Cryptosporidium

And other romantic interludes

Two adults sleeping in a rental car in broad daylight should have been the first clue that something was not right. Not long into our drive from the Gers countryside to Aix-en-Provence, Mo handed me the wheel. It was the Monday after our wedding, and we were exhausted, but I thought I could power through, so I cranked the A.C., turned up the French radio, and slapped myself like a Mafia boss jolting a subordinate. It didn’t help. We pulled into a gas station and admitted that we were in no condition to operate high-speed machinery.

By the time we arrived at our hotel in the small commune of Vauvenargues, neither of us could bear the thought of sitting upright at a dinner table. If we had to, though, the one a dozen feet from our room—in the hotel restaurant—seemed more manageable than driving into town. Our prix fixe menu began with a course called “the perfect egg,” served on a ceramic plate the size of a vinyl record. I thought it unfair to thrust that much pressure onto an egg. I ordered a glass of wine to celebrate the start of our “mini-moon” in the South of France. We were in bed by nine.

At three in the morning, I woke to the sound of flushing, followed by a suspicious silence.

“Are you okay?” I called out.

“Not really,” Mo said from the bathroom.

Back in bed, his stomach gurgled with such ferocity I felt personally offended. A few minutes later, mine started up too. We were so connected now as a married couple, I thought—like phantom pain for newlyweds. You could have called me a fool in love.

Seated on the toilet, I remembered that the human body is mostly water. Losing this much couldn’t be that big a deal. I wasn’t in pain so much as I was surprised by the consistency. Gravity was all it took.

I emerged from our windowless bathroom and said, “It’s happening to me too.”

By morning, I’d texted all my friends and family to say we were ill. The “oh noooo’s” and “I’m so sorry’s!!!” satisfied my growing need for attention as the wedding high wore off. Food poisoning, maybe. Or a vague flu. We had no fever, nausea, or cramps, so we carried on with our plan to have no plans. We showered off the foul memories of the night before and drove into Aix-en-Provence, hoping the Provençal lifestyle might lift our mood.

An outdoor market was in full swing on a Tuesday at noon, if that gives you any indication of the country’s work ethic. I skipped the vendors selling dried lavender and tote bags printed with a single sprig, but stopped to buy bottled water—to hold in my hand like a good American tourist in Europe. We stumbled upon what felt like the authentic version of a California bakery with “maison” in its name, and walked away with an olive and onion roll that revived my appetite.

That evening, we met my friend, her boyfriend, and her mother for dinner. The restaurant, with its sun-bleached stone walls and terracotta roof, served gyozas, chickpea fries, and miso salmon, which we ordered for the table. I chose the pasta à l’éffiloché de veau, or pasta with shredded veal. As far as I was concerned, the night before had been a hiccup, a passing terror.

I jumped out of the car as Mo pulled up to buzz our hotel’s gate. In America, I might’ve waited—there’s always someone at reception, ready to press a button. But in rural France, it’s a gamble whether anyone notices there’s work to be done. By some miracle, the lobby restroom had the ideal layout: a sink room, followed by a separate, enclosed toilet. Despite the two barriers for privacy and soundproofing, I avoided eye contact on my way back to the room.

“It happened again,” I told Mo.

He said I’d pushed myself too hard with the veal. I agreed, and we went to sleep.

For the rest of the week, I trialed and errored. Just when I thought I was on the mend, I’d eat something indulgent, like a truffle pizza so fragrant it bordered on nauseating, and my system would remind me I wasn’t. At a seaside restaurant in Saint-Tropez, I enjoyed salmon tartare and grilled cuttlefish—choices that would turn on me at gas station near Cannes. Mo and I were the youngest patrons by two decades. The waiter spoke to us in English, like everyone else in France, except for one man who stopped us on the sidewalk.

“OÙ EST, UH, RUE DE LA LIBER-TAY?” he shouted, with the unmistakable accent and volume of an American.

Mo and I were on our way to find Imodium.

“NEVER MIND!” he said, realizing we were one of him.

I began to feel sorry for myself at the Matisse Museum in Nice. I sat in each room reflecting on my many false starts, which had worn me down like a stripped screw. By the final days of our trip, I was inconsolable. I hadn’t had a regular bowel movement in a week. I couldn’t walk more than twenty minutes without stopping to rest on a public bench or stoop. My dinners had devolved into dry crackers and pharmaceutical-grade electrolytes, eaten back in our room after watching Mo take down a beef filet with pepper sauce or a hunk of lasagna at the bistro nearby.

It was strange: Mo had made a full recovery after our first bout. It was hard to believe that a man who omits entire food groups—who’s allergic to almonds and, depending on preparation, apples and carrots—had a stronger stomach than I did. He credited his “strong German genes.” I was sure I’d picked up a bigger viral load.

On the flight home, full of Imodium and the fear that it might not work, I settled into my daily cry.

“I’m in a hole.”

“I know you are,” Mo said gently. “We’ll be home soon.” He handed me an applesauce. “Do you want to watch something?”

I committed to the performance of being sick, whimpering at intervals and staring tragically into space. Mo didn’t flinch. He made sure I was fed and hydrated. He took the middle seat. He checked my forehead with the back of his hand and balanced an iPad on his knees so we could watch a show about cowboys fighting for land.

Anyone can rally for a couples massage or reserve a daybed by the beach. But marriage, I was learning, is best tested when both—and then one—of you has unrelenting diarrhea.

My symptoms lifted the second our wheels touched American soil. It was as if my body had simply been incompatible with France, but I saw a doctor anyway.

“Have you traveled recently to a country with poor sanitation?” he asked.

“The south of France,” I said, half-joking. I thought it was a good punchline. He didn’t laugh.

He knew something I didn’t. Parasites don’t discriminate, and neither did I when I should have.

Before the wedding, in Toulouse, Mo and I visited a fast-casual poke bowl spot with the charm of an ice rink in late March. I knew the place was sketchy the second we walked in, but I hate to make an unmotivated hourly worker put down his phone for no reason, so I ordered anyway.

“I can’t eat this,” I told Mo, frowning at my fish.

“You wanted this,” he reminded me.

Three days in Europe and I was already craving something fresh, flavored by “the Orient.” The evening before, I’d persevered through a cassoulet, a stew of slow-cooked duck, sausage, and beans. Everything was brown, even the scalding hot, personal-sized Dutch oven it came in.

“I know, but did you have to take us to the first place you saw on the map?” I said, reading a one-star review.

Mo acts on efficiency. I act on quality, but I’m also lazy, so I succumb to poorly vetted restaurants and accommodations while traveling with him. And every time, I’ve survived. So I gave the sad poke a chance, praying it wasn’t contaminated.

I’d always thought food poisoning hit fast. But cryptosporidium—the microscopic, single-celled parasite responsible for derailing my mini-moon, according to my lab results—can lie in wait for days. Single-celled? I thought. Small guy packs a punch. Of course, there wasn’t just one. There could have been an army in that bowl.

Bad Asian food in France made me sick. It was a plot so ordinary I should have seen it coming, like sleeping through an alarm or spilling coffee on a new white blouse. After all, it thunderstormed on the eve of our outdoor wedding. We scratched the rental car in a parking garage so tight and winding I wouldn’t be surprised if it had been designed by a coalition of mechanics and insurers. Sometimes, the bad thing you hope won’t happen does. And there’s nothing to do but wait for it to pass.