The Moment of Contagion (female, Secret Santa for Likesn!)

[Chanel_no5]

Hello @Likesn, I'm your Secret Santa this year!  

As we all know, I'm not doing contagion very well at all, and I'm new to writing colds altogether, but I did the very best I could, so I hope you'll like it! And that's also the reason it took me so long to finish... so... I hope it's worth the wait.  

Merry belated Christmas!

***

Who knew where Jessica had picked up this cold in the first place? It was cold and flu season, everywhere was Germo-topia. She thought through some of the events of the past week, wondering if she could pinpoint the exact moment that the cold viruses had invaded her. In all fairness though, she might just have gone outside for a moment and taken a deep breath of deceivingly healthy fresh air, and inhaled the viruses from a sneeze someone had released a couple of minutes earlier just a few steps away. Each day of the past week she had been stuck in at least one situation with someone with a very obvious, very contagious cold. The moment of infection had likely occurred during one of those situations, and she couldn’t even pinpoint when she had started feeling the symptoms. She had been a bit rundown the whole week; she was really stressed. This weekend was the New Year’s party that her girlfriend always hosted; she was too busy planning for that, and she had no time to get sick. Absolutely not.

Yet that was what had happened.  

 

Monday: Job interview

Miss James isn’t much older than Jessica, maybe in her early thirties, but she gives off that self-assured boss persona in a way that some people find intimidating. Jessica has a feeling that Miss James would seem even more intimidating if she wasn’t very obviously suffering from a monstrous cold. Her eyes, which look like they normally are a crisp crystal clear blue, are bleary and watery, her elegant nose has a dark red shade and the skin around her nostrils is chapped and looks raw and painful. She has a box of tissues on her desk, and it’s almost empty.

“Hello, Jessica, is it?”

Her voice is so raw and deep-sounding from the cold that Jessica involuntarily flinches a bit. Probably not a reaction that earns her any points, but she can’t help herself.

“That’s right.” She smiles, attempting to fix her little error, and Miss James tries to return her smile, but instead looks like she’s about to sneeze. She must have sneezed dozens of times this morning, and Jessica wonders if she has bothered covering them when she was alone. If not, the air is probably swarming with viruses, just waiting to make their way into her.

“H-have a seat. I’b just going to… huhhERSCHuhh! Heeh-TSSHooo! ISSCHooo! Heh-ITSSHoo! EeISSCHoo! Ugh, excuse be. I keep trying to kick this cold, but it keeps kicking back.”

“It must be really annoying,” Jessica says sympathetically as her potential future boss blows her nose with a tired, messy sound that conveys just how fed up she is with this cold. Miss James coughs out a raspy laughter.

“Yeah, you could say that. So, tell be a bit about your previous experiences id this field.”

Jessica begins to talk, but ever so often, Miss James interrupts her with a poorly suppressed coughing fit or a whole series of wet, tickly sneezes, the first of which she has no time to cover, and the droplets spread in the air, landing on the desk, the stapler, and the CV Jessica has handed over. How many viruses are there in each droplet? How many even smaller droplets remains in the air? God only knows. Jessica tries to hold her breath to avoid inhaling any of the germs, but she knows that all she can do is to hope her immune defence is strong enough to ward off this attack.

Before they say goodbye after the interview is over, Miss James says she hopes she hasn’t passed her cold on to Jessica.

“It’s a really dasty thing,” she says, and then, almost as if she’s making a point, she sneezes again, soaking her already soggy tissue completely. Jessica can’t help wondering why she wouldn’t simply cancel the interview to avoid spreading it, if it’s so nasty, but she only smiles and assures the other woman that she’ll be fine.

Then Miss James holds out her hand, anticipating a handshake. Jessica only hesitates for a second; she wants this job so badly, but she can’t help thinking it’s the same hand holding that soaked, germ-infested tissue a moment ago.

When she leaves, she takes a brief detour to the bathroom and thoroughly washes her hands to get rid of the other woman’s cold germs, but she can’t recall if she touched her face before she washed her hands. She thinks she might have. But she’ll be fine, though. Why wouldn’t she? It’s just a cold, and there are always colds in circulation, but Jessica is almost never sick, so why would she catch this one?

 

Tuesday: Lunch with a friend

“Jessie! Over here!”

The enthusiastic call morphs into a tickly cough, and while Jessica might not have been able to pinpoint the location from the shout alone – the lunch restaurant is completely crowded – but the continuous coughing makes it quite simple for her to follow the sound to the table in the back where her friend sits.

