“I’m fine.”
“Amelia, you’re not fine. You can barely breathe! Look at you! You look pathetic!”
I stomped over to the mirror. “I do not look—oh…” I saw my reflection in the mirror. My eyes were red and puffy. My hair disheveled. My nose was runny and red. It looked like I hadn’t slept in 28 years. I sneezed and watched as I doubled over and rose back up again, my eyes watery and my hair even more tangled.
“I guess I do look kind of pathetic,” I sighed.
Jessica raised an eyebrow, her arms crossed and posture firm. Without a word, she slowly and sternly pointed to the dresser, where she’d amassed an impressive collection of cough medicine, cough drops, teas, vitamin C supplements, VapoRub, and just about anything else you could think of. Every box was neatly arranged. I had the fleeting thought that every drugstore should hire Jessica to create award-winning display windows during flu season.
“You have to take care of yourself!” Jessica complained.
“Well, it’s not like I wanted to get sick.”
“Fair enough, but still.”
“Look, I don’t want to take medicine unless I am borderline dying. I don’t want to depend on medicine so much that the day that I really do feel very sick the medicine doesn’t even have an effect on me. I’d rather brave it out.”
“You think you’re being brave. You’re just being stupid!”
Jessica was visibly upset now, and in a rage had begun picking up all the medicines, dropping them because she was unsettled, and becoming increasingly frustrated because of it.
“I’m sorry, I didn’t want to make you upset.”
“No! Leave me alone. I get it. Look, you won’t let me take care of you, you won’t take care of yourself. So fine. You don’t want this medicine I spent a fortune on. Fine. I’m going to put it all away in the medicine cabinet—you know that place you never dare open—and it will sit there idly while you cough up a lung and develop pneumonia and bronchitis.”
“Jessica! Sheesh! It won’t get to that point. It’s just a cold!
Jessica walked past me, struggling to balance all the items in her arms. She dropped a pack of cough drops as she approached the door, and became so exasperated she absentmindedly flailed her arms and dropped everything else on the carpeted floor.
Jessica threw her arms up in frustration and started screaming about a duck for a few seconds.
Once she’d stopped yelling, I picked up the pack of fallen cough drops, unwrapped one, and popped it into my mouth.
“See? I listen to you.”
“That’s a cough drop, Amelia. A cough drop.”
“It’s a start though, right?”
“It’s a cough drop.”
I crossed my arms, trying to look powerful and authoritative in disheveled hair, a cracking choice, and some very eccentric pajamas.
“I am stubborn. You know that more than anyone. And I think it is progress for me to accept a cough drop. I know you worry. That is who you are. But you know I don’t like taking medicine. And that is who I am. Okay? Okay. Now, I will suck it up and take cough drops. That is a start because it’s something that I would not normally do. But I will do it for you.”
“You sound funny.”
“That is because I have a cold and a cough drop in my mouth. Don’t judge me.”
“I’m not.”
“Good.”
“Good.”
They both stood awkwardly, stifling laughter.
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