SOLVED. David Foster Wallace story - couple have child with strange life-threatening condition related to emotions. [s]

[Anthony]

A couple have a child with a strange life-threatening condition related to emotions. There's a medication to be administered in case of an attack. Husband and wife have to bottle up their emotions for the kid's sake, for some reason. At one point they run low on the meds, the kid has an attack, and they have to rush to the hospital. They also call an ambulance or sheriff or police or something. The father, driving the kid to the hospital, crashes into the cop/ambulance/whoever who's heading to the house.

Might be a sub-story in Broom of the System?? In any case, I have no idea WHERE it is.

[Tab]

Anthony, do you remember how many years ago you read this? That way we can eliminate recent books.

[Lobstergirl, au gratin]

I have read Brief Interviews with Hideous Men and this story plot is not ringing a bell at all. Either it's not in there or my memory is really, really bad.

[Anthony]

I must have read it about... sometime in the last year, when I discovered DFW :p

I've only read BIWHM, Consider The Lobster (and others), BOTS... and a bunch of random essays and short things from all over the net stumbled upon by googling DFW.

[Holly]

I can't identify the story you're describing, but maybe this list can help, if it was one of the stories you read from Googling. It's just a list of 30 of his stories you can find for free online. Maybe one of the titles will ring a bell.

Good luck finding what you're looking for!

[Lobstergirl, au gratin]

Anthony, are you still looking for this or did you find it?

[Anthony]

I had neglected this due to other priorities, but your prod and Google have just helped me find it!

It's in Broom of the System, a story told by a character. Pages 45 - 50 here:

http://www.reads77.com/broom-system-d...

Reading it now, it seems like a Shaggy Dog, Rube Goldberg version of the fairy tale, "How Some Children Played at Slaughtering". The thing that stuck with me though, and made me interested to find the story again, was the device of the child's life being threatened if they cried. Though I think I had conflated it with a funhouse-mirror-memory of "Suicide as a Sort of Present", and was thinking that their life was in danger if affection was expressed towards them.

[Kris]

The Broom of the System by David Foster Wallace for the GR link.