Rockabye

Gimme Gimme Gimme (A Man After Midnight!)

Gimme, gimme, gimme a man after midnight 
Won't somebody help me 
Chase the shadows away 
Gimme, gimme, gimme a man after midnight 
Take me through the darkness 
To the break of the day

Joe couldn't remember the last time he had been this sick. Not when he was ten and went camping with his dad and came back home with the flu. Not when he was a freshman in college and basically got scurvy from lack of a proper diet. Or even last Christmas when he ended up with a stomach bug that kept him bedridden for nearly a week.

He tried to ignore it. It wasn't terrible at first. The aching body here and there, the random bouts of vomiting in the middle of the night. It wasn't every night, but a handful throughout the week — enough to catch his attention. He chalked it up as some stomach bug that carried on longer than expected. And then continued on as the days turned to weeks.

He spent several weeks, in fact, feeling like absolute shit before he finally decided to do something about it. Something serious anyway. He tried drug store medication — he would spend many nights in a NyQuil induced slumber, only to be woken up by the churning of his stomach as he sluggishly ran off to the bathroom.

He didn't want to think badly about it. He didn't want to fear the worst. Too much bad shit went on in his life and he didn't want to cast a dark light on something that may turn out to be nothing. Some days he would feel fine — completely normal. He could eat without issue and sleep through the night. And then there were times where he felt like absolute garbage. It came and went enough for him to not need to go see a doctor.

The only reason he agreed to go was due to Lucy's never-ending persistence. She wanted to believe that everything was all right, but even she couldn't ignore the lingering doom of something terrible if he just kept getting sicker and sicker.

In the darkest part of his mind, he feared the worst. He remembered seeing his father slowly drift off, his body caving away into nothingness. He feared that same possible outcome for himself. He didn't feel like he had cancer, but then again, what was that even supposed to feel like?

He gave in for her sake, using the health care that he was privileged enough to have and made an appointment for the doctor. He felt like a child, jaggery and nervous in his seat as he flipped through the magazines. He hated the doctors for many reasons.

The waiting rooms were filtered with germs and the water machine always made that stupid noise when the air bubble would push through it. How they always made your appointment for a specific time but didn't take you in until much later. What the fuck was up with that?

When he did get called in, he waited even longer, nearly ten minutes. The bundle of nerves building in his chest was about to burst when the nurse finally entered. All cheery and pleasant as she read over his chart. He explained the situation as carefully as possible but by the time the doctor came around, he made it very clear that he felt like shit and just wanted to know why that was.

Neither made it seem like this was something he had to worry about, which both relaxed Joe but also frustrated him. Lucy made it out to seem like it was the end of the world and yet they were just bobbing their heads and playing it off like it was no issue.

They had him piss in a cup and drew some blood. He sat on that chair thing, in a room that was far too cold, staring at some medical poster on the wall as he waited for one of them to come back and tell him what the fuck was going on.

When the nurse came back, she instructed him to go into the doctor's private office. It was at that moment Joe feared the worst. You don't sit with the doctor with the door closed and hear good news. Each step felt like it was farther and farther away and when he entered the room, he found himself sitting an even more uncomfortable chair.