Conversations and Confessions
by VATERGrrl
"Taaahhhhmmm. Way up, Taaahhhhm."
I woke up I didn't know how much later to a small finger jabbing me repeatedly in the left bicep, and a slightly distorted calling of my name.
"Go away." I muttered, pulling the woolen blanket up over my face.
"Taaahhhm!" The voice was louder, the jabbing finger replaced by an entire hand shoving at my arm.
"He's not here."
My reply was met by an exasperated grunt, then my right eye was pried open by small fingers, and I found myself staring up into bright blue eyes framed by dark blond eyebrows.
"Ah!" I flinched back from my little brother, placing the palm of my right hand over my palpitating heart. "Jesus Christ, Brian, you scared the shit out of me!"
"Sorry." Brian, who had been deaf from birth, was probably reading my expression more than my words, for which I was grateful. He signed something quickly, and I recognized "mother," want," and "eat".
"Yes." I pivoted my fist up and down, as if it was a nodding head. My ASL skills were rusty, at best, but a few words crept through my brain fog. "And I'm sorry I scared you. You surprised me." I had to fingerspell "surprise," which made Brian smile. Finger spelling came in handy for proper names, but it could also be understood as a rudimentary grasp of the language.
Grunting with the effort, I hauled myself upright in bed, signing again once my hands were free. "I have a cold. Stay back." I pinched my index finger and thumb together just under my nose, drawing my hand down slightly, then lifted my index finger again to place it hard under my nose in the universal sign for trying to hold back a sneeze. One or the other of the signs would have been sufficient, I supposed, but I wanted to seem emphatic.
"Okay. But, are you coming to dinner now, or not? The food's getting cold."
"Yes. I just want to get a tissue." I made the same pinching gesture, followed by the sign for paper. Someone - I assumed it was Emily - had left a full box on my nightstand, and I tucked it under my arm as I got up from the bed. The way I was feeling, my nose threatening to run in a thin, irritating stream every five minutes or so, I'd need the whole damned box just to survive dinner.
Brian scampered down the hall in front of me, completely oblivious when I stopped to turn my face into the crook of my elbow and let loose a loud "Huh-arshhhooo!" When I had to stop on the stairs and grab at the handrail to steady myself against an equally loud sneeze, Brian, holding the same handrail, did turn around to see what had made the rail shake. I snuffled, glad he couldn't hear the ghastly burbling I was making, and pulled a tissue from the box, blowing one-handed as best I could.
"Ah, there the two of you are!" Emily spoke and signed simultaneously as we came into the dining room. Brian took his usual seat, poised to be able to see everyone's signs and lip movements, and Emily pointed me to a chair opposite Brian. She'd placed a small waste basket to the immediate right of the chair, and there was room enough at my place at the table to accommodate the tissue box.
"Feeling any better?" Dad came out of the kitchen holding two plates heaped with food, placing one first in front of Brian, then the other in front of me. The pork chop, rice, and pea/carrot combination looked appetizing, but I doubted I'd be able to taste much of it, let alone consume it all.
"A lih - liddle bid." I clamped down on the urge to sneeze again, bringing my right hand up to pinch my nose closed. Unfortunately, that tactic bought me only a moment's reprieve, and I jerked forward with a painfully half-stifled "hnnngggk!"
Dad stood at my side, staring down at me, until I pulled a few tissues from the box, then nodded his satisfaction and accepted his plate from Emily.
"So, Brian, what did you and Mike do this afternoon?" My stepmother steered the conversation, and the attention, deftly over to her son, who launched into an enthusiastic rendition of some kind about what might have been a trip to an amusement park. I thought I recognized the sign for bumper cars and flashing lights, but it may well have been that Brian and his Deaf friend Mike had been in a traffic accident, for all I could decipher the signs. Most of my attention was focused on trying to shovel in food and not eat with my mouth hanging open, a difficulty given the level of congestion I was experiencing. The other challenge, of course, was to avoid sneezing with a mouth full of food - I doubted Emily wanted to have to sweep peas and grains of rice from the hardwood floor.
"So, Tom, could I ask you something?"
I was halfway through a bite of pork chop when I heard my name, and I turned to my left to look at Emily. "Mmmphh?"
"Sorry. I was just wondering if you'd be able to help with a project I'm considering doing at the library."
I swallowed, nodded. "Yeah, I guess." My speech/sign simultaneity was crap, but I tried for Brian's sake. "What cad I do?"
"I'm trying to compile a list of books to recommend for Halloween reading, perhaps even a few I could read to the older kids, fourth through sixth grades."
