Mary and Daphne #153

“Hey,” I said as I woke up to someone stroking my hair. “You been there the whole time?”

“Yeah,” the hair stroker said. “Sandy is going to bring one by and leave it on the doorstep.”

“I don’t have covid,” I told Mary. “But thank you.” I wasn’t short of breath, coughing, wheezing, stuffed up, or sore-throated.

“Better safe than sorry. Being sick can cause flare ups.”

A flare up. I had a headache and muscle aches and my joints hurt and I was exhausted and now and again even my skin hurt in places for a little bit. That comes and goes pretty quick when I have a flare up, like in a day, but the achiness and fatigue are just there for a few days.

Me and my autoimmune condition have lived in relative détente for a while. No real issues of late, at least not lasting longer than a day or two and even then, just one or two symptoms, not a bunch at once or all over. For some reason that really sucks, it had been a bunch at once for three days the week we got back from Wisconsin. And Mary’s right, a little infection, something as simple as cold, can set it off. Or stress or changes in the weather or even a big hormone shift. Or nothing at all, at least nothing I can single out, like this time.

I’ve mostly been in bed. When I had a job, I would give it a day of rest and then power through it, or try to, and miraculously that didn’t work and typically just made it last longer. But I don’t work anymore, and I have this nice person to take care of me. So, bed.

It’s actually good to still move and even exercise, but I wasn’t feeling up to it, and when I tried to make myself do it anyway, Mary just kept taking my hand and making me sit down. I think she hid my workout shoes during one my naps. She’s kinda a pushy nurse. Not gonna lie.

“How’s your diaper?” O yeah, the rule that if I’m sick, I have to be in a diaper. She thinks she’s so clever counting seasonal allergies as being sick. But actually sick? I still don’t like it and usually put up a fuss (which usually just gets me called a fussy little girl and a smack on the thigh to get me hold still). But right then, I was way too into hating corporeal existence to care (like seriously, I could so totally skip having a body at all if it’s gonna feel this way; just put my brain in cyborg). She reached down all on her own and checked and must’ve been satisfied.

“Are you hungry,” she asked me, being all affectionate and stuff.

“No.”

“Well, you need to eat something. What can I get you?”

“Nothing right now.”

“I spank little girls’ bottoms even when they don’t feel well.” She takes my eating so super serious all the time, but when I don’t feel well, she turns into my grandmother and just can’t stop offering me food. Of course, had I accepted one of those offers earlier, she might have stopped for a while.

And that threat was so transparently empty. “No you don’t.”

At least not this kind of not feeling well. She knows better. She tried it once when I had a flare up back when we were dating and she moved in with me for a few days (cuz she liked me a bunch and still does). Trying to cheer me up and thinking she was being cute, I was shuffling across the living room in my slippers, and she asked me (surprise!) what she could make me to eat, and I got grumpy cuz (surprise!) it was the fourth time in forty-five minutes that she’d asked me that. I told her nothing kinda sharply (the first three times were very nicely declined; I think she was due for a kinda sharp rebuke).

She reached over and just tapped me on the butt, and while I think I meant to say ‘Urgh! Fine. Macaroni,’what came out instead was, “Waaaaaaaaahhhhhhhh! Boohoohoohoo WAAAAAHHHHH!!!!” And so on and so forth. Except harder and with sooo much self-pity. Mary set a world record for apologizing and getting almost as teary as me. Then she made me a sandwich. Since I’ve known her, Mary says tears don’t stop a spanking, but yeah they do under the right circumstances.

“We can order in. I’ll get you anything you want, but you can’t go all day without eating.”

“All the good foods make it worse.” True story. It’s as if my body is trying to tell me that whatever is in a hotdog isn’t healthy for me or something. Strange, that. I think my body tells lies (like any physical reaction to wearing a diaper other than disgust – those were my body telling lies. Really.).

“Daphne.” Hmm. Mary’s yes-you-are-too-gonna face. She saves it for when she’s adamant that yes, I am gonna do what she says. If I ignore it, she escalates (she’s always escalating stuff) to her fine-I’ll-just-make-you-then face. Not that she could actually make me right then because her toolbox of coercive measures was just about empty. What was she gonna do? Ground me to the bedroom? Make me hurt all over? I already did.

“Soup, please.”

And just like that, her anything-for-you face. “What kind?”

“Hot and sour, and chicken noodle.” As long as she was gonna make me, and as long as I had some goodwill to milk, why not be two-soups-in-one-meal girl?

“Done.” With a mere tap of her finger, Mary made soup appear (in 45 minutes via DoorDash). She’s magic like that. In the meantime, she made her I’m-sorry-you-don’t-feel-well-face and combined it with her does-it-feel-good-when-I-do-this hands. Normally, yeah. Mary’s hand on my cheek feels wonderful.

“Not there, please.” Neuropathy. It’s like having a rash or a sunburn except not. It just hurts to the touch (or sometimes even to make any movement that even tightens my skin, like smiling), and it’s always on places where the skin is sensitive anyway like my temple and cheek and my sides and the inside of my forearms. Mary’s I’m-sorry-this-sucks-so-hard sigh.

I didn’t start having symptoms until I was in college, and when I got diagnosed, my Mom, bless her heart, said not to bother getting upset about it. She was secretly super upset about it, but she didn’t want me to be and thought I’d move on to the this-is-just-my-burden-to-carry phase of acceptance if I just … did, I suppose.

And actually, I didn’t have a hard time accepting it because back then the symptoms were few and far between. But like most things, they got a little more frequent with time. And they’re still infrequent, just not totally absent. Color me impressed with myself cuz with all the stress of almost two years of pandemic, this was my first big flare up in all that time. If I had predicted it, it would’ve been my tenth or twelfth. Not that I did anything to avoid it. Just happened that way.

“Hey Mary?”

“Yeah, baby?”

“Thanks for taking care of me.”

“You are very welcome. You wanna watch a movie until dinner gets here?”

“No,” I said in my I’m-about-to-cry voice, which made Mary make her what’s-happening-face with the furrowed brow and inquisitive eyes. “I’m fine. I just don’t wanna be brave right now.”

“You can cry and be brave at the same time.”

Offer the fuck accepted! “(Weepy girl noises) (sniffles) (tiny sobs muffled by bedclothes and Mary’s sweatpants).”

“I know. My brave girl. You wanna crawl across my lap and let me rub your butt?"

"A-after d-din-ner."

"My brave girl."