Who's Laughing Now? (part two)

   

My family spent the holidays sick with the flu. 

First my father caught it. Then my wife. My youngest daughter and I were next. Last was my granddaughter. 

When I was young I would get sick, then quickly recover. These days it takes longer for me to bounce back, but that's okay. It gives me an opportunity to catch up on movies I’ve recorded from TCM but haven’t had the privacy to watch. I can’t be in the middle of watching Sonny Corleone being brutally gunned down in The Godfather only to have my granddaughter walk in wanting me to put a box on my head.

     My beautiful wife drove us to a medical clinic. My daughter laughed through her misery when she saw me carrying a box of Kleenex and a small trash can, but I knew what I was doing. At any given time I could sneeze or throw up. Hopefully, not at the same time. On the drive there she asked me for some Kleenex, then tossed the used tissues in the trash can.

     “Who’s laughing now?” I teased.

     Checking in at the clinic, the receptionist made the mistake of asking what my symptoms were. I explained to her as delicately as possible that liquid was exploding out of each end of my digestive system.

     “Da-aad!” my daughter moaned. “Do you have to be so loud?”

     Inside the clinic it was obvious the simulation Elon Musk thinks we live in was having fun at my expense. Why else would the clinic require me to use my phone to fill out information I've filled out for them a dozen times before? 

My head hurt.

I could barely focus. 

Didn’t they know I was sick?

     They called my daughter away to be helped first, which is as it should be. A few minutes later they called me. A few minutes after that, the doctor came in. The simulation wasn’t done messing with me, so I repeated my  symptoms to the doctor for a THIRD time.

     “Da-aad!” my daughter yelled at me from the next room. “Do you have to be so loud?”

     I’m kidding, of course. 

Anyway…

     “You'll be okay,” the doctor assured me.

     He left, and a nurse came in with something long and sharp.

     I had to get a shot, and she gave it to me right in...

     

The End

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