Going Bovine by Libba Bray

seem like they could be part of the medical décor arranged by that same decorator. Dad’s sitting in one of the chairs. His face is gray. Mom’s clutching a tissue.
    “Hi, Cameron. I’ve just been talking to your parents here. You’ve had quite a week, I hear,” the specialist says like he’s trying to be jocular, like this is a social call. Fuck him. I try to fold my arms over my chest but they won’t cooperate, so I let them twitch at my side. Just a virus. Viruses can do all sorts of things.
    “Your case is very unusual, Cameron.” The specialist taps his pen against a folder on his desk. “Have you ever heard of Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease?”
    “No. What’s that?”
    “It’s a neurological disease. It affects the brain. You might have heard it referred to as mad cow disease in animals.”
    I glance at Dad, who looks like he’s posing for Mount Rushmore—not a single eye twitch.
    “Mad cow disease,” I repeat. “Doesn’t that affect … cows?”
    “Yes. Well. This is the human form. But it works in much the same way.”
    I vaguely remember hearing a news story about mad cow disease. Some cows got it from bad feed and went insane, hence the mad cow. But I’m pretty sure I haven’t been munching on any bad feed, unless you count what they serve in the Calhoun cafeteria. So I don’t see how I could have this Creutzfeldt-Jakewhatever. Sounds like a brand of kick-ass speakers.
    My right hand’s trembling. I can’t make it stop. I feel like unzipping my body and crawling out.
    “You see, there are these infectious proteins called prions that aren’t normally a threat, but sometimes they go awry. And when that happens, it’s trouble. For instance …” He pulls out a paper clip. “This paper clip holds papers just fine. But if I bend it, like so”—he pulls out one leg of it—“it no longer functions in the same way.” Dr. Specialist Man shoves a sheaf of papers into the messed-up paper clip and the papers scatter across his desk. “Then those prions—the bent paper clips—reproduce like that, bad copies of a wrong protein, taking over your brain, destroying it over time.”
    “Oh. Uh-huh,” I say, because I can’t really take in any of what he’s saying.
    “This is nuts. Where could he have gotten it? You tell me how a normal sixteen-year-old kid ends up with CJ!” Dad barks.
    “Could have been anything,” Specialist Man says with an unconvincing shrug. “Could have been tainted beef or even something genetic waiting to happen. The truth is, we’ll probably never know.”
    “Unacceptable. This is pure conjecture,” Dad snarls, and for the next few minutes, he and Dr. Specialist confer in some secret language—Dad basically telling the doc he’s full of shit, and the doc making a case for why he’s not. I don’t under stand a lot of it because my head hurts and it feels like there’s an army of ants doing an aerobics class under my skin and I don’t want to be here anymore.
    “So, what’s the treatment?” I ask.
    Dr. Specialist taps his pen against his desk lightly. Dad goes quiet. Mom squeezes her tissue. Something terrible twists inside me.
    “There’s a cure, right?”
    Nobody says anything for a few seconds, and those feel like the longest seconds of my life. Dr. Specialist sits up straighter, morphing from man to doctor-machine. “We’re still exploring options at this time,” he says in that calm voice they teach you in medical school along with crappy handwriting.
    “But, like, the other people who’ve gotten this Crew, croix …”
    “Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease …”
    “That, the, um, mad cow thing, what happens to them?”
    The doc clears his throat. “It depends on the progression of the disease. But there are some things you need to know, Cameron.”
    Dr. Specialist finally finds his voice, and now I just want to tell him to shut up. It’s like the information is a big wave rushing over me, and I can only grab at certain words and phrases to hold me