What do you get when you have a
terrible illness and cramps all balled up into one ball? Me. That’s the state I’m
in. God, I hate cramps. Cramps ughhhh. I coughed endlessly during work. Dr.
Filmore told me to leave early. You can’t (I repeat, can’t) argue with Dr. Filmore.
“You all right?” David knocks on the
bedroom door.
I lie helplessly on our queen sized
mattress, my arms dangling on the edge of the bed. My nose is all stuffy, I
feel so groggy and my throat feels so itchy! I haven’t been feeling this
terrible in a long time. Better now than later.
I moan as an answer. My muscles feel
like they’re shackled to an invisible structure. I can’t seem to move.
“You’re early today. Like way early,”
David squats down next to the edge of the bed. I hear Kearney’s annoying bell
becoming louder. A soft wet tongue licks my fingers all of a sudden.
“No, Kearney,” I hear David say in
his soft tone. I like David’s soft tone, it’s comforting. The licking stops the
moment he says that.
“Honey?” his fingers brush my ear. “Are
still you alive?”
I chuckle, feeling like I’ve gained
back control of my body. I sit up and say, “Yeah. Alive and breathing. Sort of.”
Sort of meaning: my nostrils are
clogged up so I’m barely breathing.
“Sort of?” he raises his eyebrows. “Say,
your voice sounds different.”
He’s in his woollen scarf his
grandma knitted for him, still in his black trench coat and his maroon coloured
sweater underneath.
“Never mind that. How was
soundcheck?” I ask, trying to drag him away from the topic of my abnormal
voice.
“Good. Your face looks puffy. You
sure you’re all right?” he takes a closer look at my face. I wince.
“Yeah, I’m fine. Go shower or
something,” I tell him.
“Yessir,” he smirks at me.
The moment he enters into our
bathroom, I run to the mirror to see if I do look terrible. My face looks like
a land in a drought. I look absolutely positively disgusting. Is that mucus running down? I grab a roll of tissues
from the dresser and wipe it away before David can get out. I slap my cheeks to
add a little colour.
Try to relax. He’s not going to
notice that you’re dead sick. David was sick a few weeks ago, I don’t want to
make it seem like he spreaded it to me.
He gets out wearing a hoodie and
grey T-shirt with sweatpants.
“So who’s cooking tonight?” he asks.
“Uh. Me, I’ll do it,” I run off to
the kitchen to prepare.
David waltzes into the living room
to see me preparing ingredients for dinner. Walking back and forth from our
refrigerator, pantry and dish rack. He leans against the column, watching me.
“What?” I look at him as I put a
tray on the counter.
“You look sick,” he gets his back
off the column. “Here, we’ll cook together.”
I elbow him in the ribs.
“Ow!” he jerks back.
“Hands off my counter,” I tell him.
I say this because I don’t want him to catch my cold. He smiles at me.
“Come on, let me help a little,” he
starts fumbling with the humungous onions and chopping them. I groan quietly to
myself as I grab another knife and start chopping up the zucchinis.
The whole time prepping is really
nerve-wrecking; him looking up to smile at me, asking if he’s doing this right,
I try to hold back my sneeze and coughs. This really hurt my throat, so don’t
try this anywhere, kids.
I decide to make ratatouille, the
pasta I cooked for last Christmas and some garden salad (just the way David
likes it). I love making ratatouille.
Of course, it’d taste better if I added some red wine but since David isn’t
allowed to consume alcohol for religious reasons, I minus that out.
When the ratatouille bakes in the
oven, I rush into the bathroom to cough all I want. Ugh, being sick is
terrible. You know what’s the worst part about being sick? It’s that tiny
moment when you can feel that you’re getting sick. I check my forehead, hoping I’m
not catching a fever.
Good, I’m not.
I get out of the bathroom after my ‘coughing
marathon’ to find David’s arms folded across his chest and his lips… pursed.
“What’re you doing here? Go guard
the oven!” I tell him.
“You’re sick! I knew it!” he points
at me. “You need to lie down.”
“Uh, no thanks?” I walk away from
him and into the kitchen.
“I can take it from here, don’t you
worry. Go lie down by the couch. It’s not like I’m going to set the kitchen on
fire by accident. I’ve been cooking most of our meals lately,” he shrugs. I
stir the pasta sauce in the pot, ignoring every word he’s saying.
“Oh come on, stop being so stubborn,”
he sighs.
“I’m not,” I deny. Getting light headed,
having cramps and sick is one thing. My head feels as if a tank full of air is
being pumped inside of it; making me feel woozy nevertheless I protest against
David’s suggestion.
“Hey, when I was sick I was
cooperative,” he reminds me.
I roll my eyes.
“What’s with the eyes?” he pokes me
in the arm playfully.
“Nothing. Go sit at the dining
table, dinner’s almost ready.” I shift the pot into the big bowl full of penne
pasta cooked al dente.
