#it kind of messed up my sleep schedule but i'm mostly alright and recovering now 👍

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Congrats on 100!! I'd love 29 cause I'm super obsessed with appendicitis oops

I think appendicitis is a great trope too!  Problem is, you can only torture each character with it once…

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Colby’s been up and down all night.  Sitting on the toilet, in front of the toilet, guzzling water from the tap, brewing peppermint tea as quietly as possible, all to no avail.  His stomach still hurts, and Jason, who seems to be in the deeply unconscious clutches of his REM cycle, isn’t stirring when Colby makes weak attempts at cuddling.  There’s something peaceful about being awake at 3:30 in the morning. He thinks for a moment about trying to make it to one of those sunrise yoga classes, but abandons the idea immediately.  He’d vomit all over his mat if he tried to press into downward dog in his current condition.

He curls onto his right side with his chin hovering over Jason’s shoulder, ineffectively spooning his boyfriend’s sprawled frame.  But the position hurts, and he rolls to his back, shutting his eyes and wishing the painful cramp or whatever the hell it is will go away.

It doesn’t, but Colby does eventually find sleep again.  It’s light outside, and Jason’s mumbling something about Honey Bunches of Oats when he next opens his eyes.  He’s uncomfortably hot, and when he sits up, his t-shirt clings to him with sweat.

“What happened to you?” Jason asks blearily.

“Am I glamorous?” Colby replies, clearing his throat and pushing damp hair off his forehead.  He cracks a smile, but it turns to a grimace when the ache in his abdomen decides to tick up a couple notches.

“You’re kind of a mess,” Jason says.  “You ok?”

“Yeah, I’m good.”

“Dude.  No, you’re not.”  Jason finds a seated position too.

“Yeah, well.  My stomach kind of hurts,” Colby admits.  “But, I don’t know.  Probably not a big deal.”

“What, did you get food poisoning from your organic hummus or something?”  It’s a joke, but concern shows in Jason’s eyes.

“I don’t think so,” Colby says.  “I’ve been kind of up and down, like, waiting for something to happen, but I think I’m really fine.  Just kind of uncomfortable.”

“If you need the bathroom, I can always commandeer Mike’s,” Jason offers.

“If you did that, she’d murder you,” Colby laughs, wrapping his arm around his stomach to dispel the resultant throb.

“Seriously, though,” Jason says.  “You don’t look so good.”

“I’m ok.  I don’t have class till this afternoon, so I’ll probably just chill.  See if this’ll work itself out.”

“Well, in that case,” Jason says, leaning in to kiss Colby’s bristly cheek.  “I’m taking the bathroom first.”

Colby vegs against the pillows for a while, then forces himself to drink another glass of water while he watches Jason shovel down cereal.

“Call me if you don’t feel better, ok?” Jason says as he loads homework into his binder and readies his backpack for the day.  “I can come home or pick up some pepto or something.”

“Nice offer, but don’t worry about me,” Colby answers.  “It’s too close to the end of the semester for you to miss class.”

“Since when do you care about class?  Maybe I do need to worry about you!”

“Naw, you care about class.”  They both laugh.  “Now get going,” Colby says.

Half an hour later, Colby’s standing in the shower.  His stomach isn’t bloated, but the persistent pain feels like the worst possible case of gas.  He swallows a mouthful of water from the showerhead and tries to force himself to burp, convinced he’ll feel better if he just relieves a bit of the pressure built up inside him.  Nothing happens, though.  He pushes until he almost gags, then cringes.  Washes his hair. Finishes up.

He dresses in sweats and tries to think through his options.  Colby feels maybe a bit worse than he did when he first woke in the middle of the night.  He thinks perhaps a fever is slowly creeping up on him, and his stomachache is sitting consistently in the could-possibly-puke territory.  He fixes tea and toast he has no intention of consuming and sits on the couch.  He turns on Pandora and slouches into the cushions, wondering if 9:30 in the morning is too early for a nap.

“Are you listening to Indigo Girls?”  Mike’s face is a twist of disgust and confusion.

It takes Colby a second to find himself in space and time, then swallow down hot nausea, and finally formulate an answer.  “I guess.”  He doesn’t know what radio station he’s listening to.  Probably folk pop or something like that.

“You’re so weird,” Mike pronounces.  Then, “What’s wrong with you?  Aren’t you, like, usually reading the Kama Sutra or cataloging endangered leaves or something by this hour?”

“Nothing,” Colby says.

But Mike glares at him and says, “You’re sick.  Which is weirder.  You never get sick unless one of us does first.”

“Don’t worry about it,” Colby says, repeating his conversation with Jason earlier.  “Go to school.”

