Circle of Care
by VATERGrrl
"You rebebber thad dighd, oud ad Fogs Eyelud?" Tom Wyman rubbed wearily under his beyond-stuffy nose. He'd asked his best friend, Cory Marshall, to come over because he couldn't find the small, curved digital thermometer he knew he had somewhere in his townhouse, and it just felt better to have company when he was this miserable at the end of a long, pleasant summer. Not that he was willing to admit that he wanted the company -- he worked hard to cultivate a persona of isolation and stoicism. But since a cold had been creeping up on him steadily since a few days earlier, and his sweetheart Heather Williams had been called out of town for a big court case, it seemed like a good idea to ever-so-casually ask for some help. He knew he didn't have even one measly box of suphedrine in the house, and he felt too crappy to lumber down to the store five blocks away to get some cold medicine.
Cory stared at the small window on the end of the digital thermometer and made a noncommittal "mmm" sound. The dark gray numbers were difficult to see against the lighter gray background, but he thought it read 100.8. He gave it an instinctive shake to back the mercury down toward the bulb, then laughed to himself and pushed the tiny red "reset" button instead.
"Thad lasd dighd, before I wed idoo See-Oh-Aych for by idugdiod?" Tom clarified, worried that his friend hadn't understood his question.
"Yeah." Cory placed the digital thermometer on the nightstand and picked up a box of tissues. "Here. Blow your nose before it explodes from all that pressure or something."
"Too lade," Tom groused, but pulled a tissue from the box anyway and tried his best to blow into it without letting the tissue rub against his reddened nostrils. "Ow."
"Your sinuses hurt, too? Way too early for them to be infected."
Tom sniffled, tossed the used tissue into the large garbage can near the bed. He -- or rather, Cory -- had commandeered the regular kitchen trash can, and the thirteen-gallon plastic bag fitted into it was already at least a quarter full of balled-up tissues.
"Thags for the sybathy. Whed do I ged the tea?"
"Rose is stopping by later with that. I'm the pharmacopaeia." Cory pretended to open a trenchcoat, gesturing with a sweep of his left hand to what might have been an array of counterfeit watches. "I got yer Marax right here. And it'll only cost you a nickel."
"A dickel!" Tom, Cory and Rose had been raised on Sesame Street, and falling back into the sketches of their youth was easy and comforting in times of stress or illness.
"Shhh." Cory glanced around furtively.
"A dickel?" Tom repeated, his voice lower.
"Riiight. So, buy the Marax, and take it home -- tonight."
"Ad you'll peel be off the ceilig layder, ride?" Tom recalled the vile yellow cough syrup from his childhood -- it must have been almost pure epinephrine, and had been taken off the market in the early 1980's due to its potentcy.
"Well, maybe plan B would be better. You got any samples of decongestants tucked away?"
"I wish. Dad doesud seeb to believe id cold bedicide, add after I chugged the Dy-Quil, he hardly leds be dear the stuff ."
"Okay, then, plan C." Cory dug in his pants pocket and took out a sleek, silver flip phone, flicking it open with his thumb before punching in a number and pressing the set to his ear.
"Hey, Juice?" Cory smiled at something only he could hear on the phone. "Yeah, it's me. You're on your way over here, right? Uh-huh? Can you stop and pick up some, uh, let me think." He paged through a mental list of cold medicines that did not have any alcohol or other major sedatives in them. "Just a straight decongestant, whatever you can find."
He paused. Listened to the phone and grinned wider. "Hey, that's why I'm asking you to handle this part. After all, I'm stuck hearing the poor shmuck groan and sniffle and whine. Yeah, I figured you might. I'll let you give him whuh-fo when you get here. Yup, the biggest you can find, and if he whines about swallowing them, we can both give him grief. See you soon."
"Well?" Tom asked after Cory had ended the call and snapped the phone shut.
"Rose has it all under control."
Tom groaned and flopped back dramatically onto the stack of pillows behind him. "Oh, god, she's dever goig to arrive." It was an old joke between the three of them that Rose had all the navigational sense of a dead salmon in a paper bag. "I'b goig to die of codgestiod."
"Let's not order the hearse yet. I'll give her a half hour before we call the cops for a B.O.L.O. and A.P.B."
A mere twenty-seven minutes later, both Cory and Tom heard the front door of the townhouse open, then close, and a woman's husky alto voice called up the stairs. "Howdy! Anyone still alive in here, or is the index case expired?"
"We're on our way down." Cory nudged Tom into a sitting position, then pulled the Pendleton blanket from the bed and adjusted it around his friend's neck and shoulders like an oversized cape. He patiently placed an arm around Tom's waist, guiding him down the tall, narrow flight of stairs.
