Sickness

Jeremy is in preschool. He has a bright, gap-toothed smile, and a worn stuffed rabbit sticking out of his backpack. When it was new, a tag with the name “Snowy” had hung proudly off the rabbit’s left ear, but the name has long since degraded, along with the rabbit’s white color. Jeremy refers to it as Noey, and can't remember ever calling it anything else. When he's nervous, which is often, he buries his face in the threadbare place on its head where the fluff has worn off. His mommy says it’s dirty, and he's going to get a disease from it one day.

Rabbits aside, Michael Mell is Jeremy’s very first friend. Jeremy likes Michael from the day he meets him, and Jeremy’s mom likes Michael’s moms from the first time they talk. When she drives Jeremy home the day after being introduced to Michael and his family, she is beaming. “Your little friend is adorable, and so are his parents,” she says. “Now, don't suck your thumb. Do you want to scare him away?”

Jeremy nods, and switches to a different finger. His mom always says things like that to make him know what a good mommy she is.

When, later that week, the Mells set up a play date for Jeremy and Michael, Jeremy’s mom comes over to play too. Jeremy and Michael play Legos and Spider Man. Mrs. Charlie (Michael’s mom) plays movies and wine with Jeremy’s mom. Everybody likes this arrangement a lot, except for Mrs. Erica (Michael’s other mom). Mrs. Erica plays a game called looking worried and offering everybody too many cookies, but she loosens up on the second play date, and has a glass of mommy juice along with all the other grown-ups. Mrs. Charlie has two. Jeremy’s mom has a lot, so she falls asleep on the couch, and Jeremy gets to spend the night.

That night, Mrs. Erica comes to tuck Michael and Jeremy in, and Michael begs to be allowed to stay up and play until nine.

“Well,” says Mrs. Erica, with an indulgent smile, “it is a sleepover.”

Nine o’clock comes. Mrs. Charlie pops in to make a second attempt at tucking the boys in, and Jeremy asks if they can stay up until ten. He starts crying when Mrs. Charlie says no, because he's forgotten his rabbit, and he’s sure he can't sleep without it.

“That’s okay!” Michael says, smiling real big. He pushes all of the animals on his side of the bed over to Jeremy’s, and then goes into his closet and finds some more. Soon Jeremy is surrounded by a kitten, a frog, a snake, a lion, a fish, a horse, a dinosaur, and Michael’s favorite blanket — a ragged patch of a thing, that he's had since the day he was born. Mrs. Charlie only stops him when he opens up the cage on the far side of the room and hoists out his pet gecko, Little Foot, a squirming and baleful handful that doesn't look like a very good sleeping partner. Jeremy stops crying long enough to laugh at the idea of having a real lizard amongst his mountain of toys, and by the time Michael climbs back into the bed, it's so full that there is hardly enough room for him.

“I don’t have a rabbit,” Michael apologizes, “but I have me. I'll be here too. I'm not even afraid of the dark!”

“I'm not either,” Jeremy lies.

That night he finds that he isn't. Michael brings his own light.

———————-

Sleepovers at Michael’s become a regular thing, and usually Jeremy’s mom doesn't pass out drunk. Sure, she’ll have a glass or five before going over, but she always remembers to brush her teeth after.

“It washes the juice out of my mouth,” she tells Jeremy. “So I'm safe to drive.”

Jeremy sneaks his toothbrush into the hole in Noey’s stomach, because sometimes he drinks juice with Michael, mostly apple, but also kool-aid or Hi-C. It's okay if he forgets the toothbrush, though, because unlike his mommy, he never drinks so much that he can't walk in a straight line.

“It’s a disease,” Jeremy overhears his dad tell his mother once, in a pained whisper.

Deep down, though, Jeremy knows that his mom isn't afraid of diseases. She hasn't taken Noey away, after all. What she's really afraid of is needles. She keeps those far away from Jeremy.

———————

Jeremy’s mom invites Michael’s moms over for her birthday. There's cake and ice cream. She gives Michael and Jeremy remote control helicopters that really fly, and sends them out to play.

“I can't believe we get gifts on your mom’s birthday!” Michael enthuses. “This is awesome!”

Michael also starts getting gifts for Hanukkah, and dinner invitations on Passover. It's not long before Jeremy and Michael forget about being polite house guests when visiting one another. Jeremy forgets to keep his elbows off the table when eating at the Mell house, and Michael lets Jeremy talk him into sneaking onto the staircase landing to listen in to the things that their parents say late at night.

“You’re the most important people in the world to me,” Jeremy hears his mother slur to Mrs. Charlie and Mrs. Erica one night.

“You’re the most important person in the world to me,” he tells Michael later, looking him straight in the eye.

“I just don't know what to do sometimes,” Jeremy’s mother tells Michael’s on a different occasion.

“How do you do this?” Jeremy asks Michael, more times than he can count. “Can you do this for me? I never know what to do.”

“That's ridiculous,” Mrs. Erica says on another evening, and that really gets Michael and Jeremy’s attention, because Mrs. Erica is usually the one lending a sympathetic ear while Mrs. Heere rambles on and on. “That's borderline abuse.”

