NanoWrimo 2009
And the long hiatus is over!
First off, kudos to me for finishing six months of abstaining from alcohol. In all fairness, I have to say I did, during those 185 days drink twice. Once on my birthday, and once on what is likely to be the last get together between three college buddies in a long time.
But I still made it otherwise. My first official 'off the bandwagon' drink was shortly after midnight on the morning of November 5th as both a celebration of completing half a year without drinking, and also because I broke 10,000 words in my NanoWrimo this year.
Go me!
Now, for those who are reading this via Google Reader or Facebook post, it's long. It's cross-posted from my LiveJournal and you can read the original there.
November for me is going to be a tough month. First off, we've got a new teacher to introduce around and get settled in on the 16th or 17th. Next off, we've got to get our apartment cleaned up, stuff mailed off home, packing done, and eventual moving out. Not to mention a going away party, and lots of friends who want to take up a lot of time saying goodbye and so long. That's all cool, and will be a blast. I'm really looking forward to some of it.
Then there's the actual traveling. On the 19th of November, Jill and I will hop an early morning bus from Ulsan to Gimhae International Airport to catch our flight to Thailand. We will then spend five days there chillin' in the wonderful tropical sun and exploring some rainforest. Hopefully even ride an elephant. Also, I've had several requests for photos with some Thai ladyboys. I'll do my best guys, really.
After our short vacation (too short!) Jill and I will hop another flight out of Bangkok that stops over in Mumbai, India for couple of hours, and then pretty much flies nonstop for eighteen and a half hours to Newark, New Jersey. Yes, that's a trans-Atlantic flight. So, in going to Korea for a year, we will have circled the globe by the time we get home! Another accomplishment.
We will arrive, if all goes as planned, at 12:40PM at Newark International Wednesday, November 25th. The day before Turkey Day. Perfect timing. We'll see who draws lots to pick Jill, myself, and our luggage up at the airport.
Hopefully the rest of the month is pretty sedate. But until then, it will be busy. And of course, to make things more interesting, it's National Novel Writing Month again!
I've won NanoWrimo two years running with slowly increasing wordcounts. Last year I finished with just over 53,000 words. I figured, since I can type at least 1,667 words an hour (the required minimum a day to finish 50,000 words in 30 days) I would use my plentiful free time to finish two novels in November! Yes, you heard me, two. T-W-O. 2. Dos. Zwei. Doble.
So that's 100,000 words in 30 days, 3,334 words a day. Can I do it? We'll see.
Right now it's six days in. I have managed to somehow stay on top of my writing. There were two days of almost zero words written, but then I've come back with a just completed 10,000 word day. I wrote 10,000 words today. How crazy is that? I should do that everyday. Then I could write 300,000 words in November. Eh . . . maybe next year.
Warning: All work herein contained is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to persons living, dead, fictional, or entirely real is probably intended, but hey, it's not like this will ever see publication in its current form anyway, right? However, it is mine, Alexander F. Gullett, and I would appreciate it if you didn't steal it. You can however use it to get your friends to do NanoWrimo. Oh, and I haven't proofread anything, so read at your own risk. Also, I blame LiveJournal's automatic text formatting for any ugliness that results from my copy/paste of text files. They look much better in Word.
So I'll start by attaching the first writing session for my newest novel. I call it:
The Unwilling Necromancer
Charleston McCarthy opened his eyes. This was a fantastic feat. For someone who had been unresponsive for three months, it was a relief. For someone who had been undead for two of those, it was unnerving. Yet still, his eyes were opened, and not through any interference by the medical examiner. Said medical examiner dropped his scalpel, crossed himself, and promptly fled the morgue. After extensive group rehabilitation, he took up cross-stitch and other craft skills, just as his mother always said he should.
Meanwhile, Charleston McCarthy stared the stare of the dead, cold, lifeless, and eternal. After several hours, the head ME arrived to see how the investigation of the recently exhumed corpse was progressing. Finding the partially decomposed remains of the late Mr. McCarthy on the steel table, pallid and inhuman under the harsh fluorescent lights of the lab, Doctor Harold Thackery set about tracking down young Jim Thompson, Assistant Medical Examiner for the small city of Morrisburgh.
