Sick Day
先生。 Leoは日を救う! 、Hamatoの一族逃げなさい!
Two-shot turtle tot fiction! Oh, no...everyone in the Hamato household is sick! Everyone that is...except Leo! Can one determined turtle tot tend a sick father and three brothers, when it seems like everything is falling apart at the seams?
Hallo, everyone! ^^ I hope you're all well-went through a bit of depression for awhile, or my own personal 'sick day.' But I'm alright now, and am in the mood to turn myself over to the muse. :D It wants a turtle tot story. And peaches, for some reason. I've craving one right now...
*Blinks, starts.* Oh! Sorry. This fiction is for all of my kind readers, who cheer me on. *Blushes, looks at ground.* Shucks. Will not cry, will not cry, will not...
Ah, who am I kidding? *Bursts into tears.*
Please, take care everyone, and remember, I do not own the turtles! (Thankfully...ah, well...^^)
Quote:
"There's just one cure for a cold in the head...
A hot cup of cocoa, and a nice, warm bed."
It wasn't fair. It just wasn't fair.
The red clad turtle angrily snuffled, sneezed, and swabbed at his nose with a small fist, before ducking underneath his cotton comforters. Grumbling, Raph soon kicked them off, burying his fevered face in his already hot pillow, shuddering.
There had to be somethin' in tat law book Don read sometimes that said when ya got sick, you had something to legally contract that you'd be well again soon; some sort of guarantee, dumb idea though it was. That guarantee was usually your mom or dad or somethin', it seemed, but they oughta put it into the books.
...not that the law explicitly applied to mutant terrapin creatures, but all the same, it didn't seem fair that...well...Raph relaxed just a little bit, kicking his feet on the bed.
He didn't need lookin' after. He was seven years old, plenty old enough to know the ways of the world. 'N stuff. 'N whatever.
Raph glared at the bed beside him, which beheld Mikey's coughing figure. The little prankster had caught the bug just hours before Raph did, and probably went around da sewas touching everything within reach to spread it to the others. Raph fondly wished he had the strength to bap him, but it seemed a difficult task to do when Mikey was hackin' like that, even if he were in good health.
Don's face was hot and flushed; several crumpled tissues lay about his blankets; only, instead of Raph, who found the room far too hot, Don couldn't seem to get any warmth. He lay huddled over, and Raph was fairly positive that if it were possible for the Hamato turtles to disappear inside of their shells, Don would have long ago. Judging by how Don's teeth were chattering, you'd think Santa and Jack Frost were havin' ice cream cones in here.
Raph plunked on his shell, staring at the ceiling. It was miserable. He wished he could simply fall asleep until this rotten mess was over, and he could run around again. His head hurt, his body ached, and shook with fever, his throat burned, and his stomach felt ready to send any mail it received 'back to sender' express-style.
And the smell he could faintly discern with his stuffy nose coming from the kitchen wasn't making him feel any better. Raph sighed.
If only Masta' Splinta wasn't down, too.
Sensei was good with this kind of stuff. He'd hold your head over the toilet while you threw up, and when ya felt like going to shell pieces after that, he'd remind you to rinse your mouth before you got a cold fizzy drink. Raph perked up at the idea. Master Splinter normally didn't approve of the turtles having soda, but did allow them to have a small amount when they had the stomach flu. Something about fluids.
After that, he made you brush your teeth again, and he wiped your forehead with a cool wrap before ya went to bed again, this time, with different sheets and pillowcases that didn't smell all mediciney and yuck. Then, lather, rinse, repeat for a day or two, maybe with some hot soup, and you were up and kicking.
But there wasn't any of that this time. Master Splinter had become ill, just as he, Mikey, and Donny had, and now the poor guy was lying down in his small alcove with a cool rag over his head. Raph wished that, of all people, well, maybe excluding Mikey, that he had been the one to be well. Not out of selfish desire, but-
"Breakfast!"
Raph mentally groaned. He wondered if a few tears would get him out of this one. He turned to the door-
Too late. The pillow vanished from under him, and Raph yelped as his form went splunking to the bed. Growling, Raph twisted around to meet Leo, who was too busy switching the pillow with another.
"Gosh, this pillow's hot, now..." Leo commented, lying another where Raph's original pillow had been. The red-clad turtle glowered at him as Mikey managed a choked-sort of laugh.
"Considerin' it's Mr. Hothead's pillow, I'm surprised Leo can hold that thing without oven mitts!"
Donny either laughed or sneezed; or a combination of the two. Raph glared at Mikey, but rolled his eyes, and plopped onto the new pillow, shooting up again just as fast.
"Acck! Leo, this pillow is freezing! Where'd you get it, cold storage?"
The leader only blinked at him before picking up the tray he'd lugged into the room from the floor.
"I left the pillowcase in the freezer."
Raph would have laughed if his sense had humor hadn't gone as cold as the block of ice from below him.