“It's keeping my child safe,” Jeremy’s mom insists, leaning in too close to Mrs. Erica.

“It's spreading disease.”

Jeremy looks guiltily at Noey, and hides the rabbit behind his back, instead of hugging it to his chest.

“And autism isn't a disease?” Jeremy’s mother retorts.

“It isn't!”

“Are you saying that I should pump my child full of chemicals?”

Michael tugs on Jeremy’s sleeve, but Jeremy pulls away, leaning closer to the railing.

“I'm saying that there are other people’s children to think about, and yes. Yes. You should pump him full of chemicals, because these chemicals will protect him.”

“Look,” Jeremy’s mom says, “what we’re talking about here is a judgement call. I can respect that you are trying to do what's best for Michael by giving him vaccines, but you have to respect that I'm trying to do what's best for Jeremy by not giving them to him. For goodness sake, the kid can't even tie his own shoes. Do you really think he could take me screwing with his brain?”

This time, when Michael tries to pull Jeremy away, he follows, and both boys race up the stairs.

“I can't tie my own shoes!” Jeremy woefully exclaims.

“I'm full of chemicals!” Michael cries out, in a similar tone.

“You’re full of chemicals!” Jeremy repeats.

“I'm full of vaccines!” says Michael.

“Vaccine chemicals?”

“Yeah! Chemical vaccines! I'm a mutant!”

“Like in X-men?”

“Yes,” Michael agrees. He is starting to look a little bit less upset at the prospect. “Just like in X-Men.”

———————-

Michael and Jeremy spend a happy hour testing out Michael’s mutant powers. They soon discover that he can't shape shift, explode things with his brain, command Little Foot the gecko, or fly. They’re halfway through testing whether or not Michael can read Jeremy’s mind, and it seems like they might be on to a breakthrough, when there’s a commotion downstairs.

“She's sick,” Jeremy hears Mrs. Charlie saying, just as he and Michael come running down. There's a great heaving sound coming from the bathroom. Mrs. Erica emerges, brandishing an empty bottle of mouthwash, and lowering it guiltily when she sees the children watching her.

“It’s okay,” Jeremy says, because there is this look on Mrs. Erica’s face like she's scared. “She's just tired.”

“She's tired,” Michael agrees. He doesn't know the extent of how tired Mrs. Heere is, but he always backs Jeremy up.

“Is she… tired… a lot?” Mrs. Charlie asks.

Jeremy nods.

Jeremy and Michael get older. Their friendship flourishes, even as the one between their mothers cools.

“My moms say your mom is a good person,” Michael placates, the first time he reveals that he's not allowed to get in a car with Mrs. Heere.

“Just a bad driver?” Jeremy guesses.

“Just… troubled. But really great, honest! The greatest. Your mom is mega cool.”

When Jeremy is in middle school, his dad is diagnosed with depression. That's why he doesn't want to get dressed every day. He's given pills to take for that, but Jeremy’s mom hates them. She says they are chemicals, that they change the very make up of his mind. She loves him. She doesn't want a different person than the one she married, but she doesn't want an unshowered loser sitting around in the same underwear for three days straight either. She reaches a breaking point with that one night. Jeremy only witnesses a part of it, a sliver of household chaos that doesn't even seem real after.

“She had a knife to her wrist,” Jeremy doesn't tell Michael, after he decides to spend the night hiding out at the Mell house. “She said that his depression was making her depressed,” he doesn't say either. He doesn't tell Michael that his dad promised to do better, and he doesn't tell him that his mom cried and let his dad take the knife away.

“Do you think just taking a pill could change your personality?” Jeremy asks Michael instead.

“Nah.”

Michael doesn't look up from his video game. The TV screen is full of zombies, and he is hellbent on vanquishing them.

“My mom doesn't think my dad should take pills,” Jeremy presses on.

“Pills have side effects. Nausea. Lack of appetite. Dry mouth. Death. All kinds.”

“You just saw that in a commercial.”

“In coming!”

Jeremy swerves, leaning into Michael as if that will make his character on the screen move faster. No such luck. The zombie boss bites his head off.

“Nice one,” Michael says.

“This game is so old. Since when has blood looked like that? Never.”

“It's stylized!

“Hipster dork.”

Michael beams. He's fine with being a hipster dork, and Jeremy guesses he's fine with not seeing any blood today.

“Do you think it's bad to take pills?” Jeremy presses on. “Like with the chemicals and stuff?”

“If a doctor prescribes them, it's probably fine.”

“My dad is on some medicine, and my mom doesn't want him to take it. Not to— Not to like repeat myself. But yeah. What I mean is that he's on medicine and she doesn't want him to take it.”

“…Your mom is weird about that.” Michael cocks his head, and leans in, looking closely at Jeremy, who is trying to force the tight frown on his face into literally any other expression. It hurts to swallow and his heart is racing.

“My… uh.” Jeremy wipes his hands on his jeans. “My mom doesn't want my dad to take these pills that the doctor prescribed to him.”

A pause.

“That's okay.”

