Bad Nurse

Contagion is not my thing

I generally consider myself a caring person. But when it comes to those around me coming down with something contagious, all bets are off.

The sad truth is that if you have something catchy can you sit further away? and cover your mouth! are in my head and out of my mouth long before how are you feeling? or let me get you some ibuprofen. There will be no comforting hand on your feverish brow or fresh bedding and sickroom airing as was customary in the Victorian novels I read as a child, or in my own life, as my mother did for me, and I subsequently failed to do for my offspring.

I am, however, a model patient. I keep to myself. I ask for nothing. I embrace hydration and isolation. I never recline on the couch in a common area, such as a living room, coughing and sneezing with abandon, using the front of my shirt as a handkerchief. That would be my spouse, Sam, whom I love in health and in sickness, only not the kind of sickness that will get me sick.

He’s currently got a cold and I am trying to keep my distance, but I worry that I’m doomed. He didn’t laughingly agree to my suggestion that he sleep in another room, maybe at a local motel, maybe because he thought I was serious, and who knows? Maybe I was.

I am not the worst person in the world. Last night, in between glaring at him every time he sneezed and dousing every surface in Clorox, I made him some chicken noodle soup. You see, I want him to get better soon, and not just because it limits my exposure, though being honest, that’s part of it. I’m no saint, but I’m no monster, just- and I’ll be the first to admit it- a lousy nurse.