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Mom of the Year.
Thankfully, our little apartment had everything within Calla’s reach. Our living room had been built in a long, rectangular shape, and butted right up against the entryway door. On the other side, it led directly to the small but newly refurbished kitchen, and then to the right, two bedrooms and a bathroom finished off the modest, six-hundred-square-foot apartment. I liked it because I could see the kitchen, dining table, bathroom, and Calla’s room from the couch. Even in a sleepy haze, I could keep an eye on her, and she spent the day happily playing with her toys, watching cartoons, and snuggling with me.
But I didn’t get better. I chugged cold medicine in unhealthy amounts. I drank tea. I didn’t eat food because I couldn’t force it down my swollen throat, but I tried to keep my fever in check. It wasn’t working.
Worriedly, I remembered when I had gotten strep throat once as a kid, and I realized the symptoms were similar. But I couldn’t have strep. That required a doctor’s visit, and we would be hard-pressed enough to pay for Calla’s stitches without me trying to find care on a weekend. Sure, Doctor Sexy Gaze had offered to help us if we needed, but as he had joked, his prices weren’t cheap.
I couldn’t afford a hospital visit. So, I suffered through Saturday, and eventually, I gave up drinking liquids, too. I figured if I gave my throat a few days to rest, it might get better.
By Sunday, I was an absolute wreck. My throat had closed up so badly, I could barely swallow. Calla was getting bored with the two-day movie marathon she had already endured, and she complained that her stitches were hurting again.
I knew, logically, they were probably starting to itch as they healed, but my baby girl was upset, and I couldn’t have that. Plus, we were out of cold medicine, and I still clung to my delusions that it was just a bad virus, so, if I got some stronger stuff, maybe I would kick it before the next morning.
My ears had started hurting by then. I could barely think straight with the way my head pounded. I felt like someone had shoved acid-soaked cotton through my throat, nose, and ears. Despite that, I needed to get myself to the store. But the idea of getting Calla in and out of a carseat and pulling us both through the grocery store sounded like pure hell.
I sighed. There was nothing for it. I pulled out my phone and sent my mom a message.
Laurel: Hey mom, can you take Calla for an hour?
My mom replied immediately.
Mom: Of course I can. Anything wrong?
Anything I can blame you for?I mimicked in my head. My mother lived only five minutes from us, and that was one of two reasons I had moved to the small Idaho town. But asking my mother for help was like taking out an emotional payday loan. The interest was going to rake me over the coals.
Laurel: I just have a cold and need to run to the store.
Mom: I’ll be there in five. I’ll bring some food.
I sighed again. I had invited the vampire into my home, and I would just have to be brave and take the exsanguination like a woman.
She arrived in a flurry of expensive perfume and self-inflated importance, immediately looking around my apartment with her judicious, green eyes. She had a fancy set of tupperware clutched between her orange-manicured fingers, and her perfectly flippy, balayage hair drifted around her thin head like a middle-aged cloud of tidy perfection. “Laurel,” she said, her face wrinkled with disappointment. “What is going on here? Why has your house exploded like this?”
I was sitting on the couch, and I bent over as I struggled to lace up my gray sneakers. “Uh… I’m sick?”
She gave me a look that said, “So what?”
I sighed. “Sorry it’s a mess,” I scratched out. Talking felt like rubbing handfuls of thumbtacks against my vocal cords.
Calla jumped out from behind the wall, and my mom started, screaming. Calla cackled, “Got you, Grandma!”
My mom clutched her soft neck, “Goodness.”
I blew out a laugh, and my shaky fingers tied my shoestrings in a loose knot. “Be good, Calla,” I whisper-yelled.
Calla did a pirouette in her pajama pants and old dance costume, “Okay!”
“I brought food,” my mom said, giving me another hard look. “I assume there hasn’t been anything real in this house in weeks.”
I glared. “Thanks.”
“Well, looking at the state of things, it’s a good thing you called me,” she said.
I’ll nominate you for sainthood,I thought caustically. I stood with creaking joints and winced as my head pulsed with a lightning bolt of pain. My mom swept into the kitchen, opening the fridge to deposit her tupperware and then looking around with a faintly disgusted nose wrinkle.
I wrapped myself in a scarf and wished I could afford a better coat. The shivers were debilitating. “I’ll be back soon,” I rasped wearily.
“Go to a doctor,” she said, her voice full of disapproval and her nails clicking as she began shuffling contents on my counters. “I don’t know why you always insist on letting things fall apart long before you consider fixing them.”