For several hours the cataract glazed eyes of Charleston McCarthy stared directly up at the ceiling, heedless of the glare of the lights, the reflection of the steel, or even the purpose he was supposed to serve in being cut open a second time in the name of the law. Truly, he only waited for his master to speak, and tell him what was wished of him, and so he remained. Silently he endured the pains of the surgeons scalpel, retractor, and unscrupulous hands as the probed around inside him. Noiselessly he screamed in his own mind as secrets were extracted from his guts; secrets that would convict two young men of Murder in the First Degree. Secrets that were wrest free with science while an older power held the corpse in thrall.
And without a murmur of protest, Charleston McCarthy was reinterred, to spend the rest of his eternal wakefulness contemplating the inside of a pine box, encased in cement two meters beneath the grassy hillside of a New England cemetery.
In Room 307 of the Morrisburgh Memorial Hospital, Arkady Harris slept the sleep of the haunted. A fever pulled at his flesh, burning and slashing its way through his supple and resisting body. At eleven years of age, it wasn’t unusual for a young boy to be ill, to have a fever, and to fight it off with the resilience of childhood. However, it was odd that all the tests the doctors could give, and all treatments they could prescribe would have no effect. And so Arkady slept the sleep of the feverful, dreaming of ghoulish faces crying out for peace.
Next to him, seated at his bedside, was a young woman. Perhaps thirty years old, or perhaps a few years more, she looked younger. Or at least would have if it hadn’t been for the sorrow and worry that etched her face. Pale brown hair flowed over her shoulders and across her brow where it lay resting on the side of the bed. Her hazel eyes were closed, and her soft, motherly hands were clasped in front of her. Her fingers entwined with those of Arkady and forced into them the will to live and fight, even though they belonged to someone who slept the exhausted sleep of parenthood. Mrs. Diana Harris slept at her child’s side and tended his sleeping form as if it were the most precious thing in the world. Which to her, he was. However the demands of the living required that the body sleep, else the mind and the body will slip slowly into the realm of the unliving, and the dead.
Hunter Harris remained outside in the parking lot. Smoke rose from the cigarette clenched tightly between two fingers while two lips clenched even tighter in a troubled face. The dark brown, almost black hair, kept short and unstyled helped to show how young the man way. And while his wife stayed at the bed side of their only child, he spend his worry in the night, pushing smoke defiantly from between his lips and out through his nostrils, as if it carried away his anger and worry with it. Leaning against the yellow hatchback that they family had driven to the hospital in, he dragged hard on the cigarette before dropping it to the ground and stomping down on it angrily. Twisting his shoe over it with added emphasis, he blasted the smoke out through his nostrils, ending it with a snort and a cough. Really, has out of practice at this smoking thing.
Checking his cellphone again for some update from his sister Margaret, he sighed heavily when there were no new messages and thrust the sleek black device back into his pants pocket. Maggie was Arkady’s god-mother, and also a registered nurse. She had always been the family’s first line of defense against health problems, and he hoped she had heard of something like what Arkady was going through before. But thus far the blanks he was receiving in return for his questions were far from encouraging.
Stomping back towards the In-Patient entrance, he hoped one last time that when he got upstairs, Arkady would be perfectly okay.
Three days before, everything had been perfectly okay. Arkady was just starting his sixth grade year, and had moved from the Intermediate School of the Morrisburgh South School District into the Central Middle School. Not only had this meant the usual rush to buy new school clothes and supplies, but also that Arkady would be meeting new friends for the first time in five years. Morrisburgh Intermediate and Primary Schools were divided into four separate districts, and all of these combined into the large and fairly new Middle School. Students in Kindergarten through Fifth grade who had always known each other were suddenly exposed to three time as many students more than they had ever known who all had friendships and cliques from their own districts.
So, on the first day of school, Arkady had been suitably nervous.
“Mom, where’s my Spiderman pencil case?”
“Mom, where’s my Captain Jack Sparrow binder?”
“Dad, have you seen my new shoes?”
And so on. When he left in the morning, the sandy-haired little boy had been a bundle of energy, unable to control his excitement as he joined his fellow schoolmates on the bus to their new school. His brown eyes sparkled and laughed as he waved his small hand at his parents before running up the school bus steps and finding his new seat.