"The freezer." he repeated. Leo nodded, a small smile on his face.
"Yes! You were complaining that it was too hot in here...well, problem solved!"
Raph sourly stared at him before picking up the pillow, and bashing it against the wall. It made a loud, deafening THUD! that left Raph rolling his eyes.
"I could use this thing for a gong, Leo. But silly me, I forgot gongs make nifty pillowcases."
Leo just shook his head before presenting the first tray to Raph, who eyed it apprehensively.
And, as Leo lifted the lid off the small pot, he'd found he'd been right to do so.
It might have been oatmeal once. The smell said otherwise; more like burning socks and something a sick cat might have spit up. Raph stared at the platter with horror as Leo proudly advanced with his small tray over to Mikey.
Raph halfheartedly reached for the spoon that would undoubtedly need to be ripped out, thrown in a trash bag, and buried somewhere very far away later on for the contact. But to Raphael's surprise, the spoon would not come free. Annoyed, he tugged at it, and at last, it came free...
...only, the oatmeal came free from the bowl. The spoon was stuck inside the burned mixture, but the oatmeal came loose from the bowl, as if it were a mere Popsicle, and the spoon its wooden stick.
Raph went a much richer shade of green then how he usually was.
Whatever had died on this plate had died an awful lot.
Mikey swallowed, then winced at the resounding sting his throat vehemently gave in response. Eyes watering, both from fatigue and the terrible smell that was omnipresent on the small tray in front of him in the shape of pure, unmolested evil, the tired, orange-clad turtle closed them, resisting the urge to whimper.
"Well?"
Mikey opened his eyes. Oh, how he wished he hadn't done that. Leo was still perched by Mikey's bed, eyes sparkling proudly as Mikey dumbly turned his face back to what might have once been eggs. Or, volcanic ash. Either guess might have been congruent.
"U-Um...Leo?"
"Yes?"
"Remember when I said I l-like my eggs sunny-side up?"
The turtle next to Mikey nodded, smiling.
"Yeah. I may have burned one or two of the first, but this one came out okay."
Mikey glanced at the charcoal on his plate. Gosh, Leo must have burned the other eggs to incineration. He turned over the eggs, ignoring the sloppy tea mug in front of him. How does someone ruin tea?
"Leo, I don't see the sunny. It actually looks like the forecast says rain."
"Oh, come on, Mikey, they're not that bad."
Mikey stabbed at his eggs, feeling sickened as he turned to what he assumed might have once been toast...albeit burned past recognition.
"Leo, I, um..."
Donny buried himself deeper inside his blankets, wondering if he could will the breakfast place full of death away with his mind. He closed his eyes, screwed his face up, and concentrated.
...no.
...still nothing.
...nada.
Donny sighed, opening his eyes in time to see Leo give him a very strange look.
"Donny, you okay? Want me to get you anything? If you don't want porridge, I can whip you up something else, if you like."
The polite way to answer was 'no, thanks,' but the one Donny was itching for was, 'I'd rather stew roadkill in a gallstone sauce, thank you very much.' But Don just shook his head as he stirred the cement-like mixture.
"...Leo, why'd you put mustard on this?"
"I thought it would look better."
Don stared at the shapeless mess in front of him.
It reminded him of igneous rocks, or yuck molecules, or one of those countries that looks like where they are going to build a country one day, or that yellow goop Don had seen gradeschoolers use on the TV to glue a bunch of things to a piece of poster board to be hung up in a hallway, and then never spoken of again.
That, or a taco shredded through a processor. The possibilities were endless. Don cast a pleading glance at Leo, who was bending over to wring out a small handkerchief in a bucket of cold water.
"Um, t-thanks? But, I, um, Leo?"
"Hmm?"
The blue-clad turtle turned around, just as Raph was about to tell him to take the food-or what might have once been food-back to the kitchen. And then, preferably flung into the sewers, though never in a canal. The water was polluted enough as it was. But both the red and purple clad turtles fell silent, while Mikey poked at his egg again, looking nauseous.
"Hey, Leo? What happened to your hands?"
Leonardo glanced down at his bandaged fingertips.
"Mmm? Oh, had an accident with the stove. I forgot to wear mitts."
"Why the shell would ya do that for?" Raph asked incredulously, albeit somewhat hoarsely. Those cuts looked pretty nasty.
Leo simply shrugged. Mikey glanced up.
"Uh...Leo? Question: Why didn't you make us cold cereal?"
"That would have been burned, too," muttered Raph underneath his breath. "Leo would find a way to set it on fire."
Leo's brow furrowed. "Sensei said it was best that you guys ate something hot. So, well..."
He shrugged, before starting, as if he remembered something.
"Oh! I was going to bring those bingo mats for you guys to play with...but..."
Mikey pitifully shook his head.
"Leo, Leo, Leo. Don't you know that bingo was invented in ye olden days when people played bingo to have something to do until Fun was invented?"
Leo rolled his eyes, but smiled.