Hack it all up

“What brings you to the ER today?” I asked boredly

"I need a check-up. I recently got over an illness, and I really just need someone to have a look at me."

The guy on the bed looked healthier than anyone I had seen today. He lacked the phlegmy sound that most of the others had shown, the cough so full of rails, and the fever that spiked into the low end of one hundred one, and that was a little weird. After checking in fourteen others with similar symptoms in just the hour since I'd gotten back from lunch, I could have easily rattled off their symptoms myself, but this guy had none of the usual hallmarks. Cashmere was in the grip of a flu epidemic, and they had enticed me in with the promise of overtime if I would come help with intake in the ER. I had splurged a little more than I had strictly meant to on the Christmas Steam Sale, and with my pockets a little lighter in the new year, I had no choice but to put in some OT if I wanted my rent to get paid this month.

"Well, I've got to have something to put down on the page if you want the doc to take you seriously. What brings you into the ER today?"

He looked unsure, like someone who doesn't know where to begin, "I was sick, but then something happened last night, something I'm really not sure how to describe."

I raised an eyebrow at him, intrigued as I took a seat, "Start from the beginning then. I'll figure it out as we go along."

* * * * *

Kenny was sick, sicker than he had been in a long time.

His throat hurt, his head spun from the fever, and the coughing made him feel like his chest might cave in. It felt like the flu, and Kenny was afraid that he might have finally caught the Covid he had tried so hard to avoid since the start of the pandemic. Unlike his friends, Kenny had gotten vaccinated, gotten his boosters, and taken any new supplement he could get to steel his immune system against whatever might come. He'd watched his dad suffer through it in the ICU for almost two months, his life hanging in the balance every second of the day. When he'd finally come out the other side, he'd still been weak as a kitten for months after. He was only now back to something like normalcy, and his sickness had made Kenny downright scared of the virus.

For the last two years, he'd had so much vitamin C and Immune booster rolling around in his system that he hadn’t even picked up a cold, and when he'd started coughing, he knew that something had finally caught up with him.

When his Covid test had come back negative, he'd breathed a thick sigh of relief.

After what he'd been through, he almost wished it had been positive.

At least then Kenny would have something to attribute all the weirdness to.

It started with drainage. Kenny had never been the kind of person to carry a handkerchief, but now he seemed to go through three a day. The poor rags would be sodden by the end of the day, thick with mucus from his constantly running nose. The running nose and constant throat drip had seemed to come before the other symptoms, and Kenny found that he was always honking his nose or coughing up phlegm. The flow was endless, and his chest soon hurt from all the coughing and hacking.

He had called work to let them know what was going on, and his foreman was more than happy to let him stay home.

"I've been trying to get you to use those vacation days for months. Sounds like a perfect opportunity to take your two-week vacation."

"Some vacation," Kenny spat, coughing up a big glob of mucus into the trash can.

"Take your days and enjoy getting paid for being sick." his boss shot back, telling him he'd see him in twelve days before hanging up.

Kenny grumbled as he hung up, not thinking he would need two weeks, but by the next day, he was thankful for the time.

He'd woken up to find his skin on fire. Kenny was burning up, his thermometer saying he had a fever of 101.2. His head pounded, his throat felt scratchy, and his nose and throat gushing snot. He blew it out, hacked it up, and constantly felt it trickling down his throat. He spent most of that second day in bed, reeling with the fever and feeling like he didn't have the strength to do much but turn his head and watch a little TV. His one foray into the kitchen had been to grab a few water bottles, a bag of chips, and a few granola bars. One of the water bottles was now a soupy, half full mix of hacked-up phlegm and spit, and Kenny had been watching Friends through owlish eyes as he slipped in and out of consciousness. He was absolutely miserable and knew he needed cold medicine if he wanted to get past this.

He was trying to get up, his arms shaking as he tried to rise, and the next thing he knew, he was lying in a puddle of drool and snot as the sun shone and his stomach gurgled.

That was how the vomiting started.

The granola bars and chips were joined in the bowl by an alarming amount of green goo. His sinuses had been constantly draining since this all started, and every upheaval brought more of it out of his stomach. He had moved to the bathroom then, the vomiting and nausea only adding to his weakness, and Kenny was soon lying on the floor with a towel under his head. That was the first time he thought he might die as he lay shuddering and coughing next to his toilet. His body ached, and not only from the fever. He was sore from all the throwing up and coughing, and when he tried to get his legs under him so he could get some more water, they shook too much to hold him. He had to drag himself to the tub and drink some water from the spout before passing out again on the cold tiles.

He woke up covered in something and worried he had thrown up on himself in his sleep.

He was relieved, realizing that he could have choked to death on his sick, but as his hands slid over his arms, he realized it wasn't puke.

