A Flu For All Seasons
by Your Diva, Robin Pastorio-Newman

"I’m dying!"
 
"Paulie, you have a cold."
 
"It’s a virus. A giant, lurking Terminator of a bug. With fangs."
 
"Viruses aren’t alive, you know. You pour chicken soup on them and they take a powder, my sweet."
 
"My virus resists all the efforts of Womankind. I’m going to the Emergency Room!"
 
Thus, Your Darling, Your Diva, Your One True Love and her dear companion Paulie Gonzalez spent Labor Day weekend sidelined by a hinky little plague. At such a moment, one finds amusement where one can. For unexpected mirth, few events match meeting your high school friend in the ER while she’s taking Handsome Prince’s blood pressure and your hair is pointing toward magnetic north:
 
"So, how’s…your mom?’
 
"She’s fine, thank you. You’re married, and look, you didn’t even have to change your monogram! I’ll go pass out in the waiting room now." When we arrived at the hospital, the waiting room was empty and the staff bored. Half an hour later, it looked like a disaster-prone tour bus emptied on Somerset Street. Every chair was full, and stray wheelchairs had been rounded up by orderlies and placed in the lobby in an attractive grouping. It’s true, Your Beloved modeled less than her best summer look at this moment. People sitting nearby appeared rumpled and some were plainly ill. A reasonably able-bodied gal with a day job, a weekly article, credit cards and health insurance has recourse to consider imponderables like ‘I wonder if my high school friend thinks I’ve donned my bathing cap and taken a dip in the murky local deep end?’
 
Restored to our living room and the couch, connections to the outside world were limited to phone calls and television. We read our mail and had to tell friends.
 
"Mamie, I got a letter that opened with ‘Dear Fellow Republican’ and I laughed so hard my throat closed." And:
 
"Auntie, we can’t come to your barbecue. If we give you our cold you’ll send your healthy grown children to kill us."
 
Suffice it to say, a week later, Paulie’s back under the hood of his car and Your Mild Mirth has seen the inside of a salon. The laundry’s folded, the chicken stock’s exhausted and Larry, the little black cat bent on stealing your soul, is spoiled after constant – if congested - companionship. All that sleep aside, being sick is positively exhausting. On Monday morning, we went back to work to rest up for real life. There’s got to be one around here someplace. Perhaps under the piles of crumpled tissues?
 

©2004 Robin Pastorio-Newman