The smell of basil, roma tomatoes and
beef fills the room. Man, I love cooking this dish. I’ll never get tired of it.
I notice David’s lingering around
the column. His eyes fixate upon me. Not in a creepy way. It’s like he’s
observing me.
“I told you to-”
“I’m my own person, all right? So
quit telling me to go here or do that, don’t do that or whatnot. I’m capable of
handling myself,” he slurs towards the end.
“Fine, then I guess the next time
allergy season comes to whisk you into this sick hole, I’ll be at work
twenty-four-seven. Leaving you alone at home,” I turn around to attend to the ‘ding’
from the oven. Taking out my mittens, opening the oven door and extracting the
tray of freshly baked ratatouille, David starts to pout from the corner of my
eye. I keep a straight face.
“I can take care of you too,” he
mumbles.
“You don’t have to,” I bring the
bowl of pasta to the dining table, walking right past him.
“Well… I want to,” he walks over to
the table.
“Then you should restrain yourself
from wanting to,” I go back and forth from the kitchen to bring the bowls,
platters, dining utensils to the table.
“There you go again, controlling me,”
he says.
I don’t want to be a burden to him.
I agreed to marry him just so he doesn’t slip up and to see this really stupid
and goofy smile on his face when he sees me every day.
“I’m not,” I set up the forks and
spoons on the place mats. He joins to help me lay out the plates.
“That’s nice of you to care about me
but caring too much is hazardous.”
“I know,” I mumble.
“So why do you do it anyway?”
“I just…” I can’t form any coherent words
anymore. I absolutely hate it when he has to ask why I do everything. He’s like
a little child trapped in a grown man’s body.
“You just?”
“That’s how I show my affection, all
right,” I tell him, sitting down on the dining table when he does. We sit
across each other, I pass him the salad bowl.
“You have a real funny way of
showing it then,” he munches on the lettuce.
“Yeah, maybe I do,” I whisper to my
plate.
You know, it can be the sickness
that’s bringing out the monster (in David’s perspective) in me. Well, he wants
to marry me so it’s either he takes everything of me or none at all.
We eat in silence like we always do
for every meal. He urges me to go sit by the couch, I do it while he takes care
of the dishes for me.
For a few minutes I splurge my time
on Kearney’s soft fluffy coat. He senses I’m feeling rather unwell so he climbs
onto the couch and rests his head on my lap. The fireplace is not light up, we’re
out of logs for the moment. I’d have to get some more soon. The apartment’s
heating is on though.
David comes by the couch, wiping his
hands on his sweatpants. He stops when he sees Kearney lounging on the couch.
“Oh come on,” he says to our dog. “I
wanted to sit with her first.”
Kearney looks up at him with one paw
rising up. I stop stroking him and tell him to get down onto the carpet to
rest. Instead of moving close to the radiator near the fire place, he snuggles
next to my feet.
David walks over to the DVD player,
shows me a disk case, “We’re watching this just for the sake of you being sick.”
It’s a Disney classic, Pocahontas.
The first one, of course; the second one was kind of terrible if I do say so
myself.
He plops himself next to me,
dragging the quilt from the armchair and wrapping it around me.
“So what is it? Cold?” he puts his
arm around my torso.
“Uh yeah, with a weird cough.”
The Disney castle thing with the
score of ‘When You Wish Upon A Star’ appears on the screen.
“I’m sorry what I said about you
just now,” he scoots closer to me.
“No, it’s fine. You’re right anyway,”
I shrug and sniff in my mucus.
“I didn’t mean to offend you…” he
mutters.
“It’s okay, David, stop your
worrying,” I push his chest slightly into the couch to rest my head on his
shoulder, wrapping my arms around his body. I bring my legs up to the cushions
to get a comfy position.
Throughout the entire movie, David
pats my back whenever I cough. When it finally ends, he tells me to go to bed.
I crawl my way to the pillows, inhaling David’s scent in his pillow. He smells
like fresh soap most of the time which is settling.
Suddenly I smell honey in the air. I
glance over at the door and see David bringing a mug of steaming liquid. He
places it on the bedside table (my side of the bed). I peek into the mug and
see milk.
“Milk? For what?” I see him walking
around the bed to get to his side.
“It’s warm milk with honey,” he goes
under the sheets.
“Oh, all right,” I sit up to drink
from the mug. “I’ve never tasted this before.”
I think the combination of milk and
honey is strange. The mug feels warm, the smell of honey lingers around my
nostrils; barely going into them because they’re all clogged up.
I drink it and what do you know? It’s
a great combination!
“Wow,” I say after my first few
sips. This is making me feel better and all fuzzy inside.
He turns his back to see me sit in
awe with a mug in my hand. His smile appears.
“Glad you like it.”
Soon enough, the mug becomes empty.
I place it back onto the bedside table and curl up next to David.
“I might get worse tomorrow,” I
mumble under my breath.
“I’ll be here to take care of you
then,” he says with his eyes closed.