After a day of new seats, new faces, new classes, new books, and new trouble, Arkady returned home with much less of his usual vivacity. Thinking that perhaps he had just overdone himself on his first day, his parents sent him to bed early after a healthy dinner and a moderate-sized dose of celebratory ice cream. The silence of night claimed the last rays of daylight as the Harris household fell silent, and outside the first whistling fall winds blew quietly through the trees to bring creeping dreams, and silent shivers in the night.
“Kade! It’s time to get up, breakfast is ready!” Mrs. Harris called up the stairs to her son. In the kitchen Mr. Harris was buttering toast and pouring orange juice in glasses. The eggs and bacon were already waiting on plates, and usually Kade was already downstairs, waiting for his share of juice before they all started eating. But today he was apparently sleeping in.
“Di, he’s probably just not used to the schedule yet. I’ll go get him up. He was pretty tired last night too.” Hunter set two glasses of orange juice on the breakfast table and wiped the crumbs from the toast off on a towel hanging from the oven door.
Diana sighed, “You’re probably right, but he’s never late for breakfast.”
Chuckling, Hunter headed up the stairs, calling back, “Well, growing boys need their rest.”
Once he reached the upper floor with long, stair skipping strides, he reached the poster clad door to Arkady’s room and rapped quickly three times. Tap, tap, tap. “Hey, kiddo! Time to get up, you’re mother’s been calling you.” Listening carefully, he heard nothing from inside the room. Turning the knob of the door, he swung it inwards and stepped into the room.
Books, clothes, and toys were strewn across the room in the usual haphazard arrangement of a preteen boy. No one likes to clean up after themselves at that age. Picking his way carefully across the sloppy minefield, Hunter reached the bed and shook Kade gently. “Kade, breakfast is ready. Let’s go.” As his hand touched Arkady’s arm, Hunter knew almost by instinct that something wasn’t right. The skin was too warm for sleep, and the Spiderman pajama top was damp. Pressing the back of his hand to Arkady’s forehead, he felt the heat press into his skin. Frowning, Hunter went into the bathroom at the end of the hall and returned with a cup of water, thermometer, and a bottle of Children’s Tylenol.
Using the aural thermometer, Hunter gently held the device to Kade’s ear and waited for the readout to display the temperature. 104.3 degrees Fahrenheit. Perfect, just what they needed. Carefully shaking Kade some more, he managed to get a weak response, and Kade blearily opened his eyes.
“Whassat?” His voice was more than sleepy blurred, as if Hunter could hear the fever in his speech.
“Nothing much kiddo. You need some Tylenol though. Did you know you have a fever today?” Hunter gently helped Kade sit up. Holding the small measuring cup of purple liquid in front of Kade’s lips, he waited for him to open his mouth, and then poured it in. The glass of water followed the Children’s Tylenol, and then he let his son lay back down on the pillows before he turned and went back downstairs.
“Babe, I think we need to give Doctor Michaels a call. Kade’s got a pretty high fever. I gave him some Children’s Tylenol, but I think he might need something more than that.”
Diana Harris had been sitting at the table, reading a book and nibbling at a piece of cooling bacon when Hunter came back downstairs. “What? Really? Oh shoot.” She put down the bacon and book and went over to the phone. Doctor Michaels’ phone number was on the small pegboard next to the wall phone. “I hope this isn’t something going around school. How’s he look?” Concern was there, in each word, as she dialed the number of their pediatrician.
“He looked tired, and he was so hot Di. Maybe the Tylenol will break the fever, but . . . better safe than sorry. Guess he’s going to miss a day of school early this year.” Hunter snatched up some bacon and ate it almost without tasting it. Glancing back to Diana by the phone his eyes passed over the clock. 6:42AM. Well, they had a little bit of time before either of them had to start work today. Maybe they could get an early opening at the doctor’s office and this wouldn’t be too much of a problem. And maybe the Tylenol would break the fever, Hunter thought to himself. But somehow he just couldn’t picture it. Kade was so hot when he’d felt his head, and although the boy had been sick before, it hadn’t been as bad as this. 104.3 degrees was also the highest temperature the kid’d ever had. Hunter Harris was more than a little worried about Kade. He was just turning to go back up and check on him again when Diana got off the phone.
