I woke up at 3:30am yesterday to the sound of my fiance throwing up in the bathroom.
Now, I confess … I am not proud of my reaction. I banished him – the love of my life, who was so sick that he decided to take a bath in the middle of the night to somehow try to make himself feel better… even though he’s 6’3″ and does not fit into our miniscule bathtub – to the couch. And then as soon as it was reasonable to do so (6am) I jumped in my car with all of my worldly possessions (laptop, iPad, massive load of laundry – ’cause hey, free laundry!) and camped out at my parents house.
Where I am, right now… the next day.
The thing is – he’s sick. It could be food poisoning, or it could be a bug. But since there’s apparently no way to tell (thanks for that WebMD) other than to wait and see if anyone else catches it, I didn’t want to stick around and find out because, let me tell you, it wasn’t good folks. He actually sent me a text message later (much, much, much… about 18 hours later) thanking me for giving him his space today – that’s how bad it was.
So anyway, I left. In my defense, a few hours after I left I made a run to the store and dropped off a bunch of gatorades, ginger ales, and saltines. But I dropped them off with ninja like skills – without taking a breath the entire time I was in the apartment, and without touching any surface he may have touched.
It isn’t that I didn’t/don’t want to be there to take care of him. I do! Every other time he’s been ill, including when I’ve also been sick at the same time, I’ve taken care of him – tucked him in, got him juices and tea, made him toast – etc. But I do not do well with stomach bugs. They terrify me. The symptoms of stomach bugs are literally some of the worst things that can happen to a person – and, most importantly, our apartment is tiny. We only have one bathroom. You can’t have two people sick with a stomach bug and only one bathroom to go around!
So I left the love of my life alone, defenseless, and sick as a dog. And do you know what I did that was even worse? Yes – it gets worse.
That laundry I was talking about? Well, I decided that I needed to wash the bed sheets since they might be contaminated as well. So I stripped the bed and planned to dash out the door. Without putting new sheets on the bed. He put me in my place on that one (but in a really wimpy, whisper-y, pleading way).
Tell me – what is my penance? Because that was some very not-cool fiance behavior (even though he’s reassured me that he isn’t mad, and he appreciated the space).