My heart is in a cough syrup

Cough Cough Cough

I woke up in a sea of blankets, nebulizers, hot water bags, inhalers, soft toys, and cough syrups.
Cough syrup, my heart is in you, I thought. I held the syrup bottle close to my heart. I kissed her. She was bitter. Oops! Don't you like me? I asked her. I read about the ingredients. I checked the internet. I saw everything the Karnataka Drug Control Department has to say about the cough syrup.
My son heard me sing curses at the health departments. "Ma, you kissed the cough syrup bottle, and now you are shouting in my ears." He cuckooed from underneath the blankets. I'm sure he thought I cracked up.
My morning that day was very Bangalorean. It was Warm, windy, and rainy. My house, its walls, its floor, its tables smelled of the cough syrup. Maybe it's a Bangalorean thing too. Is it? I asked my husband. I caught him watching the giant machines work on a construction site. " That's definitely a Bangalorean thing," he said. We noticed the yellow buses full of children pass through the black clouds of smoke and dust. Yup! That's how he got it, we thought.
I waded back into the blankets to check if my son had a high temperature. He didn't. He was coughing.
Coughs and afternoons shouldn't last long, I told the rasam( Indian soup) bowl sweating in the kitchen's heat. I packed her in a casserole and ran to fight the cough.
Mails received! A ton of them. So many in a week? I thought. It's been a week since I went on a pani puri (Indian snack) spree, shopping in the lanes. C-O-U-G-H? Really? Strange spelling and such a mean nature. Just let go... I murmured. "I heard you again," my son said. He was peeping through the blanket he tucked himself in.
Evenings, bone soup, peppered milk, and cough stayed with us that day.
Cough syrup, my heart is in you. I told the syrup bottle. I held the syrup as high as I could. I knelt in front of it, begged, "Heal my son."
At night, the cough syrup swallowed the cough. Forever gone? I asked my son. "Yes, forever; it's gone, ma," My son replied in a rough voice.
Cold wind breezed into our rooms. We slept sprawling across the beds in our respective rooms.