Norovirus

It’s the middle of the night. The cold tile of my mom’s bathroom floor is burning my clammy shins as I grip the handles of the pot, numbly watching the bile inside it swish around. It’s not long before I vomit into it again.

I had thought I had avoided it. The norovirus had been going around my elementary school for weeks, and despite the myriad of kids coming down with it, I had managed to stay healthy. That is, until now.

 

Afterwards, I lie down on my dad’s side of my parents’ bed, the smell of burnt cinnamon wafting from the herbal heating pad that’s soothing my nausea just enough for me to drift back to sleep. Of course, within an hour or two, I wake up and puke up my guts some more. And so the cycle repeats itself until morning. 

When daylight comes, I migrate downstairs to the family room couch. My mom makes me some cream of wheat, which I choke down only to throw up again later. My temperature is 102-or-103-something, high enough that my parents look up if it’s high enough that I should go to the hospital. (It’s not – that’s 104.)

The day passes in a blur of watching TV and trips to the bathroom down the hall. I have the pot by the side of the couch in case I can’t make it to the toilet. It was a big black pot with silver handles, the kind of pot you would cook pasta in. Despite not having thrown up in it since early that morning, it seemed to emit a perpetual stink of stomach bile. Even now as I’m typing this, saying “the pot” makes an echo of nausea churn in my stomach.

What I most remember about that day happens in the afternoon. I don’t remember why my sister was home, but she was, and she, my mom and I decided to watch Freaky Friday. I had eaten cherry Jello before the movie started, and midway through I had to excuse myself to vomit yet again. The Jello burns just as much coming back up as everything else had, but it doesn’t taste nearly as bad, which, thank God. I can taste the cherry red echo of the vomit in my mouth as I settle back down on the couch. 

At around 11 at night, I fall asleep listening to Sweet Genius on the TV, the colors of it dancing across my eyelids as I drift off. I wake up early the next morning, and it’s like the last day never happened. I’m running around, full of energy, and my temperature is a normal 98.6 degrees. But the best part? Even though I felt fully recovered, I still got to stay home from school.