“Wow Emmy, you sound like crap,” she says as she sits down across from her friend, who has brought her scarf up to her face to muffle the cough into.

“Yeah, I caught that bug going around at work,” she says hoarsely, scrubs the scarf hard against her reddish nostrils, and stifles a sneeze into it. “HGNTSh! Oh man,” she mutters thickly and sniffles before lowering the scarf again.

“Bless you,” Jessica says.

“Thanks. Ugh, I promise I won’t sneeze in your direction,” Emmy says and sniffles. The sniffle sounds clogged and wet at the same time, and it makes Jessica wince.  “HUhnTSCHghh!” Emmy sneezes into her sleeve, then sits still with her head tilted a little bit back, her mouth open, eyes almost fully closed, and her damp, pink nostrils flaring and trembling. Finally she tips over the edge of the teasing sneeze. “EeeIISSCHHah! HuhpTSSHh! HuhNKTSSHH! God, sorry,” she sniffles. "I wasn't sneezing at all this morning, it just came all of a sudden now."

Jessie doesn’t know what to say; it’s not her favourite subject and normally she likes to ignore cold symptoms, but it’s quickly becoming clear that won’t be possible. Emmy’s cold has entered the sneeziest stage, and it’s still getting worse.

They place their order, Emmy sneezing her way through it, and then try to have a conversation. It goes like this:

“So what are you doing over New Year’s?”

“I’b… huh-ISSHHoo! ISSCHoo! Huh… huh-ESSCH! I’b visiting by cousid Beddy.”

“Betty?” Jessica can’t remember Emmy having a cousin Betty.

“Doh, BeDDy.” Emmy tries to articulate the best she can, but she is so stuffed up she just can’t pronounce it correctly no matter how hard she tries. Jessica looks puzzled for a moment, as Emmy reaches for a napkin and blows her nose, hoping that will help.

“Oh, BENNY,” Jessica says, finally decoding her friend’s cold-drenched speech. Emmy nods but can’t reply. She’s caught in a hitchy buildup, holding the sad, flimsy napkin several inches away from her face, which gives Jessica a better view than she’d like of Emmy’s red, flaring nostrils.

“Heh… hehh…. heiiiSSHHHoo! HeTSSHooo! Oh by God… huhh-ehh-TSSHH!”

“Bless you.”

“I’b starting to doubt I’ll bake it to his party, though,” Emmy groans and blows her nose again. Jessica is surprised the napkin hasn’t fallen to pieces from all the violent sneezing it’s been subjected to.

“Yeah, you… you sound pretty bad,” Jessica says meekly.

“I’ll probably end up id bed drinking DayQuil rather thad chabpage,” Emmy says, and it takes Jessica a moment to understand that Emmy is really saying ‘champagne’. She really likes Emmy, but she wishes this lunch had never happened. She’s starting to imagine a sore throat, despite knowing that she can’t catch Emmys cold that fast. But maybe she had caught Miss James’s cold from yesterday? Jessica can’t wait to get home and disinfect her entire self. There is no way she’s going to get sick in time for Sheila’s return home. No way.

 

Wednesday: On the train 

But the very next day, Jessica is once again face to face with the epitome of a streaming cold, this time on the train home from work. The carriage is full, and right across from her sits a young woman who caught her attention from the moment she sat down, not because of her cheerfully pink jacket, but because of her nose, which is so pink it almost matches said jacket. That could be because of the chilly weather, if she arrived only moments before Jessica, but from her posture it looks like she has been sitting there, in the warmth, for quite a while.

And she’s sniffling. Wetly and incessantly. She has no tissues, but now and then she wipes her streaming nose against the back of her hand and then goes back to sniffling.

Jessica thinks she looks like a sneezing fit waiting to happen, and discreetly leans as far in the opposite direction as she can, trying to breathe uncontaminated air while the other woman keeps sniffling.

Sniff…. Sniff… sniff…. Sniffle…

It’s wet, but light, though every once in a while she gives a louder, more desperate sniffle, and that also reveals that she isn’t just having a runny nose, she is also massively stuffed up.

