It was bound to happen at some point… I was isolated.
Now before all you people who know me come up with all your wacky theories on why I, humble and plain, would be isolated, I will tell you I was quarantined.
As reliable as the rising sun, large groups of people living in confined spaces, for days at a time, eating the same food will eventually fall ill of a stomach ailment.
Whether it is Norwalk Virus on a cruise ship or the stomach flu at a campus dorm, it is inevitable.
And as it was, after all, inevitable, I was woken, in calm seas with the sudden urge to get rid of last night’s dinner.
And then to make sure I got rid of it every hour, practically on the hour, for hours after that.
So after puking my brains out for several hours I was forced to go to the medical center or face the consequences of missing drill. Missing drill surely would result in something undesirable… though at that moment it hardly compared to the fever, chills, painful puking.
In very little time, some Swedish woman yanked my pants down and gave me a a shot in the ass. She promptly sent away with bottles and tablets. I was told not to leave my cabin until further notice.
For days afterward with every breath I took, I could feel my many taxed muscles I used to vomit.
My laugh was no where to be heard and silence prevailed throughout the ship. (The villagers may have rejoiced but I was passed out.) I was too sore to even laugh.
My cabin is the size of a large prison cell… which progressively shrank over the sentence period of two days.
Banished to my room, with a huge sign on my cabin warning any passers of the dangers within, I mostly slept the days away.
On a ship, where you can hardly spend a minute alone let alone a day, two days seems like an eternity.
And emerging into freedom is bizarre.
It starts with a knock on the door from the hazmat clean up team. She was garbed in plastic and her mouth and nose covered with a surgeon’s filter.
Everything that can be removed and thrown away is.
Everything that can be cleaned is.
And everything else… is just nuked. She comes in with this supersized, pill-shaped device about a foot long on a little stand.
Plug it in and it fumigates away, a thick dusty fog covering everything.
I no longer felt like a freed prisoner so much as a loose bio-terrorist threat.
And then there is just walking down the hall where everyone welcomes back knowing you were puking your brains out a couple days ago. That is a little weird.
I would tell people I was looking for someone else’s cabin sleep in cause I was fed up with mine.
My dad classifies the course of stomach afflictions as follows, first you worry that your are going to die, then you are worried you won’t.
I survived… til now.
Very rough seas are forecast….
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