“It’s only a small blister. How bad could it get?”
If only she knew.TenArianaIt was ten days after the burn incident, and I was flying high, especially now that I’d gotten rid of the big dressing on my chest that Parker insisted I keep on until a couple of days ago.
After I’d asked him how bad it could get, the morning after the incident, he’d sent me links to YouTube videos on how easily it was for a blister to get infected. I was determined I wasn’t going to go down that rabbit hole, but unfortunately I had the willpower of a dickhead. Everyone knows a dickhead who does something stupid, and I was now claiming that title. I’d watched those videos for three hours, my hand pressed against my mouth as I battled the urge to bring my coffee back up, and now I understood why he hadn’t let me touch the babies when we’d gone to visit them.
Also, even though I was pretty much all healed, I was now a germaphobe. I washed my hands frequently, stewed over whether I’d done it correctly or not, followed Sadie’s advice to sing happy birthday twice while I did it, used three pumps of soap, and also followed it with hand sanitizing gel. In fact, I’d just finished doing rewashing them after wiping down the bar top, something we did regularly because it got so sticky thanks to the drinks we were serving. Plus, I just didn’t know where people’s hands had been.
“Nothing wrong with being sanitary,” Sadie pointed out, spraying another layer of the antibacterial cleaning stuff Lily had on the bar. “Germs are evil things, and don’t even get me started on viruses.”
That made me look at the people around us in an even worse light. How many of them were carrying a virus or hadn’t washed their hands?
Hearing her, Beau turned and gave Sadie her full attention now that everyone had been served. Busy nights here were a blast, but when I called them busy, I meant busy.
“Are you that fixated on it because you’ve had an infection?”
Satisfied with our cleaning project, Sadie put the bottle back in its home. “Nope, but there was this commercial on television once for an antibacterial product. They showed a raw piece of chicken being put on a kitchen counter with red salmonella bacteria around it. The person used a wet cloth to wipe it up, but the red just smeared all over the place. Then they touched the bin—more red—and their face…” she shuddered.
“I couldn’t touch anything in the kitchen for weeks. Anyway, they showed the antibacterial cleanser's effect on it, but even then it left a tiny bit behind because that’s real life. We miss areas when we clean or just make a half-arsed attempt at it. So, from then on, I figured I’d do two or three passes with the spray and once with a wipe, too, just to make sure. I also make sure I wash my hands as thoroughly as possible, including in the corners of my nails. The problem is, most antibacterial stuff only kills ninety-nine point nine percent of germs, so I have to do my best not to think about what that point one percent bacteria is.”
I swear my life was changing as she spoke. All I could think about now was that point one percent bacteria and if I had it on me. Glancing at Beau, I could see her looking at her own hands and then the surface of the bar, too.
We were all so engrossed in it that we didn’t see Charlotte, Levi’s wife, until she spoke. “Please don’t let him hear this. Your brother has coprophobia, and it’s driving me insane. That'll just make it worse.”
I didn’t know he had a phobia of anything apart from being normal, so this surprised me. “What’s coprophobia?”
“A fear of poop,” she replied, her expression not turning to amusement, so I wasn’t sure if she was joking or not.
“I don’t think anyone likes poop.”
“Maybe not, but your brother takes it to the extreme. When Niklaus does a dookie, your brother either freaks out and has to go and wash his hands—even though he hasn’t touched it—or, if I’m not there to change the diaper, he puts two pairs of gloves on. His hands legit shake when he changes him, and he puts the diaper in four bags. After that, he washes his hands twice and uses hand sanitizer.”
Niklaus was my two-month-old nephew, named after a character from a show called The Originals. It was made even better by the fact that the other character in it was called Elijah, and my cousin Elijah was his godfather. And, no, Lily wasn’t to blame for this. Charlotte had binge watched it while she was pregnant and decided on the name while the hormones were running rampant in her body. We called him Nik for short, but she called him Klaus when she didn’t think anyone was around.