DAY 5

I find myself head first in a toilet the next hour. For the past six months my stomach has been gurgling like overcooked oil in a frying pan. I never paid it much attention. Mind over matter, or in this case, mind over digestion issues. After cuddling my wife, I couldn’t find the peaceful comfort to fall into a deep sleep. My stomach was regurgitating its contents so I descended the stairs searching for a glass of water. Halfway down, I rushed to the basement bathroom to vomit. And I haven’t stopped since, losing count after ten. Never thought I held so much in. The story of my life, I suppose. I can’t even leave the bathroom for that glass of water. There is a fire alarming an evacuation within and everything is poised to escape through the front door.

The Man keeps me company in this lonely state and I appreciate his silence. He sits on the other side of the toilet without disgust. I realize his expectations for me and my story, and his distaste for digression, but I think he feels sorry for me. He doesn’t even joke. In my mind’s eye, I can see him staring at me with a friendly face. The way my mother would do before she placed a wet, cool cloth over my forehead. How I missed that nurturing detail after growing up and similar ones like it.

When my stomach finally stalls the exodus of its poison, nausea sets in like a weather pressure movement pressing down. I want it to stop. I beg for it to stop. Nothing like nausea to bring your face to the coldness of a ceramic tile in the basement bathroom. With my cheek on the tile I see those long-legged spiders caught in their own web, possibly dead in their own web. I worry about centipedes exacting their revenge on me. I’ve killed so many down here. The fast, wormy way they move is reason enough to run for a wad of toilet paper or Kleenex.

The Man disappears after the nausea attacks. I don’t see him anywhere, not even in my imagination. I wonder if I vomited out my concern for him and flushed it down the toilet.

My wife finds me barely alive, or at least feeling that way, when the baby gets up for her first feeding in the morning.

“Are you all right?”

“Keep the baby away,” I mumble.

“She’s upstairs. Do you want me to call in sick for you?”

“No, it’s okay.”

I try to get up and crawl on hands and knees towards her feet, like that diseased person in the New Testament who solely wants to touch the robe of the Saviour.

“I’m calling you in,” she leaves. And I collapse again. All I can think about is not giving it to the kids. I don’t want anyone to go through this feeling that won’t go away, despite my best efforts to will it away.

And then I think of The Messenger, stranded in my story. I apologize for leaving his journey suspended.

“I didn’t see it coming.”

My wife is back, though, with my glass of water.

“We never see it coming, honey,” she says. “Stay down here. I’ll keep the kids upstairs.”

She means our spare bed in the basement for guests that never stay over.

The Man is upset with me.

“Don’t think you can talk to them too. I’m the only one you can talk to.”

He defends his privilege.

“I’m sorry. I promised to write every day.”

“He can wait. He’s already crossed the border. I’m not sure you want him to nearly die on his way to Bsharri anyway.”

“How do you know, I was thinking . . .”

And then I pass out again.