Fever

My darling wife was becoming hotter by the hour and I was becoming more worried. I called the advice nurse, I gave her cool compresses. She is not responding to homemade soup, medicine or even my love.

“Deirdre, please, we must go to the hospital!” I cry, holding onto her clammy, ghost white hands. Her fingers are edging on the blanket, looking as though they are spelling out a message I cannot ascertain.

“No… Felicia, I won’t….” She rasps out, coughing.

“Where is your phone? I’ll charge it..” I say and she gives me a strange smile, not responding.

Suddenly she sputters out a intense rattle like cough, the intense pain on her lovely, once vibrant face gone and she says nothing, looking forward in a catatonic state.

Comatose, eyes open, never sleeps, walks around Babbling nonsense.

Hospital X-Rays show she somehow lodged the smartphone’s motherboard deep inside her brain, possibly in a car accident.

She never told me about the accident and covered up the scars and injuries, somehow… and as I hold my phone’s keyboard to her dead starving stare, she types out without looking, “itssss a catching fever”.

The term “phone zombie,” just doesn’t have a ring to it anymore.