Rose was waiting near the bottom of the steps, pulling boxes of pills and individually wrapped bags of tea from a large felted blue wool bag. On one side was emblazoned the international symbol of disability, "wheelchair guy," with the word "supercrip" underneath. The other side listed prominent disabled people, starting with Haephestus and ending with Christopher Reeve.
"It's my latest design," she said when she noticed both Tom and Cory staring at it. "It may not be my biggest seller ever, but I'm damned proud of it." Rose had chucked her teaching career for a more sedate and creative life as a yarn store owner and designer of crocheted apparel and accessories. Given the current rage for all things hand-crafted, "Binky's Yarn Boutique" was thriving, and she was even drawing up plans for an unrelated but similarly fun store, Tchotchke-Rama, to combine the irreverence of Archie McPhees and Ruby Montana's Pinot Pony with the very finest in Judaica.
"Id's id -- hiiih -- idderestig." Tom patted at the pockets of his flannel pajama pants, hoping to find even a used tissue but coming up disappointed and on the brink of a sneeze. He wriggled his nose to try to stave off the rising tickle, and contemplated rubbing a corner of the Pendleton blanket under his nostrils. "You god a kleedex id there?"
"I can do you one better, actually." Rose darted a hand into the bag, coming up with a handkerchief. "If it's a little damp, it's just glasses spray, I swear."
Tom snatched it out of her hand, not seeming to care about its condition, and promptly sneezed into it before could even get it unfolded. "Huh-ISHOOO! ISHOOO! Hih-SHOOO!"
"Ow!" This time it was Rose's turn to wince, and she reached up to turn off her behind-the-ear hearing aids. "You ever think of doing that quietly?" She pried both clear plastic ear pieces out of her ears, then dropped both aids into a small felted pouch attached to her bag by a thin white braid of yarn.
"Sorry. I didud bead to hurt your liddle ear." Tom sniffled, his mouth turned down at the corners into a frown of shame.
"Aw, hon, it's okay. Nothing can hurt that ear anyway, short of an M-80 firecracker going off next to it. You could whisper sweet nothings in there all day, and I'd be oblivious." Her right ear had been devoid of hearing from birth, and the outer cartilage shell that most people called an "ear" was less than fully formed, making her head look lopsided. The effect was more prominent since she'd gone for a buzz cut, but she didn't seem to mind.
"It's my own little declaration of independence. Let the freak flag fly, you know?" She'd smiled at them when she showed it off for the first time. "And if anyone wants to point, well, I'll deck `em."
She had, too, albeit indirectly, years ago, when she, Tom and Cory had been in elementary school and the school bully, Brett Evans, had decided that the "three amigos" were prime targets for ridicule.
"Hey, look, guys," Brett had boasted to his henchmen. "It's the weirdo brigade. Hey, freakazoids."
Tom's hair had all fallen out from chemotherapy at the end of the summer, and he has been their first target. Once that failed to amuse them, they taunted Rose with insults about her deformed hands. And finally, when spring came and unleashed all of its tree pollens on a vulnerable Cory, they'd really gone to town. "Hey, weirdo, why the hell is your nose always running? I bet your mommy still has to wipe it for you, doesn't she?"
"Shud ub," Cory mumbled, looking stolidly at the ground and sniffling despite his best efforts not to.
"Shud ub, shud ub." They loved to mock Cory's congested speech, a tactic which cut him to the bone.
"Hey, would you knock it the fuck off?" Rose tried out the strongest word she knew, a word she heard occasionally when her father was out under the family car, trying to fix it.
"Oooh, tough widdle girl. Big mean words. You gonna get me to knock it the fuck off?"
"C'mon, guys, just leave it alone." Tom, the peacemaker, implored the bullies to stop, but they just laughed and kept up the taunts. As their insults grew, so did Rose's ire, and she stepped in front of Tom and Cory to confront the lead bully directly.
"Oooh, I'm scared now. What you gonna do, chicken wing me to death?" He pointed to Rose's hands, which turned out from her wrists at a ninety-degree angle.
She took a deep breath, thinking over something her sensei had told her in her karate class. "Refrain from violent behavior." She wanted to honor Sensei, really she did, but even his mantra failed to help in the face of insults to one of her best friends. With a howl worthy of Miss Piggy, she launched herself at Brett Evans, arms flailing and the pointy sides of her hands making firm, satisfying contact first with his cheekbones, then finally with his nose.
