brick house

on monday, i wrote about the brick i managed to ingest without knowing it. well, a coworker took a sledgehammer to it around lunchtime.

after spending the better part of my morning with increasingly worse pain where the brick seemed to lodge, i couldn't stand it any longer. i called debbie to see if she had any drugs -- immodium, aspirin, cyanide -- to remove the pain. the woman who self-diagnoses her own illnesses and manages to get herself prescriptions for just about anything, had nothing to help me. instead she gave me a tea bag of green tea. "it'll soothe your stomach," she tells me. between my sweating and wooziness, i almost to believed her.

back on my floor i head to the kitchen to make myself a cup of this green tea. maybe i could have tested her theory of green tea if the co-worker next to me hadn't decided to make her lunch at that moment. her choice of foodage? a big green healthy salad topped with rancid-smelling chunks of chicken which poured out from a never-ending ziplock baggy.

the smell of that chicken carcass hit me first in the nose. i tried to wave it away, turning my face this way and that trying to avoid breathing it in. too late. the boiled flesh, cubed to fit into the carnivore's mouth, hit me square in the brick where my stomach once sat. wham!

i haphazardly left my tea on the counter next to the hot water station. my only thought was, the brick has been hit and the pieces are going somewhere, anywhere and everywhere. now.

in a panic, i dove into the ladies room, which thankfully is only about 5 feet from where i stood. the first nauseous wave of bricks hit my throat, when i hear a voice behind me. "are you okay?" i pop my head out from the stall -- cause really, do you think i am okay with that large of a sound emitting from me? i can only imagine the look of panic that spread across my face with the knowledge of what comes next.

"are you going to be sick?" no, i just decided to test out being a bulimic for a while, since all attempts at anorexia have failed to date. before i could answer her, another wave of bricks decided they needed to escape my body.

wave after wave of bricks burst forth in away that can only be described as my screentest for the next installment of the exorcism. as the crowd outside the ladies room grew, because really, just in case it was an exorcism going on in the bathroom, they wanted to stay clear of any malevolent beings - myself included.

now, what do you think most people would think when a 30-year old woman begins to heave violently? right, not the rotovirus. not food poisoning. yeah, you guessed it. in between heaves i can hear the whispers starting on the other side of the door, is she pregnant? whisper, whisper, pregnant? whisper, whisper.

for the love of goddess, no! if i was, it could only be satan's child with a touch of food poisoning that could cause that much fevering, heavering and screaming. after i left pretty much most of what i had consumed for the last week in the septic system at work, i decided to go home.

in the options of being held captive on a train with others to infect or a solitary ride home, i opted to contain my germs and share them with only one person -- an immigrant cabbie who had the bad luck to pick my pale, weak self up and drive her home to the 'burbs.

"ahh, rich people live in the suburbs," he says. "i ain't rich, buddy." normally a comment like that might have set off some internal childhood ghetto alarms that shriek: if he thinks you're rich, he may try to rob you. you're in a strange car, with a strange man going very far away right now. all fight systems on alert. fortunately, i was too sick and concentrating too hard on keeping last tuesday's lunch down to care. sure, try to rob me. one push in the wrong direction and i'll hit you with a ton of bricks. (all puns intended.)

it was a miserable ride for both of us. i motioned for him to head to an atm not far from my home and one that conveniently shared a parking lot with a local police station. at least the cops could thwart any attempts at robbery i thought. instead of needing the police, i left them with a present on their lawn. yup, more bricks.

miraculously, i made it home okay. the cabbie? he probably regretted my fare, but not my tip. is there a rule about how much to tip a cabbie who will need to clean up your vomit after driving you 30 miles outside of the city? (i didn't think so either.)

i spent the next 48 hours praying for death to come more quickly or for the last load of bricks to leave. my ribs hurt. i felt as if my torso had turned inside out like a pair of old blue jeans to empty the pockets of any loose change before throwing it into the spin cycle. from hell. wash, rinse and repeat.

in those 48 hours, my nursemaids chloe and sadie never left my side. my husband left me a sink full of dirty dishes. we all know who loves me best.