A Day and Night's Worry (a short story)

A Day and Night’s Worry

(An Old Man’s Illness while in an Andean City)


She came into the bedroom he couldn’t sleep, he had been restless all nigh and she saw that her husband looked ailing. He was chilled to the bone, not composed, shaking, his face was pale and he moved as if he was in pain, every move appeared to take all his efforts.
“What’s the matter, dear?” she questioned.
“I feel sick to the stomach, all over!” he mumbled half alert.
“Go back to sleep, maybe you’ll feel better later,” she suggested.
“No, I’m really sick, I think it was that coffee from that dirty café across the street I had last night.”
“Go back to sleep, I’ll call the doctor after I get dressed, he’ll know what it is, and what to do,” she insisted.
But after she had gotten dressed and washed up, she saw he was sitting in his sofa chair in the living room looking very ill, and a despondent old man of sixty-two years. When she felt his pulse it was weak and his forehead was sweating, on fire with fever.
“You need to get back in bed,” she exclaimed, with dread written all over her face, “you’re very sick,” and then went looking for a thermometer.
“I’ll be okay,” he commented.
When the doctor arrived he took the old man’s temperature.
“How high is it, Dulio?” asked the old man.
“One-hundred and three,” he told him.
On the kitchen table the doctor left some pills, antibiotics, and gave the old man three shots in his hip, saying he had food poisoning.
This medicine was to bring the fever down, and to overcome the infection in the stomach area. The germs of the unclean restaurant—those items used for drinking and making coffee had produced this ill-infected condition. The doctor seemed to be quite aware about the food poisoning in this mountainous city in the Andes of Peru. And assured the old man’s wife there was no longer a thing to worry about, but if for some odd reason the fever did not go down, to get a hold of him. He implied most everyone in Huancayo got sick sooner or later, and it was an ongoing occurrence, or fact of life, and that there was no danger in it if she watched the old man closely because of his heart condition, and his immune system, which made him weaker, and less able to combat the infection, having Multiple Sclerosis, and a history of Atrial Fibrillation, and Hyperlipidemia.
Back in the bedroom, the old man’s wife took note of the temperature the doctor wrote down on a piece of paper, and made a fresh note of the times to give him his pills.
“Do you want me to rub your back?” asked his wife.
“No, I’m too miserable,” said the old man.
His face and arms in particular, and his whole body in general appeared to be very weak, dark shadows under his eyes.
The old man’s wife read silently from her husband’s most recent book “Cornfield Laughter,” but it was obvious she wasn’t into it, only that the reading was a quiet distraction.
“How are you feeling?” she asked him.
“It’s only been a few hours since the doctor left,” commented the old man, “I feel just the same!” he said in a half stimulate mode.
She sat in a chair by her husband now reading the same book, the short story called “A Toucan against One,” it made her laugh, and reminded her of when they were in the Amazon together, several years ago. It would have been normal for him to go to sleep, because of his Multiple Sclerosis, which often required him to sleep between nine to twelve hours a day, each day; but now he was looking very oddly into nothingness.
“You really need to get some more sleep, I’ll wake you up in four or five hours for your medication,” she indirectly said quietly, unsure if he even heard her.
“I can’t seem to be able to go to sleep, what can I say,” responded the old man.
Then the old man said in a weakened, near whisper, “Why don’t you go, you can wake me up when it’s time, if I go to sleep and if I don’t I’d rather be left alone in any case, I’m sorry, but I feel irritable.”
“It doesn’t bother me to sit around in the room, you’re my husband, I’m supposed to.”
“No, I mean, it bothers me if you do stay.”
She thought perhaps he was a slight light in the head, a tinge dizzy from all this and left the room for awhile. It was a bright warm day in the mountainous city. The nights were always chilled though and a light frost had evaporated from the sun’s heat rays off the window, leaving water streaks, and dots. And so she went outside for a little walk, stopped by a fruit vender, and had a glass of pineapple juice.
A pack of stray dogs rushed by her scattered into the neighboring bushes, a few jumping over them, frost-coated; as the old man moved from side to side unsteadily.
At the apartment there was some knocking at the door, but the old man refused to get up and let anyone in, “Go away!” he hollered from his bedroom.
When his wife came back, she went into see how he was doing, it had now been time for her to give him his pills, he was still pale and warm faced, but he was sleeping and his foot was moving as in a jerking motion. She wanted to take his temperature but was fearful of waking him up.
“What is it?” said the old man abruptly, surprising his wife, startling her somewhat.
“I need to take your temperature,” she said. It was one-hundred and one now, “Your temperature’s getting down some,” she commented.
“I’m getting a little sleepy also,” he said, evidently holding in something, perhaps feeling he had been on the edge of death.
“Take a drink of this,” said his wife, it was some red liquid to replenish his body fluids. “It will help you,” said his wife, “my sister Mini and Nancy suggested it, so I’m sure it will help.”
He sat up and drank it down, as she opened her book back up, and turned to where she had left off.
“What story are you reading?” he asked.
“About the Toucan,” she said.
“I was really feeling I was going to die there for a little while,” the old man told his wife.
“What!” said his wife.
“Yes, die, I felt I was going to die, I even heard the doctor say I had a temperature of one-hundred and three, and I felt my heart skipping a beat here and there, and I seemed to have been drifting back and forth from this world to another world.”
“What’s the matter with you you’re not on your death bed yet?”
“Oh yes I was.”
“People don’t die from food poisoning they just get real sick, stop talking so silly.”
“Most people don’t—I know that, but I’m not like most people.” He suggested.
He evidently was preparing to die. He had been preparing all day and part of the previous night.
“You silly old man,” said his wife, “You’ve got miles and miles to travel yet before you die. No food poisoning is going to kill you, you’re too ornery” and she took his temperature again and it was ninety-nine.
“Are you sure it’s ninety-nine?” He asked.
“Oh yes, yes of course, absolutely,” she said with relief.
“Okay,” he said, “I guess I got a little while longer on this earth.”
“What did the doctor say to you?” he asked.
“He told me to take care of you that your life was in part, in my hands, as well as his and God’s.”
The old man gazed at his foot; it was relaxed, no longer jerking. His whole body was relaxed, and the next day he was still somewhat weak, but he was out in the mountainous sun, crisp as it was, doing little things of no consequence.


No: 611 (4-2-2010)
For Doctor Dulio Montano and Rosa