What It Felt Like

“Quit moving,” Holly said.

Keith hissed, impatient, and resisted the urge to bat her hand aside when she mopped his brow with a cool, damp cloth. “I’m not a bloody child.”

Holly cast a pointed glance over his stuffed tiger hot water bottle, his nest of fuzzy blankets, and the mountain of pillows making him comfortable. He’d pleaded for them bit by bit over the past few hours, blue eyes big and guileless, voice small and suspiciously child-like. Now he was decked out like an Arabic Sheikh and had Holly waiting on him hand and foot.

Duffy, Shannon, and Ste were out at the newsagents securing an army’s worth of tinned chicken noodle soup.

“You could’ve fooled me,” Holly said.

Keith felt his nose begin to run. He sniffled. Holly cast him another pointed look. He sniffled again, mutinously, but when it did no good he used the back of his wrist. Holly sighed and handed him a box of kleenex.

“You really were raised in a barn, weren’t you?” she said.

Keith blew his nose, loudly, and glared at her. She ignored his glare and reached out, brushed his hair aside gently to feel his forehead, check his temperature.

“It’s gone down a bit,” she said. “You ought to kick this fever in the next four to six hours.”

“I want to be better.” Keith knew he sounded whiny, but he knew as soon as the others were done dropping off the soup they’d be out on the streets, planning the next big strike. He was supposed to be with them. He was a warrior for the Glorious Cause.

Who couldn’t fight off a common cold.

“I know you do.” Holly kissed him on the cheek. Then she pulled back, tilted her head to listen. “The others are back. I’ll fix up a bowl of soup.”

When she left, Keith sank back on his bed of pillows and sighed. He wondered if this was what it felt like, when a mother watched over her sick child. He was so used to his father just thrusting a box of tissues and a packet of lozenges at him and telling him to get over it.

The lads came in to tell jokes and clown about while Holly cooked. When she returned, they left, and it was just the two of them. Keith fell asleep to Holly reading him Yeats.

(399 words)