I remained perfectly still as the ladybug crawled up my arm, weaving around tiny hairs as if they were pylons. I’d been stuck on the wooden deck chair for an hour now, too ill to get up and go back inside Mom and Dad’s house, where I’d been staying since the E.R. visit a month ago. “What’s your name, kiddo?” I whispered, mostly to myself, but still somehow hoping it could answer. “Whatever it is, how ’bout if I call you ‘Chester’?” It flitted to my neck, near the scar but not on it.

I took that as a “yes”.

Litsa Dremousis is the author of Altitude Sickness (Future Tense Books). Seattle Metropolitan Magazine named it one of the all-time “20 Books Every Seattleite Must Read”. Her essay “After the Fire” was selected as one of the “Most Notable Essays 2011” by Best American Essays, and The Seattle Weekly named her one of “50 Women Who Rock Seattle”. She recently left the Washington Post, where she’d been an essayist who wrote extensively about Myalgic Encephalomyelitis. Her work has appeared in Esquire, Hobart, McSweeney’s, NY Mag, The Rumpus, et al.