Love is the Drug

The next morning I momentarily consider going into work.

One moment upright on the edge of the bed dashes any hope of a productive day at the office.

I am as weak as a kitten.

I have periodic feverish moments when my body seems intent on reminding me of the climate in Hell.

I sound like I have eaten a box of tacks.

My head is brimming with plaster o' Paris. 

I lay back down and text my assistant and my boss. I don't even wait for a reply.

At one point, I manage to get up and conquer the stairs to the first floor where I have, against all logic, left the cold medicine I need to survive.

Once I've downed the atrocious concoction and stopped dry heaving, I call the Executive Assistant in the C-Suite at work. She is my biggest customer right now and I am sure she is mad as a hornet that I have vanished without a trace. I touch base - she is very sympathetic - and she asks about my holiday...and before she can do any digging, I tell her that I have to tell her something. I need to tell her about Scott. She was always a fan - mostly because of the notable happiness it brought to me.  She is devastated for me. Asks a lot of questions. Tells me about an uncannily similar thing that happened the prior year when the day after Christmas her boyfriend dropped abruptly and mysteriously out of her life. No explanation, no contact. Nothing.

Is there some secret club that does this?

She tells me that 3 months later he reappeared just as abruptly and with just as little explanation.  They have been together ever since, but it is not the same. How could it ever be?

And I agree with her. If Scott were to come begging and pleading tomorrow, wearing a hair shirt and pledging his undying love, how on Earth would I react?  I can never ever let myself love him like that again. No more reckless abandon. I could never completely love him without question. Why bother at all? It is futile to even hope I ever see him again. No explanation will help the matter. No reconciliation will be complete. Again, why bother at all?

By the end of the conversation I am far worse than I have felt in days. I am sure I am going to die. I am sure I have The Plague. I am sure I am going to be found dead in my house with the cats having eaten off my fingertips so that I have to be identified by dental records.

I call my doctor. I explain to the nurse that I have no idea what my temperature is but I am surely cooking from the inside out, like as in a microwave oven. I have horrible cold symptoms, am weak and floppy and could no sooner come in for an appointment than I could land a DC-10 in my backyard.

A few minutes later, the nurse calls back and says that the doctor will call in a prescription. Amoxycillin, a strong dose, to be picked up at my local CVS. Amen.

I thank her profusely. But she is not done.

She tells me that if I am not feeling better very soon that I will HAVE to come in, and should schedule a physical because it's been ages since I've had labs drawn. (Yaddd yadda yadda...) And as a parting blow to my psyche, she tells me that  I should be aware that the drug will in fact weaken the effects of my birth control pill and until my next cycle I should take extra precautions and use condoms or some other equally redundant form of birth control or I very well may find myself pregnant.

Thank you, Nurse Happy for reminding me that I am sleeping alone.

Now I have to figure out how to schlepp my carcass down the street to the CVS. Another bitter reminder that I am no one's business. *sigh*