I thought back over my own childhood reading habits, a few prominent names popping up to the surface. "Well, Pede Seeger has a book oud dow, doesed he?" I shook my head, reached for another tissue and turned away from Emily to blow out some congestion.
"'Abiyoyo', I thig?" I pulled a few more tissues from the box, wincing as I touched them to my nose. My nostrils felt as if I'd been rubbing at them with sandpaper, and I was certain that the whole lower half of my nose was bright red. Had I had my druthers, I'd have simply snuffled repeatedly, rather than blowing, but my father cringed every time I tried it.
"Bud, uhb, I thig the ode book that scared be sh - sorry, spidless, had to be Johdathad Bellairs, The House With the Clock id its Walls."
"Mmm, yes. That one is certainly on my list, at least for the sixth graders."
"I think the Goosebumps books are cool," Brian chimed in. The R.L. Stine series was all the rage, much as the Twilight and Dark Forces books had been a bit of a trend when I was younger.
"They are," Emily assured her son. "I'm just trying to get everyone to read things they might not normally read on their own."
"Oh, okay." Brian shrugged and went back to eating. For a skinny kid, he could pack away food like a combine harvester, and a minute later, his plate was entirely empty, save a few straggling cubes of carrot.
I hadn't made it even half as far in my own dinner. Everything tasted like cardboard and sawdust, and bland cardboard and sawdust at that, and I tried to not make it look like I was just pushing bits of food around with the tines of my fork.
"Well, how about desert?" My father noticed my lethargy, as well as Brian's hearty appetite, and tried to coax me into eating more while simultaneously rewarding Brian's feat of having eaten all of his veggies.
"Yes!" Brian's sign was bold and enthusiastic, and he scooted his chair back from the table.
"Okay, then, you can help me put the dishes in the sink. Tom, you feel like some ice cream?"
I poked errantly at a carrot, sliced it in half with the side of my fork. "Whud kide?"
He smiled - even when I'd been leaning over a bucket from chemo, heaving my guts out, ice cream had some magical power to stay down and nourish me. "Chocolate, vanilla, or both."
"I'll have both." Brian signed quickly, looking over at me to get permission to take my plate away. I waved at the plate, and he snatched it up, knowing that the sooner everything was off the table, the sooner we'd all be enjoying desert.
"Chog-lid, thed. Please." It wasn't my favorite, but it would at least have a more intense flavor than vanilla. Five minutes later, a bowl filled with a large scoop of chocolate ice cream was slid in front of me, accompanied by a steaming mug.
"Mint tea," Emily explained. "It might help you breathe more easily."
I smiled. My father, who had access to any medication available in the states, as well as connections to drug trials in Canada, was a firm believer in the natural approach to cold care. Sure, if I spiked a high fever, then acetaminophen was in order, but otherwise, large doses of tea, soup, and anything else hot and soothing were just what the doctor ordered. "Thags, Eb."
I had just picked up my spoon and had it poised to dig into the mound of ice cream before me when I felt an annoying, familiar little tickle buzzing around in my nose. Sniffing sharply to keep it at bay, I stabbed the spoon into the ice cream for safe keeping, then pulled as many tissues as I could hold and pressed them over my nose and mouth. "Hiiih, ughh. Hih-gihhh." My breath hitched and released annoyingly, reminding me of a kiddie ride where cars in the shape of fishes went up and down in an endless circle to simulate the waves of the sea.
I sniffled and braced my elbows against my thighs, hunching over so that I was sitting sideways in my chair, staring with watering, itchy eyes at my father's left shoe. "Hiih-ibghhh, giihhh..."
pulled in the deepest breath I could, which seemed to trip some switch in my nose. "Hih-IGGHHHSH! ISHHOOO! Hept-SHHHOOO! Ehhh- shhhffff. Hehhh-shihhhh!"
"Bless you." Emily rubbed gently between my shoulder blades, which had pinched tight together with the tension I held in my upper body.
"HASHHH-ooookkkk! SHhchffff!" I managed a sniffle and a gulp of air before I sneezed yet again, a dreaded double with no time for breath between. "Harchhh- Ashhhh-oooo!"
"Try blowing your nose." My father suggested, and I gave it a go, though only the faintest trickle of air escaped. "Fssst!"
I coughed, and maybe it was the combination of blow then cough which did it, but I felt a lessening need to sneeze, for which I was grateful. Still hunched over my lap, I swiped briefly under my nose, then tossed the tissues away into the waste basket, pressing my palms over my eyes and sniffing again. It took a full minute before my breathing and heart rate slowed, and I feared that my hands were shaking a little as I reached over to snatch another handful of tissues from the box.
