Writing warm up: Sick Days
“Hey, dude.” Mira’s voice sounds staticky across the line. Kind of sad. “How are you doing?”
Zoey flops an ankle absent mindledly off the couch. Her bad knee twinging in protest with the sudden movement.
“I’m a’ite. Y’anno. Same old same old.” She laughs, the sound hollow even to her ears, gazing absently outside the window while the bright blue skies make a mockery of her struggling lungs.
There’s a sigh across the line. “Zo. You don’t… you don’t sound alright. Are you sleeping?”
That catches something in Zoey’s chest, and a cough rips its way out of her system before it can be contained. Swallowing down a mouthful of acrid, cloying spit, she manages to croak out something like a coherent answer.
“Nah. I mean… yeah, I guess it’s just…” She sighs, blinking back frustrated tears as she paws absently at a stray thread along the seam of the sofa, shifting restlessly in an effort to find a somewhat more pleasant position. “Just tired. I guess.”
Mira hums, thoughtful. Zoey shifts her phone to her other hand, gently flexing her fingers with a barely audible whimper from the relief as she shifts the weight away from her aching, shaking muscles.
“Have you tried a sleep routine? I know it sounds dumb, but it might help?”
Zoey can’t help it. She snaps, voice grating as she swallows down another cough and lets her voice drop into a high-pitched whine. “Mir… it’s not. It’s not the routine. It’s the pain.” She falters, briefly unsure how to describe it. How do you put words to something so huge, but that feels like such a fantasy every time she tries to spell out her symptoms in her another too-bright doctor’s office in some far flung clinic across the city.
She sighs. “I’m tired. So tired, Mir. And then I go to bed, and I want to sleep, but the pain just… hits. In waves. And it hurts. And I can’t move. I can’t… I can’t get comfy. And so it keeps me up. I guess.”
Silence falls between them, her old friend scrambling for something to say. The air now rife with tension, coloured by Zoey’s exhausted, shattered despair.
Zoey gets it. What do you do when you keep calling someone, and every time it’s the same? How often can the words ‘I’m sorry’ fall from your lips before they become the chafing sound of a broken record?
“Do you need anything? I mean…” Mira stalls, amending. “Can I get anything for you? I know we went to the store on Tuesday, but I don’t mind going back for more. Or I could come over, and we could watch a movie?”
Zoey’s lower lip trembles, and she swallows back a rogue wave of tears. “Thanks Mir. I’m okay. Thanks, though.”
There’s more, lurking behind her quiet deflection, but she won’t let herself entertain that thought. Because it’s easy, in a way, when someone’s sick. People more than eager to show up with casseroles, rides to the clinic, movies and flowers and sympathetic messages that overflow from the inbox of your preferred messaging application.
When it’s not just a passing illness… it’s different. People don’t quite know what to make of it when you’re fine one day, tanked the next, asking for help with seemingly simple tasks even with your ‘young, able body.’
She knows Mira would do more - she’s sure of it - but she just can’t bring herself to take that risk. Because yeah, she might really, really want some more gummy peach rings to get her through what’s shaping up to be a god-awful, wrung-out, exhausted write-off of a day…
…but she just can’t bring herself to ask. Who would drive halfway across town to get their friend a single bag of sweets, just because they didn’t sleep well last night? (Or the night before that. Or the night before that.)
She can make do. She’s an adult. She’s great at coping with these things.
Even if she isn’t great at talking about them.
