Page 29 of Margo's Got Money Troubles

“Have you taken his temperature? Wait, are both of you sick?”

I nodded. “I don’t have a thermometer,” I said, “because I am a fucking idiot. Do you have to put it up their butt? I don’t want to put anything up his butt, I can’t! I can’t do it!”

“I’m gonna run to Rite Aid, I’ll be right back,” Jinx said.

He returned half an hour later with a thermometer that went in Bodhi’s ear, and cold Gatorade and Pedialyte that neither of us was sure if Bodhi was allowed to drink, and fever reducer and saltines. I was so grateful it made me panicky. “I’ll pay you back for all this stuff,” I said. “I’m so sorry you had to go to the store.” I realized as I was saying it that I was about to throw up. “I need to puke, could you leave?”

“What? Give me the baby!”

I handed him Bodhi and hunched over the mixing bowl, heaving and heaving though nothing much came out. And that was when I felt it. Jinx’s large hand rubbing circles on my shoulder blades. I was still retching and couldn’t stop, and now I was also sobbing. I couldn’t believe he was seeing me do something so ugly and being so kind. Shyanne did not believe in getting sick, she saw it as a form of weakness, and she certainly didn’t want to be involved in someone else vomiting. When I stopped heaving, Jinx automatically took the bowl and left the room to dump my pitiful two tablespoons of bile and rinse it out.

He came back. “If I keep Bodhi, do you think you could sleep a little bit?”

“You can’t, he’s still puking,” I said. “He might puke on you.”

“Believe it or not, I’ve been puked on many times in my life, Margo, sometimes by adult men.”

I looked up at him. The room was dim and what little light there was came from behind him, so I couldn’t really see his face. “You’re being too nice,” I said.

“Here, take these.” He handed me some Advils and a Gatorade. “Try to sleep. If I need you, I’ll wake you. I took his temp and it’s not that bad, it’s only 101. I gave him some fever reducer.”

“It’s too nice,” I said. He had already slipped out of the room, though, Bodhi in his arms, and closed the door gently behind him. I fell into a state that, if it was not sleep, was sleep adjacent.

At midnight I received a call from a cranky-pants Dr. Azarian.

“Just so you know, the stomach flu is not an emergency,” he said.

“Oh,” I said. “I didn’t know.”

“How often is he puking?” he asked.

“About every hour or two,” I said. I felt sudden panic that Bodhi wasn’t in bed with me, then remembered he was with Jinx.

“How does he have anything left in his stomach?”

“Well, I’ve been nursing him, I didn’t want him to get dehydr—”

“Stop! Stop nursing him! Jesus Christ.”

“Oh,” I said, “like entirely?”

“When he hasn’t vomited for six hours, you can nurse him again. Or give him Pedialyte. Do you have access to Pedialyte?”

“Uh, yes,” I said, remembering that Jinx had bought some.

It was like when you got a test back in high school and went over the answers in class, and you could swear the textbook never said anything remotely like that. You were supposed to feed babies every two to three hours. I thought they died if you didn’t! It never would have occurred to me to take a baby in a weakened state and stop feeding it.

“If his fever goes as high as 104, go to the ER. Otherwise, just try to get through the night. You can come in tomorrow. You don’t need an appointment, come to the office and I’ll squeeze you in.”

“Okay,” I said. I didn’t want to explain that I was also puking frequently enough that driving and visiting his office was definitely not a thing I could imagine doing. I trundled out to the darkened living room on shaky legs. Jinx and Bodhi were on the couch watching Sesame Street. My dad patted the couch beside him. I lay so my head rested on his thigh. “I can take him,” I said, not making any motion to take Bodhi.

“I wouldn’t be able to sleep anyway” was all Jinx said.

Together we watched Elmo’s haunting monologue. There were so many questions. Elmo was evidently a child, but where were his parents? He had drawn a picture of himself with other larger monsters holding his hands, though whether these were living or merely longed-for parents was unknown.

I snapped awake alone on the couch and went to find Bodhi asleep in his crib, Jinx on the floor right next to him, dead asleep, his face mashed into the carpet. I looked at my phone. It was three a.m. I climbed into bed and moaned with gratitude. For the first time in hours, I didn’t feel like I was about to throw up. We had slept. My eyes were hot and wet. “Thank you, thank you, thank you,” I whispered to God or Jinx or maybe Dr. Azarian. I fell back asleep with the unusual feeling that we were safe.

In the morning, I woke to see that Bodhi was already awake in his crib. He wasn’t fussing. He was contentedly playing with his toes, trying to jam his feet into his mouth. Jinx was gone. The sun was coming in the window and splashing down onto us. “Why, hello,” I said, and Bodhi squawked with delight and turned his head to look at me, smiling. I still couldn’t get over those curly little smiles.

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