(03) sick days

So you have a cold. It's sneaked up on you, and what you thought was a two-day-long, epically throbbing sinus headache turns out to have been something else altogether, and you skive off work a couple of hours early (feeling a little guilty because you feel like you've gotten away with something, and a little gleeful for exactly the same reason), and you stop off at the drugstore and pick up some Alka-Seltzer Cold, and you pull up in a driveway -- yours, preferably -- in a middle-of-the-day-quiet neighborhood, and you choke down your meds and shut down so quickly it can't be anything but some sort of placebo effect at work on you, but that's okay, because psychosomatic assistance is still assistance, and you climb into your bed and the sheets are sateen, cottony and silky against your oversensitized skin, and Goblet of Fire is playing quietly even though you can't remember turning it on, so maybe you forgot to turn it off this morning when you got out of bed all cranky and achy, and you honestly can't remember where you last left off, but you've heard it so many times now that it's not like you can't pick up the thread now, regardless of where you stopped off last, and you fall asleep with the cat on your hip and the dog tucked up against your side, and when you wake up two hours later, none of you has moved and the meds have taken effect for real, and your head is hyper-clear but your eyes are burning and you can still feel the ache in your throat, and you make yourself soup and toast and eat it in bed as the sun sets, and you'll be ready for bed again in an hour or two.

And you feel sick, sure, but you also feel warm and comforted and drowsy, and maybe ready to face the day tomorrow. After you drink down another dose.