“We’ll manage.”
Cherish is still whimpering when Brianne instructs her to get me out of my clothes, and when my best friend leans into the shower, she doesn’t even think to put a shower cap over her bonnet first. She’s only managed to get my soaking-wet nightshirt from under my butt, which is now completely submerged, when one side of her head interrupts the water falling from above.
“Mom!” She’s fully crying now, and if I had any strength at all, I’d reach for her.
I have no idea what’s happened to me, or why I’m so sick . . . but it’s worth it.
Cherish can’t stop crying.
Jerry and Brianne Whitman came running like I’m their own child.
He lowered me into a bath, and she stayed to take care of me.
I can’t see Brianne, but I know she’s upset. Her agitation is bleeding into her voice, and she’s losing patience with Cherish. That’s the most overwhelming part of all—the way Brianne is snapping at Cherish now. Cherish, her universe, her heartbeat. Because of me.
“Cherish, stop crying, please. None of that is helping Farrah.”
“I can’t—” But whatever comes after in Che’s almost unrecognizable shrieking voice is completely undecipherable. Neither I nor her mom can make out what she’s blubbering about at first, and it’s a good thing Mr. Whitman didn’t wake the housekeeper to witness this embarrassing scene.
“So turn off the shower for a moment and get in, Cherish! It’ll be easier than trying to undress her bent over that way.”
Another whiny series of shrieks that are clearly in protest.
“Then your hair is already wet, and it shouldn’t matter. I hardly think that’s as important as getting your best friend cleaned up and back in bed so she can rest. Now, Cherish.”
The showerhead stops pouring water over me, but the bath is already full enough to cover my stomach. It’s going to be next to impossible for Cherish to get the now heavy, clinging nightshirt off me on her own, but her mother isn’t helping.
I can’t keep my eyelids open, and when I manage to bat them, there must be water on my lashes and in my eyes because it’s like driving in the rain. Everything’s distorted, blurry and bleeding into something else. Cherish disrupts the water when she steps in with one foot, wedging it between my legs to steady herself, and I see only wet and blurry brown stems and a red pajama shorts set. Whatever Brianne is doing, it’s outside the bath, and I can’t hear her over the sound of Cherish grunting near my ear while she laboriously peels my clothing off my skin.
“Mom, some of her vomit got in her hair,” Cherish says, on the verge of sobbing again.
“You were going to have to wash her hair anyway, Che.”
“It’s the middle of the night!”
“Maybe you’ll think next time.”
That’s the part that doesn’t make sense.
I roll my head to the side, trying to find Brianne, but even if I could keep my eyes open, there’s a fogged and frosted window between us.
Brianne doesn’t speak to Cherish that way. Cherish is a masterpiece of her parents’ design, and it isn’t as though she’s ever been made to undress a full-grown human with vomit on their clothes. It isn’t like she should have known how to avoid cross contamination—but I’m not one hundred percent certain that’s what Brianne said in the first place.
The bath that’s supposed to be getting me clean of my bright-orange vomit must be serving the dual purpose of sweating out my fever, because I realize it’s sweltering in here.
But Cherish is going to wash my hair.
She’s been given permission to leave my underwear on because they’re free from throw-up, and it’s almost like we’re back at my house, in the pool together, preparing for baptism. Even though she’s still dressed, she hugs me to her and clumsily rearranges me so that my head rests against the basin instead of the tiled wall. I’m not sure how this’ll make it easier or less messy to wash my hair, but I guess we’ll see. Only Brianne interjects again when she grabs the detachable showerhead.
“Part her hair, Cherish, you know how to wash hair. I’ll get the clips,” she says, and then it sounds like she turns away.
“I’m tired!”
“So Farrah should wake up with a knotted mess because you’re tired? Because that’s what’s gonna happen if you try to wash it all at once like I didn’t teach you how to simplify wash day.”
And then I feel Brianne’s thin fingers in my hair. I know it’s her by the faint waft of floral that precedes her touch.
“Here, sweetheart, I’m sorry. I’ll help.”
When her fingers pause, separating my hair, I hear her kiss Cherish’s cheek.
“It’s okay, baby. I know you’re tired.”
Apparently the agitation is gone. I can hear my friend sniffling, and occasionally the swift work Brianne is accomplishing in making six sections of my hair and clipping all but one of them down stops, and I know she’s coddling her daughter.
She’s taking care of us both now.
My chest and shoulders are goose-pimpling without the shower running over them, and I’m exhausted, despite not being able to throw a tantrum the way Cherish did. Thankfully, they only jostle my head for another fifteen minutes or so, rinsing the conditioner out without undoing the twists they made of each section, before wrapping my head in a fresh terry-cloth turban and working together to get me somewhat on my feet. They get me out of the bath somehow and back into the bedroom.
Mr. Whitman must’ve changed the linen, because Brianne and Cherish have to turn down the covers to put me back to bed.
“What happened to her?” Cherish asks when the two return to the bathroom for what I assume is going to be a long and backbreaking hour of cleaning, at least.
“It’s probably just something she ate,” Brianne answers, and I can tell by the echo of her voice that she’s near the toilet. Bent down, probably, and beginning to clean the putrid mess I made. “I’ll let her mom and dad know in the morning.”
“It couldn’t have been from their dinner.”
“Well, of course it could, honey. How would we know?”
“Because I had the same thing she did,” Cherish insists.
It’s quiet except for the sound of a scouring pad or maybe a brush scrubbing the bathroom tile and the grout groove in between. Mrs. Whitman must be concentrating, or more likely sick to her stomach, because she doesn’t respond to her daughter.
I didn’t know Cherish had eaten my dad’s leftovers already. When we got home, I didn’t expect her to do anything but collapse in a crying heap on her bed, but her parents called her name as we were going upstairs, and I went ahead without her. It was only a little while before she came up, too, and then Brianne was in our suite at some point. I’m having déjà vu, listening to their voices reverberate in the bathroom on the other side of the wall—only the last time they were intentionally hushed.