#4
"For the last time, Joe..." I heard my mother snarl through grit teeth, "Get OUT of that bed! We're not going to have your birthday party tonight if you don't go to school today!"
"Murhhnnnnhhh," I replied glibly.
"Oh, knock it off!" She snapped, halting her exit from my room and spinning on her heel to face the lump of me laying on the bed. "You're lucky that your father and I let you get away with this charade for this long... Well, the gig is up! You're going to school today!"
"Gnnnnnhurrrrrrrr..." I stated intelligently through my pillow, adding for emphasis a strong "Blgnnnfunf..."
She placed her hands on her hips in a motion as practiced as the snap of a football in a New England Patriots game. With a sigh, she stated, "This is useless... I know that report cards for the midterm came out this week, and I know that you're probably failing, as usual... And I know that you will just pull your grades up by the end of the semester as always, and I know that you think this is all one big game. But you're STILL going to have to face your father over this report card at some point, so you might as well get up and get it over with as quickly as possib--"
I interrupted her with an incredibly powerful bought of deep chest coughing. The sound of it was not unlike the sound of twelve years of soil deposits being cleared out of a jet aircraft engine. Or at least, I'd imagine that's what it was not unlike... Never having heard that particular noise, I couldn't tell you with any real certainty that the vast quantities of phlegm flying out in globs from the recesses of my chest sounded not unlike dirt as it passes through a jet's exhaust. But if we're using the full flowering of our imaginations - and I am here - that's what I imagine it sounded not unlike. So don't not take that with a grain of salt.
My poor mother stood there, torn. The noises she'd just heard rumble and flop out of her son sounded quite legitimate, indicating that, perhaps THIS time, he wasn't actually faking being sick to lay out of school. Still, there were no fewer than twenty seven previous occasions where this trick had been pulled, and in all twenty seven, the sounds that I'd produced to convince my mother I was actually sick became more and more authentic through constant practice. She couldn't help but think that it wasn't beneath me to go inhale chalk dust just to produce an authentic cough. But if I was really sick, that was one hell of a noise my body had just produced.
"Okay, fine!" she said, throwing up her hands. "I know a surefire way to solve this! WE... Are going to the DOCTOR today! There, how do you like THAT?!?"
"Phlaagggggmmmmurrrrr..." I answered while rolling a few degrees to the left.
She shook her head and closed her eyes contemplatively. Was I calling her bluff, trying to get her to back down by pretending I was okay with the idea; thus proving I was actually sick and making a trip to the doctor futile? Or was I actually sick and unable to put up any sort of fight? I'm an awfully good bluffer... But I also HATE the doctor with a passion...
"Okay, get dressed," She said, letting her hands flop downward with resignation. ''We're going to see Dr. Clopton."
I didn't move.
"Joe..." She said with a sharp tone, "I told you to get dressed! That means get your butt up out of that bed and..."
I shifted slightly.
"I'm not kidding! Get out of that bed, or so help me... I'm calling your father! He wanted me to handle this, but told me to call him if you wouldn't play ball..."
I shifted again.
"RIGHT NOW, YOUNG MAN!" She snapped.
I wriggled a bit, and then lifted the covers and began to roll out of bed... Literally. With a resounding
THUD, I hit the floor.
My poor mother... What must have been going through her head at that very moment! If I was really sick, she now had to lift my two hundred and twenty pound frame off that floor all by herself... But if I was faking, she'd be falling for an obvious physical-humor component of my bluff...
She bit her bottom lip. "Okay, wise guy!" she said, "You want to play it that way? FINE! I'm calling 911 then! Let's see how you handle THAT!"
And so, for the first time in my entire life, my mother actually followed through on calling what she was absolutely certain was my bluff - and one of the best bluffs I'd ever pulled, at that. She was CERTAIN that I'd come jogging into the dining room mid-call and put a stop to the charade. And when I didn't do that, she was absolutely convinced that I'd beg her to call the 911 operator and tell them it was all a mistake and that they should call the calvary back. And when the paramedics and police arrived, she was willing to bet the house and both of the mortgages that I would just sit up, smile, and turn beet red; embarrassed beyond belief that my mother had finally gotten up the gall to teach me a lesson.
***
"I said, 'Double pneumonia'," the doctor repeated.
My mother stood there, flabbergasted. "Wh... WHAT???" She said again.
