December 24th [COMPLETED]

10. Road Sick

Getting sick on the road was inevitable. George had seen it happen a million times. She, herself, had gotten sick on the road more times than she could count. There was a standard protocol that Julien taught her when she was young for when someone got sick.

You kept to yourself, rested, got someone to fill in for your job for a few days, and stayed away from others until you felt better. Standard operating procedure. George had been the one to enforce this common sense practice on a couple of different tours when she saw they didn't practice it. Julien had instilled in her the importance of this practice when she was about eight years old and George took it upon herself to do the same for others.

The bottom line was this: keep the talent healthy. If you were sick, stay away from the acts. The musicians inevitably got sick, there was no surefire way to avoid that altogether. But George did the best she could to lower those odds and lower the frequency.

While traveling with 7 Ships in Asia, George got sick. She was far from surprised as she had seen it travel from crewmen to crewmen. She was grateful neither Tommy nor Jay had gotten it and so when Jamie started mentioning a headache and a sore throat, George shut the recording bus down and the two of them kept to themselves. Jamie's cold came on strong after a day, George's the day after.

They worked on what they could during the times Jamie was lucid but they were few and far between and soon enough George's own head started burning up. But, as if on schedule, thanks to Sydney's diligence in keeping them fed and taken care of, Jamie got better. The fever was mild and the coughing stopped after two days.

George, however, only got worse. Her fever kept rising, her moments of clear thought had long since packed their bags and left for holiday and her voice was unusable due to the pain that racked her throat. Soon enough Jamie was kicked out of the bus to keep her from re-catching whatever George had and George was left alone.

She couldn't move. Everything hurt. She'd try getting up and climbing out of her bunk and every time she did, Sydney pushed her back in and she'd fall back into a shallow dream-like state. When they reached Tokyo, Sydney said something about a hotel room and getting off the bus but George was in no state to fully comprehend just what she was saying.

All she could understand was that Sydney was finally letting her out of her bunk. She was somehow placed in a cab with a medical face mask on and then she blinked and she was in a hotel room with a wide view of the city out her window. She body sunk into the deep plush bed beneath her and she was already sleeping when her head hit the pillow.

It was dark when she had gone to bed, she remembered that, and it was dark still when she woke up. Her shoulder was moving, shaking, back and forth. She tried opening her eyes and found Sydney standing over her with a cup of something hot that George didn't want to drink. She felt better once she did but the effort left her drain led and she fell back asleep.

George was up and down after that. A distant ringing would sound off and then be silenced only to sound off again immediately after. During the few minutes George's brain was awake, she found Sydney reading in a chair by the window. Later she found Sydney in that same chair but with her eyes closed and her book on the nightstand.

George's fever broke once, leaving her sweating and feeling gross but it soon came back. Sydney got her awake enough to drink something that tasted like cough medicine, that George had a feeling was cough medicine. George didn't have the strength ask what it was and instead, trusted Sydney and her medical training in the military to take whatever she gave her.

George had a thought of calling Felix to see how he was but the thought never landed and she fell into a deep dreamless sleep.

George could think. That was her first thought when she started to regain consciousness. It was revolutionary, the feeling of her brain inside her skull, its right size for the first time in days instead of swollen and pushing against her temples.