“Doctor Michaels’ office says they have an opening at nine o’clock this morning that they can fit us into. Do you want to take him, or should I?” She hung the phone back on its receiver and went over to where Hunter was standing next to the table.
The morning sunlight defied depression and bounced cheerily over the plates and glasses of juice, lighting the breakfast nook with September brilliance. None of it reached Hunter’s eyes. An unhappy smile played across his lips. “I can’t today. If it had been earlier, then no problem. I’m meeting the Collums for an appraisal at 9:30.”
“Well, guess it’s up to me then. I think I can get the morning off. They’re not going to need me too much at first. Jessie can take over most of the morning workload.”
Mrs. Harris worked at an antiques dealership, and usually it wasn't busy until after punch. Mornings were almost always spent cataloging new products or researching the authenticity of others. She would have to call in and let Jessie know she'd be late today.
"Honey, I'm going to check in on Kade one more time and then get in touch with Maggie as well. She might be able to give us a preliminary before we head to the doctor's." Hunter said as Di started dialing Jessie Casterly's home phone number.
"Mmhmm." She nodded as Hunter headed back upstairs. He stopped by the bathroom to pick up another glass of water and a washcloth moistened with cool water before heading into his son's room again.
Kade hadn't changed his position, and his flushed, damp face pulled at Hunter's heart. There was an unidentifiable malignance in the shadows that were starting to form undress the boy's fever rimmed eyes. Setting the water down on the bedside table, he sat carefully next to Arkady's sleeping form. Gently brushing back the boys pale brown hair from his forehead, Hunter again felt the fever warmth with his own skin and worried some more. He carefully placed the washcloth on his son's brow and watched him breath easily and deeply despite the fever.
I'll mostly be including this story in my LJ posts as I feel the other one, Traveling Time: The Journeys of Enas Tonmi actually has a slightly greater chance than a snowflake in a blast furnace of publication. You can have sneak peeks at that when I get around to publishing it.
First off, kudos to me for finishing six months of abstaining from alcohol. In all fairness, I have to say I did, during those 185 days drink twice. Once on my birthday, and once on what is likely to be the last get together between three college buddies in a long time.
But I still made it otherwise. My first official 'off the bandwagon' drink was shortly after midnight on the morning of November 5th as both a celebration of completing half a year without drinking, and also because I broke 10,000 words in my NanoWrimo this year.
Go me!
Now, for those who are reading this via Google Reader or Facebook post, it's long. It's cross-posted from my LiveJournal and you can read the original there.
November for me is going to be a tough month. First off, we've got a new teacher to introduce around and get settled in on the 16th or 17th. Next off, we've got to get our apartment cleaned up, stuff mailed off home, packing done, and eventual moving out. Not to mention a going away party, and lots of friends who want to take up a lot of time saying goodbye and so long. That's all cool, and will be a blast. I'm really looking forward to some of it.
Then there's the actual traveling. On the 19th of November, Jill and I will hop an early morning bus from Ulsan to Gimhae International Airport to catch our flight to Thailand. We will then spend five days there chillin' in the wonderful tropical sun and exploring some rainforest. Hopefully even ride an elephant. Also, I've had several requests for photos with some Thai ladyboys. I'll do my best guys, really.
After our short vacation (too short!) Jill and I will hop another flight out of Bangkok that stops over in Mumbai, India for couple of hours, and then pretty much flies nonstop for eighteen and a half hours to Newark, New Jersey. Yes, that's a trans-Atlantic flight. So, in going to Korea for a year, we will have circled the globe by the time we get home! Another accomplishment.
We will arrive, if all goes as planned, at 12:40PM at Newark International Wednesday, November 25th. The day before Turkey Day. Perfect timing. We'll see who draws lots to pick Jill, myself, and our luggage up at the airport.
Hopefully the rest of the month is pretty sedate. But until then, it will be busy. And of course, to make things more interesting, it's National Novel Writing Month again!
