Murphy and Me: Sophomore Fall

October: A Non-Sharable Party Trick, and Kidness of a Certain Sort

It was the Tuesday after our Saturday rain game against Hamilton that I started to feel like shit. First it was the sniffles, followed by a cough that had me sounding more like a sick seal than a human. I fired off an email to my placement teaching telling her I was ill (and therefore not coming, no matter how many hours in the hole I was) and barely dragged my ass to my seminar. It was a one absence only seminar and therefore my ass needed to be there.

And being there physically? Sure as shit not the same as being present and accounted for mentally.

As my ass - and the rest of the body it was attached to - was having a difficult time staying upright, there was no way acting class was feasible. It was difficult to breathe through clogged nostrils standing still, let along acting as a squirrel. Yeah, our professor was a little out there.

After a conversation, or parts of it, rather, as I tried to hack up a lung shortly after 'hello', with my coach, I was looking at a free Tuesday and was going to spend it passed out and snuggling in my lovely dorm bed. Preferably wrapped around Edgar.

Couldn't be wrapped around Murph as he didn't need to get sick. Didn't need to risk getting Dev, Liam, and Colby sick, either. But as Murph would want to check on me later - and he still flinched at the idea of my unlocked door on a trip to the bathroom - he would need my keys to actually get in the room.

Oblivious to the fact it was nine in the morning, I knocked on the door to the fishbowl. Dev didn't even crawl outta bed to answer it.

"Ollie?" he blinked sleepily at me.

I hacked up my kidney into the crook of my arm. We both flinched. "Can you get Murph?"

"How 'bout I get you a doctor first?" he mumbled, sliding off the bed. I held the door open with one hand, utterly miserable.

"Ol?" Murph was there in an instant, rubbing at his jaw. If my head hadn't been so damn fuzzy, the sight of my boyfriend with no shirt would have made me stare and drool. His hand touched my forehead and then recoiled. "Damn, you're hot."

"Such a sweet talker." I really needed to lay down. "Will you come check on me later?"

"Absolutely." He was offended I asked - like it was a given. "Leave your...Nope. I'll come with you now."

Barefoot and bare chested, Murph followed me up the stairs. Opened my door. Tucked me into bed after turning his back so I could change at a snail's pace.

Don't remember him leaving, but remember the sound of the lock going. A nap seemed like the right thing to shoot for.

Bushes lined the path. Green bushes. And all through the bushes little Amish people would pop up, almost like Whack-a-Mole.

Then there was clear blue sky above me as I lay on the August-warmed asphalt, having just walked into the side mirror of a truck.

Purple fireworks went off and everything started to spin, blending together.

Down and down fell the bed, the stamps, Amish hats, and side mirrors...

My feet were against something that moved every now and then and a warm, heavy weight on my calf. Opened my eyes, blinked a couple of times, and the wall came into focus. So did Edgar and what looked like Smokey. But what was Smokey doing up here?

I shifted, craning around to look at the other end of the bed and found Murph sitting with one elbow on the dresser and his nose in a European history textbook. He looked at me when I pushed my toes against his hard thigh.

"Hey," he said, laying the book down on his other leg. "How do you feel?"

Pulled the comforter up to my nose and blinked, trying to convince my stomach there was need to evacuate. Hopefully it would listen.