Dad and Emily had the presence of mind to say absolutely nothing as I straightened up, but Brian, bless his heart, pointed out the obvious. "Your ice keem is melting."
I laughed, pulled the bowl closer to me. "Yes." I spooned up some of the now-soupy desert, let the sweet liquid flood my mouth then trickle down the back of my raw, sneeze-irritated throat. Alternating spoonfuls of ice cream with soft, quiet blowing into the clutch of tissues, I was able to get desert down with a minimum of mouth breathing.
Once I was done, Emily suggested moving into the living room, where we could talk. Brian quickly became engrossed in a video game, one I'd not seen, and my father volunteered to be the hapless second player, prompting good-natured laughing every time his poor character was reduced to a puff of smoke by the game's bad guys, a trio of purple dinosaurs with huge, sharp teeth and odd yellow polka dots on their scales.
"Could I ask you another favor?" Emily had danced around what I thought was an issue for a little while, engaging in awkward talk about what I'd been doing in school, how she'd found the book I helped edit "powerful" and "moving."
"I cad go hobe, if you wad. I doad wad to idfegd Briad." I moved forward on the couch, prepared to go get my overnight bag and leave.
"No, no, Tom, that's not it at all." Emily put a soft but restraining hand on my shoulder. "You can stay here as long as you like. I just, well, I'm trying to figure out how best to ask this, without it sounding too, well, mystical or something."
"Huh?" Now she had me completely stumped. I assumed she knew I'd been raised a secular humanist, even though my tribal affiliation tended toward ancestor reverence and something akin to Paganism.
"We're having lots of Thanksgiving activities at my school, and I was hoping to engage the kids in some things to celebrate Native American Heritage Month."
I slumped back against the couch, my mouth dropping open. "You whud?"
"I know, I'm sorry I asked, but..."
"Dough, dough, thad's dot id." I felt as if our roles had been reversed - now it was I who was scrambling to clear up the miscommunication. "I'b jusd dod used to Noveber beig aboud addythig other thad turkeys ad pilgribs ad the Bayflower."
"I know. And that's why I'd like you, if you want, of course, to give a little speech or a presentation at school."
The light bulb went on overhead at last. "Subthig aboud beig Buh- caw?"
"Yes. Maybe a dance, or reading a story - a creation myth."
I knew of a lot of Raven stories, had had them told to me by my grandfather, and I even had a Raven crest button blanket I could use for a sort of show and tell. "Well, there's always `Raved Steals the Sud,' thad's pobular."
I paused to blow my nose again, though it did little good in improving the clarity of my speech. "Ad there are lods of stories aboud whalig." The Makah were primarily a whaling and fishing tribe, situated as they were on Neah Bay, right on the Pacific Ocean.
"Nothing too gory," Emily cautioned. "This would be a school wide assembly for first through sixth graders."
"Oh, ogay, well, led be thig aboud id." I wasn't sure I could deliver the sort of amazing presentation Emily seemed to think I could, but I was willing to take a trip out to see my grandfather and ask to round up some drummers, flutists, and perhaps a dancer or two.
"Sure, take your time. Can I get you more tea?"
I looked down into my empty mug, then thrust it out toward her. "Please."
Three cups of tea later, everyone was yawning, and my father gently lifted Brian into his arms to carry him up the stairs. It was the sort of thing he'd done for me a hundred times in my own youth, and the sight made my heart squeeze in a funny way. Would I ever be doing that for my own child? Might I be dipping my head down for a kiss from my wife, our child safe and asleep in my arms? And why on earth, as I ran through the fantasy, did my wife have skin like hot cocoa and brown eyes that flashed with sarcastic humor?
"Uhb, I'b goig to take sobe cold bedicide ad go ub, too." I launched myself off the couch as quickly as I could to shake the image and have something else to think about. Emily wished me goodnight, then followed her husband up the stairs.
Alone for the first time since the morning, I sighed and stretched my arms up toward the ceiling, releasing tension I'd been unaware of having built up. As my arms dropped back down to my sides, I bent forward, a sharp, uncovered sneeze escaping. "Hitch-haaaah!" Sniffling freely, I walked on bare feet to the kitchen, where I knew my father kept a supply of cold remedies, heartburn tablets and vitamins.