I've won NanoWrimo two years running with slowly increasing wordcounts. Last year I finished with just over 53,000 words. I figured, since I can type at least 1,667 words an hour (the required minimum a day to finish 50,000 words in 30 days) I would use my plentiful free time to finish two novels in November! Yes, you heard me, two. T-W-O. 2. Dos. Zwei. Doble.
So that's 100,000 words in 30 days, 3,334 words a day. Can I do it? We'll see.
Right now it's six days in. I have managed to somehow stay on top of my writing. There were two days of almost zero words written, but then I've come back with a just completed 10,000 word day. I wrote 10,000 words today. How crazy is that? I should do that everyday. Then I could write 300,000 words in November. Eh . . . maybe next year.
Warning: All work herein contained is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to persons living, dead, fictional, or entirely real is probably intended, but hey, it's not like this will ever see publication in its current form anyway, right? However, it is mine, Alexander F. Gullett, and I would appreciate it if you didn't steal it. You can however use it to get your friends to do NanoWrimo. Oh, and I haven't proofread anything, so read at your own risk. Also, I blame LiveJournal's automatic text formatting for any ugliness that results from my copy/paste of text files. They look much better in Word.
So I'll start by attaching the first writing session for my newest novel. I call it:
The Unwilling Necromancer
Charleston McCarthy opened his eyes. This was a fantastic feat. For someone who had been unresponsive for three months, it was a relief. For someone who had been undead for two of those, it was unnerving. Yet still, his eyes were opened, and not through any interference by the medical examiner. Said medical examiner dropped his scalpel, crossed himself, and promptly fled the morgue. After extensive group rehabilitation, he took up cross-stitch and other craft skills, just as his mother always said he should.
Meanwhile, Charleston McCarthy stared the stare of the dead, cold, lifeless, and eternal. After several hours, the head ME arrived to see how the investigation of the recently exhumed corpse was progressing. Finding the partially decomposed remains of the late Mr. McCarthy on the steel table, pallid and inhuman under the harsh fluorescent lights of the lab, Doctor Harold Thackery set about tracking down young Jim Thompson, Assistant Medical Examiner for the small city of Morrisburgh.
For several hours the cataract glazed eyes of Charleston McCarthy stared directly up at the ceiling, heedless of the glare of the lights, the reflection of the steel, or even the purpose he was supposed to serve in being cut open a second time in the name of the law. Truly, he only waited for his master to speak, and tell him what was wished of him, and so he remained. Silently he endured the pains of the surgeons scalpel, retractor, and unscrupulous hands as the probed around inside him. Noiselessly he screamed in his own mind as secrets were extracted from his guts; secrets that would convict two young men of Murder in the First Degree. Secrets that were wrest free with science while an older power held the corpse in thrall.
And without a murmur of protest, Charleston McCarthy was reinterred, to spend the rest of his eternal wakefulness contemplating the inside of a pine box, encased in cement two meters beneath the grassy hillside of a New England cemetery.
In Room 307 of the Morrisburgh Memorial Hospital, Arkady Harris slept the sleep of the haunted. A fever pulled at his flesh, burning and slashing its way through his supple and resisting body. At eleven years of age, it wasn’t unusual for a young boy to be ill, to have a fever, and to fight it off with the resilience of childhood. However, it was odd that all the tests the doctors could give, and all treatments they could prescribe would have no effect. And so Arkady slept the sleep of the feverful, dreaming of ghoulish faces crying out for peace.
Next to him, seated at his bedside, was a young woman. Perhaps thirty years old, or perhaps a few years more, she looked younger. Or at least would have if it hadn’t been for the sorrow and worry that etched her face. Pale brown hair flowed over her shoulders and across her brow where it lay resting on the side of the bed. Her hazel eyes were closed, and her soft, motherly hands were clasped in front of her. Her fingers entwined with those of Arkady and forced into them the will to live and fight, even though they belonged to someone who slept the exhausted sleep of parenthood. Mrs. Diana Harris slept at her child’s side and tended his sleeping form as if it were the most precious thing in the world. Which to her, he was. However the demands of the living required that the body sleep, else the mind and the body will slip slowly into the realm of the unliving, and the dead.