When he realized blood had begun to pour from his nose, Brett started screaming in a high pitched wail which drew the attention of a playground aide. The large woman crossed the school playground in about ten long strides, easily lifting the skinny Rose off of her victim.
"Fucking motherfucker!" Rose yelled, not quite knowing what the second word meant but pleased with the shock that registered on the aide's face.
"Whoa.." A crowd had gathered just before help arrived, and someone let the word roll from his mouth with awe. "There's, like, blood."
Immediately thereafter, the aide demanded that Tom and Cory take Rose to the principal's office for just and due punishment, then helped Brett to his feet, escorting him to the nurses office with one arm wrapped tight around his quivering shoulders and the other hand cupped under his chin to try to catch some of the slowing trickle of blood still seeping from his nose.
While the recess-time fight had earned Rose a one-week suspension and a stern lecture, it had also earned the "three amigos" a reprieve from taunting, even a grudging acceptance and muted admiration from their peers.
"If I whisber sweed dothigs log edough, will you give be wud of those decodgesteds?"
Rose came over to stand directly in front of, and a bit under, Tom, who had grown significantly since his elementary school days. "Hmm. Maybe." She stood on tiptoe and pressed her lips to his forehead, on the pretense of being flirtatious, but she was furtively measuring his temperature. "Jeebus, kid, you're burning up."
"Cory took by teberature earlier, bud he didud tell be whad id was."
"Something hot, I'm sure."
"Hey, if id's by teberature, of course id's goig to be hod."
"Cor, just how high did his temperature register? I think the poor man is delirious with fever."
"Fud-dy, Biggy." With his congestion, Tom thoroughly mangled Rose's childhood nickname of Binky, but she understood anyway, and gave him a light pat on the cheek. "Cad I have sub bedicid dow?"
"Yes, yes. I'll go get you a nice, cool glass of water, and Cory can figure out what among this mess is going to suit your needs." She left the bag on the foyer table, deliberately spilling out the contents to make it easier for the two men to survey the array of drug choices.
"Suphedrine hydrochloride, acetominophen, dyphenhydramine, deoxyribonucleic acid." Cory sifted through three boxes of pills and potions, including one guaranteed to "restore freer breathing without sedation" and one packet of powder to be mixed into hot water for a lemony drink.
"Dee-Ed-Ay is dod a drug," Tom protested, pulling the blanket closer around his neck and shoulders.
"Just making sure you were paying attention." Cory shook the last packet, a small box filled with a new, semi-miraculous medicated strip that worked almost exactly like the new mouthwash-in-a-strip gizmos. "I'd try this first."
"Ogay." Tom looked at it dubiously, but gamely pulled a strip from the box and placed it on his tongue. It dissolved with a pleasant fruit taste, though it felt the slightest bit gooey and sticky afterward.
"Here's that glass of water you wanted." Rose came back holding a tall plastic tumbler filled with water and three ice cubes. "Where's the big ol' horse pill I was going to force you to choke down?"
"I god ode over od you -- toog the stribs firsd." Tom's nose began to itch again, and he fumbled for the handkerchief, this time able to arrange it for maximum coverage before he sneezed. "Huuuh-uchhh! Huh-chhh! Hhh-chhh!"
"Bless you." Rose pulled up the wool blanket, which had slipped down during Tom's fit of sneezing, and tucked it back around his shoulders.
"Thags." He blew into the kerf in short bursts, trying his best to clear out some congestion. "Oh, dough."
"What? You have a bloody nose?" It was a sort of knee-jerk reaction among the three, given Tom's bout of childhood leukemia.
Tom shook his head in answer to Rose's question. "Huh-uh. I just bedt, ub, I forgot to asg you if -- "
"I'd rather you used it -- hell, abuse it if you need. As long as it helps muffle your sneezing and save my good ear, it's a blessing. Now," she added, looking in the direction of the kitchen, "what if I go make the three of us some tea and we can get caught up on what's been doing?"
"Soober." Tom adjusted the handkerchief, trying to find a dry spot, then blew his nose again. "What I meant to say is, `super'."
"Hey, the strip is working already!" Cory commented, impressed with the speed of the medication.
"Maybe so." Both Tom and Cory watched idly as Rose wandered into the kitchen and ran water from the kitchen sink faucet into a small stainless steel kettle, then Cory crossed his arms over his chest.
"What the heck did you mean about Fox Island and your chemotherapy induction?" He didn't want to be rude to Rose by not including her in the conversation, but it seemed as if it might take a long time to explain. Now that she was occupied with making tea, it seemed a good time to ask for clarification.
