I could tell something was wrong. I don't customarily get chills like that. By the time I climbed into bed, I could tell they had developed into a fever, plus my heart was pounding.
It had been a frustrating evening, too. Our car had been out on loan for the previous two days, and the person who'd had it thought it was entirely reasonable to keep it over one more night, even though that meant that my wife would be stuck without a car again for a third consecutive day. That hadn't been much of a problem, given her volunteer day on Wednesday, and since her friend had loaned her a vehicle for a doctor's appointment on Thursday, but I agreed with her that we needed a different answer for today. So we patiently worked with the person who had it to come up with a mutually-agreeable solution that would suit all of us. We stood our ground, and didn't let ourselves get run over by assumptions, but it really took a team effort to make that happen.
I 'd already been planning an early morning, and my chills had convinced me that an early evening was also a good idea. When I got home from dropping off our daughter at work, my head hung as I removed our keys from the car and noticed hers still attached. Ugh. So I went in the house and texted our daughter, but got no response. We then tried to look up a phone number for her work place, but the only number we could find was no longer in service. Those efforts wouldn't have mattered, as it turns out: yes, she needed her keys. Even though my wife had suggested that she could take them to her after the younger two granddaughters were asleep, the amount of time she spent continuing to look for a phone number after it was obvious we weren't going to find one made it equally obvious that she didn't want to go. So rather than waste further time in a fruitless effort that was probably only going to confirm what we needed to do anyway, I loaded my chills back into the car and drove back to our daughter's workplace, where she was most grateful that I had brought them to her. I then came back home and went to bed. So much for my early night, and I was plenty miffed about it. I'd also taken a disposable plastic and a paper soft drink cup out of the car; I might have left just the plastic one, but was afraid the paper one might give out and make a mess to deal with.
As soon as my head hit the pillow I knew I was feverish, but I still lay there for an hour before texting my wife and asking her to come up the stairs. I knew I was being a bit of a baby, not just taking care of myself, but wanted to be "evaluated" where I was. Sure enough: 101.1°. She brought me some acetaminophen, but I still lay there awake until 1 a.m., when I moved out to the sofa for a while. I slept fitfully through the night, but could tell that my fever had broken before I'd gotten out of bed.
She still loves and tries to take care of me, and I still love her, too.
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