Mimi's Demons

Chapter 92: Sicko

Mimi was sleepy. She kept sniffing too and her throat kinda hurt.

Juli leaned into her line of view after a particularly loud sniff, blocking the view to the screen. It was their usual videogame session after lunch. Bilo had gone back to wherever he'd come from and it was snowing outside.

"You got a cold or sumpthan?"

She shrugged. "Probably."

Faint memories of being alone and miserable in her storage room floated through her head. The cement walls and floor had been particularly cold and she'd never realized what cold medicine did for her until she'd gone without it. While she'd been sick in the past it had always felt like it did nothing and that her mother was stuffing it down her throat because some higher wisdom told her to.

She'd thought she'd die then, sweating and shivering in her mountain of blankets and sleeping bags and her battery powered heater sputtering now and then.

An even fainter memory, one she figured was a fever dream, was of a blurred, dark figure urging her to swallow something and putting something cold on her head. But she'd been alone then. And when she shut her door, the demons somehow knew to stay out.

She sniffed again. It was starting to hurt. The sniffing, that is. Or perhaps it was her head.

She didn't notice that Juli had texted someone until Serena appeared in the doorway with a tray of Mimi's arch nemesis, medicine, a cup of something steaming, and a thermometer.

She paused the game and glared at Juli. He gave his patented 'business smile.'

"Just doing my job, boss."

"I'm your boss."

"A thank you would suffice."

"Calm your attitude, chit." Serena knelt by her bean bag. "Let's take you're temperature first."

The thermometer went under her tongue and Mimi remembered that she hated this too. It hurt, having something hard sticking under your tongue and then waiting for what seemed like forever.

It beeped. Serena took it out.

"Yep, that's a fever." She put the cap on and put it in a pocket of her jeans instead of back on the tray. "Feeling anything besides sniffles?"

"My throat kinda hurts," she said petulantly.

"She's coughed a few times," said Juli.

She glared at him again, to which he responded to with yet another business smile.

"I don't know why you're so offended, boss. I thought you'd like it that people actually pay attention to you now," he said.

"It's not the attention." Mimi looked at the purple syrup Serena was measuring out into a little cup.

Juli had the audacity to giggle.

"You're such a baby."

Wrong words.

Serena had to pry Mimi away from smothering Juli with the nearest pillow to get her to take her medicine, which she did so after the required period of moaning and groaning. She had thought she'd be free from this after she had been allowed off the antibiotics and painkillers for her tongue.

All the while, Juli continued to giggle beneath his premature grave of pillow.

"One day," Mimi growled in her best boss voice. "I will cut you."

"Ooooo," said Juli.

"Enough of that." Serena pushed the cup of tea into her hands. Sadly, it wasn't the usual sweet milk and chamomile concoction she usually made her. It smelt citrusy and was distinctly unmilked.