“I can’t eat,” the 16-year-old boy announced sadly. He and his brother, along with their parents, were in London on vacation. The boy arrived a few days earlier, but he’d felt awful for the two weeks before that. Sitting at the restaurant, the boy looked sick — he was pale and clearly uncomfortable. “I have to go back to the room,” he said. His mother handed him the key, and he limped slowly to the elevators to go back to bed.

That summer had started normally enough. The boy and his family spent two weeks in Hawaii, where they had a vacation home. Then they went back to their year-round home in Seattle to prepare for the rest of what was going to be a busy summer. The boy and his mother set off for the East Coast to look at colleges, and then she dropped him off at a music camp; the first week would take place at Brown University in Providence, R.I., and the second at the Berklee College of Music in Boston.

Feeling Awful

It was on his second day of camp that he started to feel sick. His head throbbed, and his eyes ached. He thought he was going to throw up. At the infirmary, he was told he probably had a virus.

He spent most of the next two days in bed, alternating between shaking chills and drenching sweats. Though still tired, he forced himself out of bed to take part in his long-anticipated camp. He focused on playing his instruments — guitar, piano, saxophone — and by week’s end, he felt almost normal. But the day after he got to Boston, he developed a rash on his arms — a sleeve of strange-looking raised red spots. He sent his parents a picture. When it spread to his leg, they suggested he go to the infirmary.