He screamed and screamed at me. Shrieking in my ear!
"Hey Mister! Hey Mister!!! Wake up mister!!!!" the voice screamed -- and someone was tugging at my shoulder, shaking me.
"WhA-AT!" I said, waking from my reverie, ready to kill which ever nurse it was that was kicking me awake. I looked up and there was no one there. My eyes searched downward and finally settled on a very short person. A very short child.
"What the hell! How did you get in here?" I said to the kid. He couldn't have been more than 8 years old. He had no front teeth, was wearing a Yankees baseball cap, and pajamas with bears on them. He also had a really bad case of acne....or something.
"Hi Mister, what're you in for?" he asked, as if he were sharing with a fellow inmate.
"Bad knee," I said. "You?"
"Chemo...first set," he said with authority.
For some reason my heart leaped into my throat. This kid was getting chemo. That meant he had cancer. Shit. I wondered aloud if that's why he had such bad acne.
"No," he said non-chalantly. "That's the chicken pox."
*****
"I've got what?!?!?!" I yelled at Eric, who had stopped in to see me at Ned's place. I had wanted to go back to my own place at the studio, but Ned logicked me out of that. Damn lawyers. You can't win an argument with them.
Ned said that it was too dangerous for me to be alone at the studio, and too inconvenient for him to take care of me there. So, he brought me back to his place. And frankly, I was grateful. I couldn't get around without help for a couple of days after I got home. And just the other day, I started feeling like shit.
"You've got the chicken pox," said Eric non-chalantly. "Low grade fever, puss-filled vessels."
"It was that kid wasn't it?" said Ned. He remembered the kid with the Yankees cap.
"Yeah! He said he was going into chemo...Doesn't that kill it though?"
"Not if he hadn't gotten it yet," said Eric. "How did you not get this when you were a kid?"
"How the hell should I know?? Everybody I knew had it. My brother and I slept in the same room, and he had it!" I cursed myself.
I felt like shit. I was simmering in my sweats because of the lowgrade fever, and the things that looked like big welts were becoming big pimple-like things filled with stuff. Absent-mindedly I scratched one that was coming up on my arm.
"Whatever you do DON'T scratch!" said Eric. Too late. It popped. Liquid oozed out of it. I was disgusted.
Ned giggled. I shot him a look. "I'm sorry, Mike. It's pretty funny. Do I need to take him into the hospital, Eric?"
"Nah," Eric said trying to keep his laughter in check. "I'll call my buddy, who's a pediatrician, and get him to come over and make out a prescription for your drugs."
Ned looked at me with a combination of pity and amusement. I must have looked like a reptile. I tried to keep my hands from touching my skin, but I felt all these things on my scalp. On my stomach. On my legs.
I wanted to die.
