“I said you’re going to be late. Don’t you have biology at ten?” she asked, pulling on her jacket while she crammed her feet into the cute pair of flats she had gotten for Christmas.
“Yeah,” I answered, placing the pillow over my eyes to block out the unwanted light.
“Well, unless you get your ass in gear, you’re going to miss it.”
“What time is it?” I mumbled. My heavy eyes tried enticing me to stay in my nice comfortable bed for the rest of the day.
“It’s nine forty-five. Unless you’re skipping for the second time this week, you have to get up now,” she said, pulling the pillow off my face.
“Nine forty-five?” I repeated, trying to make sense of the time in my head, which seemed to be in permanent foggy mode lately.
“Yes, so get up,” she said, grabbing her shoulder bag.
“Yes, Mom,” I snipped, dragging my legs around so I was sitting up. The room spun slightly, making me feel queasy.
“Are you okay?” Melissa asked with her hand on the doorknob.
“Yeah, just a little light-headed. I didn’t eat much yesterday. I think I have a dumb stomach bug,” I mumbled.
“Maybe you should stay in bed. You look like hell,” Melissa replied, looking concerned.
“Thanks for the compliment. Philips would have my head. We’re covering mitosis phases versus meiosis phases this week. She’s hinted that they’ll be important facts to know for the midterm.” I struggled to pull on my favorite yoga pants at the same time that I was yanking my UW hooded sweatshirt over my head.
“Yeah, but if you’re sick,” Melissa said, taking in my lethargic movements.
“I’ll be fine. Once I finish biology, I’ll come back here and go to bed,” I said as I shoved my hair into a clip to secure it.
“Don’t you have a date with Justin tonight?”
“No, he’s studying with some guys from his humanities class tonight. His teacher is being a complete asshat,” I said, grabbing my bag and following her out of the room.
“I’ve heard horror stories about that guy. Thank God we steered clear of him,” Melissa said before we parted ways. “Make sure you go back to bed after class,” she added sternly.
“Yes, Mom,” I teased, feeling slightly better now that I was moving around.
“Good girl, and if you’re lucky, maybe I’ll bring you some soup tonight.”
“From Mia’s Diner?” I asked hopefully.
“You’ll have to wait and see. Now go before you make both of us late,” she said, shooing me off.
Heeding her warning, I increased my pace, although my body wasn’t happy about it, but at least I reached biology with two minutes to spare. Five minutes later, I was wishing I’d just stayed in bed. To add insult to injury, I discovered that Professor Philips wouldn’t be teaching today when one of the research assistants who had previously covered her class came strolling in. The worst part was he had a heavy foreign accent that no one seemed to be able to understand. You could hear multiple grumbles throughout the room as he hooked up his laptop to the overhead screen at the front of the classroom. The best you could do was write down as much information as possible from his PowerPoint presentation and hope that Professor Philips would cover the topic again on another day. I did my best to keep up, but the minutes trickled by at an alarmingly slow rate as I imagined my warm bed back in my room.
“What a joke,” Stan, one of my friends, said as we walked out of the building together after class. “I know he’s speaking English, but I’ll be damned if I understood five words of what he said in there.”
“Tell me about it,” I said. “I got ‘Hello, class,’ but everything after that sounded like gibberish.”
“Do you want to go grab some coffee? I have an inordinate amount of time left before my next class.”
“Can’t. I think I’m fighting off some kind of bug. It was all I could do to drag my ass out of bed for this joke of a class.”
“That sucks. I hope you feel better,” he said, backing away before he could catch any of my germs.
I told him thanks, although I was tempted to lick his face or something, the big baby. The walk back to my dorm seemed endless as the last of my energy surplus melted away. By the time I stumbled back to my room, I didn’t even bother to remove my clothes. Before I succumbed to sleep, I sent Justin a text telling him I was sick and that I would call him later when I woke. He replied quickly, telling me to rest and drink plenty of fluids.
Later turned into the next morning as I woke up after nearly twenty hours of sleep. I felt marginally better and relieved that the queasy stomach that had been plaguing me for the last week or so seemed to have disappeared.
“Look who’s finally awake,” Melissa said, placing a hand on my forehead. “How do you feel?”