Snrrrff! Sniff… sniffle… sniff…

She brings a hand up to her nose and rubs it, creating a liquid sound. It actually sounds itchy, how the hell a sound can be itchy, and Jessica assumes this is the prelude to a sneeze. The woman in pink lets out a frustrated little moan, followed by a sharp inhale. There’s a pause, where Jessica thinks she has either held the sneeze back or stifled it so quietly she didn’t even hear it, but then the sneezes explodes from the woman in a far from quiet outburst.

“HEEEIISSSSHHHHew!”

She raises her hands, she does that much, but the spray is so plentiful, and her hands are so far away from her face that a cloud of mist hits the seat in front of her, and the rest of it whirls around in the air, microscopical droplets containing the same misery she’s suffering right now. A misery Jessica has been trying so hard to avoid herself.  

The woman draws another desperate breath and erupts in a whole fit of wet, spraying sneezes.

“Hah-ISSSHHHew! ISSCHEW! HEH-EESSHHEW! Sniff… sniff… ahh-ISSSSHOO!”

She semi-covers the three first sneezes, but the fourth escapes her after she apparently thinks the fit is over, and her entire upper body bends forward with the force.

Jesus Christ, Jessica thinks, isn’t she embarrassed at all about sneezing like that on a crowded train?

Apparently not. The woman rubs her nose again, and Jessica can see a trail of moisture glistening on her hand when she lowers it. The woman in pink either doesn’t notice, or she doesn’t care.

The next station is announced, and the woman grabs her bag and stands up to leave. Jessica is relieved that she won’t have to share the crowded space with this obviously contagious lady for much longer, but before she can relax, the woman loses her balance and stumbles towards Jessica’s seat, bumping against it.

“Oh, excuse hehh… be… IISSSHEW!”

To her horror, Jessica feels the cool mist hit her straight in the face when the woman loses control over her poor nose as well as her balance.

“I’b so sorry,” the woman says, and she looks it. “I didn’t feel it cobing. But I’b dot contagious or adything, this is just allergies.”

Yeah, right, Jessica thinks. No allergies in the world makes you sound like that. Stuffed up, yes. Sniffly, sure. But this kind of thick, deep, raw voice, you don’t get that from allergies.

“It’s fine,” she assures the lady in pink, even though it’s not fine at all. She just wants the other woman to get as far away from her as quickly as possible, and take her viruses with her. “Don’t worry about it.”

When the other woman leaves, she starts to cough, and that’s definitely the kind of chesty, rattling cough that you get several days into a horrible cold.

I am so fucked, Jessica thinks, wiping her face as thoroughly as she can. So, so fucked. 

 

Thursday: At the grocery store

Jessica is surprised to feel alright when she wakes up on Thursday morning. Well, her throat feels a bit dry, but it’s winter so the air in her apartment is dry. Even though she has been drinking plenty of water to stay hydrated, it still affects her sometimes.

Honestly, she wants to hole up and hide from the world today, barely able to fathom the fact that she’s still healthy, but her fridge is empty save for a can of pickles and a piece of ham left over from Christmas, so she has to take a brief trip to the grocery store and pick up some essentials.

The first thing she sees is a woman, maybe in her early twenties, who sneezes twice into cupped hands and then immediately reaches out to grab a package of cereal from the shelf, decides it’s not the one she wants, and puts it back. Jessica glances into her cart and sees plenty of cold supplies in there, and makes a mental note to skip the cereal today.

“HuhmpTSH!”

Someone she can’t see sneezes. It’s a muffled sneeze, but clearly audible, feminine and has that tired, sick sound to it. At this point, Jessica almost thinks about giving up. Two more days and she’ll be fine. But two more days is plenty of time to start developing symptoms, or to catch something if she hasn’t already. She thinks about the woman on the train from yesterday, and shudders involuntarily.

“Hehh… mpTSSHoo!”

The sneezer sneezes again. Jessica can only hope she’s not touching anything that she’s going to touch soon.

A minute later, Sneezy Lady sneezes again, a wetter, more desperate sneeze, followed by a messy noseblow.

Jessica quickly wraps up her shopping and takes her stuff to the checkout line. Where she realises that Sneezy Lady is indeed the cashier, and the only one there, at that. And “lady” isn’t a very accurate description either, she’s a college-aged girl, wearing lots of makeup in an obvious attempt at covering up what can’t be covered. Dark circles under watery, glassy eyes, a rosy shade around damp nostrils, a feverish flush in an otherwise pale face.

She has an open box of Kleenex next to her, and there’s one crumpled, soggy tissue in her hands. She’s breathing through her mouth, raspy breaths that sound like they’re on the verge of becoming a cough.