“Yeah, I will, but I’m starting to think I’m in the twilight zone.”  She looks down at the cold, untouched toast.  “You’re eating white carbs and everything.”  Mike shakes her head.

“Mm.  Yeah.  My stomach,” Colby explains.  As if on cue, said stomach convulses painfully and sends prickling nausea up his throat. “Give me a minute, here,” he mumbles, standing up and stumbling into the bathroom.

Colby drops to his knees in front of the open toilet and breathes, waiting for the inevitable gagging to start.  He can practically feel liquid in his stomach preparing to eject, but nothing happens except a swell of seasick dizziness.  “Fuck, come on,” Colby curses.  He rests his chin on the toilet seat.  He spits excess saliva from his mouth and waits to start retching.  He feels beyond disgusting.  Colby sticks two trembling fingers down onto the back of his tongue.  He gets as far as triggering a cough when a voice comes from the doorway.

“You sure you want to do that?” Mike asks, exhausted cynicism heavy in her tone.

“Christ, fuck, Mike,” Colby croaks, putting both hands back on the toilet bowl.  “God.  Of course I don’t.  I didn’t… I’m sorry.”

“No, I get it,” she says.  “You just…wanna get it over with.”

“God.  Yes.”  The nausea’s squeezing is brain and his stomach in opposite directions.  He finally gags, though nothing comes up.  A second pitch forward brings a trickle of water.

“See, it’ll happen on its own.”

“Ugh.  Yeah,” Colby breathes

“Alright.  Well.  I’ll leave you to it.”  Mike retreats down the hall.

As soon as he has breath, Colby calls, “Go to school,” after her.  “Don’t worry about me.”

“Wasn’t planning on it,” carries back.

The front door bangs open and shut, and Colby heaves raggedly until he’s empty.  The nausea hasn’t lessened much, and all that seems appealing is getting horizontal again.  He meanders back to the living room and swallows a sip of his cold tea.  If this is how things are going to be, Colby knows dehydration’s going to be his main enemy.

He badly needs a distraction from the figurative railroad tie stabbing at his internal organs.  One of Jason’s books is on the coffee table, and Colby picks it up.  He absorbs the first few chapters of Leaving Mother Lake and decides that whatever class has assigned this book needs to get on his schedule next semester.  The story of the young protagonist growing up in rural China is surprisingly engaging for a school book.  Until there’s a passage about rooster blood and Colby has to race his nausea to the toilet.

There’s hardly anything to vomit up, but that doesn’t stop Colby’s body from turning itself inside out.  Bile drips from his lower lip with a slow cadence while heaviness draws his head down onto his arms.  Time moves oddly; it seems to take a long stretch for him to recover from each heave, but in no time at all he’s spitting up snot and acid all over again.

It turns out a lot of time has passed, and all of a sudden there are cool hands on his face and neck.

“Hey, wake up.  God, you’re burning.”

“Hm?”  Colby looks up to see Jason, and he struggles to put together a cohesive timeline.  Is it morning?  Or evening?  Has he missed class?  Does he even have class today?

“So, not feeling any better, I take it.”  Jason wets a washcloth and presses it to the back of Colby’s overheated neck.

Colby grunts, making a rippling echo tear across the toilet water.

“You definitely have a fever.  Is it still mostly your stomach?” Jason asks, popping a squat beside Colby.

“Yeah,” Colby exhales.  “It, uh, it really hurts.”

Jason worries his lip and nods slightly as he locks onto Colby’s glazed eyes.  “This is really serious, huh?”

“I, uh, yeah, maybe?”

“You never complain about anything.  You have the highest pain tolerance of anyone I know, except maybe my stupid sister, and this is hitting you hard,” Jason says.

Colby sighs.  Fights the urge to dry heave.

“Where is it hurting you the most?”

“Here?  Ish?”  Colby uses his quivering fingertips to draw an imprecise oval between his navel and right hip bone.  “’s like I’m getting fucking stabbed.”

“Ok, we have to go to the hospital,” Jason says, rising to his knees and putting a supporting arm around Colby’s shoulders.

“No, I don’t…I’m…” he breaks off and gags hard.

“Do not tell me you’re fine when I’m almost positive this is your appendix.  This is serious,” Jason insists, getting Colby to his feet. “We’re going to the ER.”

“I’m gonna puke in your car,” Colby murmurs, knowing Jason will be squeamish about any bodily fluids that are uncontained.

Jason takes a deep breath.  “It’s ok.  We have to go, though.”

They’re halfway down the hall when the front door bangs open and Mike’s unmistakable lightweight footsteps shuffle inside.

“Hey, better idea, we’ll make Mike drive,” Jason says with a guilty grin.

Colby laughs, then redoubles his grip around his aching stomach.