Sick Day, 1

Chapter 23

Sick Day, 1

       I used to get sick all the time when I first started teaching, no doubt a product of being trapped in small confines with a hundred or so students in and out all day �" students who cough without covering their mouths, sneeze without covering their noses sending their toxic snot vapors misting through the air, and still for the love of god, do not all wash their hands after leaving the bathroom. 

        I swear during my first year of teaching there was a stretch of about four straight months when I got sick every Thursday. I’d wake up feeling like crap, decide to stick it out (because as a new teacher, you really worry about missing days and kids falling behind without you), which of course only made me feel worse on Friday �" then I’d spend the whole weekend sick, would have to drag my a*s through Monday, then I’d start feeling a little better Tuesday, decent on Wednesday �" then right back into the miserable cycle on Thursday. 

        But something happens as a teacher after a few years of being surrounded by every communicable disease known to man �" at some point, you start building up immunities to everything �" and it’s been almost two years now since I’ve had even a case of the sniffles… but if the administration asks, in the morning I will have severe flu-like symptoms. That’s right, I, Mister Thomas, esteemed educator, am playing hooky from school tomorrow. 

        This week is the perfect time to do it. It’s Monday, but its the week of Thanksgiving, so we only have one more day of school before our first real break of the year �" and while I recognize and apologize to my administration for lying about being sick, especially if I ever get caught, mental health days really should be covered under the sick day umbrella in the employee handbook �" not just as a teacher, but in every profession �" and for whatever reason they aren’t. Sometimes you just need a break �" a day off to reset and that shouldn’t be frowned upon. I feel ridiculous pretending to be sick, but the system is flawed, and I’m not above cutting corners. I wonder if I get that from dad. 

        Besides, half my class was sick today �" and my classroom sounded like a choreographed song of sneezes and coughs, sniffling noses �" with a chorus of students asking me if they could go to the nurse. I don’t want to risk it. I also have a motive and a goal for my newly found six-day weekend, and that is to get some writing done �" maybe even finish. I was going to start tonight, but I’m getting tired and even though it’s not even eight, I think I should get some sleep and start fresh in the morning. The days are getting shorter and it’s getting dark earlier, and I’ve been pretty tired for the last few days. 

My head hits the pillows, and I’m out like a light. 

><><>< 

       I wake up sweaty and take a breath through my nose, but no air enters. I’m dizzy, and my head is throbbing. I open my mouth, my throat is dry and sore, and even though my body is drenched in sweat, I’m shivering. I guzzle down the glass of water next to my bed and it stings going down �" and I know exactly what’s happening and I roll my aching body out of bed and plop into the bathroom. I take my temperature, stare down at the little screen and watch as the number marches past 98.6, stomps past 100, then comes to a halt at 101.9, taking a step forward to toe the battle line at 102 even. This could be a problem. 

        Maybe it’ll pass quickly. It’s just a cold. I take some Tylenol, guzzle a couple glasses of water, and tell myself I’ll be fine in the morning. I get back in bed, toss and turn for a little bit, throw the covers and off a few times, struggle to breathe, but eventually I fall asleep. 

><><>< 

       I wake up in agony �" my body ringing in pain, and paralyzed. Okay, that’s an exaggeration, but I feel like s**t. I drag myself out of bed and call Doctor Greene’s office to make an appointment. For a moment, I think about calling in sick, but remember I don’t have to because they already know I’m sick today. 

><><>< 

        As I sit in the waiting room, the thought running through my mind that I’m in the only place in the world that there’s always a chance you’ll be told you’re going to die before you leave, I think about how I’ve always liked Doctor Greene. He’s very serious, hasn’t laughed or smiled once in the fifteen years I’ve known him, but he’s pleasant enough, and he doesn’t make small talk while his fingers are up my a*s and he’s asking me to cough.

><><>< 

        “How you feeling…” he glances down at his medical chart, “Mister… Thomas?” I knew he didn’t know my name. 

        “Not as bad as this morning,” I shrug. It’s true �" among the many dark thoughts I had this morning as I laid in bed waiting for my appointment was what they’d say about in my eulogy, and how many of my students would show up to my funeral. I’ve never handled being sick well, and sometimes my mind involuntarily drifts some to pretty grim places. 

