Medicine

“Tell me more about your teacher,” said the little thing.  Its soft cold hand gently touched the child’s wrist.  Imploring.



“Miss Jameson?” questioned the child.  He snuggled up against the little thing in bed next to him, chewing on a corner of his blanket.



“Yes, Miss Jameson.  She’s so nice.  Tell about what she wore to school yesterday!” The little thing’s voice, little as well, had a raspiness underneath, as though it had been living in a dusty attic for a long time.



“Um… Yesterday Miss Jameson was late to school.  Just a little late. We was waiting for her.  But she looked very pretty.  Not so sad any more."  The boy furrowed his brow, trying to remember more details.  The little thing would ask for more details.  "Her dress was blue I think.  With maybe some flowers.”



“More details!  Did she have a coat?  Did the coat have pockets?  What kind of bag did she have?” the little thing demanded.  It pressed its smooth forehead against the boy’s, touching his cheeks, its glassy blue eyes almost blinking, never quite closing all the way.



The boy laughed, gently pulling the little thing off and cuddling it in his arms.



“I think… She didn’t have her coat!  I had MY coat ‘cause it was so cold.  It was almost snowing!”



“But what about her bag?  What bag did she have?  Tell me, tell me, TELL ME!”  The little thing wriggled on top of the boy’s belly, pounding its tiny fists on his chest.  The boy laughed again.



“Okay, okay!  Let me see… She had her purse.  It was black.  The zipper was all broken and everything spilled out.  It was funny.  She had funny things in her bag.”



“What kind of funny things?”  The little thing gripped the boy’s shirt, pulling him closer.  It was almost vibrating, a word the boy did not know but understood.  Like when that big old clock in the hallway gonged and the child pressed his hand against the smooth mahogany when the gong struck, twelve times (he knew it was twelve because the boy could count very high, all the way to one hundred).  And then stillness and silence with only the ticking sound of the clock echoing in the dark, waiting to strike one.



“Funny things, like gum and keys and old tissues with blood on them.  And so, so many bottles!  I think there was medicine in them.  Maybe Miss Jameson is sick.”



“Yes, I think that’s right!  I think Miss Jameson must be sick!”  The little thing rocked back and forth on its haunches in ecstasy.  “What happened to all the bottles?  Did she pick them all up, that sillyhead?”



“Not all of them.  I saw one of them roll under the block shelf.  She didn’t see it.  She was yelling at us to sit down.  Then she was crying a little.  It's okay to cry. I think she was sad she dropped all her stuff and it was a mess.  She doesn’t like messes in the classroom.”



“What happened to the bottle under the block shelf?  Did she find it later?”



“No, I found it.  When we was building our building in the block area.”



“What did you do with it?”  The little thing, as though it could breathe, held its breath.



The boy leaned over the bed and opened his Thomas the Tank Engine back pack.  He pulled out the bottle.



“What does it say, what does it say, what does it say?” the little thing sang, bouncing up and down on the boy’s tummy.



“I don’t know reading yet.  I know these letters, though.”  The child clasped the bottle in his fragile hand.  “It says… S, U, B, O, X, O, N and E.”



“Sounds great!  Open it!” the little thing demanded.



The boy laughed.  “I can’t open it!  It’s stuck.”



“Just press down so, so hard and twist it that way,” the little thing whispered.  Its voice sounded a little deeper, kind of funny coming out of such a little thing.  “I can’t do it, only you can do it.”



The boy opened the bottle.  He spilled out the contents.  The boy and the thing peered eagerly at their treasure.



“These are shapes!  I know this shape.  It’s not a octagon.  It’s… a hexagon!  Like the yellow shape in the pattern blocks.”  The boy peered closely at it.  “It says the letter N and that’s… a number.  Eight, I think.”



“I love the number eight!  Let’s eat them!”  The little thing giggled.



“I’m not supposed to eat medicine by myself, I don’t think.  I don’t know though.”



“Medicine is good for you,” whined the little thing.



“Oh yeah!  Silly me.”  The boy laughed, shaking his head.  He counted how many (because he could count to one hundred) then scooped up a handful of the shapes with N and 8 on them.



“Bottoms up!”  shrieked the little thing in gales of laughter.



“Bottoms up!” laughed the boy, and swallowed 27 hexagons.



*             *             *



An empty bottle on the floor.



Silence.



The clock in the hallway struck one.