Nice Buns (Cheap Thrills 7)

Oh, I tried to argue and point out I was capable of walking without help and choosing my own clothes, and I certainly didn’t need someone to stand watch outside the bathroom while I “went tinkle.” And I was fucking hungry, too, damn it.

Seeing the exasperation on my face, Evie started laughing as we drove to the appointment.

“They got you good, didn’t they?”

“It’s like being a toddler again. I think I need to give Sheena the benefit of the doubt from now on.”

She snorted as she pulled up to the lights. “Did they try and feed you again?”

Sulkily looking out of the window, I mumbled, “You promised we’d never mention the apple sauce again.”

“I didn’t mention it,” she said slowly, “you did.”

Fuck’s sake.

For all the moaning and groaning, though, I loved every second of having Cody and Evie in my life.

And I re-read the text message she’d sent me while they’d been helping me onto a gurney at the back of the P.V.P.D. building at least ten times a day.

I didn’t realize Evie hadn’t seen me without my sunglasses on yet, so when I took them off after we’d found a space to sit in the waiting room and heard her gasp, I thought something else had happened.

Seeing her staring at me, though, it added up real quick.

“Don’t worry about it. It’s probably just allergies.”

“Do you have any of those?”

I thought about it. “Not that I’m aware of, but it’s never too late to start collecting things, right?”

“Yo, dude,” a squeaky pubescent voice said beside me, getting my attention off of Evie. “Did you fart on your pillow? That’s how you get pink eye.”

“That’s a myth. You shouldn’t believe everything you hear in movies.”

“Nuh uh,” he argued, then pointed at the man sitting next to him. “My grandad says it’s true.”

‘Grandad’ pulled his magazine up closer to his face like he was trying to pretend he wasn’t part of the conversation.

“Okay, I have a son who thought it was true as well, so I spent a long while explaining why it isn’t. Thankfully, I can remember what I told him back then, so I’ll educate you on farts and pink eye.”

The kid looked oddly excited by the topic, much like DB had back then. “Your farts are mainly methane, which is a gas. Once you fart, it gets dispersed into the air around you.”

The kid looked to the side. “That must be why my parents know when I’ve done one.”

“It is. Now, if you were to wipe your butt over the pillow, yeah, the bacteria from your poop could contaminate it. But you’d have to put your head down almost immediately on the area because bacteria from your poop die pretty quickly once they’re outside of your body.”

“This is so cool.”

I heard Evie snort at the boy’s happiness over the topic.

“Technically, you could also cause it if you wiped after you pooped and didn’t wash your hands, or didn’t do it properly, and touched your eye. But you could also cause a bad infection in the eye and maybe even lose it.”

“Not cool.” He looked disappointedly down at his hands but then perked up again. “So you don’t wash your hands after going to the bathroom either.

“My parents keep telling me once I’m an adult I’ll look back on what I did as a kid with regrets, but if a police officer doesn’t wash his hands and gets pink eye, it’s okay not to do it.”

Grandad's shaking magazine from his laughter was getting on my last nerve.

Leaning around me, Evie took over the conversation.

“Actually, he does wash his hands—and with soap.” The kid's eyes widened at this nugget like she was talking in Dutch.

“He was involved in the situation at the police station a couple of days ago, and it’s likely he got some debris in his eye that’s caused the infection.”

The kid looked back at me with his mouth open. “You got a war wound? I heard about that, but I don’t know anyone who survived being blown up.”

“Mr. Bell?” a nurse called from the door, saving me from the torture.

Getting up quickly and pulling Evie with me, I nodded at the boy and ‘Grandad,’ the asshole.

My final parting wisdom was to say, “Wash your hands after you poop, and don’t put the stuff in your eye.”

Fifteen minutes later…

So, here I was, sitting with my head in some sort of torture device, listening to Doctor Pam and Evie laughing about the conversation.

Still.

“When you’ve got a minute, Doc,” I ground out, feeling like a twat with my chin on the holder thing and my forehead pressed against a metal strip.

“Sorry, sorry.” She waved her hand in front of her face, trying to calm herself with it. “Okay, let’s pop this dye in it so I can see if you’ve got any abrasions, and then we’ll take a good look.”