The selection of medicines in the small cabinet was sparse: a few boxes of steroidal asthma inhalers held in reserve for Brian, a half- empty plastic bottle of Pepto-Bismol which was likely past its expiration date, and some generic chewable multi-vitamins. I pulled everything out and placed the collection on the counter, then waved my hand at the very back of the cabinet, relieved when my fingertips bumped into one last plastic bottle.
The liquid, a neon turquoise shade which was like no natural foodstuff I'd ever seen, swirled around as I held the bottle up to the ceiling-mounted lights of the kitchen. Its label was a slightly less flagrant shade of teal, with big white letters, and off to the side, it held a list of its wonders: "The nighttime sniffling, sneezing, coughing, aching, stuffy head, fever, so-you-can-rest medicine." That list, oft touted in commercials, seemed a pretty accurate account of my own symptoms, so I pried open the child- resistant cap and took a fast gulp or two, coughing as alcoholic vapors ran back up my esophagus and scorched my tongue.
"Whoo!" I dipped my head under the kitchen faucet and blasted water into my mouth to chase away the taste of the medicine, swirling a bit of the water around before spitting it back out. Another quick splash of water rinsed any remaining residue off the bottom of the sink, and I carefully shoved the Ny-Quil bottle back into the deepest recesses of the medicine cabinet before putting everything else back in. Five minutes later, I was peeling off my t-shirt and crawling into bed, my consciousness winking off almost as soon as my head touched the pillow.
Unfortunately for me, I'd forgotten to take a last trip to the bathroom before turning in, and I woke hours later with an uncomfortable pressure in my bladder, the net result of the endless cups of tea my father and Emily had urged upon me between dinner and bedtime. I pushed back the covers, which felt heavy as a dentist's lead apron, and struggled to a standing position.
As soon as my full weight was above my feet, I had to fling a hand toward the wall to steady myself. The floor was quaking and shifting like the deck of the Pequod, and I was Ahab without the ivory leg and the divots in the deck. Placing one foot cautiously in front of the other, I shuffled toward the doorway, then out into the hall. By the time I got halfway to the bathroom, the wall I was using to steady myself had begun to undulate, rolling slowly but unpredictably like waves far out at sea.
"Huh-ihhh..." An urge to sneeze came bubbling up from the depths of my fatigue and grogginess, and I pinched my nose closed with my free hand, breathing in slow, shallow pants to try to make the itch fade away. The very last thing I needed, sans shirt and tissues, and with a threateningly full bladder, was the sort of strong, messy sneeze that my level of congestion and the intensity of the itchiness seemed to presage.
I got three steps closer to the bathroom before my breath hitched again, the tickle in my nose maniacal in its taunting. The only thing I could think to do was to press my back up hard against the wall, my feet braced shoulder-width apart in an attempt to form a secure posture. "Hiih-ibbghhh... huhhh-ehhh!"
Before I could pull my hands up toward my face, or even turn my head toward my shoulder, the huge breath I'd gasped in burst forth. "Ihhh- SHKKOOO! UHH-shhhhfff!"
The pair of sneezes knocked me off-balance, and I crumpled to the floor with a small groan which I didn't have the energy to suppress. My body automatically curled into a fetal position, my thighs pressed against my chest and my throbbing forehead touched to my knees. I could feel a small round of wetness accumulating on my sweatpants, but whether it was snot, drool, or something worse, I didn't know, and wasn't in the mood to venture to find out.
"Tom? Sweetheart, are you okay?" I was expecting to hear my father's voice, gruff and commanding, but instead, when I was able to pry my eyes open, I found Emily at my side, the pupils of her big blue eyes dilated wide with concern for me. "I heard a thud, and I was worried something had happened."
I had it in mind to try to deny that anything was wrong, to attempt to bounce back up and smile with false bravado, but the earnest look of care on Emily's face cut right through my intended farce of machismo.
"I tribbed." I sniffled, rubbed my nose over my knees where the sweatpants were already damp, sniffled again. "I was tryig to ged to the bathroob, ad I sdeezed, ad..."
"Well, let's get you up." She placed her hands under my armpits, waiting until I'd rolled over and placed my feet under me before attempting to haul me upright. With a tug that gave the lie to her dainty, fragile appearance, she helped me to a standing position.
"Can you wait right here? I'll go get your father - he can help you get to the bathroom."
I started to say that I could do it on my own, that I needed no help, but before even the first syllable was out of my mouth, Emily had ducked back into the master bedroom, and then my father was at my other side, propping me up and muttering something to his wife as he led me toward the bathroom.