“Yeah, I kdow, I look awful,” she says. “This cold, I swear to God, it’s killing be. Hehh… eeMPTSHHoo!”

“Bless you,” Jessica offers, but she feels like leaving the stuff and bolt.

“Thags,” the cashier says, wiping her nose with the tissue again. Then she reaches for the next item in the line.

Once she has paid, Jessica goes to her car and picks out her hand sanitizer, pouring a healthy amount into her hands and rubs it in. Part of her is annoyed that the cashier is at work today despite displaying this miserable, and almost visibly contagious cold, but she knows that she probably can’t afford to lose a day of work. But how many other people are going to catch that cold?

Is Jessica?

She shudders.

Hopefully not.

 

 

 

Friday (today): The airport

Jessica wakes up on Friday morning with an unsurprising, but very unwelcome, cold. Whichever place she caught it, the illness is no longer just a prospect, but a fact. In a strange way, it’s a relief. No more trying to avoid sick people – which is almost impossible this time of year, at least if the past few days are anything to go by – and the anxiety that comes with the sound of each and every sniffle. But it’s also very annoying, having to succumb to it after trying so hard to avoid it.

She swallows against the soreness in her throat, hoping against hope that she’s only imagining this, but instead she doubles over with a sudden sneeze. And then another.

“HepTSShoo! Eh… heh-ISSCHoo!”

She sneezes openly, spraying the blanket with a light mist. Ugh.

One look at the clock tells her she has overslept – she never oversleeps, yet another sign she’s sick and that the sneezes aren't just caused by getting some dust up her nose – and she jumps out of bed and gets dressed in a hurry. Sheila’s plane arrives in less than half an hour, and traffic is always bad on Fridays.

“HeeTSSHoo! Eh… ehhhTSSHHoo! Hah-TSSHH!”

The wet triple escapes her with no warning as she’s buttoning her blouse, and she groans, already feeling that miserable, lethargic feeling of being ill, and the congestion settling deep into her sinuses is threatening to give her a headache. She grabs a couple of tissues and blows her nose furiously, but if it helps at all, it’s only marginally. What it does, however, is making the tingle worse, and she sneezes again.

“EH-ISSHHoo! Heh… hehhh… ehhASSHHOo!”

Sniffling wetly – just like the woman on the train the other day – she leaves home and drives for the airport, where she’s going to pick up her girlfriend from her business trip to L.A.

***

Jessica is unaware that people are looking at her with the same uneasy dismay that she has looked at others the past week. If she had stopped to take a look in a mirror, she would know why. Her naturally fair complexion makes the inflammation in her nose very obvious; its shade is an irritated red, darker around the nostrils but quite deep all the way up the bridge of her nose too. Watery liquid keeps trickling out of her nostrils and she has to keep sniffling constantly to keep it from being visible to others. The pressure of the congestion has indeed given her a headache, of that unpleasant eye-watering kind, and while she’s not sure if she has gotten a fever yet, she sure feels like she has. She’s shivering in the chilly air of the waiting hall, and the shivers makes her feel like she has to sneeze all the time.

Which she more or less does.

“HepTSSHHoo! Eh-ISSHHoo!” She sniffles and rubs her nose with the palm of her hand. “HeeISSHH! Ahh… ahhhIISSHHooo!”

“Oh my God, bless you!” a familiar voice says from right behind her. When she turns around, one hand still loosely cupped in front of her twitching nose and half-open mouth, Sheila is standing there with a big grin on her sweet face. “Are you alright?”

 “I think I bight be cobig dowd with sobething,” Jessica replies. Sheila raises an eyebrow.

“You think? Yeah, sweetie, I think so too,” she says, then cups Jessica’s face in her hands and kisses her softly, right on the mouth, as if her messy and contagious appearance doesn’t put her girlfriend off one bit.

“You’re going to catch this too, hodey,” Jessica says when Sheila breaks off the kiss, but her girlfriend only laughs.

“I don’t care, as long as I catch it from you. Come on now, let’s go home, before you get the entire airport sick.”

“What about the party toborrow?”

“Well, we either cancel and I take care of you, or we throw the party anyway and I’ll take care of you while hosting the party.”

Jessica envies her girlfriend’s easy-going nature, and this is only one of those examples. Sheila smiles.

“You’re acting like a cold is a big deal. It’s not. Everyone gets a cold once in a while. If I get it from kissing you, then so be it. Relax.”