Jeremy winces. Michael’s tone is gentle, but he still hasn't figured out what Jeremy needs him to know, about the knife, and the crying, and the way that his mom needs so much and she isn't getting it and that's probably the reason she drinks and obsesses over chemicals.

“Everybody’s weird about stuff,’ Michael continues, rallying brightness behind his words, as though by sheer force of will. “My moms? When I was little, they were hella paranoid about crayon brands. Remember that? They wouldn't buy anything other than Crayola, ‘cause they swore up and down that all the others were toxic. I’m willing to bet you anything that if I bought a box of cheap ass dollar store crayons even today, they'd go nuts.”

“I guess, but…”

“Wait, hear me out. What I’m saying is, people get overprotective about the people they love, but they mean well. I'm not going to eat a crayon no matter how poisonous it is, and your dad isn't going to get constipation and destroy the world because of medical side-effects, but everybody is doing the best with what they think they know. They just take it stupid far sometimes.”

Jeremy shrugs.

“You’re going to be okay,” Michael promises. “You dad's going to be okay too. And, best of all, we’ve got those Weird Al tickets for next weekend. Awesome, right?”

“Yeah.”

“And if you do have a problem, or your dad does, I’ll help you. Always.”

“My dad is depressed, my mom is threatening suicide, and I'm sure this is all somehow my own fault,” Jeremy still doesn't say. He just smiles at Michael, moves in a little closer, and restarts their game.

———

“Michael is the best friend you could have chosen,” Jeremy’s mom tells him one morning, during his freshman year of high school. He has no idea what prompted her to say this, but he agrees.

Two days later, Michael reveals that he's recently become Mrs. Heere’s pot dealer.

“Don’t freak,” is how Michael starts the conversation. He's rubbing his hand incessantly against the back of his neck as he speaks, and he can't sit still. “I feel hella skeevy about it, but she offered me like twice what I pay Dustin, and I don't think it's morally wrong. If I thought it was morally wrong, I wouldn't have given it to you, but she's your mom, man.”

“It's cool,” Jeremy says. He doesn't want Michael to feel uncomfortable, but if smoking calms his mom down, he doesn't care. “I wouldn't want her doing it with us, but it's fine if she does it.”

“Oh, thank god,” Michael says. “I thought you’d be pissed, but when she asked me I just froze and agreed before I knew what I was doing. You know that feeling where your heart is screaming fuck no and your mouth is saying certainly Mrs. Heere, ma’am, would you like me to help with the dishes after I fuel your drug habit? ‘Cause that's where I was at.”

“She has a talent for making people uncomfortable,” Jeremy says. He's proud of how nonchalant it comes out. He almost feels like one of those cool, disaffected teens who hates his parents like it's an art form. If only!

“… Here's the thing I don't get,” Michael says, still fidgety and cautious. “She doesn't like drugs. She didn't even want to get you an inhaler for your asthma. She flat out wasn't going to let you do it.”

“She doesn't like chemicals,” Jeremy says. “Pot is a leaf. Wine is just grapes. Can we talk about something else?”

Michael looks uncertain, but he nods. Jeremy’s the one who ruins everything by not keeping to his own directive to change topics. “My family isn't as fucked up as it looks,” Jeremy says. “Everybody thinks there's something wrong with my mom, and it's driving her crazy. She’s tired. She's under a lot of stress.”

“Okay,” Michael says. He seems almost sad, but doesn't press the issue.

“Your moms say my mom is a good person,” Jeremy reminds him. “Just troubled.”

“She is a good person,” Michael echoes. The words are like a pile of stones being removed from Jeremy’s chest. “And hey, everybody’s troubled. I don't judge.”

When Jeremy is a sophomore in high school, all his mother’s anti-vax bullshit reaches its magnificent and disastrous peak. It starts with a tickle in his throat, one that Jeremy assumes is asthma. It progresses into a hacking cough that's probably just a cold. Each morning, Jeremy shoves a thermometer under his tongue and prays for a fever, so he can at least get out of school. And every time, without fail, his mom takes one look at his cursedly normal temperature, and drags him out to the car.
“I'm not faking sick this time,” Jeremy tries to tell her.

“Do you remember the boy who cried wolf?” she retorts, and Jeremy glowers, because he's not five years old. He doesn't need fables to keep him in line. Inwardly, his stomach sinks, because he has faked sick a lot, sometimes so well that he's convinced himself. Imaginary nausea and imaginary shortness of breath are the main culprits.

This cough doesn't feel psychosomatic. It doesn’t feel like a lie.

This cough from hell, be it real or made up, makes going to school even more heinous than usual.

Jeremy has been trying to be as inconspicuous as possible since sixth grade, and now he can't.

It's not that he doesn't want to be noticed. It’d be pretty cool to be recognized just once, but that's never how it goes. Instead, Jeremy gets to choose between being invisible or being a freak, and being a freak means getting shoved around and laughed at. Sometimes it means having gay slurs hurled at him, because Rich Goranski has realized that Michael (in all of his openly gay glory) is the only person keeping Jeremy’s head above water. Rich is out to get Jeremy. That's reason enough for Jeremy to silence the dumb ass wanting part of his brain, keep his head down, and focus on survival.

