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"That's terrible! Need me to come over?" She asked. "I could cancel some appointments and be home early."
"Don't worry. Come home when you can" I told her. "I'm about to make Don some chicken soup."
"That'll do wonders!" she said.
"I hope so! Well, I need to get the soup started for Don" With that we said our good byes and I started on the soup. Don was lying down on the couch, watching T.V.
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As soon as I saw that Dad was busy, I decided to call the office to see how the case was progressing. So, I discreetly got the phone that was on a small table next to the couch. Layla, as usual, was resting on the cable box after inspecting me. Unfortunately, I was caught by Dad
"Give me that phone!" He grabbed it from me before I could even dial. "You are going to rest!"
"Dad! Come on!" I complained, and he took it with him. I watched T.V.
Eventually, Dad brought a T.V tray, and then served me the soup. The cat hovered nearby.
"Layla!" Dad scolded. "I already gave you chicken! Leave Don alone!"
Annoyed, the cat went back to the satellite box.
The soup was okay, but I wasn't really in the mood for eating. I just wanted to rest. It took effort just to sit up and eat.
Around six, Natalie came home.
"Feeling any better?" she asked after Dad gave her a hello kiss.
"Not really" I shook my head.
"Between your Dad's TLC, and the antibiotics, you'll recover from this" she assured me.
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Don tried to respond, but coughed instead. Poor Guy! He looked terrible.
"Would you like some soup?" Alan offered "I made a lot"
"Sure" I served myself. It gave me energy, and tasted wonderful. So, I told Alan "This could raise the Dead!"
He smiled.
Sports, of course, blared on the T.V. Alan sat with Don, and I did as well, but read a book from this series about, a necromancer. After a bit, Don started to cough a lot.
"Babe, I think we've got vapor rub in the bathroom." I said, and then got up to get it.
"It's fine" Don said when I handed him the bottle. Guess he'd rather cough than smell it.
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"It'll help with the congestion in your chest!" Dad argued. After some more nagging from him, I put it on when Natalie went to the kitchen. She returned with something for me.
"Here's a little something. It's lemon tea with Honey. It'll do you good" Natalie gave me the mug.
"Thanks!" I drank it and found the tea to be pretty good. At ten or so, Dad shooed me to bed.
"You need your rest!" he insisted.
The guest room had a small T.V, but no satellite. By the smell of the sheets, I knew that Dad had put in the some clean ones.
I woke up coughing. Seeing the glow in the dark clock, I saw that it was half past midnight.
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Since it was Friday night, I was still up, watching T.V. On my way to the bathroom, I heard Don coughing, so I went in to see what was wrong. Alan of course, beat me to it. He and Don were arguing.
"Put some more vapor rub on yourself!" Alan ordered.
"Fine..." Don coughed harshly.
"Could you get me the Nyquil?" Alan asked me.
"Sure babe" I got it, and then gave the bottle to Don.
After a while, the coughing got better.
"I'll be in the next room if you need me" Alan told Don
"Thanks Dad"
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"Are you coming to bed soon?" I asked as we left the guest room. I hated to sleep alone.
"In a bit." she said.
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For breakfast, I made Don Oatmeal and toast and served it to him in bed around eleven.
"Dad! I could've gotten up!" he protested, while coughing. I straightened the blankets. My son liked to think that he didn't need to be taken care of. Sometimes, I blamed myself, because of the attention we had to give Charlie. Margaret and I, it would seem, had made Don believe that he needed to or could take care of himself. Sometimes I wished that I could go back in time and knock some sense into my thirty something self.
Just then, Charlie came into the room.
"Natalie told me that you were here" he said to his brother.
"Any leads?" Don asked.
"No shop talk!" I ordered, gave them a stern glare, and went to eat breakfast with Nat.
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"How's Don?" I asked Alan, when he returned from the kitchen with a full mug of coffee and his breakfast
"The same. I just hope Charlie's not wearing him out with shop talk!" he groaned.
"Has he taken his medicine?"
"When he's finished with breakfast, I'll give it to him" Alan promised.
Before we finished our breakfast, Charlie was on his way out.
"Going already Charlie?" Alan found it odd, as did I.
"Don wants me to get back to work" he told us.
"Aren't you at least going to have some breakfast?" I offered.
"I'll grab something on the way" With that he left.
Monday came and Don really hadn't shown any improvement, so Alan decided to take the day off. I offered to do the same, but he told me that it wasn't necessary.
"Hot nights?" Vera teased me on Monday morning. Guess I looked tired. God knows I felt it.
"No...one of Alan's sons is sick, and he coughed almost the whole night" I explained.
Around ten, I had a house call. My partners and I did them, though we didn't' really advertise that fact and we charged extra, especially if it was an animal you could bring to the clinic. The patient, a large boa constrictor, which could never fit into the clinic, or on the examining table, was at a pet store. An employee led me to a back room. The animal was about twelve feet in length and quite wide.
"He's got the sniffles, and hasn't been eating much" she told me. That wasn't good. A snake with a respiratory infection can't smell, and therefore won't eat. This leads to physical weakness, which in turn could cause the poor animal to get something worse, like pneumonia. I injected broad spectrum antibiotics, into it, and told the employee to do the same at the indicated times.
