Sometimes the pictures Sarah sent had traces of Justin in them. His keys on a coffee table. His hoodie on the arm of a sofa.
I was at work, eating my lunch alone, when she sent a picture of Brad in the kitchen. I could see Justin in the background. He was standing at the sink. Probably doing dishes. It was a shot of him from behind, just the waist down.
I stared at that photo for so long, I didn’t even finish eating my lunch. I must have studied every inch. Justin’s phone in his back pocket, the one he used to send me a generic “good morning” or “good night” reply to my daily obligatory text of the same thing.
He was wearing the same shirt he’d had on that day at the mall. I knew how it smelled. I knew how it would feel if he hugged me against it.
I don’t know why, but I had to clutch a hand over my heart. It actually hurt to look at him. Even just part of him.
And the weirdest thing was that while the kids were the biggest reason I didn’t want to keep seeing him, I wished I were there with them. I wondered what Justin was making them for dinner. I could picture sitting with him on the couch watching Frozen, docked in the docking station, with Chelsea and Brad curled up with us. I wanted to chat with Sarah in person and hear one of Alex’s animated stories of what he was up to.
When I went back to work after lunch, I wasn’t feeling well.
I stayed two hours later than scheduled, so I was exhausted when I finally got the boat docked. When I got to the cottage, I realized we barely had any groceries. I’d go tomorrow. I was getting a headache and I was too tired to do anything other than peel off my clothes and climb into bed.
A few hours later, the nausea woke me up.
I felt for my phone on the nightstand in the dark. 2:42 a.m. I rolled onto my back, hoping if I lay still enough the feeling would pass.
It didn’t.
I barely made it to the bathroom.
I hated throwing up. Hated it. Probably something I picked up at the hospital, or maybe something I ate. I retched up everything I had, holding my hair back at the nape of my neck.
When I was done, I rinsed my mouth out and brushed my teeth, tied up my hair. Then I spun and vomited again.
By 6:00 a.m., I’d given up trying to make it back to my room. The stomach upset started a little after the vomiting did. During the short breaks I got from puking and sitting on the toilet, I lay on the semi-damp blue bathroom mat in front of the tub, my head pounding.
I wanted water.
The kitchen felt a million miles away so I pulled myself up to the sink and drank from the tap. It was awful. It tasted like rust and smelled like sulfur.
It was worse on the way out.
I rifled through the medicine cabinet for something, anything, but there was nothing that would help me. Band-Aids, Visine, nail clippers, some NyQuil but that wouldn’t stop the vomiting. I moved some peroxide and found an ancient bottle of Pepto. It had separated. The top half was a watery layer of milky-looking liquid. I shook it and the contents came back together a little, but it still looked spoiled. I checked the date. Expired in 1994. I blanched and put it back and slid down on the floor again.
I called in sick to Royaume.
Maddy called around 8:00 a.m. “Hey, just checking in.”
“Okay,” I croaked.
“You all right? You sound like shit.”
I shifted to my back and put an arm across my forehead. “I think I have norovirus. I’ve been throwing up since last night.”
“Ick. Diarrhea too?”
“Yup.”
“Ugh. Well at least it passes quick.”
“I hope so.”
There was a pause. “Janet and Beth asked about you.”
I squeezed my eyes shut against another rolling wave of nausea. “Oh. Tell them hi.”
“You should come next time.”
I nodded, even though she couldn’t see me. “Yeah. Sure.” I sat up. “I have to go, I think I’m going to throw up again.”
After I heaved for another five minutes, I dozed off on the tile with a towel as a pillow. When I woke up, it was noon. Justin had texted good morning three hours ago. I replied with “not feeling great today” and a green-faced emoji. He called immediately, but I didn’t answer.
I got up and managed to make it to the kitchen. My legs felt wobbly. I gulped cold water from the Brita in the fridge. It sloshed in my stomach and came back up a few minutes later in the sink.
I couldn’t remember ever being this miserable. I was sweating through my pajamas, my ribs hurt.
I pawed around the pantry. I was hungry, but we didn’t have soup or broth. I didn’t have tea or crackers or anything else that would settle my stomach. I tried to eat a granola bar I found in my purse, but I knew the second I swallowed it, it wasn’t staying down.
I decided to try to take a shower and just sat in the tub with the water raining down on me with my head between my knees.
If I could stop using the bathroom and throwing up, then I could take the boat and go get groceries and medicine. But even as I thought it, it felt too hard. I was shaky. I sat in the water until it ran cold and then dragged myself out and managed to get into some clean clothes, but I was too out of it to brush my hair so I just left it in the towel.
I climbed into bed with the bathroom trash can, but the stomach cramps curled me into a fetal position. I lay there, hugging the plastic basket with one arm, willing myself to stop vomiting.
I just needed to sleep. I might be able to keep things down if I was asleep. But I couldn’t sleep because I couldn’t stop throwing up.
