Nine to ten, ten to eleven, eleven to twelve, twelve to one - he'd been asleep for four hours, after going to bed early with a headache. The headache had grown in strength. His stomach was cramping, squeezing his guts like a slick fist. He felt simultaneously nauseous and hungry.
It was only a few steps from the bathroom to the kitchen - hell, it was only a few steps from anything to anything in the two-room apartment he shared with the love of his life. By the time he arrived in front of the sink he was beginning to think leaving the bathroom had been a mistake. He left a glass under the slow-trickling water filter they had attached to the faucet and made his way back to the toilet where he proceeded to expel everything out of the other end of his stomach that had not uprooted during the first mass exodus. In the middle of this it became necessary to grab the trash can and project from both ends at once. He felt an odd sense of accomplishment at this as his stomach spasms subsided.
Back to the kitchen, where the glass stood overflowing in the sink as the faucet valiantly continued its trickle. He grabbed the cool drink and an apple off the microwave and shuffled his way back to bed.
An hour and a half later he was still awake, trying to read through the dull blaring pain rattling around behind his eyes. Periodically his stomach would shift, a writhing ball of cold snakes in his belly, and he was pretty sure things were going to get worse before they got better. In the circle of luminescence cast by the tiny booklight on his novel he spotted drops of sweat wrinkling the page. It was November, and very cold, and yet as he rocked back in forth with the blankets pooled around his waist, he couldn't seem to stop sweating. Everything inside him, it seemed, wanted out. No use fighting it. Back to the bathroom.
Things were a little harder this time - not the relatively smooth upchuck of earlier, these spasms came like a punch to the gut, more noise than substance, more apple and water than anything else. The chunks of red-skinned fruit looked disturbingly like pieces of his own insides, jarred loose in the tsunami of disease that had taken residence inside his frame. One particularly solid piece of regurgitate hit the water with a significant plop and splashed toilet juice directly into his mouth, prompting a fresh convulse from the old crap-factory. Fuck this, he thought, I'll do the rest of my puking in bed thank you very much. With all the grace of a palsied old man he shambled back to bed and crashed to the bed beside the still blissfully unaware figure of his girlfriend. She had to get up at 5 am. Let her sleep.
The book he was reading was quite good, much better this second time through than he remembered it being when he'd read it in college. It served as a distraction for a little while, until finally the confines of his torso could no longer remain stationary and, remembering his last delicious taste of bathroom, he turned and vomited in the bedside trash can with a strangled moan. These battle cries of the common flu eventually aroused the sleeping beauty beside him, and she laid a cool hand on his hot back. "Are you alright?" she asked, already sounding pretty awake.
"No," he said pitiably, pitying himself quite a bit in the process, "I feel absolutely horrible." There was nothing left inside him to be expelled, and yet his body was still clenching and unclenching, struggling to push out what was no longer in, but the worst of it seemed to have past. He felt his awareness move from the cramps and queasy feeling in his stomach and become centered on the dull roar of pain in his head. He rolled onto his side, facing away from her so as to avoid exposing her to his foul breath, and said simply "hold me."
There's an odd comfort that comes when you are in the bleakest moments, when the physical vessel you inhabit turns against you and the night stretches onwards, out of sight, in either direction, and the sunrise can't come fast enough if only for the hope it brings with it that all things must pass. Eventually I'll die, he realized, and the knowledge filled him in a way that was inconceivable during the overstimulating light of day and freedom of health. Eventually this will end, and all the agony and ecstasy I've experienced will be free to dissipate and spread amongst the stars. Eventually these chemical bonds will break, and the constant struggle to simply not fly apart, a million pieces in all directions, will come to a satisfying end. Eventually he will feel better. Eventually he fell asleep.