Since the pet store, was near my and Alan's place, I stopped by to see how Don was doing.
"Hey Nat!" Don called me from the couch.
"How are you feeling Don"
"Better!" he said, but didn't look it. Plus, he started to cough right then.
"Nat!" Alan smiled and kissed me. He had been sitting with Don, doing crosswords.
"I had a house call nearby, and thought I'd drop in" I explained.
"You do house calls?" Don was surprised.
"Yeah, but we keep it on the down low" I replied. "It was a boa with a respiratory infection."
"Snakes get respiratory infections?" Don asked. I noticed that he was still wearing his father's pajamas.
"If you've got lungs, you can get respiratory infections" I explained.
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"Want me to make you lunch?" Dad generously offered Natalie.
"I've gotta make my next appointment." she told him. "I'll get fast food on my way back."
"Are you sure?" he asked.
"Yeah I am." she gave him a kiss, then left.
For lunch, Dad made lentil soup, which I hated.
"It's good for you!" He insisted, when he served it on the TV table and I just picked at it. "One of the reasons why you're sick is because you live on take out!"
Reluctantly, I ate it in between coughs.
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Don actually looked worse, when I came home from work.
"How is he?" I asked Alan softly when he gave me a kiss in the doorway.
"He started to cough more, and I think his temperature is up." Alan told me with concern.
"Hey Natalie" Don said with less energy than before, as he saw some game.
"Here's another blanket for you, Donnie" Alan put another one on him.
"It's fine! I don't need another blanket!" Don argued like a five year old. Why did he have to fight over everything? Couldn't he just appreciate his father's attentions?
"Why aren't you wearing socks?" Alan asked him when he added the blanket
"I dunno"
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"Well, put them on!" Dad scolded and gave me a pair. Natalie made me some tea.
"Thanks!" I told her, when she gave it to me.
"Anything else?" she asked.
"No, thanks."
The tea helped a little, and tasted pretty good. I still felt like crap though. I could barely breathe, and just walking made me tired. I had aches all over, and felt cold.
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When the game was over, Don handed me the remote control. Then he told Alan
"Dad, I think by tomorrow, I should be well enough to go home."
"Go home? In your condition?" Alan asked with disbelief. I didn't blame him.
"I think the worst is over" Don insisted.
"I'll be the one to decide that!" Alan told him sternly. I agreed the Don needed to be taken care of. He looked pale, and had no energy whatsoever.
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The truth was that I preferred to stay at my apartment. I could easily watch T.V all day there, and make myself instant soup. It would be more comfortable for me. Natalie was nice enough, but living with her was annoying. She walked too loudly, and shut the closed the door roughly. Then, she read some weird and dumb books. It irritated me how she called Dad 'babe'. You don't call men in their sixties Babe. Period.
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Don kept Alan and me awake, despite us being in bed, with his loud coughing. It's times like this that I wished that I had sleeping pills, which would help me doze off despite the noise. We checked on him, made the guy put on vapor rub, and gave him Nyquil. Then, we returned to bed. Alan, in the darkness, started to talk about how he felt partly responsible for Don's illness getting to this point, because of how he and his wife had to give so much attention to Charlie, as a child, that Don was too often parented on autopilot, causing Don to not be willing to rely on anybody.
"You two did the best you could, babe" I held his hand. "You can't expect yourself to know then what you know now."
He kissed my hand and held me closer
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The next day, around six in the evening, I was about to get up and grab some Nyquil from the bathroom, but Natalie went in first to shower, and Dad joined her sometime later, when he thought I wasn't looking. With a sigh, I coughed my ass off, and watched T.V.
For dinner, Dad, wearing that dumb 'real men love cats' tee-shirt, made fried chicken with steamed rice. A weird combo. He must've done it for Natalie because he usually makes mashed potatoes with fried chicken.
"I saved you a thigh" he told me while serving it with a side of rice, in the living room. I wasn't really hungry, but it beat the green pea soup he made me eat at lunch a few hours ago.
After dinner, I watched T.V while Dad played scrabble with Natalie.
"Why do you always get the question marks?" she whined during the game a couple of times.
Eventually, Dad won the game. I was glad.
"Guess you'll need to load the dishwasher" I could hear the smirk in his voice.
With a playful sigh, she got up and started. Then Dad joined me and asked who was playing.
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Sometime later, Don decided to bring up the going home thing again.
"I actually felt hungrier today" Don boasted.
"You only ate half of your soup, and that was because I nagged!" I pointed out. "Then you left most of the rice"
"The rice didn't have enough salt" Don said as an excuse."But I ate all of the chicken."
Then I realized what my son was trying to do. I asked "Is this your subtle way of telling me that you are well enough to go back to your place?"
"Yeah..." He admitted.
I sighed and shook my head. The 'Let Don go Home' campaign was getting on my nerves.
"I feel like I'm imposing!" Don argued.
"You're my son! You could never impose!" I told him. I couldn't let him go home in his condition. "Would you let me go home if I were you and you were me?"
"Let me watch the game!" Don went into avoidance mode rather than admit that he would do the same thing in my place.
TBC