Hunter Harris remained outside in the parking lot. Smoke rose from the cigarette clenched tightly between two fingers while two lips clenched even tighter in a troubled face. The dark brown, almost black hair, kept short and unstyled helped to show how young the man way. And while his wife stayed at the bed side of their only child, he spend his worry in the night, pushing smoke defiantly from between his lips and out through his nostrils, as if it carried away his anger and worry with it. Leaning against the yellow hatchback that they family had driven to the hospital in, he dragged hard on the cigarette before dropping it to the ground and stomping down on it angrily. Twisting his shoe over it with added emphasis, he blasted the smoke out through his nostrils, ending it with a snort and a cough. Really, has out of practice at this smoking thing.
Checking his cellphone again for some update from his sister Margaret, he sighed heavily when there were no new messages and thrust the sleek black device back into his pants pocket. Maggie was Arkady’s god-mother, and also a registered nurse. She had always been the family’s first line of defense against health problems, and he hoped she had heard of something like what Arkady was going through before. But thus far the blanks he was receiving in return for his questions were far from encouraging.
Stomping back towards the In-Patient entrance, he hoped one last time that when he got upstairs, Arkady would be perfectly okay.
Three days before, everything had been perfectly okay. Arkady was just starting his sixth grade year, and had moved from the Intermediate School of the Morrisburgh South School District into the Central Middle School. Not only had this meant the usual rush to buy new school clothes and supplies, but also that Arkady would be meeting new friends for the first time in five years. Morrisburgh Intermediate and Primary Schools were divided into four separate districts, and all of these combined into the large and fairly new Middle School. Students in Kindergarten through Fifth grade who had always known each other were suddenly exposed to three time as many students more than they had ever known who all had friendships and cliques from their own districts.
So, on the first day of school, Arkady had been suitably nervous.
“Mom, where’s my Spiderman pencil case?”
“Mom, where’s my Captain Jack Sparrow binder?”
“Dad, have you seen my new shoes?”
And so on. When he left in the morning, the sandy-haired little boy had been a bundle of energy, unable to control his excitement as he joined his fellow schoolmates on the bus to their new school. His brown eyes sparkled and laughed as he waved his small hand at his parents before running up the school bus steps and finding his new seat.
After a day of new seats, new faces, new classes, new books, and new trouble, Arkady returned home with much less of his usual vivacity. Thinking that perhaps he had just overdone himself on his first day, his parents sent him to bed early after a healthy dinner and a moderate-sized dose of celebratory ice cream. The silence of night claimed the last rays of daylight as the Harris household fell silent, and outside the first whistling fall winds blew quietly through the trees to bring creeping dreams, and silent shivers in the night.
“Kade! It’s time to get up, breakfast is ready!” Mrs. Harris called up the stairs to her son. In the kitchen Mr. Harris was buttering toast and pouring orange juice in glasses. The eggs and bacon were already waiting on plates, and usually Kade was already downstairs, waiting for his share of juice before they all started eating. But today he was apparently sleeping in.
“Di, he’s probably just not used to the schedule yet. I’ll go get him up. He was pretty tired last night too.” Hunter set two glasses of orange juice on the breakfast table and wiped the crumbs from the toast off on a towel hanging from the oven door.
Diana sighed, “You’re probably right, but he’s never late for breakfast.”
Chuckling, Hunter headed up the stairs, calling back, “Well, growing boys need their rest.”
Once he reached the upper floor with long, stair skipping strides, he reached the poster clad door to Arkady’s room and rapped quickly three times. Tap, tap, tap. “Hey, kiddo! Time to get up, you’re mother’s been calling you.” Listening carefully, he heard nothing from inside the room. Turning the knob of the door, he swung it inwards and stepped into the room.
Books, clothes, and toys were strewn across the room in the usual haphazard arrangement of a preteen boy. No one likes to clean up after themselves at that age. Picking his way carefully across the sloppy minefield, Hunter reached the bed and shook Kade gently. “Kade, breakfast is ready. Let’s go.” As his hand touched Arkady’s arm, Hunter knew almost by instinct that something wasn’t right. The skin was too warm for sleep, and the Spiderman pajama top was damp. Pressing the back of his hand to Arkady’s forehead, he felt the heat press into his skin. Frowning, Hunter went into the bathroom at the end of the hall and returned with a cup of water, thermometer, and a bottle of Children’s Tylenol.