"Oh, that." Tom made a weak, half-hearted waving gesture with one hand, using the other to secure the blanket around his neck like a heavy collar. "I guess it just occurred to me."
Cory squinted at his friend, scowled. Perhaps the medicated strip had addled his mind while clearing out his congestion, but the comment made little sense.
Unless, Cory thought, it was all about the subtext. That evening, he and Tom had shared a bed in the small beach cabin, snug under a light quilt and secure in their light knit cotton pajamas. Doctor Stevens had allowed Tom one entire weekend of fun and frolic, or whatever degree of frolic Tom could muster, as he was getting over a cold and was also fatigued by a low red blood cell count, before he went in to start chemotherapy treatments for a rapid-onset leukemia.
In the middle of the night, Tom had cried out in his sleep, in the grips of some nameless night terror. Instinctively, and still sound asleep, Cory had edged closer to his best friend, spooning his body behind Tom's and placing his arm over and around Tom's chest and upper arm. In the morning, they were sprawled on opposite sides of the full mattress, but some residue, some faint memory of their moment of care, stayed with both of them.
It was that care that Cory recalled now, and Tom's unspoken request came into focus. Ordinarily, Tom would have been absolutely loath to ask for help, certainly not for something as simple as a free-floating ennui or a wish for companionship through a sniffly, cold-plagued night. But it was the only thing that made sense to Cory, the only reasonable explanation for bringing up such a difficult part of their shared past.
"Hey, Rose?" He called into the kitchen, pitching his voice over the hiss of the teakettle.
"What, what?" She yelled back, pouring water into three coffee mugs.
"What are you doing tonight?"
"Uh, a hot date with Ben and Jerry? My own chubby hubby's out of town, so I have to borrow one. What do you need?" She poked her head out from behind a partition.
"Can you bring Mr. Ben and Mr. Jerry here? I thought it would be fun to have a meeting of the triumvirate, for old time's sake." He glanced over at Tom, hoping he was calling this right.
"And we camp out on the living room floor, watch awful comedies and fall asleep ridiculously early?"
"Yup."
"As long as it's okay with the sickie here. You game?"
Tom, who had just blown his nose a moment earlier, sniffled suspiciously, his eyes bright with something other than fever. "If you guys don't mind that all I have in the freezer is some junky store-brand butter brickle and half a jar of butterscotch topping."
"We'll get you dressed and make a junk food run -- on your dime." Cory emphasized his point with a quick jab of his index finger toward tom's chest
"And hit the video store for something new. I am NOT going to watch `A Christmas Story' when it's the end of July." Rose groused.
"It's a classic," Cory argued right back. "Timeless."
The pair argued their way up the stairs, Tom wedged safely between them, though Rose had to step aside and wait in Tom's small home office while he changed into street clothes. The debate picked up steam again as they headed out to Rose's car, parked nearest the street, and lasted from the Safeway run through wandering the aisles at Mondo Video, and back to the townhouse.
"I'b going to jusd seddle this." Tom flopped down on the couch, video selections in hand. "First, we watch `Victor/Victoria,' then `A Christmas Story,' and after that, `Twelve Angry Men'. Sound good to everyone?" He looked from one friend to the other, and they both nodded. "Okay, then. Rose, you go get the bowls for the ice cream, Cor, you can get some blankets from my bedroom closet, and I will wait for the two of you to come back."
His last pronouncement earned him two throw pillows to the head, but not fifteen minutes later, the orchestral strains of "Crazy World" and "Le Jazz Hot" were floating around the cozy living room, Tom wedged in between Rose and Cory on the couch, a full box of tissues on his lap and his favorite Pendleton blanket wrapped around him. By the end of Victor/Victoria, as Julie Andrews and Alex Karras were accepting roes flung by Robert Preston in drag, the trio had demolished the entire half-gallon of butter brickle, drained the bottle of butterscotch topping, and were sprawled out on the rug near the television. When Ralphie made his famous march down the stairs in his pink bunny outfit, only Rose and Cory laughed -- Tom had already fallen asleep on the floor, cocooned in his wool "security blanket" and snoring away.
As quietly as he could, Cory gestured to Rose to turn off the television and DVD player, then hunkered down next to Tom, pulling a rather battered purple sleeping bag around himself. Rose snuggled up on Tom's other side, two quilts wrapped around her for warmth. And during the night, when Tom cried out softly in the wake of some new nightmare, two arms reached out to enfold him, encircling him in protection and care.
Written for Plot Bunny Week #52: Write a story which somehow involves elements from "modern" medicine today. The faithful tea, juice and bed rest are all well and good, but this challenge is to incorporate newer elements in order to aid a sick character.