"Daaad." I protested weakly as he led me across the threshold and then to the white ceramic toilet. I braced one hand on the tank itself, fumbling with the waistband of my sweats with the other. My flailing did little good, and my father adroitly pulled down both my pants and underwear just low enough for me to relieve myself, his gaze firmly focused on the Monopoly shower curtain to give me privacy even as he supported my torso with one arm.
"How much Ny-Quil did you take?" He waited to ask until I'd dried off and covered myself back up.
"I duddo. There wasud a cab to beasure."
"Ah-hah. One gulp or two?" He waltzed me back toward my bedroom, allowing me to sit back down on the edge of the mattress with a distinct bounce.
"Two, baybe?" I watched him cross the room to my dresser, pull a pair of blue cotton pajama pants from the lowest drawer and matching boxer shorts from the top drawer. He tossed them at me underhand, making it clear that I was to change into them and discard my sweats. I did so slowly, my movements hampered by what I now recognized as a mild case of drunkenness. Most folks seemed to welcome the grogginess that Ny-Quil inevitably delivered, but since I was mildly deficient of the enzymes that metabolized alcohol, the cold medicine hit me doubly hard.
"May I come in?" Emily's voice was muted by the door, and as soon as I nodded, my father moved to turn the knob. I saw that she had collected a few washcloths and a bowl, which I hoped was filled with cool water. She set the bowl down on my nightstand and put one cloth into it, leaving the other to the side.
"Jed?"
"Mmm?" My father's scowl faded as he looked at his wife, his dark eyebrows perking up.
"Could you go get me a few handkerchiefs? Please?"
Dad looked rather relieved to have something concrete to do, and he nodded. "Be right back."
While he was gone, Emily tucked me back into bed, placing an extra pillow underneath my head so that it would be easier for me to breathe. Once I was settled and propped to her satisfaction, she swiped a tissue under my nose, and I sniffed reflexively. The gesture made me feel as if I was a toddler, incapable of caring for myself, but any resentment I felt was quickly shoved aside by a need to sneeze again.
"Cad you had be aduuuh-"
Emily, bless her heart, cupped four layers of tissue to my nose, supporting my head and upper back with her free hand as my eyes watered and pinched closed.
"Ihshkkk! Hip-skkkk!" I clenched my jaw as the sneezes came out, transforming them into quiet little hisses of air for Em's sake.
"Bless you." When she was satisfied I wasn't going to sneeze again in the next thirty seconds, she pulled the tissues away and tossed them into the trash basket.
"Thags." I sniffled again, the sort of desperate snort that made it sound as if I was trying to swallow my sinuses, or maybe even my brain. My father, coming back into my bedroom with a stack of handkerchiefs in hand, winced at the noise.
"Must you do that?" He took the first cloth off the top of the stack and flicked it open, reaching past Emily to offer it to me. Well, offer wasn't exactly the best word to define his gesture: demand was closer to the truth. I took the handkerchief reluctantly, feeling censured and slightly petulant. The urge to reject my father's care, to define myself in opposition to him, warred with my desire, even my need, to be looked after.
My internal squabble collapsed a minute later as my nose burned and itched, and I shielded my nose and mouth behind the pale blue cloth as a new fit of sneezing shuddered through me. "Uhh-chhhh! Huh- chhhh! Uhb-shhh! Chhh!"
"Gesundheit." Dad's blessing was quiet, gentle, a complete reversal of his minute-ago growling.
"Thag you." I was about to sniffle, thought better of it and bunched the handkerchief to my nose to blow into it. The cotton was mercifully soft against my raw nostrils, a small comfort which allowed me to blow repeatedly and heartily into the cloth.
After I balled up the used handkerchief and set it beside my pillow, Emily wrung out the washcloth she'd left to soak in the bowl and placed it on my forehead. The terrycloth was cool and soothing, as I'd hoped, and I couldn't suppress a small moan of pleasure as a bit of the tension lifted from my sinuses.
"This is a good thing, then?" Her tone was light, almost teasing.
"Yes, very buch so." I realized then that I hadn't bothered to thank my father for the handkerchiefs, and a wave of shame flushed through me.
"Ub, Dad?"
"Mmm?" He looked as if hew knew what I was going to say - twenty years of parenthood could probably do that to a fellow - but played dumb.
I reached for a second handkerchief, a plain white one, and shook it gently for emphasis. "Thags."
He waved one hand dismissively, yawned. "I need to get some sleep. If you need me, you know where I am." Leaning forward, he kissed Emily on the mouth, then her cheek, muttering something into her ear. I expected her to follow him out of my room, but she stayed seated at the edge of my bed.