He's starting to think that maybe survival is overrated.

The cough steals Jeremy’s breath, his comfort, and his ability to blend into the background of high school life. He spends math class trying so hard not to have a coughing fit that his eyes water with the effort, and has about eight coughing fits anyway. They’re loud and deep and they go on forever. Kids shift their desks away from him. During history class, he sips water to stave off the coughs, and ends up spitting out a mouthful into the hair of the girl in front of him, when one of the fits catches up with him mid-gulp. She screams. There’s laughter. For all that Jeremy’s lungs seem ready to tear their way out of his chest, his body remains unfortunately alive, albeit sweaty and prickly with mortification.

At lunch, Michael sits across from Jeremy at their usual table.

“You sound on the verge of death,” Michael says cheerfully. Jeremy is trying to catch his breath from the exertion of walking from his classroom to the cafeteria.

“Everybody keeps staring at me.”

“Dude, they’re staring because they think you’re about to start coughing out your own spleen.”

“No such luck. Not for lack of trying. Thanks for the pep talk.”

Michael rolls his eyes, and returns to his sushi, with a good natured shake of his head. Jeremy pushes his own food around with his fork for a minute, then pushes the tray away, to rest his head in his arms and zone out on the image of Michael eating.

It's not long before he's caught be another coughing fit. This time, when he tries to catch his breath, his airway spasms and tightens, and before he knows it he's making a sound like a monkey being strangled, as he tries to suck in some air. Then Michael is holding on to him by the shoulders, and he's digging his fingers into Michael’s arm.

“Shit. Grabbing your inhaler,” Michael says, carefully unlatching Jeremy’s hand, and going around the table to grab his backpack. The inhaler is in its usual place in the front pocket. Jeremy hasn't taken it yet, but his throat muscles seem to be loosening on their own, and he can mostly breath again. He takes a puff of the inhaler for good measure. Michael moves to sit next to Jeremy, arm going around his waist. “Better?” Michael asks. His eyes are too wide.

Jeremy wipes the drool off of his mouth with his sleeve.
“Jeremy?”

“—m okay.”

“You wanna go to the nurse?” Michael asks.

Jeremy shakes his head. He can't get sent home after his mom made him come in.

After lunch, his intro to bio teacher, Mrs. Rosch, takes the decision out of his hands. Jeremy’s throat closes up again, just as loudly as before, and soon as it opens, Mrs. Rosch is handing him a hall pass with word nurse followed by two exclamation points. She walks out the door after Jeremy, closing it behind them.

“When you go to the hospital,” Mrs. Rosch says, “—and I assume you will be going to the hospital— be sure to tell them about that sound you’re making. I don't like it one bit.”

Jeremy nods to make her go away.

Once he gets to the nurse, it's not long before she calls his mom to come and get him. Jeremy sits on the stool in her office to cough and wait.

“He didn't tell me that he was sick,” is the first thing that Jeremy’s mother says to the nurse. “I thought he might be, but we took his temperature this morning, and it was normal. He's mildly asthmatic, you know, and sometimes when he gets himself worked up…”

“This doesn't seem like asthma,” the nurse interrupts.

“Of course not. I just need you to understand, that we, both Jeremy and I, mistook it for asthma. I'm very concerned. We’ll be going to the hospital right away.”

To Jeremy’s surprise, they do.

“I'm very concerned,” Jeremy’s mom repeats on the way. “You should have told me that you were feeling bad. That woman is going to think I'm a bad mother. Your science teacher is going to think I'm a bad mother.”

Jeremy doesn't say anything, but he coughs a lot.

“You know I love you, don't you?” she goes on. “You do know that. I do everything for you. I would've killed myself or left a long time ago if it wasn't for you. It's days like these that I just want to go somewhere far away. People are awful, Jeremy. You can't even cough or sneeze without them judging you, and when you have a child, it's like having an extension of yourself. They’re probably thinking, Jesus, why is that terrible woman letting her son cough like that.”

Jeremy rests his forehead on the cool glass of the car window, gulping in air. Something about the position seems to help.

“Do you think I'm a bad mother?”

“No.”

“Do you think I'm a good mother?”

Jeremy begins to cough, and his mother keeps driving.

When they enter the hospital, they sit in the waiting room and fill out forms, just like any other patient. Jeremy’s mother opens a magazine, but stares at Jeremy instead of it.

Leaving the hospital, Jeremy has to wear a paper surgical mask on his face. It makes him feel dumb and singled out. Conspicuous.

It isn't definitely whooping cough, but that's something they’re looking into. The test involves putting a stick up Jeremy’s nose, maybe as some kind of sadistic joke, or maybe to get a mucus culture. There's no way to really tell. It’ll take a couple of days for the results to come in, but in the mean time, even suspected cases of whooping cough are treated seriously, and Jeremy is given strong antibiotics and instructed not to go out in public for five days, until he's finished taking them. He's also informed that if he really does have whooping cough, the antibiotics won’t cure it, but they will stop it from being contagious. Then, the doctor goes into another room to talk to his mom. When she comes back, her eyes are red and puffy.

