Page 95 of Turnabout Is Fair Cosplay
“Lungs are clear. Say ah, dear.”
I comply, but barely.
“Oh, yes. Strep for sure, but we’ll run a test all the same.” I’m told to stick out my tongue again. Pauline sticks a cotton swab in my throat, and I gag.
“I’ll call in a script while this is running. CVS on Pearl?”
“Fine,” Mom says.
“Antibiotics for a couple of weeks should do it. Plenty of rest. Fluids.”
“Should I bring her home?” Mom asks.
“Home?” Pauline pauses.
“She means Del Mar,” I croak.
“Ah, I wouldn’t advise it. Not with your little grandson and Julie expecting. Best to convalesce at her own digs.” Pauline writes a note. “I’ll go make a call. Feel better, sweetie.”
“How far away is the pharmacy?” Mom asks when we get back in her car.
“Not far,” I rasp.
“I’ll just be a minute,” she says, pulling into the CVS parking lot.
“Mom, it’ll take hours. I want to go home. I want to be a cactus.”
“Five minutes,” Mom says.
She’s back in three with my prescription.
My throat burns too much to ask how she pulled that off. But I know Molly.
I asked nicely.
I said please.
I went to school with so-and-so or their best friend was my cousin’s maid of honor.
She’s unstoppable. She gets what she wants.
“Come on. Let’s get this in you before you fall asleep again.” She hands me a bottle of ginger ale and one of the orange pills.
I don’t argue. I just take the pill and fall asleep against the car window.
I wake up hours later in my bed. My dishwasher and dryer are whirring quietly. Mom is sitting on my expensive sofa with her feet on the coffee table, her toes curling, a book in her hand.
“You know, that little market on the corner is extraordinary,” she says. “Everything anyone could possibly want and in a store the size of a shoebox.”
“I smell bleach and oranges.”
“I cleaned up before I started baking.”
“You didn’t have to,” I groan.
“Oh, I know. But I wasn’t going to let you get sepsis on top of strep.”
“It wasn’t that dirty.”
