Three Days

When I wake up, it feels as though I have a knife through my throat, the handle bobbing before my trachea and the point emerging just right of my spine. Within an hour or so, this feeling goes away, and there is no pain in my throat or lungs - only I feel like I am suffocating, like maybe I'm being smothered. I cough a lot - a cough that sounds fake, a cough that is partway between a choke and wheeze, a cough that is mostly brought on by moments of emotional stress. I am, as usual, quick to assume the malady is psychological in nature. Better to have an unhealthily strong mind than an unhealthily weak body.

Never mind that everyone else in the house is also coughing. My mind is so powerful as to be communicable?