“You okay? You seem off.”
I’d barely slept that night. By midnight, I’d started coughing, and by morning, every breath hurt and chills were running through me.
“You’re shaking.”
Nathan stood up and crossed the kitchen in two steps.
“Claire.”
“I’m fine.”
Nathan had checked my temperature twice during the night. The last reading was 102.
“I promise I’ll rest.”
“You’re staying in bed today,” he said.
“I’ll be fine. Go to work.”
“Claire, you’re shaking. Sit down.”
I sat, mostly because the room had tilted a little.
Nathan had called twice.
“I’ll call in,” he said. “I’ll stay.”
“No. Go to work. I’ll sleep it off.”
“Claire.”
“Nathan, go. I promise I’ll rest.”
“Almost NOON.”
He hesitated, then kissed my forehead and left.
****
By eleven, my fever was still hovering around 102. Nathan had called twice to make sure I was still in bed, and I’d finally managed to fall asleep.
I was drifting in and out of sleep when, at 11:30, our bedroom door flew open so hard it hit the wall.
“We all get sick, Claire.”
Patricia stood in the doorway, our spare emergency key dangling from her finger like a trophy.
“Almost NOON,” she announced, “and here you are, still tucked in like a princess.”
I tried to push myself up. My arms shook.
“Patricia, I’m sick.”
“Make him a proper dinner.”
She stepped inside without invitation.
“We all get sick, Claire. My generation got up. We took care of our husbands.”
“I have a fever of a hundred and two.”
Her eyes swept over the medicine and tissues.
“Say cheese.”
“Nathan’s working while you’re lying here. Get up and make him a proper dinner.”
“I can’t even stand.”
Then she pulled out her phone. The screen flashed toward me and my stomach turned.
“Patricia, please don’t.”
“Nathan deserves better than this.”
“Say cheese.”
“Patricia, don’t. I’m begging you.”
She lowered the phone with a satisfied little smile.
“Maybe a little embarrassment will motivate you. Nathan deserves better than this.”
‘In my time, we’d never.’
She walked out. The front door clicked shut.
****
Ten minutes later, my phone buzzed on the nightstand.
I picked it up with trembling fingers.
There I was. Hair matted, eyes swollen, mouth slightly open. Under the photo, in her cheerful public voice:
I cried.
‘Good morning to everyone who actually gets up, goes to work, and takes care of their family instead of sleeping until noon like my DIL.’
The comments were already flooding in. Women from her church, her book club, her old neighbors.
“Poor Nathan.”
“Kids these days.”
“In my time, we’d never.”
“I know exactly what she did.”
I put the phone face-down. Eight years of trying not to care what Patricia thought of me, and now she’d handed her verdict to hundreds of people. I cried until my chest hurt worse than the fever.
****
