“It wasn’t a suggestion,” she said, putting a plate of scrambled eggs and toast in front of me. She followed that up with a mug of herbal tea.
“You cooked all this while I was showering?”
“And changed the sheets on your bed. I move quickly.”
Nobody had thrown up in nearly thirty-seven minutes, which felt like a solid win. I scooped some eggs into my mouth, and the minute it hit my tongue, something twisted low in my stomach.
Huh. Weird.
I swallowed carefully.
The nausea slammed into me, sudden and violent.
Oh no.
Winnie glanced at me. “You’re pale.”
“I’m fi?—”
Nope. Absolutely not fine. My stomach lurched, and I grabbed the counter to keep the dizziness at bay.
Winnie was at my side in an instant. “Conrad?”
I looked at her helplessly. “Oh no.”
I bolted for the sink.
“Dad’s dying,” my children said in unison.
Being sick as a parent was fundamentally different from being sick as a normal person. Normal people got soup, sympathy, and plenty of restorative sleep. Parents got tiny audience members who still required attention and care.
By noon, all four of us had relocated into my bedroom because Winnie had decided centralized suffering was more efficient.
The storm outside kept worsening as the day dragged on. Rain hammered endlessly against the windows while thunder rolled in long, violent waves. The lights flickered twice around lunchtime, which prompted Billie to whisper, “The house is considering death.”
“Nobody’s dying,” Bianca muttered from beneath three blankets.
“That’s exactly what haunted houses want you to think.”
CJ groaned weakly from the foot of the bed. “Please stop giving the weather motives.”
I lay flat on my back, trying to determine whether my skeleton had always hurt this much or if it was actively dissolving. The stomach bug hit me harder than the kids. Probably because children were fueled by some kind of unholy survival mechanism and processed illness with alarming speed while adults simply became invalids.
Every time I opened my eyes, Winnie was doing something different. Refilling water glasses. Adjusting blankets. Checking temperatures. Making tea. Carrying soup upstairs. Carrying uneaten soup downstairs. Calmly intercepting Billie before she wandered off to “die in the hallway.”
The woman handled disaster with utter competence, and she never once looked overwhelmed. At one point, I woke from a fever nap to shadow puppets dancing across the bedroom wall.
I blinked slowly.
There was a rabbit, then a bird, and something that looked suspiciously like a dragon.
Billie squealed, and I had no idea where she got the energy to do that. “Do a goose.”
Smiling, Winnie adjusted her fingers, and a goose appeared on the wall.
“That goose understands labor rights,” CJ croaked.
“Obviously,” Winnie said. “There will be no need for a labor strike today. This goose understands and treats his employees with respect.”