“Let's go,” she says to Jeremy. She takes his hand, something she hasn't done since he was a little kid, and her grip is too tight.

“Do you think I'm a good mother?” she asks again on the car ride home.

“Of course.”

“Do you trust me?”

“Yeah.”

Jeremy’s mother sighs. “If this is whooping cough, it's a good thing that you’re getting it over with. It’ll strengthen your natural immunity so you don't have to worry about it in the future.”

This time Jeremy’s cough is deliberate, at least insofar as he gives it a little push to start, and then his body takes over from there, until it goes hard and painful and chokes him. Still, it gets him out of the conversation, and that's worth something.

Jeremy gets his whooping cough diagnoses two days after he's tested. That's when he starts with the pills. His mom makes him wait until they’re sure he's sick, ‘cause over-prescription of antibiotics is a great medical atrocity or some shit. It causes all kinds of awful stuff, like flesh eating bacteria and disease outbreaks. Jeremy takes a picture of the bottle, and texts it to Michael.

Jeremy isn't into reading medicine bottles, with all their freaky side-effects and stuff, but dosage info is nice to know. Besides, Michael gets it, and he's good at rolling with Jeremy’s particular brand of abject uselessness. He texts back for Jeremy to take one pill three times a day, with meals.

Holding the medicine bottle in his hand, everything seems hopeless. Jeremy has showered three times today, gasping in steam, which seems to be the only thing that will quiet his cough. He hasn't washed all week. All he’s able to do is close his eyes and stand there, until hot the water turns cold. His skin and hair are somehow dry and greasy at the same time, his lungs burn, and he’s freaking infectious. He ignores the antibiotic dose that Michael gave him, taking three pills instead of one. Excessive force is okay with stuff you want excessively dead, and his whooping cough very much falls under that category. Then, he hangs out picking at his acne, wondering if his mom could be right about flesh eating bacteria, and doubling over with coughs every few minutes.

At around five o’clock, Michael comes by to distract Jeremy.

“Look at my skin,” Jeremy says. “And be honest. Does this—” cough“— look like—” Cough.

“Dude, it's a zit,” Michael interrupts. Jeremy has been texting him about stuff most of the day, so he knows what's up. “How are you feeling?”

Jeremy shrugs.

“Let me phrase that another way. Are you up for video games, or is this a languishing tragically kinda hangout sesh?”

More coughing. Michael pats his back.

“I mean,” Jeremy sputters out, “I’m better than I was.”

“Yeah?”

“No school.”

Michael offers him a weak smile. “If you were looking to play hookie, we probably could’ve devised something better. Did you know the CDC called my house today? The CDC! They’ve called like a gazillion times. Also, get this, Mrs. Sherman and Mr. Murcier both have confirmed pertussis cases.”

“Per-whatsit?”

“What you've got. They’ve got what you got. You’re supposed to get a booster vaccine every ten years, and a lot of adults don't know that, so congrats, you gave whooping cough to your teachers. No students yet, but we’re being told to stay home if we feel even a little sick. I'm… uh… being given pretty wide berth at school.”

“Sorry.”

“No big. Rich tried getting on my case, and I coughed in his face. Give it a try when you come back and aren't, like, actively contagious.”

“I think I wanna play those video games, actually.”

“Cool, cool.” Michael gets up, and starts setting up the system, while Jeremy watches. Then Jeremy plops down on one of the beanbags in front of his bed, and prepares to lose. Truth is, he feels almost as zombified as the pixels he's fighting on the screen. By the fourth repeat of level one, the game has ceased to be a game, and turned into just something for him and Michael to do with their hands. Michael isn't even shifting around and jumping and reacting to the game like he usually does. His character gets killed onscreen, and he reboots without blinking.

“I've been doing some research on your mom’s antivax stuff,” Michael says.

“Okay?” Jeremy gives his game controller a light smack, like it's not working, and he's trying to shake the bugs out.

“In 1901, they used to make anti-diphtheria serum out of horse blood. Gnarly, right? And there was this horse named Jim, who had tetanus, and they injected his blood into some kids who also got tetanus and died. So, yeah. Horse blood injections are definitely something to be wary of, not that diphtheria isn't. And people living in 1901 were mega doomed to die of something, as illustrated by the fact that they probably all have, and most of them were forgotten, unlike Jim the diseased horse. The history of Jim the horse will be forever remembered, thanks to the untold horrors he caused.”

“… Right.”

“Then, in 1955, there were some polio vaccines that accidentally got contaminated with live polio virus, so more kids died. Of polio! Polio is hella bad. Trust me, you don't want it.”

Jeremy puts down his controller, and turns to face Michael.

“You agree with her!” he says. He doesn't know why it comes out sounding so accusatory.

“I shouldn't say.”

“But you do! Be-because of like… like horse serum and 1955, and…”

“I shouldn't say,” Michael repeats.

“I think if I'd been a better kid, or maybe if I was better now, she wouldn't be like this.”

“What? No.”

“It's just… like… I already sucked, and she couldn't risk making me worse, and now she gets stuck dealing with all this crap just ‘cause she didn't want me to have autism or whatever.”

