Page 44 of What A Croc
Hugging it to my chest, I grinned at Jackson, who was now the one looking a little flushed. He shrugged, “It’s dumb, but I don’t know. I thought it was cute, and you could put it on your bed or something.”
“I love it,” I told him truthfully, clutching the stuffed crocodile to my chest.
He leaned down and gave me a soft kiss. “Yeah?”
“Yeah.”
“You can tell me if you hate it,” he whispered, “we’re not teenagers, so if you don’t–”
Placing a finger over his lips to hush him, I repeated, “I love it.”
Chapter Twenty
Robert
Groaning, I rested my head on my arm, across the toilet seat. Not exactly sanitary, but I gave no fucks at this point. I could not stop throwing up. This was the worst case of the flu I had ever experienced.
I woke up yesterday morning, Monday, with it. Since there was currently a tummy bug making its rounds through the daycare, I hadn’t been all that surprised it had hit me. Towards late afternoon, I had actually been able to keep a piece of toast down and thought I was on the mend. But this morning, upon the alarm clock going off, I had immediately been hit with another wave of nausea.
I was on my third round of puking and would need to drag myself to my phone to text Wyatt that I couldn’t make it in again today.
A noise had me jerking awake. I must have dozed off, because I was lying on the bathroom floor in a heap. The last thing I remembered was thinking I needed to text Wyatt. Before I could get my head around what had woken me, a key scraped in the lock and Wyatt’s voice called out to me.
“Pops! I’m coming in.”
Groaning against the throbbing pain in my head, and the vile taste in my mouth, I heaved myself up from the floor. Well, I tried anyway. The room spun so fast around me, I ended up slamming back down on my butt, panting harshly, and trying not to vomit on my son’s shoes that were now directly in front of me. He’d kill me if I hurled on his vans.
“Well, that answers the question of how you’re feeling.” He knelt down in front of me, his hand covering my forehead. “No fever, but you look like hell. I figured when I saw your car still here you were still sick.”
Peering at him through narrowed eyes, I realized there was sunlight streaming into the bathroom from behind the closed blind over the one window. “Time is it?”
“Nearly nine,” he told me, wetting a cloth with cool water and wiping my face like I was a child.
“Sorry,” I mumbled, trying to take a deep breath. “I was going to text. I think I fell asleep.”
He frowned at me, “Or passed out. Come on, back to bed.”
It might have been better to just camp out in the bathroom with the way my stomach was heaving, but the comfort of my bed sounded amazing. Wyatt helped me as I got unsteadily to my feet, and we made the trek slowly to my bedroom. “Where’s the baby?”
“She’d yell at you if she heard you call her that,” he warned me, tugging the bedspread up to my chin. “She’s almost two, as she reminds me daily.”
The smile I tried felt shaky, and my throat hurt when I croaked, “Oh, I’m aware.”
“Becks has a later shift, so he’s going to drop her off later at the daycare,” Wyatt looked around the room. “You need water and ibuprofen. I thought you were feeling better last night?”
My stomach flipped and I shook my head, one hand resting on my stomach. “Just water. I don’t think I can handle anything else right now.
Since I didn’t have a fever, I would be fine without the medicine. It might help the aches and pains, but it did little good if I just threw it up. “And I thought I was better too. Guess not.”
“Hmmm,” Wyatt hummed, leaving and returning with a glass of water a few minutes later. He sat the bottle of medicine next to it. “Just in case you need it later. And here’s a bucket, to be on the safe side.”
He sat my giant mixing bowl on the floor, and I grimaced. It wasn’t a true bucket, but it would work if Icouldn’t make it to the bathroom. Though I really hoped I was done being sick.
My eyelids were drifting closed on their own, exhaustion washing over me in a tidal wave. “Thank you.” My voice sounded like sandpaper from my puking.
“Welcome, Pops,” Wyatt whispered. “I’ll have Becks check on you before he goes in, but text him if you need anything. I mean it, he’s right next door.”
I gave a slight nod of my head, because not moving at all seemed to be keeping the nausea at bay, and I wanted to keep it that way. I hated being sick, but I hated throwing up more than anything.
