I start seeingtwo of Superintendent Daniels towards the end of our meeting on Friday.
I realize that I’ve slowly been listing to the side when he frowns at me. “Are you okay, Ms. Sanchez?” he asks me.
I’m sick and tired of people asking me this question. “I’m fine, Mr. Daniels. Is that all for today?”
“You really don’t look well,” he repeats, inspecting me. “Have you been doing okay with this responsibility? You know, with great power and all. Are you handling it?”
I steel my back, force myself to sit up straight. I don’t admit this requires an extreme amount of energy. “With all due respect, Mr. Daniels, I don’t remember you ever asking Oliver this question. I am handling it quite well. Would you like to me to reshare the survey results from the PS 2 community? The community thinks I’m handling it stunningly.”
The Department of Education sends a survey out to the families and staff members of each individual school in the city. It asks all types of questions, about leadership, support, academics. My scores were fantastic.
I force my body out of my chair, ignoring the rush of lightheadedness and gripping onto the handle of my door when I reach it. “If that’s all, Mr. Daniels, I have a lot to do before I leave for the weekend.”
Daniels seems unconvinced, but he gets up to go. He shakes my hand and raises an eyebrow while looking down at our clasped hands. “You seem unnaturally warm. I may be your boss, but I’m still a dad, and I know what a fever feels like. I’d check your temperature.”
“Thank you, Mr. Daniels,” I say firmly and finally.
He walks out.
The last of my energy gives out. I shut the door and slide down the back of it, eyes closed. I manage to crawl to my desk to get my phone. The ibuprofen I took a few hours ago seems to have fizzled out of my system way earlier than advertised. Fucking Big Pharma. I pull up the Uber app and request one home.
* * *
I take in my surroundings. I’m in my bed at home. It kind of smells and the duvet cover is very wet. After a few minutes of attempting to claw my way out of a haze and into coherent thought, I realize it’s wet because I seem to be sweating from every orifice of my body, including the places I didn’t know had sweat glands, like between my toes and behind my ears. I’m not quite sure why I’m sweating though, because I am absolutely freezing cold. Arctic cold. Shivering and shaking cold. My lips feel tender. The space between my joints feels tender. Everything feels tender.
It’s a monumental effort to get under my covers, because I’ve lost most of the voluntary control of my limbs and because my sheets feel like sandpaper on my skin. Ithurts. Fucking 700-thread count sheets. There has to be a thread count conspiracy. If so, I’m the number one subscriber.
It’s probably a bad sign that I don’t remember how I got to my bed. It’s probably the number one sign that I should go to the doctor. That, and because my Egyptian cotton sheets feel like knives.
This is the last thought I have before my eyes close.
I dream of Blackbeard. He goes to Costco to buy the value pack of matches. There are thousands and thousands of matches. He is annoyed that Costco doesn’t provide shopping bags, so he has to use a Chiquita banana box to carry all his matches to his ship, which is parked in the parking lot. Under the cover of darkness, he sticks matches into every crack in the brick facade of PS 2. He lights them all, and it gives a very spooky effect to the school. Blackbeard has no concept of fire safety.
When I regain consciousness, it’s pitch black and I can’t breathe. Oh yes, I’m under my covers. I won’t be moving. I’m not sure I can.
I have a pounding headache, and I wonder why the hell I woke up when my dream was clearly about to get really good.
“Lina?!” a deep voice calls out. Oh, maybe I’m still dreaming. Blackbeard seems to be calling for me. Maybe he needs help carrying the matches. I told him to use a shopping cart.
“Lina, baby.”Oh, okay Blackbeard, it’s like that?
I am assaulted by a gust of frigid air and a spotlight. Maybe Blackbeard has taken me to the North Pole.
A rough hand feels my forehead, my neck. Blackbeard smells like my boyfriend, Dom. He is my boyfriend Dom.
“Holy shit, Lina. You’re really hot.”
“You too,” I tell my boyfriend Blackbeard Dom.
“Fuck. You’re soaking wet.”
“Always, for you.”
“When was the last time you took any medicine?”
I try to open my eyes to make sure I’m not hallucinating Dom, but it just isn’t possible. I decide to hope for the best. “Sometime this afternoon. Maybe around lunch?”
“Fuck,” he mutters again. “Okay, stay here,” he says sillily. Obviously.
