Chapter 4A

I had a bad cold. It was just before Thanksgiving. Wearing a heavy brown flannel robe, I sat up against the headboard as Martha Jane settled near me on the bed and sat Indian-style. In her hand she had a bottle of green cough syrup, a bottle of cod liver oil, and a bottle of ear drops.

"Okay, hon, time for dessert."

"That's not dessert," I complained.

"This is dessert for sick folks." She shimmied her hips into the mattress to get comfy. "Now, let's see, what does this say... ?" She examined the label on the cough medicine. "One tablespoon. Okay!" With a giddy smile she fished for the spoon in the paraphernalia she had gathered in a large dish towel spread on the bed. She held up the spoon. "One tablespoon!" she announced. Seeming to enjoy every minute of it, she unscrewed the cough medicine, held the spoon up as she poured the dark green gunk, and carefully brought the spoon toward my face. "Oookay... a-a-all for you, hon. C'mon. Yumyum. Yumyum."

"Yumyum Yuch!" I pouted.

"Come on now, you don't want to stay up coughing all night like you did last night, do you?"

I frowned at the spoon.

"C'mon. It tastes good."

"I already had some of it and I know it doesn't taste good. It's terrible, it leaves a bad taste in my mouth for hours."

"Well, Speedy, it doesn't taste good because it's medicine. It isn't supposed to taste good."

"Why don't they make it in the first place so it *does* taste good?"

"'Cause if it tasted good in the first place, you'd drink it all the time. You'd live on it, and then it would make you sick."

"If it's medicine, why would it make me sick?"

"Listen, stop bein' so logical. Here. Yumyum. C'mon."

I opened my mouth and she tilted the spoon into it. I swallowed and grimaced.

"There, I knew you'd like it."

"Yech."

"Now where's the cod liver oil..."

"Yecch!" I growled, as disgustingly as I possibly could, stretching my mouth into a horrific grimace that went from ear to ear. I held the pose as if frozen into it.

"Oh, stop. It can't taste that bad. Here..." She carefully squeezed an eyedropper of amber oil into a spoon, and then squeezed the juice from half an orange into it. As she did this I sat rigidly against the headboard as if long petrified, my face still frozen in the same gruesome pose.

"Speedy, stop making that ugly face. Now, here... here's your cod liver oil. Come on, stop makin' that face and swallow this."

I looked her straight in the eye, with the same face.

"Speedy, that is the ugliest thing I ever saw. Stop, so we can get this over with."

I let my face relax, sighed heavily, and opened my mouth. The orange juice didn't do much to hide the bitter, fishy taste that clung to the inside of my mouth. "Yah!"

"That's a good boy, that's two outta three. Now let's get this off the bed so you can lie down and I can fix those ears." She placed the dish towel of goods on the side table and sat up on her knees on the bed, holding the bottle of ear drops. "Lie down on your side. C'mon, you've had earaches before, you know what to do. At least your ears can't taste this."

"They can too," I insisted.

"Lie down the other way first, facing away from me. That's right. Now, here..." She bent over me and placed the tip of the filled eyedropper into the opening of my ear. The sudden contact of the cold glass tip made me jerk and quiver involuntarily.

"Oh!" She jumped and pulled her hand away. "Oh, Speedy! Did I hurt your ear?"

I shook my head no. "It itches!"

"Oh my god, don't do that! You almost gave me a stroke. I thought I hurt you!"

I coiled up into a ball and feigned a low, pitiful groan, then another.

"Oh, behave. You're not funny. Be still."

I relaxed on my side and then cringed as the cold thin fluid filled my ear with a small roaring noise. "It itches. Eeew, it's so itchy."

"It'll settle in and be okay," she said, stuffing a piece of wadded cotton in my ear. "Now turn over so I can do the other one... Turn over."

I lay still.

"Speedy, turn over so I can do the other one."

I sat up and pretended I was in a breathless daze. "What? Did you say somethin'? I can't hear. Where am I?"

Holding the ear medicine in one hand and the eyedropper in the other, she started to laugh, resisted it, and closed her eyes patiently. "Speedy, please... you'll make me laugh and spill this stuff all over the bed. Now... please... stop."

I groaned, "Okay," and laboriously rose to turn over on my other side. Already weak, I feigned an even greater weakness, moving slowly and spasmodically, writhing at every turn as if in pain. "Oh... Uh... Mr. Holmes!... uh... call Dr. Watson right away!... it's the deadly, poisoned ear drops... cgh, cgh."

"Speedy, if you make me spill this..." She started to laugh again, and held it back with clenched teeth. "Stop, or I'm gonna spank your butt 'till it falls off on the floor."

On my side facing her, I lay still.

On her knees, she shuffled closer to me. "Honestly, I never in my life saw anybody go through such agony... Now here, this is the last one."

Once more, the cool fluid rushed into me and greasily leaked over my eardrum. I shivered again with the same itch in my ear as before, and Martha Jane sealed my ear with cotton. Then she sat back and sighed, drooping.

"I am exhausted from this! You're worse than a room full of sick puppies."