“You know autism isn't necessarily a bad thing, right?”

Jeremy shrugs. He doesn't know much of anything.

“And either way, it's way better than being dead from whooping cough. Not that I think you’re gonna die of whooping cough, ‘cause you totally aren't. But people do. Old people. Babies. Nobody ever killed anybody by walking around being autistic, but walking around carrying a contagious disease? That's bad. Not to mention that vaccines don't cause autism. They verifiably don't, but that's not the point.”

“Okay, but you still haven't said if you think my mom’s right or not.”

Michael takes a deep breath, slowly releasing it. “What do you think, Jeremy?”

“There was… there was horse serum that killed people.”

“In 1901. One. Nine. Zero. One.”

Jeremy coughs. He's starting to get hot and itchy. When he and Michael were little kids, they'd deduced that Michael’s mutant super power would be reading Jeremy’s mind, but nothing could be farther from the truth. And though Jeremy has had more than a decade to come to that conclusion and get used to it, there are still times when it leaves him unaccountably bitter, and unaccountably lost. When Michael puts his hands on Jeremy’s shoulders to steady him, Jeremy pulls inwards and away.

“I guess I'm wondering why you haven't been looking up this shit yourself,” Michael says. “What you think of your mom’s choices is a hell of a lot more important than what I think of them. You’re the one who’s gonna get to make these choices yourself in a few years.”

Jeremy shakes his head. Then it's coughing and gasping some more, because why not.

“Is there anything I can do to help?” Michael asks, once Jeremy is done.

Jeremy shakes his head again. “Nothing helps. It just keeps going.”

Michael nods, frowning. “That sucks. So much.”

The antibiotics run out earlier than they should, with no noticeable improvement. Jeremy hides the bottle. According to Michael, whooping cough has started to hit some of the students at Middleborough, seniors mostly, which is dumb, because it's not like Jeremy was running around coughing on them, or licking their cafeteria food, or even talking to them. Michael, who has a penicillin allergy and every right to catch Jeremy’s whooping cough, does not. Michael’s mom's are both put on antibiotics, just in case.

Jeremy overhears his parents arguing over whether or not they should be on antibiotics. His mom, predictably, thinks that they shouldn’t, while his dad puts a higher value on breathing and not murdering innocent babies through the mere fact of his existence. Jeremy stays the fuck out of it, or at least he tries. He's never been great at not getting caught up in his parents’ crossfire. He guesses it serves him right, since he's the cause of so much of it.

This particular cold war begins with a hot drink. Jeremy’s mom has read somewhere that boiling up Coca-Cola on the stove with a shit ton of ginger is great for coughs, so she's been doing that each day, and giving Jeremy gigantic mugs of the stuff to drink. The taste is surprisingly good for something sticky, thick and so spicy that Jeremy’s tongue burns just looking at it, but Jeremy can't drink or eat a large amount of anything. The muscles in his stomach are sore, and he's coughing so much and so deeply that the only way to keep himself from vomiting up everything he eats is to eat as little at a time as possible.

Every day, Jeremy’s mom brings him the drink, and every day he drinks what he can handle, and leaves the rest untouched. By the time that a week has passed, there are six mugs of Jeremy’s mother’s medicine on his desk, the oldest of which has hardened into a sort of congealed taffy-like substance. The house has also run out of usable mugs, so Jeremy’s mom comes in to collect them. She doesn't say anything, so Jeremy doesn't say anything either. A few hours later, Jeremy’s dad knocks softly on the door of Jeremy’s room. He's unshaven, and his hair is mussed. He looks as tired as Jeremy feels, which is unfair, because he has no reason to be.

“You holding up, soldier?” Jeremy’s dad asks.

“Yep.” Jeremy flops back on his bed, and grabs his phone, pretending to reread his most recent series of texts from Michael.

“Your mom told me about the fight you had.”

Jeremy lowers the phone, to see if his dad is joking or something.

“You know how she gets when the two of you argue.”

The way that Jeremy’s mom gets when they argue is fucking hammered.

“What did she… say… we argued about?”

“The drink she's been making you. With the ginger.” Jeremy’s dad rubs the back of his neck, looking down at Jeremy’s knees instead of at his eyes. “I know it tastes strange, but if it helps, it helps.”

Jeremy nods slowly.

“She thinks you’re trying to punish her by eating and drinking so little.”

Something awful twists in Jeremy’s gut, and that night, he takes a certain perverse pleasure from pushing his dinner plate away, without taking a bite.

“I'm sorry,” he says placidly, looking straight at his mother. “I don't feel well.”

She gets up and walks away. It's the closest to satisfied that Jeremy has felt since the whooping cough debacle started. The guilt sets in all of two minutes later. Jeremy sits with it a full fifteen minutes, then texts Michael:

hey man should i go on a hunger strike and stop eating and drinking to make my mom feel gyilt

?

Jeremy's phone buzzes with Michael's response:

no :-/

All in all, it's not a very useful exchange.

Jeremy takes another few minutes to mourn his inability to be an evil genius, finds his mother, and asks her to make him one of those ginger things that help so much. She does, and then hangs out in the living room taking her solace in a bottle of vodka. So much for grand peacemaking gestures, and so much for waging a battle. Either way, Jeremy is too pathetic.