        “Alright, we’re going to run a few tests,” he says, starting with the stethoscope and blood pressure - before moving into the usual poking and prodding. 

><><>< 

        It’s almost an hour later and I’ve just been told I likely have something known as a coinfection, a condition in which two different viruses infect a single host. 

        “It’s rare, but it happens,” Doctor Greene says, his face very serious for a moment before he lets out a single chuckle. “The next few days aren’t going to be pretty.”

       He laughed. After fifteen years as my doctor he finally laughed. 

        “Just make sure you get this right away,” he says, handing me a sheet of paper with several prescriptions. “And get plenty of rest and stay hydrated. Any questions?” 

        I want to ask him about the laugh, but am not quite sure how to broach the subject, so I let it go. “Nope. I will. Thank you.” 

><><>< 

        It’s not even three in the afternoon and I’m back in bed to stay. I feel like complete crap. Doctor Green wasn’t kidding when he said this wasn’t going to be pretty - but I’ve taken my medication, called my mother and despite her insistence that I'll live, I’m sure that one of these times she could be wrong, so I made sure she knows that I want my eulogy to be filled with beautiful alliterations and metaphors, along with references to some of my favorite books �" just in case

       “You’ll be fine,” she says. “Get some rest. Love you.” 

       “Love you too,” I sigh, perhaps for the final time. “You’ll miss me when I’m gone.” 

There’s a long silence. 

        “You’ll live,” she reminds me before hanging up. She doesn’t get it. As much as I love her, my mother possesses the rare and infuriating quality of being one of those people who’s good at being sick. She could be diagnosed with a terminal disease, would still crawl out her deathbed, shower and iron her clothes, drag herself out the door, get to work �" and no one would notice. She wouldn’t vent, wouldn’t complain, wouldn’t say a word.

I don’t know what it is �" maybe my body just feels processes pain and discomfort differently, or Rosa Cortez was right all the times she told me I was a b***h, because when I’m sick, I get whiny, agitated, depressed, paranoid, and I don’t want to do anything but alternate between lying on the couch and my bed all day. 

As I lay there, I think about the last time I was really sick - and one particular sequence of events during that horrendous bout with Norovirus three years ago when I coughed, sneezed, and s**t the bed all in one unbroken motion - a moment that remains permanently etched in me and will live forever as one of the lowlights of my life. Ugh, that was horrendous. I just sat there in it for about twenty minutes, in that disgusting filth, unable to move. That was the ultimate "f**k my life" moment.

I’ve never told anyone about that forsaken moment. Now in hindsight, low as it was, I have to laugh about it. 

It’s strange, but I can’t get Doctor Greene’s laugh out of my mind. Why did he wait fifteen years? 

><><>< 

           I’m in a cold sweat when my eyes shoot open from a horrible nightmare where the night mother came for Leia, but this time I’m sure it’s real. I’m freezing and every inch of me screams out in pain, and the very blood that courses through my veins is an army declaring civil war against my body, against their king. I can’t move, can’t breathe, and my head feels detached from the rest of my body �" and I know now why Doctor Greene laughed, why he bided his time and held it for fifteen years before unleashing it today, because he’s the devil himself, the incarnation of pure evil.

            Just then a figure appears at the door, steps into the light and I see red rivers running through it’s yellow eyes, a mouth full of razor sharp teeth in the hellspawn’s mouth as it opens its jaw, ready for to devour, and for a split second I’m certain it’s been sent by the earth mother, vengeance for my betrayal of silence…  but then I suspect Doctor Greene, that evil son of a b***h, is behind all of it!

… but then the cloudiness in my head subsides, reconnects itself to my body, and I let out a gasping breath, perhaps the last of my life, but I see that it’s just Leia yawning. It takes me a second, perhaps a product of fever dreams, to decide she can be trusted.

            “Up,” I say, and she hops right onto the bed and nestles next to me, just like my childhood dog Bear used to when I was a kid �" and just having her there makes me feel a little better. I fall asleep remembering conversations I had with Bear when I was a kid. He had a funny southern accent in my mind, and it wasn’t until many years later that I had the wherewithal to realize he should have sounded Scottish, being a border collie and all. Still, those were some of the best talks of my life.