I smiled angelically.

"Don't you smile at me like that, you little devil." She leaned closer to me and half whispered, scowling. "Hey, you have to get well. We can't fuck while you're sick like this, you're too weak. So there."

She rose from the bed and brought the bottles and table cloth into the kitchen. While I heard her running water and cleaning I made myself comfortable in the bed, lay on my side, and pulled the covers up to my neck. I shivered as the 'flu coursed through me, but soon the blanket warmed me and I relaxed.

Martha Jane turned off the lights, except for one small lamp in the living room. Then she came into the bedroom and turned out the ceiling lamp using the switch on the wall by the door, and reached under the bedside lamp to turn off the last light in the room. We were dimly lit by the glow from the small living room lamp.

Martha Jane hiked up the legs of her jeans to make herself more comfortable in bed, and quietly lay down beside me. She held her palm against my forehead. "You still have a little fever," she whispered. She fiddled with the blankets and straightened my pillow. She felt me tremble. "You still have chills?"

Lying on my side, I nodded slowly.

"Well, don't you worry, they'll go away soon." She stretched and pulled blankets about, soothing out the twists and tangles that were made while we struggled earlier with the medications. "You just stay nice and warm and... take your medicine the way you're supposed to, and... before you know it... you'll be well and gettin' right back into trouble, good as new." She rested on her elbow beside me. "You ready to go to sleep?"

I nodded. Then another wave of the chills and shivers rippled through me. I clasped my arms closer around myself to fight it off.

She asked, "Want me to keep you warm?".

I nodded yes, several times.

She moved closer to me, putting one arm around my head to cradle me onto her bosom, and using the other arm to rub warmth into my back and shoulders. I snuggled into her and she said, "There, now." As soon as I was settled against her she unbuttoned her shirt and opened it loosely. She pulled up her bra, baring her breasts, and wiggled down so that her left nipple grazed my cheek. Against my feverish face her soft tit felt warm as toast. I reached up and kissed the pale pink bud of her nipple. She whispered, "There... Sleep, hon."

The shivers made another brief pass as I fell asleep against her.

... A week or so later I was standing in Martha Jane's kitchen as her mother, a thin lady who looked much older than my own and who resembled her darker brunette daughter more than her fair, auburn haired Martha Jane, carefully handed me a large tablespoon filled with dark green syrup. Her mother always spoke slowly and with a slight rasp, having never completely overcome the lung problems that she developed from the long and severe illness following her husband's death in the war.

"There," she told me, "now go in the bedroom and give that to Martha Jane. And be certain she takes every drop of it."

"Yes, ma'am," I said. Holding the filled tablespoon face high before me, I walked carefully through their living room and into Martha Jane's bedroom. She sat up in bed, a pink wool blanket up to her waist, the place littered with used kleenex and her school books. Her eyes and nose were swollen and red. In one hand she held a thoroughly used tissue.

I grinned maniacally at the door and chanted, "Yumyum!"

She winced. "Don't yumyum me, you--Is it already time for that awful stuff again?"

"Yumyum!"

She called into the kitchen, "Mother, I thought I already took this stuff!"

"It's four times a day, Martha Jane," her mother called back.

"Oh my," she moaned. I had climbed onto the bed and, on my knees, moved closer to her with one hand holding the spoon and the other cupped guardedly beneath it.

"You were right," she said, sniffing. "That stuff really does taste awful. And you can taste it for a week!"

"Yumyum," I said, moving the spoon closer.

"Oh," she whimpered, wincing again. "Do I have to?"

I nodded. "It hurts me more than it hurts you."

"Right," she muttered, eyeing the spoon with mild terror. "Oh... all right." She opened her mouth and I dipped the spoon inside. Mugging and wincing, she took it all, swallowed, and slithered her tongue around thickly. "Oh, that is *so* disgusting! This is supposed to be the atomic age. Can't modern science do better than this?"

Her mother came into the room and retrieved the spoon. She stood beside the bed shaking her head and fretting.

"Look at this," her mother said, indicating Martha Jane's books and papers all over the bed. "Look, she won't even stop when she's sick as a dog. I don't know what to do with her, Speedy. She was awake half the night studying, and if she wasn't studying she was coughing *and* studying."

"I have to graduate," she muttered petulantly. "On time!"

"But, Martha Jane, you can't learn very well if you don't sleep. It just makes your 'flu that much worse. You need rest, dear."

"Yes, mother, I know, I know, you're right, you're right." She sighed, sounding peevish and testy. Nervously she played with a kleenex, then quickly raised the kleenex to her nose and sneezed into it.

I said, "Bless you."

Martha Jane wiped her nose and said into the tissue, "I hate people staring at me when I'm sick. I'm so ugly."

Giving up, her mom turned away and said, "All right, I'll go back in the kitchen. Speedy, you visit a while, and try to talk some sense into her."

Her mother left and I started to settle on the edge of the bed, but Martha Jane said, "Don't get too close," holding up a hand. She sneezed again and then and held out her palm, indicating the box of kleenex near my knees. I gave it to her and she plucked a new tissue.