe they are archaic, and (2) they’ve fucked me over in the past. Specifically, when I was eight and trying to feign illness in an effort to avoid a math test that was supposed to be given in school that day.
School was already a pain in the ass, and the very notion that we were expected to study for tests in addition to going to classes pissed me off. Pop quizzes were less of an affront to me, because at least I had no time to have anxiety about failing them. Algebra was a particular nuisance, and when I woke up the on the day of the test, I had to think fast.
“Mom!” I screamed from my bedroom.
Not for the first time my mother ignored my cries for help, so I got up and walked over to the door in order to get some better acoustics. “Mom!” I screamed again and ran back to my bed and lay down.
“I can’t move my legs,” I told her as she opened the door.
“So, you’re paralyzed?” she asked.
“God forbid,” I told her.
“Well, then, I guess we’ll need to go to the ER.”
In an effort to be more convincing and avoid an actual hospital, I told her that I felt very hot and that maybe some chicken soup would help. She left without saying anything and came back moments later with Campbell’s chicken soup, and then went into my closet where she found a pair of jeans and tossed them at me. She was testing me.
When my mom left the room again, I dipped the thermometer into the chicken soup and put on my jeans as if my legs were in fact immobile. This was before nanny cams, but I thought if she was secretly peeking through my keyhole, it was in my best interest to cover all bases. I thrust out each leg straight in front of my body and leaned my torso over my legs, like any person paralyzed from the waist down would do when putting pants on.
I heard my mother’s footsteps returning, so I lay prone on my back, struggling to zip up my jeans. I grabbed the thermometer out of the chicken soup and put it back in my mouth.
“Well, you certainly put those jeans on fast for someone with no use of their legs.” She rolled her eyes and took the thermometer out of my mouth. “A hundred and thirty degrees?”
“Is that Celsius or Fahrenheit?” I responded as weakly as possible.
“Let’s go to the hospital,” she said. I weighed my options and decided the hospital would be better than failing algebra. I had spent plenty of time in hospitals, because I have a history of either hurting myself or faking hurting myself.
My father was usually the one to take me to the hospital, but for some reason he had already left for the day even though he didn’t have a real job. He was probably just picking up his breakfast at McDonald’s.
I was admitted into the ER at St. Barnabas Medical Center. After an hour and a half of getting my legs bent in several different directions and then pricked with small needles from my ankles to my thighs in neat, tiny rows, the doctor pulled out the reflex hammer. It is incredibly hard not to move your leg when someone is hitting you in the knee with a hammer, but I thought I did a pretty good job of pulling it off. After this, the doctor drew the curtain to the examining room and he and my mother stepped outside of it.
“Your daughter doesn’t need a to be in the emergency room. She needs to be in a psychiatric ward.”
The next day I woke up with dried blood all over my legs from the needle pricks but was somehow able to get up, dress myself, and go to school.
“You have a quite a vivid imagination,” my father told me, as I made myself a peanut butter and jelly bagel for breakfast.
By the end of retelling this story to the girls, the sweat from my body was melting the snow I was sitting on.
“That is one of the most fucked-up stories I’ve ever heard,” Sue told me. “You really were a nightmare.”
“What do you mean, ‘were’?” Gina asked, cracking herself up. “Ever heard of the boy who cried wolves?”
“No, Gina. But, I have heard about the Boy Who Cried Wolf. My dad was kind enough to regale me with that tale after I broke my arm that summer in Martha’s Vineyard, and he refused to take me to the hospital for two days because he assumed I was lying.”
“Well, I don’t blame him,” Gina shot back as quickly as she was able, craning her neck like a rapper.
“My forearm was dangling off of my elbow joint in the completely wrong direction. It was pretty obvious it was broken. Even my dog Mutley knew it was broken. He sat there barking at me for two days.”
“Well… you need to get in bed if you think you have a fever,” Gina snarled with one eye open. “You need to be able to ski tomorrow.”
“Well, I’m not going to miss fondue, idiot. This could very well be my last meal.”
Cheese has always been one of my greatest passions. I adore it, and if I wasn’t predisposed to obesity, I’d want a block of it every day. It was a short walk to the fondue restaurant, so I grabbed another T-shirt and a sleeveless vest and sweated profusely throughout the entire meal. The steaming hot cheese wasn’t a help to my fever, and the restaurant smelled like a fillet of feet, but I was able to power through it and use the bread squares to dab the sweat off my forehead.
When I got up to use the restroom, I felt a draft hit what felt like an exposed midriff.
“Is that a half shirt?” Sue asked, leaning across the table, smiling.
I looked down and realized I was indeed wearing a half shirt. “I don’t know how this got in my suitcase.”
“Who packed you?” Sue asked.
“Who knows?” Gina declared. “It was probably the cleaning lady from work.”
“Actually, Gina, you packed me. Remember?”