———————

Jeremy’s mother thinks that everything he does is to punish her. If he eats very little, that's a punishment. If he eats to stuffing himself and can't keep it down, that's also a punishment. After a sleepless night of coughing, she tells him to “cut the tell-tale heart routine”, whatever that means. Then she tells him that he’ll be going back to school the next day, since the antibiotics should be finished, rendering him not contagious.

That night, Jeremy’s body decides it's time to punish everybody. He's coughing and watching TV, ‘cause that's all he ever does these days. In the middle of the coughing, something cracks. There is a sharp pain, that makes Jeremy clutch his stomach, eyes screwing shut. He cries out, but his throat is closing, and by now the sound he makes when that happens is normal. Gradually, he's able to draw a few shallow breaths, but even those are agonizing. If Jeremy can get through this, he thinks, he’ll never joke about dying again, because he is definitely about to die. Then he's back to coughing, and super about to die, as each cough is punctuated by a jolt from something that is moving around inside of him, and shouldn't be.

This is fake, Jeremy tells himself. He repeats those words over and over in his mind. This is fake. I'm panicking. I'm convincing myself something is wrong, when nothing is wrong.

It's a long time before Jeremy's coughs fade into a calm period. Those do happen, though they are few and far between. He gets up, and makes his way to his parents room on shaky legs. He gets to the door, puts his hand on the doorknob, and then goes back to his room. Nothing is wrong.

Another cough. Jeremy rolls over on his side, and the position hurts. He sits up, and the movement hurts so bad that is makes him nauseous.

He picks up his phone, and pounds out a plea for Michael to get one of his moms to take him to the hospital. Then, he stumbles out to the front porch to wait. Jeremy forgets his phone on his bed, so he doesn't know what Michael answers.

Michael shows up not long after, with both of his moms and himself.

It's late at night, like stupid late. Jeremy starts walking out to Michael's car before it comes to a complete stop in the driveway, then pauses, arms wrapped around his midsection. Will Michael’s parents think he's lying about needing to go to the hospital, if he can walk on his own? Isn't he lying about it? Who is he trying to hurt? Jeremy’s not perfect, or even good. Sometimes the things he does hurt people, and sometimes it takes him too long to remember to care.

Jeremy closes his eyes, shivering and aching. When he opens them, Michael is there.

“Hey. Come on,” Michael says, as he leads Jeremy to the car. “You look like ass warmed over,” he says, as he helps Jeremy get situated. “No offense to any moms in the car. Can you tell me what's up?”

“Dunno. Maybe nothing. I—”

The door of Jeremy’s house opens.

“Fuck,” Michael mutters, and then to his moms, he shouts: “Book it! We have to go!”

That gets Michael a look that even Jeremy, in his current state, doesn't miss.

Charlie gets out of the car, to talk with what a hesitant glance upwards tells Jeremy is his dad. Erica keeps her hand on the stick shift, and her foot on the gas. Then, the door opens, and Jeremy finds himself sandwiched in the back seat, between Michael and his father.

“Son?”

The car starts to move. The air is thick with people waiting for Jeremy to tell them what the problem is. And what is the problem, really? That it hurts to cough? For all Jeremy knows, that's just part of the normal course of what’s going on, and he's freaking for no reason, just like he always does.

“You don't have to talk if you can't,” Jeremy’s dad goes on. “But it might help if we can tell the doctors in the emergency room what the problem is. Michael, do you—?”

Michael waves his phone in Jeremy’s dad’s general direction. He's got Jeremy’s text open, but his hand is probably moving too fast for Mr. Heere to see it.

“Maybe nothing’s wrong,” Jeremy manages to get out. “I just thought something was wrong, and…”

Jeremy’s dad puts his hand on Jeremy’s shoulder. “Take a deep breath,” he instructs.

“Not helpful,” says Michael. “Pertussis. He can't do that.”

Jeremy’s dad purses his lips, and tries again. “If you felt bad enough to ask Michael to take you to the hospital in the middle of the night, then it's worth going, even if they don't find anything immediately wrong.”

“Other than the pertussis,” Michael reminds. “That's very wrong, and also mega preventable.”

Jeremy doesn't say anything, and his dad doesn't say anything either.

————————-

For an ugly, unpopular nerd, who is also a budding hypochondriac, Jeremy arrives at the hospital emergency room with a pretty big entourage. It’s around two in the morning when they get there, and a lot later by the time Jeremy gets seen. Apparently, somebody coughing as loudly as he is isn't in mortal danger. Jeremy’s dad fills out forms, watches Jeremy, and periodically gets up to ask when exactly the doctor will see him. Mrs. Charlie stares off into the distance, except for when she catches Jeremy looking at her, and smiles. Mrs. Erica reads something on her phone, occasionally passing it to Jeremy’s dad. Jeremy has no idea what she's making him read.

Michael holds Jeremy’s hand, and shifts around in his seat, like he's trying not to fall asleep in class. Jeremy doesn't think that he's ever held hands with anybody for this long, not even Michael.