As his hand came away slimy, he lifted a hand to his face to see a thin coating and realized it was also covering the floor.

It was snot.

His own mucus had dribbled from his nose and puddled on the ground around him. He swiped the same hand over his face and came away with a translucent trail of spidery fluid. Kenny was transfixed by it, watching the light play off the muck as the vanity lights hit it, but as he watched, he saw little else to do but drag himself into the bathtub. It took all of his limited energy to pull himself up over the lip, and he more or less fell into the basin. Kenny lay on his back, gasping for air, as he stared at the popcorn ceiling and felt the mucus slide out of his nose. It wet his shoulders, soaking his back as it pooled, and Kenny could do little but lay there, panting like a dog.

He spent the day sipping water from the tap, his body still racked with coughing and fever. The plastic wasn't as cold as the tile, soaking up some heat Kenny had managed to turn on before his body had gone into rebellion. He could still feel the snot as it dribbled around him, his shoulder feeling sticky. He hacked up more of it, letting it fall to the side as it mingled with the rest.

As the day waned, Kenny felt his stomach rumble and curled into a ball as he felt his gorge rising again. Tears began sliding out of his eyes, his pathetic state becoming too much to handle. As he swiped at his eyes, the tears came away in long ropes. The tears were viscous, sticking to his hands, and when he shook them, they also proved to be mucus. Kenny snapped his eyes shut, the tears still flowing as his nose ran like a faucet. He shuddered himself to sleep at some point, praying to anyone who might be listening to just make it all go away.

When he opened his eyes next, Kenny thought he might have accidentally turned on the water.

He was semi-submerged in a warm, thick liquid, and upon realizing this, Kenny surfaced as he sucked in a breath. His face was slimy, and his eyes crusted shut as the thick sludge coursed from them. Not just his eyes, though. His ears, his nose, and even the corners of his mouth seemed to run continuously. The liquid was nearly up to his waist now that he was sitting up, and as he scrubbed his eyes open, he could see that his pours also flowed with the stuff. He was like a toad, his skin slick and oozing, and when his stomach heaved, he doubted anything he'd eaten would come up.

As the wave of thick green mucus rocketed up his throat, he realized he'd been right. His upheaval filled the tub more, the thick snot coating his throat as it hit the plastic tub like sleet. He was powerless to stop it, and when he fell, he turned his head so he wouldn't break his nose. He continued to vomit, but it was more like what you hack into a napkin. His throat should have been raw after all that, but it only felt sticky amidst so much mucus.

Kenny wheezed, his coughs thick and watery, and he felt like he was drowning. He'd read about dry drowning once when you breathe in water, and it saturates your lungs as it drowns you slowly, and that was how this felt. His breathing was soupy, but he still managed to pull in the oxygen he needed as the goop poured out of him. The mucus flowed from every pore, and as it did, he felt his eyes getting heavy. He didn't want to sleep. He knew that if he couldn't keep his head up, he'd drown in this stuff, but he was powerless to stop himself.

He was out of energy, and as Kenny slipped off, he wasn't sure he would ever wake up again.

He came to sometime in the middle of the night, the tub empty and his lungs and chest clearer than they had been in days.

The mucus pool was gone, but whether it had gone down the drain or simply left on its own, Kenny would never know.

He had a vague sort of memory, almost a dream, of floating weightlessly in a pool of green. It churned around him like a great ocean, moving him as he lay there. He was weightless, rising and falling at its leisure, and as he drifted within it, he felt as the caterpillar must while it hung within its cocoon.

Wherever it had gone, it had also taken his fever and weakness with it. As Kenny sat up, he felt like a new man. As his stomach growled, he got up to make food, steadying himself as he nearly slipped on the remains of his sickness. If it hadn't been for the thin coating of slime in the bottom of the tub, Kenny might have wondered if he'd even been sick at all. That shiny layer of mucus, however, reminded him of the miserable night he'd spent as it poured from every orifice.

He made a mental note to go to the hospital the next day, and after a shower and a good meal, he slept sounder than he had in days.

* * * * *

"And that was yesterday when you woke up in the tub?" I asked, not quite believing what I was hearing.

The man nodded, "It was the strangest thing. I feel better than I have in months, and I haven't even had any of my usual allergy symptoms for this time of year. I normally keep a runny nose after October, but I haven't had to sniffle or blow it all day. It's like I pushed every ounce of mucus out of my body, and now I'm free of it."

I finished filling out the form, telling him the doctor would be in to see him soon.

Looking over it now, I can't help but shake my head. I had thought maybe it was just the hospital that was odd, but the more stories like this I collected, the more I think it might be the whole town. Cashmere is an epicenter for strangeness, and the longer I work here, the more I believe it's starting to get worse.