The Sick Day IX / XI

THE SICK DAY

         The quarreling over who hogged the bathroom was over and the lost page of homework had been found right where Orrin had left it. The children were out the door at last. The schoolbus pulled away.

         Wayne went to the phone, "Hey Augie, don't bother stopping to pick me up today, No, I called in. I told you yesterday I was coming down with something. Well, maybe not, but all the times I went to work when I really was sick -- I'm not kidding. my throat is sore and my sinuses -- look the kids just got on the schoolbus and Carrie's gone to work at the hospital. I'm going back to bed."

         Wayne hung up the phone and went back to the bedroom. He couldn't remember when he'd been alone in the house. His throat really was a little sore. He didn't know why he always felt guilty calling in. After all what is sick time for?"

         He put the remote on Carrie's pillow and crawled into bed. It wasn't that he didn't like his job, and he loved the kids and all, but sometimes a man just has to relax in peace and quiet. Nobody running into the room with "Daddy, Orrin won't get out of my room." "Daddy, Amy hid the joy stick and won't tell me where it is." Petty squabbles.

         He had them with his sisters when they were growing up. Truth to tell he still did. They were all married but Dawn. And she and Augie were going to tie the knot at Christmas time.

         Wayne clicked around the channels and discovered there was nothing much on. On one channel a sinewy man was demonstrating an exercise machine. On another two women were hawking some kind of beauty cream. The news; that's it. He fell asleep before the commercial was over.

         He woke with a start a little later. The channel he had been watching was off the air. The one day off he had in months and the cable was out. Channel two was out, so was four. No, it wasn't the cable, some channels were on. This channel was playing some kind of a disaster movie. No wait, Fox News doesn't show movies. Something bad must have happened.

         The image was of thick smoke and people running. He turned up the sound and heard a frantic voice hoarse with emotion and disbelief. The images stopped and suddenly the scene was clear, the street where he worked, a peaceful pleasant morning. Blue sky behind the towers. Then he saw it happen all over again. The video tape. The airplane, the explosion, smoke flames and -- death.

         "I've got to wake up," was his thought. But it wasn't a dream. They were talking again and there were more images of people running away. He got up and ran for the bathroom. While he was throwing up the second plane hit the other tower. A little later he watched as the towers came down. His own office was now a pile of rubble and the people who had been working in it -- they must be dead. Augie must be dead! Another thought: Carrie thinks I went to work!

         He grabbed the phone to call her but a recorded voice told him all circuits were busy and to try again later.

         "Carrie thinks I'm dead," was the thought in his mind right then. Carrie thinks I'm dead and I can't get through to her."

         The TV kept showing unthinkable images. It was all happening right now. It was all going on only about twenty miles away. If he looked out the window he would probably see the smoke. He had to get in the car and go to Carrie's job and let her know he was all right he didn't go in today. He tried the phone again and it was useless.

         He got dressed and went outside. Looking around the quiet street where he lived there was no sign of anything amiss not even a whiff of smoke in the air. When he got in town everything looked normal there too. He started to wonder if he had been taken in by one of those reality programs. Something like that time his father told about when who was it? Alfred Hitchcock? No, someone else, did a radio show so real people really believed the Martians were attacking.

         If that was the case he was going to feel really stupid running into Carrie's office to tell her he was okay. But he was here now and he might as well go in. Carrie came running to meet him. She clung to him sobbing. "I thought you were -- " she couldn't even say it.

         "The phone doesn't work so I came down to tell you, I called in sick this morning."

         She looked up at him. "Sick?"

         He decided it wasn't the time to talk about that. "I got the kids off to school and then went back to bed. Should we go get the kids, or what?"

         "They're all right where they are. I don't understand, you didn't say anything about being sick when I was leaving this morning."

         "Sore throat. Listen, Carrie, the kids must know what happened and they think I went to work."

         "I can't leave. They don't know how many people will be brought here in a little while. They're holding everybody on duty. We might be getting a lot of critical patients pretty soon. Maybe you should go to the school and ask someone to tell the kids you're okay."

         He left the hospital and went back to the car. Some ambulances were leaving the parking lot, presumably to go and help with the evacuation of injured people.

         At the school, he was told he couldn't go in. He showed his ID and said his children would need to know he didn't go to work today and was all right.

         As he got into the car, he thought he smelled smoke in the air. There were helicopters overhead. Somebody was holding traffic back from leaving the school parking lot. Fire trucks were going by, headed for the city.

         Sitting there in his car, twenty miles away from where he should have been that morning, Wayne was thinking what right did he have to be here and okay? He was alive because he told a white lie and said he was sick when he really wasn't. He just wanted to take it easy for one day for once! What had he done or not done that somehow entitled him to be alive right now, when a lot of other people were dead?

         The cop was waving him on, so he exited the parking lot and headed for home. There wasn't much else he could do right then.

         His father had told him about this, how after the war some of the vets were tormented with guilt because they lived, apparently by chance, when others had died. His father had told him that he always believed he was spared to do something special in the world, and he hadn't done it.

         Wayne told him he was an awesome father, and wasn't that enough? His father always had it in the back of his mind that he was spared for a reason, and questioned whether he had lived up to it. Wayne now knew he was going to face that same question. A selfish whim and a white lie had saved his life. For this he surely owed something.