On Taking a Sick Day

No onwe will read this--but that's fine! I just want to write. And that way I don't have to feel guilty about not providing any details of my year-long blog absence. (Blogsence?) Or thew extra ww my dying iBook G4 likes to throw in at random moments, just to let me know it's still got a little something special.

Yesterday afternoon I went home sick. I had one of those deep, clotted coughs that clogs your vocal chords and alerts those miles away to your presence. Coversations were difficult, since I could only make myself heard for half of them (and who could predict which half?), and laughing hurt my chestal cavity (there's a lot of laughing at my office--restrained, cubical-appropriate laughter about erudite topics and literary masterworks like Butterflies in Heat). I became a pariah, a roving health hazawrd. If I wandered from my cube, Laura would look at me like she thought any moment I might turn myself inside out, phlegmy organs wriggling, and touch her. Michael pointed and laughed, knowing his weeks-old immunity from this office-wide epidemic would keep him safe. When I handed anyone paperwork, they would first pull on hazmat gloves and use lead tongs to take it from me before spraying it down with disinfectant. In my defense, I always wwwashed my hands before printing anything out to give to someone.

My protests of "it's better than it sounds" meant nothing. Some could only think, "Thanks for saving the worst part for me to listen to all dayww." For others, weach cough was as a death knell--eventually they, too, would be stricken, and they, too, would have to work through voicelessness, wheezing, and choked bronchial tubes. No one appreciated my heroic stance, working my infected, sanitizer-gelled fingers to the bone as I typed out cover copy after cover copy. No one wanted to be within ten yards of me. But that, sadly, is the lot of a hero--unappreciated in her time, mourned only after she is gone. So basically I'd need to do something really awesome, so that everyone would miss me when I went to run errands at lunch time.

However, before lunch time--I got sicker. I started getting chills--not too strange, since the heater wasn't working that well. Then I started getting dizzy--stranger, since I assume no one was releasing gasses into the building. Then my whole body started to ache. And then I began to consider finishing up the day with some sick time.

And here I am now, at the end of a second sick day, better rested and with a far less interesting cough. Tomorrow I shall merely annoy my cube mates, rather than toll the bell.