Is that a new head you're sprouting?

Yesterday, a friend of mine -we'll call her Mary to protect the innocent - called me from an east coast airport asking if I could fetch her and her daughter, let's say, Bianca, from the airport that evening. "We would take a cab," Mary explained, "but Bianca seems to have caught the stomach flu from my friend's son where we were staying. It's not going to be a pretty day."

So, I went to the airport, where I found them at baggage claim. Bianca, who is 8, was sitting cross-legged on the floor, looking like a zombie. Jaw slack, eyes sunken and blank, shoulders drooping. She looked so very sad and fragile.

As we drove to their house, I heard the most indescribable noises coming from the back seat. A loud, deep, belchy-wretching sound. "Oh dear," I said in alarm, "is that Bianca making that noise?"

"Yeah," said Mary, "she's been doing that on and off all day. Don't worry, there's nothing in her stomach, and in any case she has a barf bag from the plane."

I thought Mary seemed surprisingly nonchallant about this, and though I appreciated her thoughtfulness about my car's upholstery, that actually wasn't my biggest worry. Bianca was sitting right behind me so I couldn't actually see her, and the noise was getting louder and more frequent. Imagine the troll in Harry Potter trying to cough up an enormous hair-ball. "No, seriously," I said, "surely it's not possible for an 8-year-old body to make that sound?"

Mary laughed and admitted that she planned to call her friend whose son was the index case for this awful bug, "to find out what happens next, you know, what course I should expect it to take."

BWWWAAAARCHCHCGLGLGLGX, I heard from the back seat.

What happens next? Like, is she going to grow a new head from that belly? Transmutate into something unearthly? Begin channeling the voice of a long-dead spirit being? 'Cause, I'm starting to think I've got something out of Buffy the Vampire Slayer in my back seat.

It must be very nerve-wracking to be a parent sometimes.