And, Jessica finds, for the first time in almost a week, she can actually do that. She leans her head against Sheila’s shoulder, allowing herself to feel as miserable that she does. Her nose itches like crazy and she can’t even turn to the side before another sneeze attack strikes.

“Heh-mnTSHH! TSSCHoo! Heh-EpTSSHoo! Oh God, I’b sorry, I sdeezed all over you,” she says, but rather than pulling back, Sheila only holds her tighter.

“I don’t care, silly. Let’s go home and get you to bed.”

Jessica nods. Going back to bed sounds like the best idea of the whole week.

 

 

***

Edited to add: please don't ask me to continue this fic. I'm not into contagion myself and write it only for trades. Thank you.  

 

Edited February 29, 2020 by Chanel_no5

[CheekyGuy]

Wonderful stuff, really vivid, fantastic writing. Do you imagine yourself as Jessica, or as someone else watching her and loving her predicament?

[Alex Hemmings]

amazing

 

[Likesn]

Oh. My. Dear. Lord. This is so amazing, fantastic, I'm not even sure what else could I call it. Yes, it was so definitely worth the wait. I know you usually don't write contagion, but you certainly handled it very very well. In my honest opinion, you could give many (probable most) people writing contagion stories a run for their money. All the different scenarios were absolutely exquisite, and Jessica is adorable. I know it's a long shot, but if you were ever to write a continuation featuring Jessica and Sheila being sick together I would be the first in a what would most likely be a very long line of people thanking you for that. Still, I have to thank you right now for making me so happy I decided to participate in this year's secret Santa

[Chanel_no5]

33 minutes ago, CheekyGuy said:

Wonderful stuff, really vivid, fantastic writing. Do you imagine yourself as Jessica, or as someone else watching her and loving her predicament?

Thank you! I personally try to keep myself out of anything contagion-related, so I don't imagine myself as either Jessica or anyone loving her predicament.  

8 minutes ago, Alex Hemmings said:

amazing

 

Thank you! 😃 

19 minutes ago, Likesn said:

Oh. My. Dear. Lord. This is so amazing, fantastic, I'm not even sure what else could I call it. Yes, it was so definitely worth the wait. I know you usually don't write contagion, but you certainly handled it very very well. In my honest opinion, you could give many (probable most) people writing contagion stories a run for their money. All the different scenarios were absolutely exquisite, and Jessica is adorable. I know it's a long shot, but if you were ever to write a continuation featuring Jessica and Sheila being sick together I would be the first in a what would most likely be a very long line of people thanking you for that. Still, I have to thank you right now for making me so happy I decided to participate in this year's secret Santa

You have no idea how relieved I am now!! I'm SO happy you enjoyed it!! Thank you so, so much for all those kind words!  

 

[MzMental]

This is fantastic! I know you said you don't do contagion well but this was amazing. I always love your work so I'm not surprised!

[Chanel_no5]

On ‎12‎/‎29‎/‎2018 at 6:14 PM, MzMental said:

This is fantastic! I know you said you don't do contagion well but this was amazing. I always love your work so I'm not surprised!

Thank you so much!  

[macrotwentytwo]

I love this so much... Simply prefect. I wished you'd just go on and on and on with repeated exposures.  I really hope they throw this party anyway and she has to be the one exposing other people now

[M214186]

This was fantastic 

[Jeff1]

Amazing!  Very well done!

[Shamaël]

Chanel, if you had any doubt about this story, please stop immediately!!! This is amazing! Each and every of your characters are very well individualized, they have their character and sneezing pattern, and it's just brilliant, as always.

On 12/29/2018 at 1:54 PM, Chanel_no5 said:

Yeah, right, Jessica thinks. No allergies in the world makes you sound like that. Stuffed up, yes. Sniffly, sure. But this kind of thick, deep, raw voice, you don’t get that from allergies.

This is the line I like most, because I always love when you make a difference between allergies sneezes and cold sneezes. Thank you for sharing!

[ZakuConvoy]

Okay, this one is great.  So many great situations.  Love it.

[Matt alacran]

Nice description 

 

[RedVelvetHeart]

Wonderful fic, thank you! I'm always drawn to exploring that moment of contagion 🙂

[Scandinavius]

Dread it, run from it, destiny the cold still arrives. Excellent story this, and you do contagion so well.

[NickG1998]

I love this story keep up the great work