Shiver and Sweat

I've been oh-so-sick--dog sick--sick enough that I couldn't make it to my computer to write.  On Friday, I went to the factory even though the disease had already begun to take hold, but there were things I had to do to take care of other people, so I went.  I left early, as soon as I had accomplished what I had gone to do, and was back home by mid-afternoon.  By three o'clock, I was in bed shivering with fever.  That lasted for the next day and a half, me rising each time I would come back to consciousness to get some water which I knew I needed but trembling myself violently back to bed quickly where I would once again shiver and sweat.  By Saturday night, I was a wreck and a shell having eaten nothing.  Being alone in the house (the cat wisely stayed outside) without company of any kind, my sleeping thoughts were nightmares of the worst kind--they were based in fact.  My waking thoughts, if possible, were worse.  One friend, wife dead, blind and alone, another sleeping in the psyche ward that very night, others in various stages of disrepair. . . I felt a feeble hollowness I'd not yet known.  There was nothing other than that but the ticking silence of the house.  This is how it ends, I guess.  It is scary as hell, no doubt, but it really pisses you off, too.  Maybe Will Loman had it right, I thought.  A man must add up to something.

The fever was passing on Sunday until evening, of course, when all illnesses intensify, and then at bedtime, having been in bed for thirty-six of the last forty-eight hours, sleep was difficult but the only refuge from more thinking in the dead, black silence of the night.  I went to bed thinking that if at all possible, I'd go to work on Monday just to hear another voice, but Monday morning came and I could not make my legs obey me shaky as they were, so I called in to take another day.  By noon I had gone back to bed, but by mid-afternoon I had gotten up and taken a small walk around the block.  Nothing was right.  Still having eaten little, I felt myself a corpse.  When a friend's sister brought her car to a halt to ask me why I wasn't at work, I realized how rotten I still felt.  I could barely string words together.  Back home, I drank a glass of water and decided I needed to get some things from the grocery store before people started leaving work.  I should not have been driving.  By the time I got to the store, I was a sweaty mess.  I walked across the tiled floors like a junky or a half-wit.  I couldn't remember why I'd come, couldn't focus on the shelves.  I was lost.

Now evening is approaching once again and my energy levels drop.  My throat becomes sore.  I begin to cough up again that hideously dangerous goo.  My nose begins to drip.  This must be the flu, I think, that the vaccine was made for.  I can see how it can kill the aged.  For all of you who think that nature is sublime, you can think again.  It doesn't care for you one wit.  You can try to live in harmony with it.  Animals do.  And domestic animals live much, much longer than those in the wild.

My thoughts are wild and black right now.  I've spent most of four days alone in a stinking, spewing mess of disease with the awfulest of terrible ideas to keep me company.  If I come out of this O.K., it will seem a miracle.  But I can guarantee you that I won't be the same.  My life will not be.  There is something worse than they teach you waiting for you.  It's not like one of those fucking lying Hollywood movies with sweet sad music and your family and friends.  It isn't some spiritual awakening with blue skies calling you.  I am sure as shitting it is none of that.  And you can be certain of one goddamned thing--I'm stocking up a heavy drug cache right now.  If I'd had one goddamned codeine tablet or one stash of opium, it would have all passed away easily, without the nausea, without the pain, and without the scarring nightmares.

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Morning now, and the fever is gone though I still feel the sticky, cold glistening of a sick sweat upon me.  I will shower and go to work for awhile just to be on my feet.  I won't last the day, but these things must be done.  I will wander among healthy people until it is too awful.  Perhaps I will take a walk this afternoon to begin to get some legs underneath me.  I must return to myself.  There are things that need attending.