5:23 p.m. - 2006-09-13
Revenge of the Smothered Chicken
REVENGE OF THE SMOTHERED CHICKEN

Two a.m. is a rotten time to wake up, expecially when you're on day shift the next day--or that day--today, which it is. Something in my stomach is churning, boiling, roiling. I try ignoring it, try propping up my pillows, try denying that it's happening at all...but I know this feeling, and so (sighing dramatically) I get out of bed, walk to the phone with one hand over my belly, and call work.
First try: nobody answers.
Hang up, try again: a wrong number, somebody's voice mail.
Third try: Al, one of the midnight crew picks up.
"Can you hold on a minute?" I ask, and rush to the bathromm. I'm back in a few minutes, and Al says, "So, Maya, I guess you're calling in sick."
"Uh-huh," I say and hang up and run to the bathroom again.
And that's my early morning activity until things slow down enough for me to rummage thru the medicine cabinet and find something that might help.
It takes about an hour to work, and then I'm so tired, plus the medicine has drowsiness as a side effect--and I'm pretty much thankful for that.
I creep back to bed, but keep the light on in the bathroom. I'm cold and shaky and can't get warm enough, but sweating paradoxically at the same time. Outside my window the wind is howling and whipping around the corners of my apartment building, trying to break in, trying to make me even colder than I am already. I pull my knees up until I'm almost in a fetal position, lying on my side; and I pull the blankets over my head. The medicine, aided by exhaustion, starts to make me drowsy. I feel myself slipping down, down--leaving the cold and the wind behind--down into a warmer place where I'm just out of reach of the wind and the cold.
I only ordered the smothered chicken because I wanted to see if it would come with a little pillowcase still on its head, and I'm sorry, and I'll never eat a smothered chicken again.

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