Haven’t heard from me for a while, have you. I really don’t have a good excuse. You know how it is – you get the sniffles, a sore throat, a pixie with a jackhammer inside your skull … “But it’s just a cold!” Yeah. Okay. You keep telling yourself that. A few days later you’re at the Doctor’s office with the rest of the family. You know, because families share everything. Your one-year-old daughter looks like she’s possessed by a slime demon, your pregnant wife is having her nostrils swabbed for H1N1, and you’re just sitting there wondering why you’ve still got a cold, while shivering in the 27-degree waiting room and clutching the cigarette bin that you stole from outside the door as you walked in. You try to wear the paper mask they force on you, but the three boxes of used tissues on the chair beside you are testament to how often it’s actually in place. You consider whether or not the mask can hold enough of what’s up your nose to stop using the tissues for five minutes, then see your daughter, grinning like the maniac she is, and you realise it’s just not possible. Those aren’t cobwebs holding her new playmate to the wall, you know.
You finally see the Doctor, who insists on soaking you in pure ethanol before you enter the office. He measures your temperature, heartrate, and blood pressure from the other side of a bulletproof glass window sealing him in a positive pressure environment, then sticks his SCBA-covered head out the door for a moment so he can yell at you incomprehensibly and throw you a half dozen prescriptions he claims “might work”, along with some black-market holy water in which to douse the thing that used to be your daughter. There’s a written instruction demanding that you sleep on the couch for a week so as to protect your pregnant wife. It’s penned in a strangely familiar cursive.
It takes three hours to get home, because the line at the chemist goes around the block, twice. And you forget where you live. Having to use your sixth box of tissues to wipe down the inside of the windscreen every time you sneeze doesn’t help either (the mask disintegrated an hour ago). You finally walk in the door with your backpack full of pills, and start rationing them out, since you’re not allowed out in public again for at least a week.
One of the tablets is not like the other ones. Oh well. Everyone deserves to be spoilt a little when they’re sick, right?
Some tablets are too big to swallow, like those made by Wacom
I knew some of you would appreciate the pun.
Well, I’m still not exactly back on my feet, but I should be able to entertain you with some pretty pictures and less nausea-inducing text in the near future. Those of you suffering with this season’s batch of influenza – I really, truly, feel your pain.
God bless.
Jinx
by Jinx
2 comments