Chapter 26: Sicknness
Author's Note: I loved the reviews from last chapter! :D Thanks so much guys! And sorry that I've been slow updating... a lot has been going on lately that I can't really explain. (And by the way, sorry if the beginning of this chapter is a bit gross to you guys) (Don't worry now, it's nothing bad xP). Review!
I woke up in the morning to the very pleasant sound of Freddie puking.
Melanie had stayed stayed with us for a night, but then had to go quickly. Since it was the beginning of summer, she was going on vacation with her best friend and her best friend's family for a long time over the summer. This was the day after she left.
Oh, right, back to Freddie puking. I know, if you were me you'd probably run to see where Freddie was to see if he was okay. Well, I'm Sam. And the sound of him throwing up woke me up approximately two hours before I wanted to.
I closed my eyes again, trying to fall back asleep and pretend that nothing happened, but then I heard Freddie puke again. I groaned quietly and forced myself out of bed. I slowly walked from my cot to the doorway of the bathroom. In our bathroom, I saw Freddie breathing heavily, leaning over the toilet.
"Uh... are you okay?" I asked awkwardly.
"Yeah, I love this," Freddie said weakly, able to be sarcastic even at his worst times. That made me slightly smile. He explained, not turning around just on case he had to be turned to the toilet, "I think this is from something I ate. From that new fast food restaurant you insisted we should sneak out and try last night."
I grinned, remembering the fast food from the night before. It was really greasy and all of the food tasted fake and rubbery. Best place I'd ever been. His bad attitude to it annoyed me, although he was throwing up after all. "Well sorry, you want me to hold your hair back or something?" I joked.
Before he could answer with one of his "witty" comebacks, Freddie threw up in the toilet again. I sharply turned my head away in disgust. Him throwing up reminded me of the way my mom was, every morning after drinking too much the night before. That pretty much meant every morning, ever.
"Where's my mom?" he asked weakly from behind me, as I was still turned away.
"I'll get her..." I said awkwardly. I walked out of our room into the kitchen. I saw Marissa in a red checkered apron, cooking yolkless scrambled eggs in the oven... Yeah, I don't get it either.
"Good morning, Sam," Marissa said sort of flatly, not in a cheery way like she used to. She barely made eye contact with me as she spoke. She still didn't like me, though Freddie and I had been following the new stupid ground rules well. We'd been eating our fruits and veggies, and I barely even saw him after nine o'clock. She still hated me though, but I was pretty used to it. She was slowly putting some eggs into the oven.
"Um, hey," I said awkwardly. I sneered as I looked at the very non-appetizing looking eggs on the pan. Succinctly, I said, "Just to tell you, Freddie's puking in the bathroom."
"WHAT?" Marissa screamed. She threw everything she was holding in the air, and quickly ran past me into Freddie's and my room. Somehow she ran so fast that she didn't get to see the wonderful sight of the pan of eggs falling upside down on the floor, yolkless eggs flowing around the floor.
I slowly turned away from the sight of the eggs streaming around the brown tiles. I walked into the doorway of the bathroom to see Marissa kneeling next to Freddie, rubbing his back lightly. It brought me flashbacks of the times I'd gotten sick in my childhood, when I lived with my mom. And she kicked me away from wherever I was getting sick, telling me to get over it.
I shook my head quickly and took a deep breath. Those times were over. Sure, Marissa sort of hated me, but she would still be there if I got sick.
"Mom, I think it was something I ate," Freddie told her. I widened my eyes, and after just one glance at me, Freddie widened his eyes too, realizing he shouldn't have said that. Marissa didn't know that we snuck out to go to that fast food place. Key words: snuck out. She would never have let her precious Fredward go to that place. I'll never get why.
"All you ate was my gluten free dinner!" Marissa exclaimed.
Freddie hesitated before saying, "Well, after I ate that mushy broccoli, my stomach did start to hurt."
I smirked. Good job, Freddork, I thought. She didn't find out about us sneaking out, and she might never give us that disgusting broccoli again.
Marissa stood. "Freddie, I'm going to go get your special medicine," she announced after quickly deciding.
Special medicine? Need I ask? Probably not. I was used to this stuff from living with the Bensons.
"No, mom, you don't need to." Freddie stood up and placed a hand on his stomach. He glanced at me, then back at his mom. "I just ate something bad. Trust me, I'll never eat it again." Freddie gave me a longer look after that; it may have lasted a couple of seconds. There was a slight smirk on his face, but not one that his mom would be able to catch.
"Fredward Benson, I'm getting your special medicine and that's final." Marissa wasn't one to give in that fast.
"Mom, the only store that has my 'special' medicine is all the way in Yakima. It's not worth it. I'm fine."
Marissa ignored him. She stomped out of the room, and I heard her feet make a loud sound after every step. She grabbed her pocket book and other things. She called from the doorway of the apartment, "I have my cell phone fully charged! If you need me, call me! If I don't answer, call 9-1-1!" And with that, she was gone. I took the next couple of seconds to laugh hysterically as Freddie glared at me.
Freddie groaned. "This is so dumb," he complained. "I feel better, now that I got that-stuff, I can't even call it food-out of my system. A good brushing of my teeth and flushing of the toilet and it'll feel like none of that drama happend. And half of that is done. Now, I just need to brush my teeth for... say... a half an hour and I'm all good!" Freddie grabbed his green tooth brush and started to brush his teeth.
I chuckled. "Frederly, I can't believe you're actually surprised. It's your mom."
Freddie shrugged, not being able to talk as he brushed his teeth.
I sat on my cot. I could still slightly see Freddie in the bathroom through the bathroom mirror from where I was sitting. I stared at him and thought about all that we'd gone through, but how we still acted the same as always. Our relationship was... weird, but it was kind of nice.
Freddie noticed me staring. "Wha?" he asked, through a tooth pasted mouth (so I guess he couldn't properly say 'what').
"I'm just... thinking," I said, looking down at my knees, covered with light blue jeans, for a moment.
"Abow wah?" he asked, and I figured he was asking 'about what'.
I smirked, looking back up. "The fact that I've survived a few months with the Bensons."
Freddie smirked through his toothbrush. "Amih ih, you uv ih." Decoding what he was trying to say was getting annoying, especially because I wasn't sure if he meant 'admit it, you love it' or 'admit it, you love me'. I didn't answer that one, because whatever he was trying to say, he was probably right.
Later that day, when we figured Marissa was probably almost home, the home phone in the kitchen rang.
Freddie walked into the kitchen and I followed behind him, bored from doing nothing but talking to Fredweird for hours, and hoping to be able to eavesdrop on Freddie's conversation with whoever was calling.
Freddie answered the phone quickly and put it to his ear. I put my head right next to his head with the phone between our heads so I could hear who was on the phone and what they were saying.
"Hello, is this Fredward Benson?" It was an unfamiliar, sophisticated sounding woman.
"Yes," Freddie seemed confused. "That would be me. Who is this?"
"Hi. I'm a receptionist from the Hospital of Seattle. Don't be alarmed, but your mother was just in a car accident, and she just checked in here moments ago."