Would You Mind Dying A Little More Quietly Please?

Gary started coughing his lungs out the other night, so I took him to the emergency department - we thought he'd accidentally breathed in sawdust while cutting up firewood. While we're there, someone else comes in coughing and has to be put on a ventilator, then they put Gaz on a ventilator, then I start coughing, then more people start coming in and it turns out the town is in the grip of a nastily-contagious influenza chest infection thing. Or the government is doing plague experiments. Or maybe the rest of the world is dead and we're just the last ones that the Russian super-anthrax has reached, and no one's noticed because we're all delirious & staring blankly at 3:00 am re-runs of Pawn Stars and Pimp My Ride on the TV.

So Doctor Mike sent us home with inhalers and antibiotics and we tried to go to bed, but lying down made it worse so we had to sort of prop ourselves up on pillows on the arms of the sofa and spent the night coughing & retching & praying that Paul would drop by with his .222 and put us out of our misery. But Paul was too busy coughing and retching himself, along with most of the town. It was horrible! Finally it passed and we are mostly on our feet once more, although after an hour we need to lie down again. It was like one of those end of the world epidemic movies where the army arrives to isolate the town, then nukes it when no one's looking. "Just a precaution! Ha ha! cough cough oh dear god we're doomed"

So now we're down to just 786 coughs each per night and luxurious periods of almost ten minutes of sleep before our bronchial tubes try to expel themselves on the pillows. Hopefully we'll feel human again soon, because I'm starting work at the roadhouse on Monday and Gary has a heap of council heavy machinery to fix. Not to mention how nice it would be to be able to leave the camp long enough to get food other than instant beef noodles & icy poles which is all we feel like eating most of the time...here Smokey...no there's no cat food left...coughcoughcough...have an icy pole.