The doctor sighed. "Mrs. Peacock, your son is VERY ill," he said, repeating his previous three sentences in yet another slightly different way. "He's got double pneumonia, bronchitis, infections in both ears, a sinus inf--"
"He's... He's really..." She stammered. She narrowed her eyes, placed her hands on her hips with that practiced motion, and stared the doctor down. "Are you
certain that he's really sick?"
"Ma'am," the doctor said with a shocked chuckle, "I can hear all sorts of buildup in his lungs when he breathes, he's running a temperature of one hundred two, and he's barely able to open his eyes! If he's not sick, then I'm fairly sure I need to stop practicing medicine..."
She shot him a look that might very well have taken out an eye. "Did
he put you up to this?"
"Uh... What?" the doctor kindly said with a gasp. "Mrs. Peacock, I'm not sure what you're getting at... I mean... How... Why..."
My mother's face resembled a film transition as it wiped from angry to extremely sad and concerned. She began to cry. "Oh... Ohmygod... He's really sick!"
The doctor looked at her for a moment. "Yes, ma'am... That's what I've been... Wait, you mean you didn't know he was sick?"
"No! Well, wait - I knew he SAID he was sick..." she responded. "I mean... It's report card week... And he's going to lose his Nintendo... And..." She adopted a pleading tone as she told the doctor "Oh doctor... You have no idea! I mean, I know it sound so bad, but... But you just don't know him!"
"You... You thought he was faking?"
"Yes!" She exclaimed. "I really, really did!"
"Faking double pneumonia and bronchitis?!?" he asked again.
"Well I'M not a doctor!" she said. "I don't know what real bronchitis sounds or looks like! He can fake sick really well... I mean... You just don't know my son!"
"Did it ever occur to you to take his temperature?" the doctor asked.
"It's useless!" She said. "He knows every trick in the book! He'll hold it to a lightbulb if you're not in the room, and if you are, he'll pretend he can't hold it in his mouth... He'll hold hot coffee in his mouth to throw it off... Doctor, seriously! You just don't know him!"
The doctor regarded this poor woman with the incredibly devilish son with a penchant for dodging school. "And the cough?"
"I'd just thought he'd finally perfected the sound..."
"Well," the doctor said with a small note of pity mixed with a symphony of concern, "His situation isn't good. He's severely dehydrated and... Wait, didn't you notice he wasn't eating?"
"He has a fridge in his room," she said in monotone, staring off into space as her mind danced around how it could be that she could miss all these signs.
"I see... Makes a habit of hibernating, does he?" He asked as he stood and approached a small intercom.
"Yeah... He'll draw in his room for days, or read comics, or... OH MY GOD..." She cried as she began sobbing.
He finished paging a nurse to the room we all occupied, and then turned to comfort my poor distraught mother. "It's alright, Mrs. Peacock," he said. "He's going to be okay..."
"I'm a terrible mother!" She stated.
"You're probably a fine mother," he said as he witnessed the guilt overcome her. "I'm sure he is quite a handful, if he's as much of a devil as you say..."
She just sobbed as the nurse arrived. The doctor ordered an IV and began rattling off all sorts of multi-syllabic words. My mother interrupted his orders by asking, "He needs an IV?"
"Yes," the doctor replied. "He's going to have to stay here overnight... Maybe even a few days. We're going to have to get some fluids--"
"OH MY GOD," cried my poor, poor mother.
"It's... It's going to be alright, Mrs. Peacock..."
She got up and walked over to the side of the bed where I laid. "I am SO SORRY..." She said, taking my hand. I'm sure the sight of me in a hospital on my birthday brought back any number of bad memories.
I spent that night and much of the next day in the closest thing to a coma one can be without being in a coma. I'm not sure there's a medical term for it, outside of saying that I was "really, really, really, really tired from being really, really, really, really sick." But that's what I was, and that's how it went.
When I was released, I came home to a fairly nice party with a few family members in attendance; my eigth grade year not producing any real friends that I'd associate with outside of school. I got a yellow "Sport" Walkman and the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles game for Nintendo, as well as some comic books I'd been asking for - and I got them all taken away, along with the Nintendo, my television privileges, my stereo, and my bike when my report card came back with five "F's" and an A in Physical Education.
Not to worry, though... I got straight B's at the end of the semester... Just like I always did.
| 
| 
| Twitter | Facebook | LJ
