Sick In Bed

Sick in bed for a day and a half, in a way I haven’t been since the Bush Administration. Tired and sore and achey and shaky, sweating through the sheets, sweating through my purple octopus shirt, dazed and dehydrated, staring at nothing. The last time I was this sick I was in my mother’s house in Miami and had the inimitable pleasure of being exquisitely tended by her. She really pulled out all the stops that time: rice pudding and soup and cold cloths for my head, the expensive puffy tissues with lotions and unguents in them, the foot rubs and the softly shut doors. What were the chances, we were both thinking, that she’d have the opportunity to do that again? I lay back and accepted everything she had to give me, apologizing the whole time, grateful for the care and the love.

This time I’ve had to do it all myself, in between exhausting, pummeling fever dreams. I’ve washed the sheets and hung them out to dry, made myself toast and tea and yogurt, took several showers to wash off the sick stink. I’ve moaned quietly, so as not to importune my concerned flatmates, and talked out loud to myself in an encouraging manner: “Okay sweetie, now you are going to put the bottom sheet on! And now the top! And then you are going to drink some orange juice! Come on, girl! You can do it!” I’ve rolled in and out of sleep, messily, dazedly, and lurched downstairs to find the ibuprofen, feeling vaguely sorry for myself.

This afternoon, after attempting to go to work and being hastily sent home, I was lying in bed propped up on all my pillows, online chatting to a friend who lives not a fifteen minute walk from me. “I’m siiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiick,” I typed. I said how glad I was that I normally have such a good immune system—I was fine all through swine flu last year!–and how I was absolutely rubbish at taking care of myself. “I just want someone to bring me tea,” I type-whined.

“Yeah,” she replied. “When I was in hospital last year all I wanted was for my boyfriend to bring me a hot water bottle. I can get up and make myself a hot water bottle whenever I want but it’s so much better when he does it.”

I’d been thinking of my mom, of course, and of the rice pudding. Not a partner. The idea of a partner bringing me anything, doing anything for me—the idea of a partner, a partner of mine, my partner—seems stranger to me than almost anything else I can think of. Brontosaurus didn’t exist and Pluto’s no longer a planet, yes, fine, but a hot water bottle? Brought to me by someone who is not a close blood relative? Yeah, yeah. Next thing you’ll be telling me that Utah wants to make miscarriage illegal.

We ended the chat, I poured another glass of orange juice, and outside it began to storm and hail and wail with wind. I looked upside down through my window, and saw bits of leaves and sticks whirling around, and thought for a moment they were tiny birds being swept out to sea. The rain beat and battered down and the house got really cold; during my brief sojourn to the kitchen in my hoodie and fuzzy striped socks my flatmate and I talked about getting in this year’s supply of wood. After my tea-and-toast dinner I nestled in between the recently washed sheets and heaped up the blankets and pillows, making a little mental fortress against the insistent outside, fitting it exactly to my form, dropping back down easily into the benign lethargy and welcome solitude of mild illness.

There’s only enough room for me in here anyway, I thought, looking around the room, looking around my heart, listening to the restless, ceaseless wind, awaiting the oncoming winter.