Sickness

Dear Levi,

The inevitable came, I suppose. After weeks of struggling with non stop fatigue and exhaustion, headaches, and reoccurring sleeplessness, my immune system gave way to illness. By Friday, October 11^th, my fever was 102.8 degrees and I was shaking so badly at work I could barely stand. When I stared at the screen and tried to talk over the swelling infection in my throat, the tears literally burned down my feverish cheeks. I clocked out of work through Kronos, our timekeeping system, and hugged the wall on the long walk through the compound to my car. Outside, the cold wind sapped my lungs from oxygen and made my knees weak. I almost fainted before I reached Zoila and climbed in. Was it a miracle from God that my benefits through Panera, never used, expired in two days?

I drove straight to the after hours clinic. After three hours in ice-cold waiting rooms, and finding the Indian doctor standing at the computers drinking coffee with the off-duty nurses at one point, I was glad to hear it wasn’t strept. A pretty severe upper respiratory track infection, I was told as I was handed my doctor’s note for work and a prescription for antibiotics. What the heck is that?

I drove straight home and crawled into bed with sweats, hoodie, scarf, double socks, and tears all folded under the comfortless cloud of down feathers. The next eight hours I tossed and cried in agony as the fever scraped every ounce of strength and feeling from my body. I awoke again and again in the darkness, sheets tangled and clothes literally drenched, sick to my stomach and unable to breath past the pain in my throat. I changed clothes, and the cold came instantly to stick to my clammy skin like death’s embrace and start my bones shaking.

I dreamt, and they were burning black dreams of you, and Anna, and your wedding. I was the smiling, faceless photographer behind the lens documenting your happiness, hers, the end of my dreams and prayers. The guests held champagne glasses, but the light sparkling through them was grey. And my lens kept trying to find you, and all I could see was the sharp cut of your white collar, the curve of your strong hand stuffed in your pocket, the silhouette of your coat’s shoulders. Anna’s pretty long hair kept blocking out the lens, bouncing and danging in festivity to her perfect laugh, perfect smile. She looked at me and my lens framed in her happy face and I knew she didn’t know me. Neither did you. Or the guests. So I just snapped away, and no one paid me mind. And I couldn’t leave, either. Again and again I woke up shaking and coughing and gasping, crying out to God.

I know He hear me. He was with me that night, in the darkness, in the sickness.

I cried myself back to sleep and whimpered for you, for Levi, for your strong, gentle fingers massaging the sickness from my throat, for my head on your chest, for your arms and coat and cologne… God held me instead, but it wasn’t the same. I wanted my Levi.

Have you been sick this year? Did you miss me? Was someone there to bring you a drink, to make sure you had medicine, to pray for you? I wish I knew. I wish I was there.

Your star,

Rigel