Who Is Paul Botterman?

XI

Second Encounter, 2015.

I had suffered a bad case of the flu when I was nine in the winter of '96. The first symptom had been weakness and fatigue. But it was the puking and diarrhea that put me down. To this day, I still recall being on the couch, waiting for Mom to come in with the thermometer the way hero parents do that we take for granted, when suddenly and without warning, I released what felt like water and mud into my pajama pants. Embarrassed and crying about such an accident while she cleaned me up and comforted me to make me love her even more. My body tanked from there as I went a pale green, appearing to be being eaten from the inside out. Ginger ale barely kept my stomach intact. Painkillers didn't take the edge off the body aches, hitting me in sharp constants that were random throughout to my toes and fingertips. To get up and rush to the bathroom was agony I nearly collapsed off the toilet, needing help or practically crawling my way back to bed. There was a trash can next to my bed meant for if I had to let out the contents of my guts. Used twice when I knew I couldn't reach the bathroom and did not want to ruin another pair of pajamas. Four days of that. Each worse than the last that I remembered dreaming about really dying-really getting everything up to the burial. Alone and isolated to keep the contagion from spreading through the house. The tail end of it felt like my head would bust like a grape. The pressure was so severe. Every slight contact with my skin carried the sensation my flesh was rotting off the bone. Years later, I would hound Mom and Dad, wondering if it had been some rare strain we shared with an animal, like a possum or rat or some other filthy creature that could only be responsible for the deathly touch of this infection. They insisted it was just regular ol' flu. All just a bad case of it.

My upstairs room was already hot. After four days, I needed to get somewhere more relaxed, or I felt my brain would melt inside my skull, imagining it looking something like a grilled cheese but in skull and more...cheesy. The image of pink slime running out of my ears and nose still sticks with me. Mom helped me downstairs into the den with my comforter onto the couch. Where the winter cold could be felt radiating off the windows. I could suffer out the end of the world in there. But it didn't change the sickness ravaging my body on a mission to see me as worm food. The symptoms didn't seem to improve, not even slightly, to the point I asked Mom to take me to the ER just so I could get told by a medical professional that I was indeed dying and that my parents could make arrangements. By that fourth day, it felt like every breath I took was inhaling razor blades instead of air. The only reprieve came from the moments I managed to find sleep when I didn't think it would ever find me again.

"Just let me die," I said from the couch. Not sure if I was addressing God or hoping Mom or Dad was listening around the corner. In the few moments of consciousness I was imagining they finally came to terms with it. They would come in to euthanize me no different than you would a family pet. They could have even buried me in the backyard. I wouldn't have minded if it meant this being over.

It was a cold winter. Not so much bad. But it was so cold that everything froze solid by December, and enough snow grass was a novelty. Mom poked her head into the den to let me know she was going out and taking the kids with her to do some errands. I heard her, I remember, giving something of a zombie groan to let her know. She was gone for two hours, but it felt in my dying state as a whole afternoon. I heard the minivan pull into the driveway. The driver's door close, and the back door slide open. Pete was pitching a fit about not getting something. A candy bar, most likely. Annette doing the same but with a new Barbie.

You notice that when you're sick and most of your facilities are failing, how you remember things? Hear better than you could when you're well? Oh, yeah. I heard my mother's feet skid on the patch of black ice my dad missed when he cleared the driveway that morning. Pete wailed, and Annette stood still in a shriek of panic. Mom sprained her ankle that day and broke her right wrist trying to catch herself in the fall. Still a toddler, Marissa began bawling into the winter day in a constant drone that carried into the wind. Pete and Annette were too young to do much more than stand while their tears froze. Mom would have had to claw her way into the garage and into the house to the phone to call Dad if I had not been there.