When the doctor finally gets to Jeremy, he asks him a lot of questions — how long he's been sick, where he's hurting, when it started, and how bad it is, on a scale of one to ten. Jeremy chooses seven, because it's the worst pain he's ever been in, but he imagines having his skin peeled off or plunging into a volcano would be considerably worse.

An x-ray reveals that Jeremy broke one of his ribs coughing. It's just a hairline fracture, and it's not puncturing his lungs, which is good. The doctor doesn't want to put him on any hardcore painkillers, because asthma and whooping cough are a bad mixture, and he doesn't want Jeremy to stop breathing and not wake up. Also, it turns out that lots of painkillers are bad for asthma. Like aspirin! Aspirin is bad. So are Advil and Ibuprofen.
And that's how Jeremy breaks a rib, and gets sent on the way with naught but extra strength Tylenol, and the instructions to come back if he punctures his lung.

The validation that he isn't imagining problems that don't exist is kinda nice, at least.

————————-

Michael suggests, on the ride home, that Jeremy stays the night at his place. Jeremy’s dad doesn't say no, and Michael’s moms don't say no. They ask what Jeremy wants to do, and Jeremy nods, which is taken as a sign that he totally wants to hang around and have a sickness slumber party.

His dad asks to have a moment alone with him, once the get to Michael’s place.

“I understand why you asked Michael to help you tonight and not me,” Jeremy’s dad says.

“I'm not trying to punish mom,” Jeremy says in response. “Or you. I'm not trying to punish anybody.”

“I know that,” Jeremy’s dad says. “Don't worry about your mother. I used to be able to make her happy when she got like this, and you know what? I'm going to do it again, starting from today.”

“Okay.” Jeremy swallows.

“Tell me what you need.”

“Isn't it your job to know that?”

Jeremy’s dad clears his throat. “Like I was saying, I understand that you might… feel better going to Michael with some stuff. Man stuff.” He shoots finger guns at Jeremy. “But I'm a man too. The way I see it we’re all… uh… in the army! And you and Michael are part of the same splatoon, but I'm the admiral, and an admiral takes care of his troops.”

“…Okay?”

Jeremy’s dad lets out a laugh that is both hearty and forced. “I'm not saying I'm the admiral in the sense that you have to jump up to obey my every command. Ten hut! I'm saying that you can turn to me if you need anything. Anything at all. Even if you think you can't turn to your mother, or to Michael, you can turn to me.”

Jeremy puts a hand on his father's arm. “I will,” he promises. His father puts up his hand in mock solute, and Jeremy tiredly salutes him back.

Mrs. Erica drives Jeremy’s dad home, and Jeremy goes down to the basement to find Michael.

————————-

“Did he overreact?” Michael asks. He's looking up something on his computer.

“Not really.” Jeremy sits down on Michael's bed, grabbing one of his pillows to hug. It helps a little bit. It, like, gives him support or something. Michael does not comment on how Jeremy is rocking himself on his bed, or on how he stole his pillow.

“I'm looking up whether or not to give you pot,” Michael says. “Benefits are that it’ll help with the pain. Drawbacks are that you sure as hell aren't smoking anything for the next million years. But, like, it's almost morning and I could probably throw some in the waffle iron. I don't know if pot waffles is a good recipe, or if it's ever been done before. This could be trail blazing.”

“Heh. Blazing.”

Jeremy closes his eyes sleepily, but then he starts coughing again.

“I was also reading what people do to kind of ease the cough or whatever.”

“I'd cut off a limb if it would help.”

“It seems to be mostly about temperature. No limbs required. It's different for different people. Feel like sticking your head in the freezer?”

“No.”

“How about showering. Does that help?”

“Too tired.”

“But it helps?”

“Too tired,” Jeremy repeats.

Michael scrolls around on the internet for a few more minutes. Jeremy’s eyelids are drooping more every second, but it seems every time he starts to drift off, the coughing starts up again, and with it the pain in his ribs.

Michael gets up, and Jeremy doesn't ask what he's doing. He drags one of the beanbags up the stairs, and Jeremy still doesn't ask. Next, he comes back for blankets and pillows, and finally for Jeremy.

“Come on,” Michael whispers, guiding Jeremy up the stairs. “That's it.”

They end up in the first floor bathroom. Michael has the shower going, and the mirror is already steamed up. The bean bag, pillows, and blankets form a nest of sorts in the corner of the room.

“Awesome, right?”

Jeremy has to admit that it is. Michael sits down, and pulls Jeremy down with him, wrapping his arms around him where they sit. If it's more intimate than is strictly normal, Jeremy is beyond caring. It's a decision, relaxing into Michael, and letting him card his figure through his hair. In Jeremy’s half awake state, it feels like an important one.

“I'm so mad at her,” Jeremy admits, voice quiet under the sound of the shower.

“Me too, bud. Me too.”

“This is bullshit.”

“Totally.”

Somehow, Jeremy sighs without immediately breaking down in coughs. He shuts his eyes. It is there, lying with Michael in the corner of the bathroom, with the shower going, and the steam rising up, that Jeremy manages to sleep.