We've been livin' in the North for a whole year now. It's summertime again, and New York is still freezin' by my standard. Nat says it's nice to not have to pay the air conditionin' as much, but I wish I did. I miss my lil' farm and the lazy summer days there more and more with each 75 degree day. Plus, how do I know my house ain't been knocked down in a twister? Alfred says the folks he's got workin' down there'd tell me, but I dunno about that.
I'm feelin' a lil' bit out of it when I get back from my work, after pickin' Maribel up from daycare. The Happy Tomato Daycare center's run by Antonio Fernández Carriedo, who is the nation of Spain, which as far as I got from Nat tryin' to e'splain to me is just European Mexico. He watches nation kids for free, which is nice. I guess he ain't a pedo-phile after all, as they ain't allowed to have daycare licenses which he does. Still kinda creeps me out, though. Maribel likes him, at least, and her two friends, Elise DeBoer and Marina Beilschmidt go there too, and even though I only met Elise's daddy once, I trust he wouldn't let a pedo-phile babysit his kid. I dunno about Gilbert, seein' as he'd probably let his friend look after Marina no matter what.
Either way, I'm feelin' out of it, not really sick, but tired and outta breath just from walkin' from the car to the house, and Nat looks over at me when I walk in the door and she goes,
"J.G., you don't look so good. I'm goink to get the thermometer." and walks off to get the thing and Maribel looks at me and asks,
"Didn't'cha git yer shots, Daddy? 'Cuz then you won't git the real bad sickies like smallpox and measles!" She must be a Southern state 'cuz she still talks like me and not her yankee friends and person-cations don't lose their accents, no matter how long they live in a different place. I just sigh at her.
"Maribel I think you mean chicken pox and I already got that and measles when I was about yer age, so it ain't that." I tell her. Then Nat's back with the thermometer and she sticks it in my mouth 'til it beeps at her and then she tsks and says,
"You're runnink temperature of 101.2 American. Is that high?" Nat don't say "ferenheit," she says "American." She lost the cute quirk where she said it "amm-err-i-ken" on account of livin' here for so long, but that's okay.
"Yeah," I say, "I'm s'posed to be around 98-point-somethin'." Just then I go into a real bad coughin' fit and Nat helps me get my jacket off.
"I think you are sick. Go to the bed, now." she says. I don't argue.
I'm in the water, it's a river, maybe the Mississippi that I used to play in back durin' the Civil War, and it's murky and cool, and I'm pullin' for the surface all I can and I ain't makin' it, and I'm runnin' outta breath and I still ain't even close and I can't draw my breath 'cuz there's water and I'm outta breath now and I'm breathin' water and tryin' to cough it back out and then I'm awake...
"Jason, cough!" Nat says, sittin' me up. I still can't breathe. Good Lord I can't breathe... I'm tryin' to pull air in, but it ain't goin' in, not nearly enough, and it feels bubbly and raspy in my chest, but I ain't thinkin' on that, I'm thinkin' on how I can't breathe still and there's a pain in my chest, and I wonder if I'm havin' a heart attack, and I don't think I am but I might be, and Nat's whackin' me on the back, shoutin' across the house,
"Mari-bel, hosovenyet-sota-genyevsnet!"
And my vision's gettin' fuzzy and the last thing I hear is Maribel goin'
"My daddy's real sick and ain't breathin' right and my mama's tryin' to help him, we live in Cityscape Homes right by the 109th street subway..." into the house phone.
And then I'm passed out 'cuz I still couldn't breathe...
I wake up and feel somethin' in my throat, and I can't breathe, but I sorta can, and I feel like I'm gonna gag on whatever it is. I try to call out for help, but I can't make a sound, with the machine suckin' air outta me and forcin' it in. Instead, I hear a loud beep from the machine and a young woman in a nurse's white uniform hurries over and looks at me carefully.
"J.G., do you know where you are?" she asks. I shake my head just a lil' bit and start to reach up to get the tube from my mouth that's makin' me feel like I'm suffocatin'. The nurse stops me, "You might hurt yourself if you pull that out. I'll take it away as soon as all the fluid is drained from your lungs, in about five minutes. As for where you are, you're in the ICU- Intensive Care. Your daughter called the ambulance when you stopped being able to breathe." she says.
I feel a pain in the side of my chest and I look over and see a clear plastic tube full of golden brown liquid that's goin' into a lil' bag that's about a quarter full. The other end's goin' inside my chest, and I yelp the best I can and try to squirm away. Nurse stops me again.
"That tube is taking the infected fluid out of your lungs so you don't get sicker." she tells me. I've got another tube in my hand, too. In my throat, in my chest and in my veins, I got tubes to spare right now. I hate that I can't control my breathin', and I hate the way the tube in my chest feels like it's shiftin' and gonna stab me whenever I squirm and I ain't never goin' to the doctor again. Ever.
Soon, Nurse leaves and a doctor comes in and smiles, says, "I'm Doctor Samson and I'm going to take those tubes out of you." and presses some buttons on the breathin' machine. The air-pumpin' stops. The doctor grabs the tube right at my mouth, holds my chin with a hand to keep me down, and with a gag from my throat takes the tube out. I take a raspy, bubbly breath on his instruction and he frowns with an ear on my chest. He soon comes back with a big tank and a mask and puts the mask on my face. It smells like plastic and the metal part on top kinda sits heavy on my nose. I cough a hard, dry sound and gasp loud and hard to get enough air, almost soundin' like I got whoopin' cough, I think, and he works a lil' faster to turn a knob on the tank. I feel air kinda softly blow on me and I feel like I'm gettin' enough now, so I kinda patiently look at him and hope he gets this damn tube outta my chest soon.
"J.G., we need to figure out what happened to you." Nat says. I mess with the mask givin' me air that covers my mouth and nose. I can talk fine with it on, unlike the thing I woke up in the ICU in, with a tube down my throat makin' my chest rise and fall and another in my chest to get the 'fected stuff out, but I don't really wanna talk too much even if I can, as I get outta breath real easily right now.
"What'd they say was wrong?" I ask, in a breathy way. I'm still in the hospital, with this stupid-lookin' mask on, and Maribel usin' a colorin' book in the corner.
"Pneumonia, as a complication from a malaria parasite's wvhatever-endoma-" Nat stops as I give her a really confused look, "When you got malaria the bad bugs stayed in you and then just now they got in your lungs and made them get fluid in them and the fluid got germs in it and so the lungs stopped workink." She 'splains simply.
"Ugh..." I say.
"Ugh is right." Nat agrees, "Nation do not just get pneumonia and need to go to the ER for it. We usually repair ourselves before that point. Somethink awful must have happened in your part of the country."
I turn on the TV and there's news- A hurricane hit Louisiana. A big one. I cough and the air-machine buzzes at me 'cuz it don't like it when I make air go into it instead of into me. Luckily, the hurricane, Katrina, they're callin' it, didn't seem to hit South Carolina, and so my farm is safe. I wonder if Alfred's feelin' it and I bet he ain't, not nearly as much as me.
"Oh no..." I breathe in regards to the news.
"No wonder you are so sick." Nat says. "You will probably be better once the floods stop."
"Yeah..." I breathe again.
I am better, in a couple weeks. For a year after, though, I'm gonna have to carry a in-haler in case I get somethin' that I can't breathe. Floods as bad as Katrina really mess a nation up.