Using the aural thermometer, Hunter gently held the device to Kade’s ear and waited for the readout to display the temperature. 104.3 degrees Fahrenheit. Perfect, just what they needed. Carefully shaking Kade some more, he managed to get a weak response, and Kade blearily opened his eyes.
“Whassat?” His voice was more than sleepy blurred, as if Hunter could hear the fever in his speech.
“Nothing much kiddo. You need some Tylenol though. Did you know you have a fever today?” Hunter gently helped Kade sit up. Holding the small measuring cup of purple liquid in front of Kade’s lips, he waited for him to open his mouth, and then poured it in. The glass of water followed the Children’s Tylenol, and then he let his son lay back down on the pillows before he turned and went back downstairs.
“Babe, I think we need to give Doctor Michaels a call. Kade’s got a pretty high fever. I gave him some Children’s Tylenol, but I think he might need something more than that.”
Diana Harris had been sitting at the table, reading a book and nibbling at a piece of cooling bacon when Hunter came back downstairs. “What? Really? Oh shoot.” She put down the bacon and book and went over to the phone. Doctor Michaels’ phone number was on the small pegboard next to the wall phone. “I hope this isn’t something going around school. How’s he look?” Concern was there, in each word, as she dialed the number of their pediatrician.
“He looked tired, and he was so hot Di. Maybe the Tylenol will break the fever, but . . . better safe than sorry. Guess he’s going to miss a day of school early this year.” Hunter snatched up some bacon and ate it almost without tasting it. Glancing back to Diana by the phone his eyes passed over the clock. 6:42AM. Well, they had a little bit of time before either of them had to start work today. Maybe they could get an early opening at the doctor’s office and this wouldn’t be too much of a problem. And maybe the Tylenol would break the fever, Hunter thought to himself. But somehow he just couldn’t picture it. Kade was so hot when he’d felt his head, and although the boy had been sick before, it hadn’t been as bad as this. 104.3 degrees was also the highest temperature the kid’d ever had. Hunter Harris was more than a little worried about Kade. He was just turning to go back up and check on him again when Diana got off the phone.
“Doctor Michaels’ office says they have an opening at nine o’clock this morning that they can fit us into. Do you want to take him, or should I?” She hung the phone back on its receiver and went over to where Hunter was standing next to the table.
The morning sunlight defied depression and bounced cheerily over the plates and glasses of juice, lighting the breakfast nook with September brilliance. None of it reached Hunter’s eyes. An unhappy smile played across his lips. “I can’t today. If it had been earlier, then no problem. I’m meeting the Collums for an appraisal at 9:30.”
“Well, guess it’s up to me then. I think I can get the morning off. They’re not going to need me too much at first. Jessie can take over most of the morning workload.”
Mrs. Harris worked at an antiques dealership, and usually it wasn't busy until after punch. Mornings were almost always spent cataloging new products or researching the authenticity of others. She would have to call in and let Jessie know she'd be late today.
"Honey, I'm going to check in on Kade one more time and then get in touch with Maggie as well. She might be able to give us a preliminary before we head to the doctor's." Hunter said as Di started dialing Jessie Casterly's home phone number.
"Mmhmm." She nodded as Hunter headed back upstairs. He stopped by the bathroom to pick up another glass of water and a washcloth moistened with cool water before heading into his son's room again.
Kade hadn't changed his position, and his flushed, damp face pulled at Hunter's heart. There was an unidentifiable malignance in the shadows that were starting to form undress the boy's fever rimmed eyes. Setting the water down on the bedside table, he sat carefully next to Arkady's sleeping form. Gently brushing back the boys pale brown hair from his forehead, Hunter again felt the fever warmth with his own skin and worried some more. He carefully placed the washcloth on his son's brow and watched him breath easily and deeply despite the fever.
I'll mostly be including this story in my LJ posts as I feel the other one, Traveling Time: The Journeys of Enas Tonmi actually has a slightly greater chance than a snowflake in a blast furnace of publication. You can have sneak peeks at that when I get around to publishing it.