"You doad have to hag aroud here ad take care of be," I protested when she lifted the washcloth from my forehead and dipped it into the bowl, though inwardly, I craved her light, soothing touch and calm, interesting conversation. I was exhausted, but it seemed to go too deep for sleep to come easily, and I didn't want to try re- reading my notes from earlier in the day and make sense of them.
"I know." She wrung out the washcloth again, replaced it on my forehead, but a little lower than before, so that it covered my eyes and draped over my lower sinuses.
I sighed again, probably sounding like a fool, or a pervert, but that washcloth felt so good, and Emily's care even better. It wasn't that my father wasn't adept at caring for me - far from it. He'd been at my side every moment he could spare when I'd been in the hospital receiving chemo, and though he tried not to let it show, I'd noticed how his heart was heavy with pain for me when I was stuck repeatedly for new iv lines or when the chemicals caused my hair to fall out and gave me mouth sores.
It was just that I'd gone for so long without a maternal figure in my life, a woman's particular brand of care and concern, that Emily's company felt a little like manna fallen from heaven to coat me in warmth and tenderness. The mere notion caused tears to gather in my eyes, and I hoped they wouldn't be visible under the washcloth if they happened to slip out. I just wasn't good at accepting care; sarcasm was so much easier.
A moment later, I felt the light touch of another cotton cloth dabbing moisture away from my ear, and I swore. "Aw, fug."
"Tom." Emily's tone of reproach was soft, understanding, and I pulled the washcloth away from my eyes, which were now watering beyond my ability to stop.
"This is so sdupid." I sniffled, reached for the balled-up handkerchief I'd used earlier and touched it to my closed eyes, pinched it under my nose to blow into.
"Why stupid?"
"I bust be really, really drugk." I blinked, sniffled again. "I doad eved dough why the hell I'b cryig."
"Maybe it's just the exhaustion talking." Emily reached forward, dabbed away another dribble of tears.
"Yeh." But I knew, as I savored the feeling of being taken care of, that it wasn't just the exhaustion. Sure, my fatigue had made a little crack in the wall, but it wasn't fatigue seeping out. It was some odd combination of grief and fear and longing, and that small admission forced out even more tears, threatened a sob that I tried to disguise as a cough. Even though my mother was hardly more to me than a shoebox full of photographs and my grandfather's stories about a beautiful woman with black hair who loved dancing, I longed for her. And my longing for her merged with my feelings of rage and railing at the injustice that was the death of my professor, and the long-ago deaths of childhood friends who had not been as lucky in the game of cancer roulette as I.
"Oh, gread god, why?" My question was only a whisper, a sigh, but I heard it in my own mind as a scream, feeling the crack in my personal wall surge outward, crumbling the mortar and allowing my pain to flow out in a great rush.
Emily, wise and gutsy woman that she was, just held on to me, allowed me to sob out ten years of pain in ten wet, gusty-breathed minutes. She didn't seem to care that I was making the front of her blouse damp with my tears, didn't chide me when I occasionally tried to draw in a deep breath through my nose and only succeeded in sniffling abominably. She simply held on until my breathing slowed and deepened, then coaxed me to lean back against the pile of pillows behind my shoulders.
Once I was settled, sniffling and pressing the heels of my hands against my damp eyes, my stepmother took a fresh handkerchief, this one a red bandanna I was sure my father had kept from my nosebleed- and-chemo days, from the stack on the nightstand and offered it to me. I unfolded it and blew repeatedly into the folds, a great rush of moisture escaping from my nose into the cloth.
"Jeez," I muttered, pulling the sodden bandanna away from my face. If nothing else, my torrential downpour seemed to have cleared my congestion, at least for a moment, and I pulled in a long, dry breath through my nose. "Is that why they call it `having a good cry'?"
"Maybe so." Emily smiled at my joke. "Think you can get some sleep now?"
"Yeah, I'll try." I yawned, feeling my body relax and my mind being pulled downward into a fluffy haven of grogginess. Em placed her hand briefly on my forehead, whether to comfort or to check for a fever, I couldn't tell which. But the gesture was calming, almost entrancing, and the last thing I recalled before I drifted off was the soft click of the light switch being flipped down and the door to my bedroom being closed.
This is a continuation from the last thing I posted, and started with a Ny-Quil bunny which tg inspired. It ended up taking me in an unexpected direction, but I originally intended to explore the stepmother/stepson relationship betwen Emily and Tom.